I've been reading the posts on this list for some time picking up and
passing on informative bits of news and opinion.
Thank you!
I think "cowardly" Americans aren't so much just plain chicken to
speak up as brainwashed and whipped into fear, hatred and the
consequent nationalistic fervor by the corporate right wing media.
Seek out the financial sources for the distribution of information
and you'll see that the same corporations buying government in this
country also influence the news of the day to promote their
expansionist agenda. And the Republican majority FCC is merely trying
to deregulate the degree of government sponsored propaganda.
Perhaps you just saw on CNN George Bush in Sacramento playing
mouthpiece for the biotech industry. The president of the United
States is a shill for Monsanto Corporation. And Halliburton, etc,
etc. The electoral process in this country is driven by money, not
principle. The majority in Congress and the media aren't cowards,
they're in on the corruption. For example
look at how environmental law is being rolled back for the sake of
industry to the detriment of human health
The United States has been taken over by the military industrial
complex. Endless war is the plan and corporate profit is the goal.
There may be some hope out of this ever widening quagmire if 1) the
Republican business/government juggernaut dooms itself through its
own excesses, 2) and the imminent energy crisis can't be mitigated,
3) and the Dems get their act together and promote a populist agenda.
4) ....or terrorists pull off a really big hit.
Most likely all this is so much fluff as the world peak in energy
production is reached this decade and economies crash because energy
resources become unavailable. We're already at war about it. And
then there's already the natural gas crisis in the United States.
There are so many wild cards in the deck that the future's a toss up.
That is to say that the US is at war to sustain its energy supply.
The outcome of war isn't predictable at all.
As for China.... go down to the Ace hardware store in your
neighborhood and try to find something NOT made in China. China's
going to be encircled by US aircraft carriers and armies running out
of gas if the Bush / PNAC / WTO -Pentagon megalomaniacs
stay in power.
IMHO of course.
Tim Jones
Monday, Jun. 30, 2003
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html
I Want My Al TV
Liberals look to break the conservative stranglehold on talk radio
and TV. But will anyone tune in?
By KAREN TUMULTY
With its ornate chandelier, Italian tile floor and antique gilded
mirror, the little salon tucked just off the Senate floor looks like
a spot designed for polite conversation. But the dialogue was
anything but polite when media magnate Rupert Murdoch lunched there
in early June with Democratic Senators. The session was supposed to
be a private discussion of the effects that looser media-ownership
rules would have on consolidation and competition. Instead, the
Democrats spent an hour venting about Murdoch's enormously successful
Fox News Channel. They complained that the cable network, whose
slogan is "fair and balanced," shuts out and even mocks anything but
right-wing views. California's Barbara Boxer told Murdoch his
network's only balance is between the right and the far right, and
suggested a new tag line: "Fox News: the right slant."
With Fox's comfortable dominance in the high-pitched world of cable,
it's easy to forget that in the mid-1980s it was the right that felt
abused and ignored on the airwaves. In 1985, North Carolina Senator
Jesse Helms launched a campaign to get 1 million conservatives to buy
20 shares of stock in CBS each and "become Dan Rather's boss."
Conservatives still argue - garnering huge and sympathetic audiences
in the process - that the traditional media giants lean left. But
these days, that familiar spiel is done more for rhetorical effect.
Conservatives know their power in talk radio, cable television and
publishing, and they exult in it. Democratic Senator Byron L. Dorgan
of North Dakota recently commissioned a study of a week's worth of
programming by the nation's 44 top-rated radio stations and found
they broadcast 312 hours of conservative talk programming, compared
with 5 hours of liberal shows. And with conservative authors staked
out atop the nonfiction best-seller lists, the country's two largest
publishers, Random House and Penguin Group, have added conservative
imprints to their roster.
All these outlets combined still reach only a smallish slice of the
population, but it's a motivated and committed slice - that
all-important group of people who actually vote. They're the ones who
helped put the Republicans in power in the White House and in both
houses of Congress. That's why Democrats are increasingly eager to
find a microphone of their own. As first reported by TIME's website
last week, former Vice President Al Gore has been exploring the idea
of creating a cable-television network, as well as helping Chicago
venture capitalists Sheldon and Anita Drobny start a liberal
talk-radio network.
The initial challenge is not political but economic. Gore and Friends
have to convince potential backers that there's a market. Said a
Hollywood source familiar with Gore's original TV proposal: "When it
first came around, people were, like, 'How is this thing going to
make money?' These are Democrats, but they're business people first."
That's why Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt, who co-founded a
nationwide chain of storefront legal clinics, have refined their
proposal to be less ideological and more entertaining. It would not
be a traditional news network, says a person familiar with their
plan, but "something totally different in concept and format." Both
Gore and Hyatt declined to be interviewed.
Whether there really is a market for entertaining liberal media is a
question mark. A few liberals have tried to make a go of talk radio
and television, but none have developed anything close to the
following of radio's Rush Limbaugh and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. Perhaps
it's because liberals are too earnest. But even as gifted a gabber as
former New York Governor Mario Cuomo failed as a talk-show host
because his program was, in a word, boring.
Many Democrats are convinced, however, that if someone can build a
network to showcase their point of view, the ratings will come. As
evidence of an appetite for liberal media, they point to the fact
that Hillary Clinton's just-released memoir is on track to becoming
the fastest-selling nonfiction work of all time.
But others argue that all the hand wringing over the lack of a
liberal alternative to conservative media misses the left's real
problem: a lack of new and coherent ideas. That's why key figures
from the Clinton White House, led by former chief of staff John
Podesta, are launching a new liberal think tank to rival such
conservative intellectual bastions as the Heritage Foundation and the
American Enterprise Institute.
It's all part of what Hillary Clinton might call a Vast Left-Wing
Conspiracy. But there's a long way to go. It took conservatives 30
years - from Barry Goldwater's call to action in 1964, to Newt
Gingrich's takeover of the House in 1994--to put all the pieces in
place. In the meantime, Rupert Murdoch is not likely to be accepting
any more lunch invitations from the Democrats.
Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030630-460213,00.html
At 2:41 PM +0800 06/26/2003, btws549 wrote:
I did think about the part on the encirclement of China, and just
wondering if the Chinese would know what to do about this
geopolitical strategy by the Bush administration. It is so obvious,
but the mainstream press or academic circle seem to be oblivious to
this situation.
One question about all the alleged cowardly behaviours of the
Congress and the Media in the states, since the US is the democracy
it is, why can't they speak up? Is it because of nationalism, or is
it because all the financial strings and political powers are vested
in this Presidency?
Nationalism is quite a hard argument to subsantiate, as the
corporatist culture with the migrant society in the US would make it
difficult to really develop such strong nationalist characteristics.
Political power in the Executive can, in theory, be curbed by the
Congress, despite its limitations. But what we're seeing are the
most outright violations ever known, at least to me, by any American
administration, and the Congress is so helpless about it! Vested
interests in going along the lines of the administration? Or just
plain cowardice in challenging a wartime President?
Main question is, are they really cowed in because of these, or are
there any other reasons? I find it hard to understand their
behaviour.
Justin
--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>