The De-Sperm-inator
By Audrey Schulman, Grist Magazine
Reprinte at Alternet
If you plan to have sex anytime soon, let's hope it's not in Niger,
Africa. According to the nonprofit organization, Save the Children, just 4
percent of couples in Niger have access to birth control. Although the
situation in this West African country is extreme, more than 125
million couples worldwide – most of them in developing countries – cannot get
contraceptives. Some of the children that have resulted from these
couplings were wanted and some were not, but one thing is certain: Lack of
access to birth control increases the burden on already strained
parents and on the global ecosystem.
Sujoy Guha, professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute
of Technology in Delhi, believes he has the answer to this problem.
Highly regarded in India for his work on everything from disability rights
to drinking-water purification, Guha has spent the last 25 years
perfecting his invention; Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance,
better known (thankfully) as RISUG. RISUG, he says, has all the advantages
of the perfect contraceptive – and, some would say, a surprising bonus:
It's made for men.
RISUG works by an injection into the vas, the vessel that serves as the
exit ramp for sperm. The injection coats the vas with a clear polymer
gel that has a negative and positive electric charge. Sperm cells also
have a charge, so the differential charge from the gel ruptures the cell
membrane as it passes through the vas, stopping the sperm in their
tracks before they can even start their journey to the egg. RISUG doesn't
affect the surrounding tissues because they have no charge.
Compared to the other male contraceptive choices currently available –
abstinence, withdrawal, condoms and vasectomies – RISUG is a whole new
ballgame. In fact, Guha and others believe, the contraceptive promises
to be even better than the choices available to women. Guha enumerates
six advantages of his invention:
Neither sexual partner has to interrupt the throes of passion to use it
– no more running to the bathroom and fumbling with various ointments
and plastics.
The process, once it is refined and approved, will be completely
non-surgical. Whew, say a lot of men.
It's long-lasting. According to Guha, a single injection can be
effective for at least 10 years.
After testing RISUG on more than 250 volunteers, neither Guha nor other
researchers in the field have found side effects more worrisome than a
slight scrotal swelling in some men immediately following the
injection. This swelling goes away after a few weeks. Compare that to the Pill,
which even today can cause health problems ranging from severe
migraines to blood clots.
It works. Of all the men who've had the RISUG injection (and 15 of the
250 had it more than 10 years ago), there has been only one unplanned
pregnancy among their partners – and in that instance, the injection
wasn't administered properly.
Best of all, the contraceptive appears to be reversible with another
injection. To date, reversing the procedure has been tried only on
non-human primates, but among them, it's been reversed successfully multiple
times.
If RISUG's current stage of clinical testing goes well, it will be on
the market in India by next year. Within a few more years, if all
proceeds as planned, the injection to reverse it will also be on the market.
Just Shoot Me!
But would men in India – or anywhere else – use it? Every U.S. male
authority I talked to in the field, including experts at the World Health
Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development,
pooh-poohed the idea. "Men don't like doctors to have anything to do with
their testicles," summarized Don Waller, a contraceptives expert and
professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Illinois at
Chicago.
Maybe not – but one in six married men in the U.S. have had
vasectomies, which definitely require medical personnel poking at the gonads.
Moreover, surveys conducted by the University of Edinburgh, the Kaiser
Foundation, and other entities have shown that in countries as diverse
as Hong Kong, South Africa and the U.S., the majority of men say they
want more options for male contraceptives.
But even if men used RISUG, would women trust them? It's doubtful that
the whispered promise of having been RISUGed would fly during a
one-night stand. However, in the context of a committed relationship, RISUG
could shift some of the responsibility for family planning off the women
who have borne (and born) too much of it for too long, at the expense
of their health, time, finances and emotions.
That shift is definitely possible, according to Ronald Weiss, a
vasectomy specialist in Toronto, who says men's attitudes toward contraception
are changing. "In Canada, 10 years ago, it used to be tubal ligations
[the more-invasive female equivalent of a vasectomy] to vasectomies were
performed at a ratio of 2 to 1. Now that number is reversed."
Weiss believes a lot of men would prefer a procedure that wasn't
permanent. And, he says, RISUG is the most promising male contraceptive out
there.
Still, there's been a lot more media fervor over the possibility of a
male version of the Pill – even though its potential side effects for
men include everything from liver damage and prostate problems to what is
referred to in the literature as gynecomastia. Translation: Men growing
breasts.
Weiss thinks RISUG is preferable. "The only people who should be
excited about the male Pill are pharmaceutical companies," he said. He
believes so much money has been poured into researching the Pill because
pharmaceutical companies want something consumers will have to buy again
and again – as opposed to an inexpensive, one-time injection. In the
U.S., a 10-year supply of the female Pill costs about $3,600. RISUG would
be dramatically less expensive, while pharmaceutical companies would
have to pay $25 million to $40 million to bring it to market.
From the consumers' point of view, RISUG could be a godsend during the
approximately 30 years the average person spends trying not to cause a
pregnancy.
And in the developing world, RISUG would mean much more.
This Little Injection Went to Market ...
"Realize that overseas there just aren't decent options," said Elaine
Lissner, director of the Male Contraception Information Project. "By the
time condoms arrive there, they're cracked by the heat. Poverty and
lack of medical follow-up are a problem. You can't use a diaphragm if you
don't have clean running water. You can't use an IUD if no medical
treatment exists if something goes wrong. You can't use the Pill if it's
too expensive."
In the developing world, RISUG's price tag could be brought down to
about $22, the price at which Guha and Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
(the largest Indian drug company) are planning to market it in India.
This makes RISUG potentially affordable by even the world's poorest.
Studies have shown that when couples in the developing world start having
fewer children, both the health and literacy of the children improve,
and mothers are more likely to survive long enough to raise their kids.
Moreover, families with fewer children have less impact on the natural
world, because they are not as desperate for firewood, water and bush
meat.
This "less children/healthier environment" connection has become so
clear that wildlife organizations have started to team up with
family-planning groups in biodiversity-rich areas of the world. In the Montes
Azules Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, Conservation International is working
with Mexfam to slow the clearing of the forests as well as to offer
people there the option of reproductive health care.
Inevitability, talk of providing contraceptives to people in developing
countries raises allegations of racism – but there's a huge difference
between forced eugenics and offering people the choice to control their
own fertility. According to Save the Children, 72 percent of Sweden's
population has access to contraceptives; why shouldn't the same choices
be available in Niger? With the world's population growing by 77
million people per year, access to contraceptives is not something the
industrialized world can continue to hog.
So far, what's holding up the potential marketing of RISUG outside of
India is safety testing. Although the Indian medical community maintains
that its safety testing is better than that of the U.S., Jeff Spieler,
chief of research at USAID's Office of Population and Reproductive
Health, said, "The pre-clinical toxicology testing in India [on RISUG] was
weak."
Lissner agreed that some of the older studies should be redone, but
given the near-perfect record of RISUG so far, she noted, "If I were a
man, I'd feel safer having RISUG injected than eating non-organic fruit."
RISUG will probably soon be marketed in India, but the U.S. will play a
critical role in determining its use elsewhere in the developing world.
Grants from U.S. agencies, corporations, and nonprofits spur on a
significant portion of the world's research. But, said Waller of the
University of Illinois, "If funds from the U.S. are paying for another
country's research, then the research has to be already approved by the FDA.
Otherwise it looks like we're using the rest of the world as
experimental subjects."
Thus, lack of interest in RISUG by the U.S. helps delay its use around
the world.
As Lissner said, "Every month we delay means thousands more women dying
in childbirth, more families in poverty from too many children, and
more women dying in attempted abortions."
Audrey Schulman is the author of the novels "The Cage," "Swimming with
Jonah" and "A House Named Brazil." She has written a chapter on female
sexuality in "The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women."
Article Link
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Tell Your Representative to Vote No on Artic Drilling
Tell Your Representative to Vote No on Arctic Drilling
They're at it again. The Bush administration and its allies in the House of Representatives are trying -- again -- to pass a deceptive energy policy. This time they're trying to justify their drive to drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge by saying it's needed due to rising gas prices at the pump.
The House is scheduled to vote the week of June 14th on a bill to allow drilling in the refuge -- America's premier birthing and nursing ground for polar bears, caribou, Arctic wolves and millions of migratory birds. Your Representative needs to hear from you that this shortsighted plan won't fly.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would have absolutely no effect on today's gas prices at the pump. Arctic oil would take 10 years to get to market and would amount to only a 180-day supply -- a tiny drop in the bucket of our nation's oil consumption and not nearly enough to impact prices. Consumers would still remain dependent on a volatile foreign oil market, leaving us highly vulnerable to price and supply shocks. And in the process our nation's last pristine arctic wilderness would be polluted forever.
Improving the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks would deliver far more energy than the Arctic Refuge ever could -- and it would do so more quickly, less expensively and without destroying our natural heritage.
To Contact Your Representative
If you are from Fayette County call on Representative Chandler (if you are from another region the info can be found online--leave me a message if you have trouble) to oppose efforts to open the Arctic Refuge, our last great wilderness, to destructive oil drilling.
Representative Chandler's fax number is (202) 225-2122
You can also call Representative Chandler at (202) 225-4706.
They're at it again. The Bush administration and its allies in the House of Representatives are trying -- again -- to pass a deceptive energy policy. This time they're trying to justify their drive to drill for oil in the Arctic Refuge by saying it's needed due to rising gas prices at the pump.
The House is scheduled to vote the week of June 14th on a bill to allow drilling in the refuge -- America's premier birthing and nursing ground for polar bears, caribou, Arctic wolves and millions of migratory birds. Your Representative needs to hear from you that this shortsighted plan won't fly.
Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would have absolutely no effect on today's gas prices at the pump. Arctic oil would take 10 years to get to market and would amount to only a 180-day supply -- a tiny drop in the bucket of our nation's oil consumption and not nearly enough to impact prices. Consumers would still remain dependent on a volatile foreign oil market, leaving us highly vulnerable to price and supply shocks. And in the process our nation's last pristine arctic wilderness would be polluted forever.
Improving the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks would deliver far more energy than the Arctic Refuge ever could -- and it would do so more quickly, less expensively and without destroying our natural heritage.
To Contact Your Representative
If you are from Fayette County call on Representative Chandler (if you are from another region the info can be found online--leave me a message if you have trouble) to oppose efforts to open the Arctic Refuge, our last great wilderness, to destructive oil drilling.
Representative Chandler's fax number is (202) 225-2122
You can also call Representative Chandler at (202) 225-4706.
One Mom's Struggle With Brand Mania
One Mom's Struggle with Brand Mania
Nandini Pandya,
AlterNet
When she was 10 years old, my daughter wanted to buy underwear at Limited Too. I just did not get it. "Why does the brand of your underwear matter?" I asked her.
"Because," she said, as if explaining the most obvious fact to a child, "my friends can see the name on the band and know that even my underwear is from Limited Too."
I still did not get it. "Why would the top of your underwear show?"
"Mommy, when I sit down, my jeans get pulled down slightly and it shows. Or, when I raise up my arms, my shirt gets pulled up and it can show then too." Of course, this opened another can of worms in my mind. Why is my 10-year-old daughter wearing clothes that just barely cover her body? But that, as they say, is another story.
It is now four years later and I think I have learned the motivations behind this brand-name mania. More important, I have learned things about myself and I have learned how to teach her some of the values that I hold dear.
To a teenage girl of today, using brand-name merchandise is like carrying important universally recognized credentials. It tells the world that she can afford this stuff, that she uses only the "best" and that she is way above using ordinary discount store merchandise. (Brand awareness is so pervasive that even teachers are not immune -- a science problem was worded this way: A poor person must decide whether to buy store brand cereal or brand name cereal.)
As a caring, understanding parent I try to provide her with things that are considered standard issue. So, her backpack is from L.L. Bean ($55) instead of one from Bradlees ($20); her bathing suit is Speedo ($30) instead of one from Kmart ($15). Clothes are bought at one of these stores: American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, Gap, Old Navy. If they are bought at stores like JCPenney or Sears, they are not the store brand like Arizona or Canyon River Blues -- they must be L.E.I or Calvin Klein or a comparable well-known label. Shoes must be Nike, Adidas etc. ($50) as opposed to those from Payless ($15). (During the "Back To School" purchasing spree last September, Payless was empty and the store selling brand-name shoes was packed!)
The peer pressure is brutal and relentless. On one occasion, she noted that two of her friends were wearing what looked like identical pants. Immediately, one of them said, "but mine are Ralph Lauren." This happened with a group of girls who are her "best friends" or even "BFFs -- Best Friends Forever. Clearly, when it comes to brand names all other loyalties are forgotten. I shudder to think how much worse it gets when she is not with her BFFs. Another time, she admired her friend's pea coat and mentioned that she might buy one at Costco. The comeback? "I doubt it is a real pea coat. Mine cost $300!"
Purchasing decisions are governed by how the item will "play" among her friends. She knows that she will be asked, "Where did you buy it?" She has paid what I consider exorbitant prices for otherwise ordinary T-shirts just because they have a Reebok logo, or a "cute" quip such as "Girls Rule" or "Princess." She bought a metal lunchbox with a 60s-style design for $15 and raved to me about how many compliments she gets because of it. The problem is that she hardly ever took lunch from home before getting the lunch box and, after buying the lunch box she took lunch from home for only as long as the lunch box was a novelty.
What happens to a child who does not have the requisite brand-name merchandise? Well she is considered a reject, not quite "A List" material. Not that the child is aware of all this in any explicit way. All she knows is that she "needs" these labels to be taken seriously by her peers. A low point was when my daughter was reluctant to go to K-Mart because someone from school might be there. My point that she would not be harmed by being seen by someone from school because that someone from school would also have to be shopping at K-Mart was lost on her.
Strategies for Sanity
As a caring, understanding parent I worry about what this slavish devotion to brand names does to my pocket book and to her morality. After almost four years of this type of brand-name awareness in our home, I have developed some strategies.
First, she gets a monthly allowance of $20. She must pay for all her discretionary purchases out of this money. That includes paying for lip-gloss, hair accessories and even candy/soda at the movies. This has given birth to an interesting phenomenon. When she wants some knick-knack, she tries to convince me to buy it for her. It's like thinking "better if I can get it with mom's money than with mine!" After a few false starts, I have learned to be steadfast in my refusal. Then she thinks really hard about getting it. She still buys items that I consider frivolous or extravagant. But now there is an automatic cap on these indulgences and without much aggravation for me.
Second, she gets a mutually agreed-upon budget for clothes at the beginning of the school year and she must choose her mix of brand-name/discount brand purchases to fit this budget. (We have not been very successful at this because she has "needed" additional clothes throughout the year -- either because they "fell apart," got stains from spills, or she outgrew them.)
Third, I have tried to teach her to ask herself three questions before making a purchase: 1) Do I need it? 2) Can I afford it? 3) Is it worth the money?
I cannot say that this last has met with a great deal of success. But, I am hopeful that over time it will teach her valuable skills about managing her wants and needs.
Finally, I have taught her to keep her guard up even with BFFs when it comes to brand-name mania. It is OK to tell white lies - "I bought it at Bobs" (Bob's is one of the "in" stores); "I don't remember how much I paid"; "It was a gift from an aunt." And, if she feels particularly brave, laugh it off and say, "What is it with you and brand names? Jeez! Can we talk about something else?!"
Spending Style
Growing up in Bombay in the 60s and 70s "spending style" was not an issue. Kids wore what the parents bought them, took out the hem when pants/skirts became too short, sewed on buttons when they fell off, and thought nothing of using hand-me-downs. This was because of necessity, of course. But it was also because the culture was one of minimalism -- why get more when one can make do with less?
Also, the pervasive presence of multitudes of people managing with much less and doing it with grace was enough to put an end to any ideas of false grandeur and pretense. Another important factor was an understanding of delayed gratification. I knew that I should-would-could allow myself all the indulgences that I might desire when I came into my own -- after getting a good education, a good job and becoming both financially and emotionally autonomous. In fact, to this end, it was very important to do well at school and the good grades that I achieved were my brand!
When I explain all this to my daughter (where I am coming from, so to speak), she tries to understand. And I think she does, in her own way. It took quite a bit of explaining to convince her that my family in India was not poor or struggling or cheap. It has taken a lot more explaining to convince her of the need to put in the effort needed to produce brand-name quality -- whether it is doing schoolwork, doing household chores or keeping her room clean.
Yesterday she said to me "If I were you, I would use a Gucci leather purse and not this thing that you bought at Sears." I told her that if I had $50 to buy a purse, I would spend half of that on a purse, save a fourth and give a fourth to charity. She just rolled her eyes.
Nandini Pandya is the publisher of Desi Journal, a website about life in the Indian Diaspora. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two children.
Nandini Pandya,
AlterNet
When she was 10 years old, my daughter wanted to buy underwear at Limited Too. I just did not get it. "Why does the brand of your underwear matter?" I asked her.
"Because," she said, as if explaining the most obvious fact to a child, "my friends can see the name on the band and know that even my underwear is from Limited Too."
I still did not get it. "Why would the top of your underwear show?"
"Mommy, when I sit down, my jeans get pulled down slightly and it shows. Or, when I raise up my arms, my shirt gets pulled up and it can show then too." Of course, this opened another can of worms in my mind. Why is my 10-year-old daughter wearing clothes that just barely cover her body? But that, as they say, is another story.
It is now four years later and I think I have learned the motivations behind this brand-name mania. More important, I have learned things about myself and I have learned how to teach her some of the values that I hold dear.
To a teenage girl of today, using brand-name merchandise is like carrying important universally recognized credentials. It tells the world that she can afford this stuff, that she uses only the "best" and that she is way above using ordinary discount store merchandise. (Brand awareness is so pervasive that even teachers are not immune -- a science problem was worded this way: A poor person must decide whether to buy store brand cereal or brand name cereal.)
As a caring, understanding parent I try to provide her with things that are considered standard issue. So, her backpack is from L.L. Bean ($55) instead of one from Bradlees ($20); her bathing suit is Speedo ($30) instead of one from Kmart ($15). Clothes are bought at one of these stores: American Eagle, Abercrombie and Fitch, Gap, Old Navy. If they are bought at stores like JCPenney or Sears, they are not the store brand like Arizona or Canyon River Blues -- they must be L.E.I or Calvin Klein or a comparable well-known label. Shoes must be Nike, Adidas etc. ($50) as opposed to those from Payless ($15). (During the "Back To School" purchasing spree last September, Payless was empty and the store selling brand-name shoes was packed!)
The peer pressure is brutal and relentless. On one occasion, she noted that two of her friends were wearing what looked like identical pants. Immediately, one of them said, "but mine are Ralph Lauren." This happened with a group of girls who are her "best friends" or even "BFFs -- Best Friends Forever. Clearly, when it comes to brand names all other loyalties are forgotten. I shudder to think how much worse it gets when she is not with her BFFs. Another time, she admired her friend's pea coat and mentioned that she might buy one at Costco. The comeback? "I doubt it is a real pea coat. Mine cost $300!"
Purchasing decisions are governed by how the item will "play" among her friends. She knows that she will be asked, "Where did you buy it?" She has paid what I consider exorbitant prices for otherwise ordinary T-shirts just because they have a Reebok logo, or a "cute" quip such as "Girls Rule" or "Princess." She bought a metal lunchbox with a 60s-style design for $15 and raved to me about how many compliments she gets because of it. The problem is that she hardly ever took lunch from home before getting the lunch box and, after buying the lunch box she took lunch from home for only as long as the lunch box was a novelty.
What happens to a child who does not have the requisite brand-name merchandise? Well she is considered a reject, not quite "A List" material. Not that the child is aware of all this in any explicit way. All she knows is that she "needs" these labels to be taken seriously by her peers. A low point was when my daughter was reluctant to go to K-Mart because someone from school might be there. My point that she would not be harmed by being seen by someone from school because that someone from school would also have to be shopping at K-Mart was lost on her.
Strategies for Sanity
As a caring, understanding parent I worry about what this slavish devotion to brand names does to my pocket book and to her morality. After almost four years of this type of brand-name awareness in our home, I have developed some strategies.
First, she gets a monthly allowance of $20. She must pay for all her discretionary purchases out of this money. That includes paying for lip-gloss, hair accessories and even candy/soda at the movies. This has given birth to an interesting phenomenon. When she wants some knick-knack, she tries to convince me to buy it for her. It's like thinking "better if I can get it with mom's money than with mine!" After a few false starts, I have learned to be steadfast in my refusal. Then she thinks really hard about getting it. She still buys items that I consider frivolous or extravagant. But now there is an automatic cap on these indulgences and without much aggravation for me.
Second, she gets a mutually agreed-upon budget for clothes at the beginning of the school year and she must choose her mix of brand-name/discount brand purchases to fit this budget. (We have not been very successful at this because she has "needed" additional clothes throughout the year -- either because they "fell apart," got stains from spills, or she outgrew them.)
Third, I have tried to teach her to ask herself three questions before making a purchase: 1) Do I need it? 2) Can I afford it? 3) Is it worth the money?
I cannot say that this last has met with a great deal of success. But, I am hopeful that over time it will teach her valuable skills about managing her wants and needs.
Finally, I have taught her to keep her guard up even with BFFs when it comes to brand-name mania. It is OK to tell white lies - "I bought it at Bobs" (Bob's is one of the "in" stores); "I don't remember how much I paid"; "It was a gift from an aunt." And, if she feels particularly brave, laugh it off and say, "What is it with you and brand names? Jeez! Can we talk about something else?!"
Spending Style
Growing up in Bombay in the 60s and 70s "spending style" was not an issue. Kids wore what the parents bought them, took out the hem when pants/skirts became too short, sewed on buttons when they fell off, and thought nothing of using hand-me-downs. This was because of necessity, of course. But it was also because the culture was one of minimalism -- why get more when one can make do with less?
Also, the pervasive presence of multitudes of people managing with much less and doing it with grace was enough to put an end to any ideas of false grandeur and pretense. Another important factor was an understanding of delayed gratification. I knew that I should-would-could allow myself all the indulgences that I might desire when I came into my own -- after getting a good education, a good job and becoming both financially and emotionally autonomous. In fact, to this end, it was very important to do well at school and the good grades that I achieved were my brand!
When I explain all this to my daughter (where I am coming from, so to speak), she tries to understand. And I think she does, in her own way. It took quite a bit of explaining to convince her that my family in India was not poor or struggling or cheap. It has taken a lot more explaining to convince her of the need to put in the effort needed to produce brand-name quality -- whether it is doing schoolwork, doing household chores or keeping her room clean.
Yesterday she said to me "If I were you, I would use a Gucci leather purse and not this thing that you bought at Sears." I told her that if I had $50 to buy a purse, I would spend half of that on a purse, save a fourth and give a fourth to charity. She just rolled her eyes.
Nandini Pandya is the publisher of Desi Journal, a website about life in the Indian Diaspora. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two children.
Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change
L.A. Times
While not explicitly endorsing Sen. John F. Kerry for president, 26 former diplomats and military officials, including many who served in Republican administrations, have a signed a statement calling for the defeat of President Bush in November. Their names and some of the posts they have held are:
Avis T. Bohlen — assistant secretary of State for arms control, 1999-2002; deputy assistant secretary of State for European affairs 1989-1991.
Retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. — chairman, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Committee, 1993-94; ambassador to Britain, 1993-97; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89.
Jeffrey S. Davidow — ambassador to Mexico, 1998-2002; assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1996
William A. DePree — ambassador to Bangladesh, 1987-1990.
Donald B. Easum — ambassador to Nigeria, 1975-79.
Charles W. Freeman Jr. — assistant secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs, 1993-94; ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992.
William C. Harrop — ambassador to Israel, 1991-93; ambassador to Zaire, 1987-1991.
Arthur A. Hartman — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1981-87; ambassador to France, 1977-1981.
Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar — commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, overseeing forces in the Middle East, 1991-94; deputy chief of staff, Marine Corps, 1990-94.
H. Allen Holmes — assistant secretary of Defense for special operations, 1993-99; assistant secretary of State for politico-military affairs, 1986-89.
Robert V. Keeley — ambassador to Greece, 1985-89; ambassador to Zimbabwe, 1980-84.
Samuel W. Lewis — director of State Department policy and planning, 1993-94; ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985.
Princeton N. Lyman — assistant secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1995-98; ambassador to South Africa, 1992-95.
Jack F. Matlock Jr. — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-1991; director for European and Soviet Affairs, National Security Council, 1983-86; ambassador to Czechoslovakia, 1981-83.
Donald F. McHenry — ambassador to the United Nations, 1979-1981.
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak — chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, 1990-94.
George E. Moose — assistant secretary of State for African affairs, 1993-97; ambassador to Senegal, 1988-91.
David D. Newsom — acting secretary of State, 1980; undersecretary of State for political affairs, 1978-1981; ambassador to Indonesia, 1973-77
Phyllis E. Oakley — assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, 1997-99.
James Daniel Phillips — ambassador to the Republic of Congo, 1990-93; ambassador to Burundi, 1986-1990.
John E. Reinhardt — professor of political science, University of Vermont, 1987-91; ambassador to Nigeria, 1971-75.
Retired Air Force Gen. William Y. Smith — deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command, 1981-83.
Ronald I. Spiers — undersecretary-general of the United Nations for Political Affairs, 1989-1992; ambassador to Pakistan, 1981-83.
Michael Sterner — deputy assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, 1977-1981; ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, 1974-76.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner — director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1977-1981.
Alexander F. Watson — assistant secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, 1993-96; deputy permanent representative to the U.N., 1989-1993. Source: Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change
Source
While not explicitly endorsing Sen. John F. Kerry for president, 26 former diplomats and military officials, including many who served in Republican administrations, have a signed a statement calling for the defeat of President Bush in November. Their names and some of the posts they have held are:
Avis T. Bohlen — assistant secretary of State for arms control, 1999-2002; deputy assistant secretary of State for European affairs 1989-1991.
Retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. — chairman, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Committee, 1993-94; ambassador to Britain, 1993-97; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1985-89.
Jeffrey S. Davidow — ambassador to Mexico, 1998-2002; assistant secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1996
William A. DePree — ambassador to Bangladesh, 1987-1990.
Donald B. Easum — ambassador to Nigeria, 1975-79.
Charles W. Freeman Jr. — assistant secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs, 1993-94; ambassador to Saudi Arabia, 1989-1992.
William C. Harrop — ambassador to Israel, 1991-93; ambassador to Zaire, 1987-1991.
Arthur A. Hartman — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1981-87; ambassador to France, 1977-1981.
Retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar — commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, overseeing forces in the Middle East, 1991-94; deputy chief of staff, Marine Corps, 1990-94.
H. Allen Holmes — assistant secretary of Defense for special operations, 1993-99; assistant secretary of State for politico-military affairs, 1986-89.
Robert V. Keeley — ambassador to Greece, 1985-89; ambassador to Zimbabwe, 1980-84.
Samuel W. Lewis — director of State Department policy and planning, 1993-94; ambassador to Israel, 1977-1985.
Princeton N. Lyman — assistant secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, 1995-98; ambassador to South Africa, 1992-95.
Jack F. Matlock Jr. — ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1987-1991; director for European and Soviet Affairs, National Security Council, 1983-86; ambassador to Czechoslovakia, 1981-83.
Donald F. McHenry — ambassador to the United Nations, 1979-1981.
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak — chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, 1990-94.
George E. Moose — assistant secretary of State for African affairs, 1993-97; ambassador to Senegal, 1988-91.
David D. Newsom — acting secretary of State, 1980; undersecretary of State for political affairs, 1978-1981; ambassador to Indonesia, 1973-77
Phyllis E. Oakley — assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, 1997-99.
James Daniel Phillips — ambassador to the Republic of Congo, 1990-93; ambassador to Burundi, 1986-1990.
John E. Reinhardt — professor of political science, University of Vermont, 1987-91; ambassador to Nigeria, 1971-75.
Retired Air Force Gen. William Y. Smith — deputy commander in chief, U.S. European Command, 1981-83.
Ronald I. Spiers — undersecretary-general of the United Nations for Political Affairs, 1989-1992; ambassador to Pakistan, 1981-83.
Michael Sterner — deputy assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, 1977-1981; ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, 1974-76.
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner — director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1977-1981.
Alexander F. Watson — assistant secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, 1993-96; deputy permanent representative to the U.N., 1989-1993. Source: Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change
Source
Today's Front Pages
A great resource for tapping into the "mood of the day" and general research tool. This is a Newseum project which collects and reproduces the newspaper front page from 233 publications in 32 countries.
Today's Front Pages
Today's Front Pages
Saturday, June 12, 2004
The Center For the Study of Political Graphics
(from the website)
Political posters—
the ideas and struggles
they embody—
are being presented
to wider publics
and new generations
by a unique archive...
With over 50,000 posters, the CSPG archive is the largest collection of Post World War II graphics in the United States.
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics collects, preserves, and exhibits posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. Through its varied programs, CSPG is reclaiming the power of art to inspire people to action.
There has never been a movement for social change without the arts—music, poetry, theater, posters--being central to that movement. Political posters in particular are powerful living reminders of struggles worldwide for peace and justice. Communication, exhortation, persuasion, instruction, celebration, warning: graphic art broadcasts its messages through bold images and striking designs.The archive contains more than 50,000 posters produced in a staggering array of visual styles and printing media, dating from the Russian Revolution to the present. University, museum, and public collections of this material are rare, and are seldom accessible to the public. CSPG is uniquely committed to widely exhibiting this rich visual record of social movements.
See the Exhibitions of Political Posters
Political posters—
the ideas and struggles
they embody—
are being presented
to wider publics
and new generations
by a unique archive...
With over 50,000 posters, the CSPG archive is the largest collection of Post World War II graphics in the United States.
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics collects, preserves, and exhibits posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. Through its varied programs, CSPG is reclaiming the power of art to inspire people to action.
There has never been a movement for social change without the arts—music, poetry, theater, posters--being central to that movement. Political posters in particular are powerful living reminders of struggles worldwide for peace and justice. Communication, exhortation, persuasion, instruction, celebration, warning: graphic art broadcasts its messages through bold images and striking designs.The archive contains more than 50,000 posters produced in a staggering array of visual styles and printing media, dating from the Russian Revolution to the present. University, museum, and public collections of this material are rare, and are seldom accessible to the public. CSPG is uniquely committed to widely exhibiting this rich visual record of social movements.
See the Exhibitions of Political Posters
Granny 'D'
"The Granny D. Speech"
Doris "Granny D" Haddock
Speaking in Hood River, Oregon, August 16, 2003
Originally published by Common Dreams
Republished by Sustainable World Coalition
Thank you.
Well, you've heard that wonderful Margaret Mead quote about how you
should never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change
the world, and that, indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Well,
I think it's time we stopped repeating that quotation and came to
some agreement about what we happy few might do over the next five
years or so. That is the purpose of my remarks today.
You know, there are two kinds of politics in the world: the politics
of love and the politics of fear. Love is about cooperation, sharing
and inclusion. It is about the elevation of each individual to a life
neither suppressed nor exploited, but instead nourished to rise to
its full potential--a life for its own sake and so that we may all
benefit by the gift of that life. Fear and the politics of fear is
about narrow ideologies that separate us, militarize us, imprison us,
exploit us, control us, overcharge us, demean us, bury us alive in
debt and anxiety and then bury us dead in cancers and wars. The
politics of love and the politics of fear are now pitted against each
other in a naked struggle that will define not only the 21st Century
but centuries to come. We are the Sons and Daughters of Liberty in
that struggle, indeed we are. Let us not shirk from the mission that
fate has bestowed upon us, for it has done so as a blessing.
This struggle is real. A very close friend of mine, a college
student, spent this summer in Guatemala to help small communities
prosper in ways that support their local environments. Those
villagers and their environments are under siege by international big
business, using a captured U.S. Government to push through damaging
treaties such as the proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement
and the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas. The
villagers of Guatemala want global FAIR trade, but the corporations
and their captive governments want FREE trade. If fair trade wins, a
global middle class will rise, as farmers and craftsmen are paid
fairly for their work, and as they gain a voice in their governance
and their environments are protected for their future generations. If
free trade wins, it is colonial exploitation, torture and murder
written in blood across another century.
Or do you wonder if it is really an honest difference of opinion as
to which policies are best for the people? On July 24, three armed
gunmen broke into the home where my young friend was staying in
Guatemala, dragging her and another young woman to the ground,
covering their heads with blankets. These young women began to count
their lives in seconds. For three-quarters of an hour, the gunmen
went through the biodiversity files in the home. Big business
interests in Guatemala, in league with elements of the military, are
trying to push-through the passage of free trade agreements and to do
it they must suppress all dissent. Their partner and blood brother is
the U.S. Government. Not the U.S. Government that we see, but the
U.S. Government that much of the rest of the world sees: a world of
C.I.A. treachery, the training of death squad leaders in our own Army
facilities within the U.S., and a big business-friendly White House
that winks and nods as great injustices continue.
The two women survived, but tens of thousands have not, because they
are in the way of big business. It is not an honest difference of
opinion; it is a global struggle of people versus a global crime
syndicate that counts taken-over governments and multinational
corporations among its members.
There is a term now in common use in Latin America that is confusing
to us Americans. It is called neoliberalism and it is a very dirty
word indeed among the brave pro-democracy and fair trade groups
throughout the Americas. "Neoliberal" sounds like the happy return of
the Kennedys, but it is not. Nor is it about some resurgence of the
liberal values of the Square Deal or the New Deal or the War on
Poverty or any of those great moments when we called upon our best
instincts to cooperatively address our largest needs as a free and
self-governing people. The liberation that we meant then when we used
the word "liberal" was the liberation from poverty, despair and
ignorance, the liberation of the mind through public education, the
liberation of the citizen through universal voting, equal rights and
equal opportunity, and the freedom to prosper from the fruits of our
labors. But that is not the liberal that is meant by neoliberal. It
means newly free to rampage. It means free of government constraint.
It means free trade over fair trade.
"Neoliberalism" refers to the liberation of a giant beast that we,
the ordinary people of America -- the farmers, the townsmen and
townswomen, the trade unionists -- tied down to the earth early in
the 20th Century and it is that beast that has now gotten himself
loose again to do great damage to us all. The deadly meanderings of
this beast are most apparent in the most labor-intensive regions of
the world, but the beast is here, too, and he has brought misery and
suffering into your life and mine, stealing our water, blowing up our
mountains, fouling our air and seas, and stealing our lives and our
future at every turn. Neoliberalism is the colonialism department of
neoconservatism.
How did we handle this evil giant before? The Teddy Roosevelt
Progressives, and the William Jennings Bryan Populists before him,
were part of a successful effort to tie down the giant. After the
Civil War, at the high point of the Industrial Age--the age of
railroads, oil and steel--great corporations and trusts were created
that towered high over the human-scaled businesses of America's Main
Streets and cast dark shadows over human liberty and happiness. These
monstrosities treated humans as slaves. They robbed the public wealth
and were properly called the robber barons of that Gilded Age. These
giants freely stalked, destroying the economics of family farms and
family businesses, corrupting our governments with great bribes and
corrupt deals, and polluting our food, our land, water and air. They
tore our families apart and dragged us into the hardest of hard
times, as they have been liberated to do once more.
I am not talking about all corporations or all big business.
Corporations of reasonable size are but groups of people. Beyond some
point, however, the humanity falls away from an organization and all
that is left is the will to power and profit. They care not that our
seas and atmosphere are rapidly changing in ways that may lead to
disaster and famine of unimaginable scale. They care not because they
are not human and they have moved beyond human values. They do not
need the fresh air or the water or the mountains of the birds. They
are a kind of virus or a cancer, all prettied up with a nice logo and
television commercials to tell us the most outrageous lies, one after
the other. For in reality, they crush us under their boots and they
pay off our political leaders with campaign contributions and other
bribes. They trample on diversity of all kinds, including human
personality, as fewer and fewer kinds of people can prosper in the
world they are casting, and more and more of us are marginalized.
The big corporate empires would be powerless if they were not in
league with crooked politicians. I do not mean that the politicians
necessarily know what they are doing. The corruption is so immense
that they cannot even see it, even when it pays their spouse and
finances their reelection. These, the happily blind, populate Capitol
Hill and our state capitols like vermin who have been for generations
in deep caves where they gradually lose their vision and there other
senses, too.
Well, two and a quarter centuries was a good run for this democracy,
but a rebirth is long overdue, and it is indeed necessary if we are
to save our freedoms and our human values here and abroad, and if we
are to protect the beauty and sustaining graces of nature, including
the positive sides of human nature.
What that Republican Teddy Roosevelt understood at the beginning of
the 20th Century was that, if the rights and fortunes of the human
scale are to be protected, if the rights and fortunes of average
Americans, small businesses, family farms and Main Street are to be
protected from the ravages of overscaled business giants, then
government must grow in size and power to protect us all. The big
business wing of the Republican Party, under Taft, defeated the
family business wing of the Republican and their leader, Teddy
Roosevelt. It would take another Roosevelt of another party to turn
the Square Deal into the New Deal, under which government greatly
expanded to protect the people.
That has not been altogether a happy strategy, as large government
has its own costs to us and its own abuses. The Libertarians are our
new and brave allies in the defending of the Bill of Rights from
Bush's anti-American attacks through his henchmen Ashcroft and Ridge.
But our friends the Libertarians would have us do away with most all
of our government. Anyone who has paid too many taxes or dealt with
too many rude and overly powerful bureaucrats understands the
Libertarian's feelings, but I ask at least the intellectually honest
Libertarians -- and there are many of them -- to wisely see that
government, which is indeed a system of restraint -- must be matched
in strength and scale to the corporate monstrosities that now have
the ability and the willingness to destroy us -- to blow up the
entire Appalachian Range for the profits of coal, for example, as is
now happening -- or to steal for profit the water supply of whole
regions, or to enslave whole regions at low wages rather than allow
fair trade. Or to move every one of our good jobs overseas. These
inhuman and inhumane organizations are stealing our lives and all
nature around us.
Only government is large enough and powerful enough to reign-in the
corporations whose cold heartedness trades lives for profits all over
the world. Republican Teddy Roosevelt began the buildup of big
government solely to protect us from overlarge corporations so that
they might not overwhelm us human beings. In doing so, he created a
split in the Republican Party, and big business interests won.
Perhaps the rational solution is to scale them both back --
corporations and government -- and let individual enterprise and
individual freedom, and its many middle class treasures and
blessings, blossom in the old battlefield. But there is no leadership
for that, and governments are being stripped of all regulatory powers
by the false religion of a new deity, the unfettered, liberated
market. So, no longer protected by governments, we must fight the
battle that is before us: human beings versus monstrous corporations
and their body snatched government puppets. It is a battle of human
scale versus monstrous scale, love versus fear.
What is happening now, of course, is that the neo's in the Bush
Administration -- you can call them neoliberals or neoconservatives,
though they are neo nothing except perhaps neocolonial and neolithic
-- What's happening now is that the neo's in this Administration are
starving government very much on purpose, and they tell us as much in
their writing.
Huge military commitments, huge tax cuts to the wealthiest
individuals and corporations, and huge budget deficits leave no money
for the old New Deal programs like Social Security or newer programs
such as Medicare. No money for schools, hospitals, police, fire,
veterans -- no money for anything but the front lines of a
corporatized military and a militarized corporatocracy. A starved
government -- once our government -- has no ability to restrain the
liberated giant or to investigate his abuses or prosecute his crimes.
And so, two years after Enron, but one person is behind bars. It is
not for lack of villains, and, as all California cries, it is not for
lack of victims.
All right. When did this monster get untied? He did so in the era of
corporate raiding, permitted and smiled upon by the Reagan
Administration. Reagan admired those cowboy businessmen of the 1980s
-- the corporate raiders who engineered hostile corporate takeovers.
But those takeovers, allowed by hamstrung regulators, caused all
large and mid-sized American corporations to go on a rampage of
streamlining, outsourcing, wage-cutting, plant closings and job
exporting. They did so to make themselves takeover-proof. It was no
longer respectable to make a respectable profit and to serve your
community with good jobs and fairly priced goods and services. The
new mentality of profit maximization and unlimited mergers and no
government control, was the untying of the monster and it was no
accident. The ropes were further loosened in the greedy and morally
corrupt Clinton and Bush administrations, until we find ourselves now
with a government of, by and for the corporations. The new model CEO
was the ruthless cost cutter and dealmaker. CEO salaries went
unbelievably high, where they have stayed. For every hundred dollars
that the average American worker makes, these top CEOs make fifty-thousand
dollars. It is a moral outrage in the land of so many
homeless and struggling and worried people. But the giant does not
care if we struggle or worry. The giant does not care that every
homeless person we walk by is a humiliation to us, too, as members of
a community no longer able to take care of our own. It is a
humiliation designed to impress upon us that we are not in charge.
That we must do as we are told if we do not want a similar fate. It
is concentration camp logic.
A century ago, the ordinary people of America joined together to tie
down the giant. The antitrust laws and environmental laws and the
rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain for wages and
benefits all joined to nurture the restoration of a great middle
class -- always the bedrock of democracy. The robber barons, the
great giants, remained tied down, no longer free, liberated, to do as
they pleased in crushing us with their great wealth and political
power. And so it was for a time.
And now, loosed again, these giants have taken over our television
networks and most of our newspapers, turning them against our
interests and against the truth itself. These giants send our young
people off to fight their commercial wars -- great profitable
ventures.
How free are we now, friends? Check you bills and your bank account.
How much time and leisure do you have to enjoy your life and friends?
How is your place in your community as a free and equal citizen? Or
are we drones that go to work, go to bed to rest for more work, go to
the stores to spend all that we earn and more, and watch television
to receive our instructions what to buy the next day, if we have jobs
at all? Is that freedom by some other name? It is not freedom by any
name and it is nothing to push on the rest of the world in the name
of freedom.
These corporations steal our time with their computerized telephone
switchboards and their long waiting lines and few employees. They
steal our jobs and our benefits and our pensions. They use fear at
every turn to sell us a little protection, and a little more. And
they steal our senators and congressmen just when they might have
earned their keep protecting our democracy.
What shall we do, my fellows, about these corporate giants stalking
our earth freely? How shall we get our children home from their wars
and ourselves free from their captivities?
We the people, acting together in the new ways made possible by
electronic communication, must become the large counterbalance to
these powers -- the counterbalance that our government no longer
provides. By communicating and acting in concert, we can reward the
good companies and thereby keep our money clear of the worst. We can
make our demand for fair trade products and provide the shift in
market share that will change the practices of those businesses that
now exploit our brothers and sisters here and around the world. We
can agree together which television news channel is the least
objectionable, and agree to watch only that -- for our watching and
buying habits are votes for the kind of world we will live in. By
nudging market share, our small group of dedicated people can
influence great changes. We have the tools now to do this now. It
will not be an easy task, but we have no real alternative if we are
to save the world, and that is what we must decide to do.
Tell your favorite coffee house that, as of Earth Day, 2004, you will
only buy fair trade coffee. Let us give a "fair warning for fair
trade" in this and other areas of products and services. Let us
develop the best information about who is doing what, and let us use
our new tools of electronic democracy to come to consensus regarding
which companies deserve our support -- a reverse boycott on a global
scale. I will try to put information on my website about who is
helping in this new effort, and I will put some little cards there
you can print to give a fair warning for fair trade to your favorite
shops and other companies. And let us use each subsequent Earth Day
to push for more improvement on every front, giving our fair warnings
to move progress along. Let Americans and other people of the earth
join us or not. But let them decide and know for themselves which
side they are on.
Yes, let's continue our efforts to reform our government, most
especially with campaign finance reform. But, with revolutionary new
tools, we are capable of redefining democracy at a critical moment.
Let us not be shy about it for time is short. We stand for love and
fairness in the world. That is not gentle work, nor is it painless or
bloodless, as so many people around the world know.
This is, after all, our world and our lives. Do you remember those
few weeks after the 9/11 attacks when we, as an automatic antidote to
the inhumanity of those attacks, sought to reassert our humanity
again in a million little ways? For that moment we came out of the
hypnosis we have come to live under and we saw the Eden of human love
and cooperation. We must not fall back under that hypnosis again, as
it is a waste of our lives. The forces of life and death are in
struggle, for those are the other names for love and fear. Let us
choose life and love, and happily use our selves up in loving service
to one another.
Thank you.
Granny D
Doris "Granny D" Haddock
Speaking in Hood River, Oregon, August 16, 2003
Originally published by Common Dreams
Republished by Sustainable World Coalition
Thank you.
Well, you've heard that wonderful Margaret Mead quote about how you
should never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change
the world, and that, indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Well,
I think it's time we stopped repeating that quotation and came to
some agreement about what we happy few might do over the next five
years or so. That is the purpose of my remarks today.
You know, there are two kinds of politics in the world: the politics
of love and the politics of fear. Love is about cooperation, sharing
and inclusion. It is about the elevation of each individual to a life
neither suppressed nor exploited, but instead nourished to rise to
its full potential--a life for its own sake and so that we may all
benefit by the gift of that life. Fear and the politics of fear is
about narrow ideologies that separate us, militarize us, imprison us,
exploit us, control us, overcharge us, demean us, bury us alive in
debt and anxiety and then bury us dead in cancers and wars. The
politics of love and the politics of fear are now pitted against each
other in a naked struggle that will define not only the 21st Century
but centuries to come. We are the Sons and Daughters of Liberty in
that struggle, indeed we are. Let us not shirk from the mission that
fate has bestowed upon us, for it has done so as a blessing.
This struggle is real. A very close friend of mine, a college
student, spent this summer in Guatemala to help small communities
prosper in ways that support their local environments. Those
villagers and their environments are under siege by international big
business, using a captured U.S. Government to push through damaging
treaties such as the proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement
and the hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas. The
villagers of Guatemala want global FAIR trade, but the corporations
and their captive governments want FREE trade. If fair trade wins, a
global middle class will rise, as farmers and craftsmen are paid
fairly for their work, and as they gain a voice in their governance
and their environments are protected for their future generations. If
free trade wins, it is colonial exploitation, torture and murder
written in blood across another century.
Or do you wonder if it is really an honest difference of opinion as
to which policies are best for the people? On July 24, three armed
gunmen broke into the home where my young friend was staying in
Guatemala, dragging her and another young woman to the ground,
covering their heads with blankets. These young women began to count
their lives in seconds. For three-quarters of an hour, the gunmen
went through the biodiversity files in the home. Big business
interests in Guatemala, in league with elements of the military, are
trying to push-through the passage of free trade agreements and to do
it they must suppress all dissent. Their partner and blood brother is
the U.S. Government. Not the U.S. Government that we see, but the
U.S. Government that much of the rest of the world sees: a world of
C.I.A. treachery, the training of death squad leaders in our own Army
facilities within the U.S., and a big business-friendly White House
that winks and nods as great injustices continue.
The two women survived, but tens of thousands have not, because they
are in the way of big business. It is not an honest difference of
opinion; it is a global struggle of people versus a global crime
syndicate that counts taken-over governments and multinational
corporations among its members.
There is a term now in common use in Latin America that is confusing
to us Americans. It is called neoliberalism and it is a very dirty
word indeed among the brave pro-democracy and fair trade groups
throughout the Americas. "Neoliberal" sounds like the happy return of
the Kennedys, but it is not. Nor is it about some resurgence of the
liberal values of the Square Deal or the New Deal or the War on
Poverty or any of those great moments when we called upon our best
instincts to cooperatively address our largest needs as a free and
self-governing people. The liberation that we meant then when we used
the word "liberal" was the liberation from poverty, despair and
ignorance, the liberation of the mind through public education, the
liberation of the citizen through universal voting, equal rights and
equal opportunity, and the freedom to prosper from the fruits of our
labors. But that is not the liberal that is meant by neoliberal. It
means newly free to rampage. It means free of government constraint.
It means free trade over fair trade.
"Neoliberalism" refers to the liberation of a giant beast that we,
the ordinary people of America -- the farmers, the townsmen and
townswomen, the trade unionists -- tied down to the earth early in
the 20th Century and it is that beast that has now gotten himself
loose again to do great damage to us all. The deadly meanderings of
this beast are most apparent in the most labor-intensive regions of
the world, but the beast is here, too, and he has brought misery and
suffering into your life and mine, stealing our water, blowing up our
mountains, fouling our air and seas, and stealing our lives and our
future at every turn. Neoliberalism is the colonialism department of
neoconservatism.
How did we handle this evil giant before? The Teddy Roosevelt
Progressives, and the William Jennings Bryan Populists before him,
were part of a successful effort to tie down the giant. After the
Civil War, at the high point of the Industrial Age--the age of
railroads, oil and steel--great corporations and trusts were created
that towered high over the human-scaled businesses of America's Main
Streets and cast dark shadows over human liberty and happiness. These
monstrosities treated humans as slaves. They robbed the public wealth
and were properly called the robber barons of that Gilded Age. These
giants freely stalked, destroying the economics of family farms and
family businesses, corrupting our governments with great bribes and
corrupt deals, and polluting our food, our land, water and air. They
tore our families apart and dragged us into the hardest of hard
times, as they have been liberated to do once more.
I am not talking about all corporations or all big business.
Corporations of reasonable size are but groups of people. Beyond some
point, however, the humanity falls away from an organization and all
that is left is the will to power and profit. They care not that our
seas and atmosphere are rapidly changing in ways that may lead to
disaster and famine of unimaginable scale. They care not because they
are not human and they have moved beyond human values. They do not
need the fresh air or the water or the mountains of the birds. They
are a kind of virus or a cancer, all prettied up with a nice logo and
television commercials to tell us the most outrageous lies, one after
the other. For in reality, they crush us under their boots and they
pay off our political leaders with campaign contributions and other
bribes. They trample on diversity of all kinds, including human
personality, as fewer and fewer kinds of people can prosper in the
world they are casting, and more and more of us are marginalized.
The big corporate empires would be powerless if they were not in
league with crooked politicians. I do not mean that the politicians
necessarily know what they are doing. The corruption is so immense
that they cannot even see it, even when it pays their spouse and
finances their reelection. These, the happily blind, populate Capitol
Hill and our state capitols like vermin who have been for generations
in deep caves where they gradually lose their vision and there other
senses, too.
Well, two and a quarter centuries was a good run for this democracy,
but a rebirth is long overdue, and it is indeed necessary if we are
to save our freedoms and our human values here and abroad, and if we
are to protect the beauty and sustaining graces of nature, including
the positive sides of human nature.
What that Republican Teddy Roosevelt understood at the beginning of
the 20th Century was that, if the rights and fortunes of the human
scale are to be protected, if the rights and fortunes of average
Americans, small businesses, family farms and Main Street are to be
protected from the ravages of overscaled business giants, then
government must grow in size and power to protect us all. The big
business wing of the Republican Party, under Taft, defeated the
family business wing of the Republican and their leader, Teddy
Roosevelt. It would take another Roosevelt of another party to turn
the Square Deal into the New Deal, under which government greatly
expanded to protect the people.
That has not been altogether a happy strategy, as large government
has its own costs to us and its own abuses. The Libertarians are our
new and brave allies in the defending of the Bill of Rights from
Bush's anti-American attacks through his henchmen Ashcroft and Ridge.
But our friends the Libertarians would have us do away with most all
of our government. Anyone who has paid too many taxes or dealt with
too many rude and overly powerful bureaucrats understands the
Libertarian's feelings, but I ask at least the intellectually honest
Libertarians -- and there are many of them -- to wisely see that
government, which is indeed a system of restraint -- must be matched
in strength and scale to the corporate monstrosities that now have
the ability and the willingness to destroy us -- to blow up the
entire Appalachian Range for the profits of coal, for example, as is
now happening -- or to steal for profit the water supply of whole
regions, or to enslave whole regions at low wages rather than allow
fair trade. Or to move every one of our good jobs overseas. These
inhuman and inhumane organizations are stealing our lives and all
nature around us.
Only government is large enough and powerful enough to reign-in the
corporations whose cold heartedness trades lives for profits all over
the world. Republican Teddy Roosevelt began the buildup of big
government solely to protect us from overlarge corporations so that
they might not overwhelm us human beings. In doing so, he created a
split in the Republican Party, and big business interests won.
Perhaps the rational solution is to scale them both back --
corporations and government -- and let individual enterprise and
individual freedom, and its many middle class treasures and
blessings, blossom in the old battlefield. But there is no leadership
for that, and governments are being stripped of all regulatory powers
by the false religion of a new deity, the unfettered, liberated
market. So, no longer protected by governments, we must fight the
battle that is before us: human beings versus monstrous corporations
and their body snatched government puppets. It is a battle of human
scale versus monstrous scale, love versus fear.
What is happening now, of course, is that the neo's in the Bush
Administration -- you can call them neoliberals or neoconservatives,
though they are neo nothing except perhaps neocolonial and neolithic
-- What's happening now is that the neo's in this Administration are
starving government very much on purpose, and they tell us as much in
their writing.
Huge military commitments, huge tax cuts to the wealthiest
individuals and corporations, and huge budget deficits leave no money
for the old New Deal programs like Social Security or newer programs
such as Medicare. No money for schools, hospitals, police, fire,
veterans -- no money for anything but the front lines of a
corporatized military and a militarized corporatocracy. A starved
government -- once our government -- has no ability to restrain the
liberated giant or to investigate his abuses or prosecute his crimes.
And so, two years after Enron, but one person is behind bars. It is
not for lack of villains, and, as all California cries, it is not for
lack of victims.
All right. When did this monster get untied? He did so in the era of
corporate raiding, permitted and smiled upon by the Reagan
Administration. Reagan admired those cowboy businessmen of the 1980s
-- the corporate raiders who engineered hostile corporate takeovers.
But those takeovers, allowed by hamstrung regulators, caused all
large and mid-sized American corporations to go on a rampage of
streamlining, outsourcing, wage-cutting, plant closings and job
exporting. They did so to make themselves takeover-proof. It was no
longer respectable to make a respectable profit and to serve your
community with good jobs and fairly priced goods and services. The
new mentality of profit maximization and unlimited mergers and no
government control, was the untying of the monster and it was no
accident. The ropes were further loosened in the greedy and morally
corrupt Clinton and Bush administrations, until we find ourselves now
with a government of, by and for the corporations. The new model CEO
was the ruthless cost cutter and dealmaker. CEO salaries went
unbelievably high, where they have stayed. For every hundred dollars
that the average American worker makes, these top CEOs make fifty-thousand
dollars. It is a moral outrage in the land of so many
homeless and struggling and worried people. But the giant does not
care if we struggle or worry. The giant does not care that every
homeless person we walk by is a humiliation to us, too, as members of
a community no longer able to take care of our own. It is a
humiliation designed to impress upon us that we are not in charge.
That we must do as we are told if we do not want a similar fate. It
is concentration camp logic.
A century ago, the ordinary people of America joined together to tie
down the giant. The antitrust laws and environmental laws and the
rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain for wages and
benefits all joined to nurture the restoration of a great middle
class -- always the bedrock of democracy. The robber barons, the
great giants, remained tied down, no longer free, liberated, to do as
they pleased in crushing us with their great wealth and political
power. And so it was for a time.
And now, loosed again, these giants have taken over our television
networks and most of our newspapers, turning them against our
interests and against the truth itself. These giants send our young
people off to fight their commercial wars -- great profitable
ventures.
How free are we now, friends? Check you bills and your bank account.
How much time and leisure do you have to enjoy your life and friends?
How is your place in your community as a free and equal citizen? Or
are we drones that go to work, go to bed to rest for more work, go to
the stores to spend all that we earn and more, and watch television
to receive our instructions what to buy the next day, if we have jobs
at all? Is that freedom by some other name? It is not freedom by any
name and it is nothing to push on the rest of the world in the name
of freedom.
These corporations steal our time with their computerized telephone
switchboards and their long waiting lines and few employees. They
steal our jobs and our benefits and our pensions. They use fear at
every turn to sell us a little protection, and a little more. And
they steal our senators and congressmen just when they might have
earned their keep protecting our democracy.
What shall we do, my fellows, about these corporate giants stalking
our earth freely? How shall we get our children home from their wars
and ourselves free from their captivities?
We the people, acting together in the new ways made possible by
electronic communication, must become the large counterbalance to
these powers -- the counterbalance that our government no longer
provides. By communicating and acting in concert, we can reward the
good companies and thereby keep our money clear of the worst. We can
make our demand for fair trade products and provide the shift in
market share that will change the practices of those businesses that
now exploit our brothers and sisters here and around the world. We
can agree together which television news channel is the least
objectionable, and agree to watch only that -- for our watching and
buying habits are votes for the kind of world we will live in. By
nudging market share, our small group of dedicated people can
influence great changes. We have the tools now to do this now. It
will not be an easy task, but we have no real alternative if we are
to save the world, and that is what we must decide to do.
Tell your favorite coffee house that, as of Earth Day, 2004, you will
only buy fair trade coffee. Let us give a "fair warning for fair
trade" in this and other areas of products and services. Let us
develop the best information about who is doing what, and let us use
our new tools of electronic democracy to come to consensus regarding
which companies deserve our support -- a reverse boycott on a global
scale. I will try to put information on my website about who is
helping in this new effort, and I will put some little cards there
you can print to give a fair warning for fair trade to your favorite
shops and other companies. And let us use each subsequent Earth Day
to push for more improvement on every front, giving our fair warnings
to move progress along. Let Americans and other people of the earth
join us or not. But let them decide and know for themselves which
side they are on.
Yes, let's continue our efforts to reform our government, most
especially with campaign finance reform. But, with revolutionary new
tools, we are capable of redefining democracy at a critical moment.
Let us not be shy about it for time is short. We stand for love and
fairness in the world. That is not gentle work, nor is it painless or
bloodless, as so many people around the world know.
This is, after all, our world and our lives. Do you remember those
few weeks after the 9/11 attacks when we, as an automatic antidote to
the inhumanity of those attacks, sought to reassert our humanity
again in a million little ways? For that moment we came out of the
hypnosis we have come to live under and we saw the Eden of human love
and cooperation. We must not fall back under that hypnosis again, as
it is a waste of our lives. The forces of life and death are in
struggle, for those are the other names for love and fear. Let us
choose life and love, and happily use our selves up in loving service
to one another.
Thank you.
Granny D
PhD Exams and Fools Crow by James Welch
I feel as if I am coming out of a long, dream. The PhD examinations strained me physically, mentally and spiritually... its not that it was so difficult, for one could just learn the materials and repeat the accepted knowledge/traditions in a manner that would please the committee. It was more that there seems to be something wrong in the diretion of our society and I'm trying to see if there is another way to learn, communicate and share knowledge--what can be learned from the past, what is healthy/dangerous that we know now, and where should we look to in the future. As the coastal people of my homeland of San Diego know it is draining/dangerous to swim against the currents of any ocean (be it physical or mental). I am weak and a poor vessel for these serious meditations--I've spent my whole life being more of the trickster/jokester, making fun and taking apart, sensing that life was "of the moment"... why have I changed?
How fortunate that the first book I picked up to read for "fun" after these trials was James Welch's novel Fools Crow (Penguin: 1986). It has a beautifully realized moral universe that helps one to rethink our current way of life. The writing is lyrical and it realizes the key elements of any great novel bringing a sense of dramatic development of "identity" (Fools Crow), place (Montana Territory in 1870) and community (the Lone Eaters, a Blackfeet tribe struggling in a changing world). This book is beautiful in the sense that it quite literally took my breath away at the thought of the possibility of a different "way" of life. I was moved by the rituals and practices that fused individual desires/needs with collective knowledge/history and how it helped to fuse their individual lives into the collective group in a meaningful way. I cared deeply about these people and wanted to know more...
James Welch:
American Novelist, American Indian
We are stronger, wiser for having read Jim Welch
James Welch's essay on Native American Literature written for a bookseller
Joy Harjo on James Welch
2003 Obituary
How fortunate that the first book I picked up to read for "fun" after these trials was James Welch's novel Fools Crow (Penguin: 1986). It has a beautifully realized moral universe that helps one to rethink our current way of life. The writing is lyrical and it realizes the key elements of any great novel bringing a sense of dramatic development of "identity" (Fools Crow), place (Montana Territory in 1870) and community (the Lone Eaters, a Blackfeet tribe struggling in a changing world). This book is beautiful in the sense that it quite literally took my breath away at the thought of the possibility of a different "way" of life. I was moved by the rituals and practices that fused individual desires/needs with collective knowledge/history and how it helped to fuse their individual lives into the collective group in a meaningful way. I cared deeply about these people and wanted to know more...
James Welch:
American Novelist, American Indian
We are stronger, wiser for having read Jim Welch
James Welch's essay on Native American Literature written for a bookseller
Joy Harjo on James Welch
2003 Obituary
Frozen Frame Film Series: A Zed and Two Noughts (1983)
from your friendly folks at the Icehouse ...a small reminder for this
weekend:
Frozen Frame Film Series - Screening #2
Sunday, June 13th
9:00 pm
@ The ICEHOUSE
412 Cross Street (just off West Maxwell)
Free to the public, with donations of $3 accepted if possible.
This weekend's film:
A Zed and Two Noughts (1983)
Directed by Peter Greenaway
From the director of the controversial "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", comes the darkly comic story of twin zoologists (and former siamese twins) who lose their wives in a bizarre accident. As a result, they become obsessed with documenting and measuring death and decay amidst a cast of idiosyncratic characters. Powerful, funny, bizarre, evocative, and rich in visuals. Should be a treat for fans of the off-beat, slightly absurd, but deeply moving "art film" genre.
Coming soon (we had to alter our schedule a bit, sorry!):
Sunday, June 27th - "Downtown 81"
Sunday, July 11th - "Black Orpheus"
A little bit of info about the FROZEN FRAME series:
The Frozen Frame Film Series strives to bring a variety of interesting,
controversial, esoteric, and groundbreaking films, shorts and documentaries
that may not be readily available at your nearest video store or theater.
Whenever possible, featured screenings will open with a small short feature
or two, lasting no longer than 1/2 hour or so total (not unlike average
movie previews, but more entertaining, and without all the product
placements!). The showings are free to the public, but donations of $3 will
be accepted to help fund future events and showings at The ICEHOUSE. As Ross
Compton has mentioned before, the ICEHOUSE is a warehouse art-space that
serves as a residence-workshop-studio for a few local artists. Very cool
space (no pun intended). Keep in mind, those of you who may not have visited
the Icehouse before, it is a very open, studio-like environment with actual
provided seating at a minimum... those who attend the showings are
encouraged to bring a pillow, blanket, or something to get comfortable with
as we all gather 'round on the floor to watch the films (no chairs, please).
For more information, contact: FrozenFrameFilmSeries@hotmail.com
weekend:
Frozen Frame Film Series - Screening #2
Sunday, June 13th
9:00 pm
@ The ICEHOUSE
412 Cross Street (just off West Maxwell)
Free to the public, with donations of $3 accepted if possible.
This weekend's film:
A Zed and Two Noughts (1983)
Directed by Peter Greenaway
From the director of the controversial "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", comes the darkly comic story of twin zoologists (and former siamese twins) who lose their wives in a bizarre accident. As a result, they become obsessed with documenting and measuring death and decay amidst a cast of idiosyncratic characters. Powerful, funny, bizarre, evocative, and rich in visuals. Should be a treat for fans of the off-beat, slightly absurd, but deeply moving "art film" genre.
Coming soon (we had to alter our schedule a bit, sorry!):
Sunday, June 27th - "Downtown 81"
Sunday, July 11th - "Black Orpheus"
A little bit of info about the FROZEN FRAME series:
The Frozen Frame Film Series strives to bring a variety of interesting,
controversial, esoteric, and groundbreaking films, shorts and documentaries
that may not be readily available at your nearest video store or theater.
Whenever possible, featured screenings will open with a small short feature
or two, lasting no longer than 1/2 hour or so total (not unlike average
movie previews, but more entertaining, and without all the product
placements!). The showings are free to the public, but donations of $3 will
be accepted to help fund future events and showings at The ICEHOUSE. As Ross
Compton has mentioned before, the ICEHOUSE is a warehouse art-space that
serves as a residence-workshop-studio for a few local artists. Very cool
space (no pun intended). Keep in mind, those of you who may not have visited
the Icehouse before, it is a very open, studio-like environment with actual
provided seating at a minimum... those who attend the showings are
encouraged to bring a pillow, blanket, or something to get comfortable with
as we all gather 'round on the floor to watch the films (no chairs, please).
For more information, contact: FrozenFrameFilmSeries@hotmail.com
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Capitol Hill Blue
President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”
Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”
“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”
“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
Report Link
By DOUG THOMPSON
Capitol Hill Blue
President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”
Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”
“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”
“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
Report Link
Friday, June 11, 2004
What America Needs?
(description from the documentary website)
From Sea To Shining Sea: A Synopsis
In October of 2002, Mark Wojahn set out, traveling alone via Amtrak, to interview the country. Using a straightforward, person-on-the-street interview format, and employing basic consumer electronics, he asked people from all walks of life "What do you think America needs?".
Over and over again, in more than 500 interviews, 10 different cities and dozens of different neighborhoods, people of different ages, genders, backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities deliver heartfelt prescriptions for the country's woes.
The filmmaker set out to ask America what America needs and was astonished to discover that all kinds of Americans instinctively understand many of the same essential truths. Truths that if held deeply by enough of us, could provide the basis for workable solutions. This is not to say that the solutions are easy, or that there aren't many disturbing, conflicting and contradictory answers delivered within the film. The film documents plenty of angry and disappointed voices, voices of confusion, disgust, cynicism and despair. But in general, these stand out in stark contrast to the more powerful voices of hope. In the end, the movie builds understanding between diverse viewpoints even as it underscores the importance of further dialogue.
In essence, the movie is a declaration for the democratic ideal and the democratic necessity of talking and really listening to what people have to say. It is a State-of-the-Union address by everyday people whose viewpoints are rarely sought or heard in conventional media.
"What America Needs" (WAN) is told in an 93 minute, chronological format that documents its filming through 10 U.S. cities. Throughout the movie the filmmaker serves as guide, briefly introducing the film and then transitioning the audience through subsequent locations using title cards, location markers and narration.
What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea - is the sequel to the award winning 1995 film -What America Needs: An Interior Expedition, - which Wojahn conceived and produced in conjunction with the progressive film co-op, the New Kinomatagraphic Union (NKU).
Find Out More about "What America Needs"
From Sea To Shining Sea: A Synopsis
In October of 2002, Mark Wojahn set out, traveling alone via Amtrak, to interview the country. Using a straightforward, person-on-the-street interview format, and employing basic consumer electronics, he asked people from all walks of life "What do you think America needs?".
Over and over again, in more than 500 interviews, 10 different cities and dozens of different neighborhoods, people of different ages, genders, backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities deliver heartfelt prescriptions for the country's woes.
The filmmaker set out to ask America what America needs and was astonished to discover that all kinds of Americans instinctively understand many of the same essential truths. Truths that if held deeply by enough of us, could provide the basis for workable solutions. This is not to say that the solutions are easy, or that there aren't many disturbing, conflicting and contradictory answers delivered within the film. The film documents plenty of angry and disappointed voices, voices of confusion, disgust, cynicism and despair. But in general, these stand out in stark contrast to the more powerful voices of hope. In the end, the movie builds understanding between diverse viewpoints even as it underscores the importance of further dialogue.
In essence, the movie is a declaration for the democratic ideal and the democratic necessity of talking and really listening to what people have to say. It is a State-of-the-Union address by everyday people whose viewpoints are rarely sought or heard in conventional media.
"What America Needs" (WAN) is told in an 93 minute, chronological format that documents its filming through 10 U.S. cities. Throughout the movie the filmmaker serves as guide, briefly introducing the film and then transitioning the audience through subsequent locations using title cards, location markers and narration.
What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea - is the sequel to the award winning 1995 film -What America Needs: An Interior Expedition, - which Wojahn conceived and produced in conjunction with the progressive film co-op, the New Kinomatagraphic Union (NKU).
Find Out More about "What America Needs"
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Reagan: Myth and Reality
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Reagan: Media Myth and Reality
As the media spend the week memorializing Ronald Reagan, journalists are redefining the former president's life and accomplishments with a stream of hagiographies that frequently skew the facts and gloss over scandal and criticism.
*Reagan's Popularity
"Ronald Reagan was the most popular president ever to leave office, "explained ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas (6/6/04). "His approval ratings were higher than any other at the end of his second term." Though the claim was repeated by many news outlets, it is not true; Bill Clinton's approval ratings when he left office were actually higher than Reagan's, at 66 percent versus Reagan's 63 percent (Gallup, 1/10-14/01). Franklin Delano Roosevelt also topped Reagan with a 66 percent approval rating at
the time of his death in office after three and a half terms.
In general, Reagan's popularity during his two terms tends to be overstated. The Washington Post's lead article on June 6 began by declaring him "one of the most popular presidents of the 20th Century," while ABC's Sam Donaldson announced, "Through travesty, triumph and tragedy, the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity." The Chicago Tribune (6/6/04) wrote that "his popularity with the electorate was deep and personal... rarely did his popularity dip below 50 percent; it often exceeded 70 percent, an extraordinarily high mark."
But a look at Gallup polling data brings a different perspective. Throughmost of his presidency, Reagan did not rate much higher than other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years, Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent), George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55 percent). His popularity
frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71 percent.)
Some in the media similarly emphasized Reagan's likeability. CBS anchor Bob Schieffer asserted, "You could hate his policies, but it was hard not to like Ronald Reagan (6/6/04). But Reagan's "likeability" numbers did not score much higher than other modern presidents, including Jimmy Carter. (For more on Reagan polling myths, see: Reagan Popularity)
*No Time for Critical Voices
Mainstream media have relied heavily on Republicans and former Reagan officials to tell the story of Reagan and his accomplishments, which results in a decidedly one-sided version of events. A June 7 article in the New York Times on Reagan's impact claimed that Reagan "was almost always popular and, many now say, usually right." The article stated that "Reagan lived long enough to enable many of his old lieutenants, and some more dispassionate chroniclers as well, to argue that he had also been right on some of the bigger questions of his time."
Six of the eight sources the article quoted were former Reagan staffers or Republicans, one was longtime Reagan devotee Margaret Thatcher, and one was University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, who gave no argument that Reagan was "right" about anything. No other "dispassionate chroniclers" were quoted. Should readers be surprised that Reagan's friends and former colleagues still think he was right?
Television news has displayed an even more pronounced reliance on Reagan's Republican admirers. The Sunday morning shows (6/6/04) almost exclusively featured Republicans; former Reagan chief of staff James Baker appeared on all three networks, as well as Fox and CNN. Fox News Sunday (6/6/04) featured, in addition to Baker, current national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Sheila Tate, former press secretary for Nancy Reagan. MSNBC's June 6 Hardball program
featured Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Republican representatives David Dreier and Chris Cox, and Reagan strategist Richard Wirthlin.
Interviewing Reagan's admirers may have provided an intimate view of the former president, but it yielded virtually no acknowledgment of his flaws. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, when questioned by CNN's Anderson Cooper (6/6/04) to name Reagan's greatest weakness or failing, responded, "I'm not going to criticize the President. And even if I wanted to, I would never do it on an occasion such as this. We should be grateful that the world was a better place because of Ronald Reagan's presidency."
Even when potentially critical voices were included, the tendency was to soften any disagreements over Reagan's policy. On NPR's Morning Edition (6/7/04), Susan Stamberg interviewed Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher along with Democratic strategist Paul Begala. Clearly, though, this was no time for disagreement, as evidenced by one of Stamberg's questions to Begala: "You once famously said that politics is show business for ugly people. Ronald Reagan makes a liar out of you. He
was an extremely handsome, attractive man." Begala's response: "Boy, was he."
*Reagan's Legacy
Reagan's influence over world politics and the direction of the Republican Party were important aspects of the media's Reagan tributes. But more often than not, the more controversial aspects of Reagan's legacy were either downplayed or recast as footnotes.
Time magazine (6/14/04) cheered that "the Reagan years were another of those hinges upon which history sometimes turns. On one side, a wounded but still vigorous liberalism with its faith in government as the answer to almost every question. On the other, a free market so triumphant-- even after the tech bubble burst-- that we look first to 'growth,' not government, to solve most problems." As NBC's John Hockenberry put it (6/5/04), "The Reagan revolution imagined the unimaginable. When poverty and welfare were at crisis levels in the 1980s, Reagan declared war on
government and turned his back on the welfare state." The long-term impact of cuts in social spending, gutted environmental protections and other casualties of Reagan's "war on government" were relegated to passing mentions.
Reagan's fervent support for right-wing governments in Central America was one of the defining foreign policies of his administration, and the fact that death squads associated with those governments murdered tens of thousands of civilians surely must be included in any reckoning of Reagan's successes and failures.
But a search of major U.S. newspapers in the Nexis news database turns up the phrase "death squad" only five times in connection with Reagan in the days following his death--twice in commentaries (Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/6/04; Chicago Tribune, 6/8/04) and twice in letters to the editor (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/8/04; L.A. Times, 6/8/04). Only one news article found in the search (L.A. Times, 6/6/04) considered the death squads an important enough part of Reagan's legacy to be worth mentioning. The three broadcast networks, CNN and Fox didn't mention death squads at all, according to Nexis. Nor were any references found in the transcripts of the broadcast networks to the fact that Reagan's policy of supporting Islamicist insurgents against the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The Reagan administration's friendly policy towards Saddam Hussein was also a neglected media topic. During the Reagan years, the U.S. offered significant support to Iraq, including weapons components, military intelligence, and even some of the ingredients for manufacturing biological weapons like anthrax (Newsweek, 9/23/02).
The rare opportunities for critical reflection about Reagan's policies were turned into additional evidence of his strength, as when Time magazine (6/14/04) suggested, "Even when his views were most intransigent-- when he wondered out loud whether Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist or failed for nearly all of his presidency to speak the word AIDS even once-- Reagan gave Reaganism a human face." Time followed that strange assessment with a comment from Bush adviser Karl Rove: "He
made us sunny optimists... His was a conservatism of laughter and openness and community."
Journalists seemed determined to show that any criticisms of Reagan could be turned upside down. As Dan Rather explained on CBS's 60 Minutes (6/6/04), "The literal-minded were forever troubled by his tendency to sometimes confuse life with the movies. But he understood, like very few leaders before or since, the power of myth and storytelling. In his films and his political life, Ronald Reagan stood at the intersection where dreams and reality meet, and with a wink and a one-liner, always held out hope for a happy ending."
Even Reagan's contradictions were somehow construed as strong points. As Time put it (6/14/04), "So great was Reagan's victory in making his preoccupations into enduring themes of the national conversation that it may not matter that his record didn't always match his rhetoric. He insisted, for instance, that a balanced budget was one of his priorities. But by the time Reagan left office, a combination of lower tax revenues and sharply higher spending for defense had sent the deficit through the
roof."
The Iran-Contra scandal, which loomed too large to ignore, was often written off by journalists. "As we look back today, it's like just a speck in the eight years of his presidency," explained CNN's Judy Woodruff (6/7/04). Meet the Press host Tim Russert (6/6/04) showed a clip of Reagan's famous response to the scandal, in which he stated, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and
the evidence tell me it is not." Russert described this tortured evasion of culpability as "very believable."
Whatever reporters made of Iran-Contra, though, Reagan's triumph over such problems was more important than the incidents themselves. CBS reporter Anthony Mason (6/6/04) explained: "The deficit doubled during the Reagan years. His second term was scarred by the Iran Contra scandal, but he never lost that common touch.... Ronald Reagan had an uncanny ability to make Americans feel good about themselves." That bond with American citizens remained front-and-center throughout the media. As CBS anchor Dan Rather put it (6/5/04), Reagan "was the great communicator, yes. But he
was also a master at communicating greatness. He understood that, as he once put it, 'History is a ribbon always unfurling,' and managed to convey his vision in terms both simple and poetic. And so he was able to act as a conduit to connect us to who we had been and who we could be."
*Reagan and the Media
The overwhelmingly positive coverage of Reagan struck some as a significant change. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz noted (6/7/04): "The uplifting tone with which journalists are eulogizing Ronald Reagan is obscuring a central fact of his presidency: He had a very contentious relationship with the press." Others would certainly disagree with Kurtz's assessment-- Mark Heertsgaard's 1991 book, "On Bended Knee: The Press & the Reagan Presidency," for example, characterizes the press
corps as being basically uncritical during the Reagan years.
In any event, it would be hard to argue that current coverage of Reagan carries any lingering traces of that formerly "contentious" relationship. If anything, some reporters now seem to think that the main lesson learned from the Reagan years was not to be critical. As ABC's Sam Donaldson put it (6/4/04), "Reporters over the years made the mistake of saying, 'Well, he made this mistake, he made this mistake. He got that fact wrong.' The American public got it right. It didn't matter."
Finally, Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (USA Today, 6/7/04) gave an interesting take on what he acknowledged were "almost completely uncritical" media reports on Reagan: "For networks that are accused of being liberal, this is a way for them to show that they are fair." One would hope that such an overwhelmingly uncritical assessment of important political and historical matters would not meet anyone's definition of "fair" journalism.
----------
Your donation to FAIR makes a difference: To Donate
FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit Counterspin
Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything,
but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples
of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your email correspondence
with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org .
You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: http://www.fair.org . Our
subscriber list is kept confidential.
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E-mail: fair@fair.org
Reagan: Media Myth and Reality
As the media spend the week memorializing Ronald Reagan, journalists are redefining the former president's life and accomplishments with a stream of hagiographies that frequently skew the facts and gloss over scandal and criticism.
*Reagan's Popularity
"Ronald Reagan was the most popular president ever to leave office, "explained ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas (6/6/04). "His approval ratings were higher than any other at the end of his second term." Though the claim was repeated by many news outlets, it is not true; Bill Clinton's approval ratings when he left office were actually higher than Reagan's, at 66 percent versus Reagan's 63 percent (Gallup, 1/10-14/01). Franklin Delano Roosevelt also topped Reagan with a 66 percent approval rating at
the time of his death in office after three and a half terms.
In general, Reagan's popularity during his two terms tends to be overstated. The Washington Post's lead article on June 6 began by declaring him "one of the most popular presidents of the 20th Century," while ABC's Sam Donaldson announced, "Through travesty, triumph and tragedy, the president enjoyed unprecedented popularity." The Chicago Tribune (6/6/04) wrote that "his popularity with the electorate was deep and personal... rarely did his popularity dip below 50 percent; it often exceeded 70 percent, an extraordinarily high mark."
But a look at Gallup polling data brings a different perspective. Throughmost of his presidency, Reagan did not rate much higher than other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years, Reagan's approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent), George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55 percent). His popularity
frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton's maximum approval rating hit 71 percent.)
Some in the media similarly emphasized Reagan's likeability. CBS anchor Bob Schieffer asserted, "You could hate his policies, but it was hard not to like Ronald Reagan (6/6/04). But Reagan's "likeability" numbers did not score much higher than other modern presidents, including Jimmy Carter. (For more on Reagan polling myths, see: Reagan Popularity)
*No Time for Critical Voices
Mainstream media have relied heavily on Republicans and former Reagan officials to tell the story of Reagan and his accomplishments, which results in a decidedly one-sided version of events. A June 7 article in the New York Times on Reagan's impact claimed that Reagan "was almost always popular and, many now say, usually right." The article stated that "Reagan lived long enough to enable many of his old lieutenants, and some more dispassionate chroniclers as well, to argue that he had also been right on some of the bigger questions of his time."
Six of the eight sources the article quoted were former Reagan staffers or Republicans, one was longtime Reagan devotee Margaret Thatcher, and one was University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, who gave no argument that Reagan was "right" about anything. No other "dispassionate chroniclers" were quoted. Should readers be surprised that Reagan's friends and former colleagues still think he was right?
Television news has displayed an even more pronounced reliance on Reagan's Republican admirers. The Sunday morning shows (6/6/04) almost exclusively featured Republicans; former Reagan chief of staff James Baker appeared on all three networks, as well as Fox and CNN. Fox News Sunday (6/6/04) featured, in addition to Baker, current national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and Sheila Tate, former press secretary for Nancy Reagan. MSNBC's June 6 Hardball program
featured Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Republican representatives David Dreier and Chris Cox, and Reagan strategist Richard Wirthlin.
Interviewing Reagan's admirers may have provided an intimate view of the former president, but it yielded virtually no acknowledgment of his flaws. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, when questioned by CNN's Anderson Cooper (6/6/04) to name Reagan's greatest weakness or failing, responded, "I'm not going to criticize the President. And even if I wanted to, I would never do it on an occasion such as this. We should be grateful that the world was a better place because of Ronald Reagan's presidency."
Even when potentially critical voices were included, the tendency was to soften any disagreements over Reagan's policy. On NPR's Morning Edition (6/7/04), Susan Stamberg interviewed Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher along with Democratic strategist Paul Begala. Clearly, though, this was no time for disagreement, as evidenced by one of Stamberg's questions to Begala: "You once famously said that politics is show business for ugly people. Ronald Reagan makes a liar out of you. He
was an extremely handsome, attractive man." Begala's response: "Boy, was he."
*Reagan's Legacy
Reagan's influence over world politics and the direction of the Republican Party were important aspects of the media's Reagan tributes. But more often than not, the more controversial aspects of Reagan's legacy were either downplayed or recast as footnotes.
Time magazine (6/14/04) cheered that "the Reagan years were another of those hinges upon which history sometimes turns. On one side, a wounded but still vigorous liberalism with its faith in government as the answer to almost every question. On the other, a free market so triumphant-- even after the tech bubble burst-- that we look first to 'growth,' not government, to solve most problems." As NBC's John Hockenberry put it (6/5/04), "The Reagan revolution imagined the unimaginable. When poverty and welfare were at crisis levels in the 1980s, Reagan declared war on
government and turned his back on the welfare state." The long-term impact of cuts in social spending, gutted environmental protections and other casualties of Reagan's "war on government" were relegated to passing mentions.
Reagan's fervent support for right-wing governments in Central America was one of the defining foreign policies of his administration, and the fact that death squads associated with those governments murdered tens of thousands of civilians surely must be included in any reckoning of Reagan's successes and failures.
But a search of major U.S. newspapers in the Nexis news database turns up the phrase "death squad" only five times in connection with Reagan in the days following his death--twice in commentaries (Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/6/04; Chicago Tribune, 6/8/04) and twice in letters to the editor (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/8/04; L.A. Times, 6/8/04). Only one news article found in the search (L.A. Times, 6/6/04) considered the death squads an important enough part of Reagan's legacy to be worth mentioning. The three broadcast networks, CNN and Fox didn't mention death squads at all, according to Nexis. Nor were any references found in the transcripts of the broadcast networks to the fact that Reagan's policy of supporting Islamicist insurgents against the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan led to the rise of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
The Reagan administration's friendly policy towards Saddam Hussein was also a neglected media topic. During the Reagan years, the U.S. offered significant support to Iraq, including weapons components, military intelligence, and even some of the ingredients for manufacturing biological weapons like anthrax (Newsweek, 9/23/02).
The rare opportunities for critical reflection about Reagan's policies were turned into additional evidence of his strength, as when Time magazine (6/14/04) suggested, "Even when his views were most intransigent-- when he wondered out loud whether Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist or failed for nearly all of his presidency to speak the word AIDS even once-- Reagan gave Reaganism a human face." Time followed that strange assessment with a comment from Bush adviser Karl Rove: "He
made us sunny optimists... His was a conservatism of laughter and openness and community."
Journalists seemed determined to show that any criticisms of Reagan could be turned upside down. As Dan Rather explained on CBS's 60 Minutes (6/6/04), "The literal-minded were forever troubled by his tendency to sometimes confuse life with the movies. But he understood, like very few leaders before or since, the power of myth and storytelling. In his films and his political life, Ronald Reagan stood at the intersection where dreams and reality meet, and with a wink and a one-liner, always held out hope for a happy ending."
Even Reagan's contradictions were somehow construed as strong points. As Time put it (6/14/04), "So great was Reagan's victory in making his preoccupations into enduring themes of the national conversation that it may not matter that his record didn't always match his rhetoric. He insisted, for instance, that a balanced budget was one of his priorities. But by the time Reagan left office, a combination of lower tax revenues and sharply higher spending for defense had sent the deficit through the
roof."
The Iran-Contra scandal, which loomed too large to ignore, was often written off by journalists. "As we look back today, it's like just a speck in the eight years of his presidency," explained CNN's Judy Woodruff (6/7/04). Meet the Press host Tim Russert (6/6/04) showed a clip of Reagan's famous response to the scandal, in which he stated, "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true. But the facts and
the evidence tell me it is not." Russert described this tortured evasion of culpability as "very believable."
Whatever reporters made of Iran-Contra, though, Reagan's triumph over such problems was more important than the incidents themselves. CBS reporter Anthony Mason (6/6/04) explained: "The deficit doubled during the Reagan years. His second term was scarred by the Iran Contra scandal, but he never lost that common touch.... Ronald Reagan had an uncanny ability to make Americans feel good about themselves." That bond with American citizens remained front-and-center throughout the media. As CBS anchor Dan Rather put it (6/5/04), Reagan "was the great communicator, yes. But he
was also a master at communicating greatness. He understood that, as he once put it, 'History is a ribbon always unfurling,' and managed to convey his vision in terms both simple and poetic. And so he was able to act as a conduit to connect us to who we had been and who we could be."
*Reagan and the Media
The overwhelmingly positive coverage of Reagan struck some as a significant change. As Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz noted (6/7/04): "The uplifting tone with which journalists are eulogizing Ronald Reagan is obscuring a central fact of his presidency: He had a very contentious relationship with the press." Others would certainly disagree with Kurtz's assessment-- Mark Heertsgaard's 1991 book, "On Bended Knee: The Press & the Reagan Presidency," for example, characterizes the press
corps as being basically uncritical during the Reagan years.
In any event, it would be hard to argue that current coverage of Reagan carries any lingering traces of that formerly "contentious" relationship. If anything, some reporters now seem to think that the main lesson learned from the Reagan years was not to be critical. As ABC's Sam Donaldson put it (6/4/04), "Reporters over the years made the mistake of saying, 'Well, he made this mistake, he made this mistake. He got that fact wrong.' The American public got it right. It didn't matter."
Finally, Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (USA Today, 6/7/04) gave an interesting take on what he acknowledged were "almost completely uncritical" media reports on Reagan: "For networks that are accused of being liberal, this is a way for them to show that they are fair." One would hope that such an overwhelmingly uncritical assessment of important political and historical matters would not meet anyone's definition of "fair" journalism.
----------
Your donation to FAIR makes a difference: To Donate
FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit Counterspin
Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything,
but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples
of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your email correspondence
with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org .
You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: http://www.fair.org . Our
subscriber list is kept confidential.
FAIR
(212) 633-6700
http://www.fair.org/
E-mail: fair@fair.org
Status of Women in the U.S.: Best and Worst
The Status of Women in the States is part of an ongoing research project conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) to establish baseline measures of the status of women in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The effort is part of a larger IWPR Economic Policy Education Program, funded by the Ford Foundation, intended to improve the ability of advocates and policymakers at the state level to address women’s economic issues. The data used in each report come from a variety of sources, primarily government agencies, although other organizations also provided data where relevant.
Making the Myth, Forgetting the Man
(courtesy of S.N.A.F.U.)
Making the Myth, Forgetting the Man
By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel
NEW YORK, June 7, 2004 -- In the bad old days of the Cold War, we would learn that a Russian leader died when their TV screens went dark and martial music was all that we heard. Afterwards, their channels filled with non-stop accolades and tributes to a "great proletarian leader." It was this type of Cold War propaganda posing as news that was held up as an example of the kind of information control the Free World was fighting to overturn -- and had, thanks to the brilliance of our 40th President.
Deification like this had its origins in the Church. When a great religious leader died, church organs responded with divine adoration. Scriptures like Hebrews 1:1-3 were recited to bless the departed with glowing language: "He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of is power."
When word of the passing of former President Ronald Reagan reached American newsrooms on Saturday, they went into a similar overdrive as hagiography displaced journalism. Like praise singers in ancient cultures, our modern day alchemists, went to work transforming a sick and aging political leader into a demi-god.
Suddenly, our news networks resembled religious broadcasters with a Pravda-like, Soviet echo. In many ways this was consistent with the way Ronald Reagan was treated when he was in office. C.T. Hanson, a one-time Washington editor of The Columbia Journalism Review used this frame in an analysis of the same man decades ago, writing then:
"The White House Press served with unusual frequency during Reagan's first two years as a kind of Pravda of the Potomac, a conduit for White House utterances and official image mongering intended to sell Reaganomics."
The best book written in that period on a most deferential White House press corps was called "On Bended Knee." Needless to say the Reaganauts praised their captive media. Lynn Nofziger, Reagan's campaign press secretary said in March 1982, "Overall, I don't have any real complaints about the way the press covered this administration."
Indeed.
In his book length assessment of "Presidents and the Press," Joseph C. Spear showed how the Reagan White House adopted his predecessor Richard Nixon's trick bag of press appeasement, evasion and intimidation to shape opinion and mould public perceptions. Spear called Ronald Reagan's presidency "probably the best staged one in history thanks to his acting abilities and the expertise of his media specialists."
As It Was Then, So It Is Today
The reporters who were infatuated with Reagan's charisma and appeal during his life remained as infatuated after his death.
Ironically, in keeping with the secrecy Republicans are known for, up until the end, Reagan's own office had been downplaying the President's deteriorating condition. The New York Times reported in its early edition before Reagan's death was confirmed that "his office denied his condition had changed."
When the "Breaking News" broke, television reporters quickly brought us every detail live from the gates of the Reagan ranch. The news anchors rushed back to their studios to fill the air with their personal reminiscences and play by play, while their show producers dipped back into time-worn Rolodexes to book the loyalist footmen and handlers who fostered the Reagan myth in the first place, and now had a chance to give it new legs.
Defying any pretense of diversity in media, Time and Newsweek remade their covers with the SAME photo of Reagan as cowboy. The usually competitive New York Daily News and The New York Post showed the same lack of imagination with cloned front pages. Network specials were cranked up overnight.
60 Minutes dropped a promised segment with Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who claims she saw evidence that the government knew of planned terrorist attacks for a special segment by Mike Wallace who introduced himself as "Nancy's friend" before he became a journalist.
Dan Rather was called on to introduce a segment on Reagan's funniest bits, as if this was original. CNN's Jeff Greenfield had a similar report the night before. Neither bothered to interview Reagan's skilled Virginia-based joke writer who scripted his every word.
The TV archivists worked over time dredging up old footage as Reagan as hero took over the networks -- bumping President Bush's extravaganza at Normandy to CSPAN
Program after program on network after network ran interviews with former Secretary of State and longtime Reagan ally James Baker. Newt Gingrich hailed Reagan on CBS while Sam Donaldson, Cokey Roberts and George Will outdid each other with praise on ABC. NBC did not pre-empt tennis matches for more of the same.
It was all Ronnie all the time, a non-stop Televisual Reaganathon, with nary a negative word or honest assessment. The contra war, the military buildup, the growing inequality, the attack on unions, the alliance with the Islamic crazies -- including Bin Laden -- in Afghanistan, the embrace of Saddam, the crazy SDI star wars systems, the support for white South Africa etc., etc. . . had "disappeared" from view like an Argentinian dissident from the same era. Reagan was reborn again as the quintessential folk hero. It was morning in America one more time. Throughout this next week, it will be mourning in America with a planned State funeral.
This all flows out of the widely held perception that Reagan was a popular president because he restored our confidence in a mythic America after the decline of Nixon, the folly of Ford, and the "malaise" of Carter.
The networks clearly wanted some of that popularity to rub off on them as they pandered to the audience with what were essentially apolitical or even anti-political profiles of a master politician who supposedly was popular because of his plainspoken personality. There was little in the coverage that deviated from that self-fulfilling perspective. There was little that explained how constant positive TV coverage of the kind we were seeing constructed and reinforced the image of Reagan as superhero.
Just as Reagan often invented stories that were traced back to movies he saw, many in the public do the same when they respond to him.
Last night, I heard Noam Chomsky on Air America say that educated people tend to be the most indoctrinated, and that the people who convey propaganda have often propagandized themselves first. In short, they believe their own hype.
Media Amnesia -- Reagan's Record Goes Unmentioned
Website www.Geeze.US dug into his past to reminds us what the TV commentators haven't: "Reagan can be remembered for his consideration of ketchup as a vegetable so as to not require additional expenditures for children's lunches. Neither can we forget 'If you've seen one redwood, you've seen em all' to justify the cutting down every standing tree in California. Does anyone want to remember his California Kitchen Cabinet? No thanks. Besides the Beirut loss and the Grenada victory, 52/444 and the Iran-Contra scandal (trading arms for hostages and using the profits from the arms sales to fund the Reagan sanctioned anti-Sandinista CIA death squads), perhaps the most disgusting of the Reagan-as-President legacy was the re-naming of National Airport (DCA) after Ronald Reagan."
Blogger Steve Gilliard contrasted the way American journalists treat the death of politicians as opposed to the way it is handled in the UK "The British have a tradition: when someone dies, their newspaper obituary tells the truth. Americans like to say something kind about the dead, no matter how scummy they were. Even Nixon got a halo in death, where only Hunter Thompson reminded people of who exactly he was and how the honors given him were, well, wrong."
The network coverage this weekend achieved its goal: to leave us with a warm and gooey feeling towards Reagan while erasing our memory of his actual deeds. It is in moments like these that we see the continuity of conservative news coverage and its larger function to re-package politics into the mythology of a triumphant America.
Ronnie's handlers couldn't have written a better final scene. Cut to credits . . .
-- News Dissector Danny Schecher writes a daily blog for Mediachannel. He is finishing WMD, a feature-length documentary on the media coverage of the War in Iraq based on his book "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception." (Prometheus)
Essay Link
Making the Myth, Forgetting the Man
By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel
NEW YORK, June 7, 2004 -- In the bad old days of the Cold War, we would learn that a Russian leader died when their TV screens went dark and martial music was all that we heard. Afterwards, their channels filled with non-stop accolades and tributes to a "great proletarian leader." It was this type of Cold War propaganda posing as news that was held up as an example of the kind of information control the Free World was fighting to overturn -- and had, thanks to the brilliance of our 40th President.
Deification like this had its origins in the Church. When a great religious leader died, church organs responded with divine adoration. Scriptures like Hebrews 1:1-3 were recited to bless the departed with glowing language: "He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of is power."
When word of the passing of former President Ronald Reagan reached American newsrooms on Saturday, they went into a similar overdrive as hagiography displaced journalism. Like praise singers in ancient cultures, our modern day alchemists, went to work transforming a sick and aging political leader into a demi-god.
Suddenly, our news networks resembled religious broadcasters with a Pravda-like, Soviet echo. In many ways this was consistent with the way Ronald Reagan was treated when he was in office. C.T. Hanson, a one-time Washington editor of The Columbia Journalism Review used this frame in an analysis of the same man decades ago, writing then:
"The White House Press served with unusual frequency during Reagan's first two years as a kind of Pravda of the Potomac, a conduit for White House utterances and official image mongering intended to sell Reaganomics."
The best book written in that period on a most deferential White House press corps was called "On Bended Knee." Needless to say the Reaganauts praised their captive media. Lynn Nofziger, Reagan's campaign press secretary said in March 1982, "Overall, I don't have any real complaints about the way the press covered this administration."
Indeed.
In his book length assessment of "Presidents and the Press," Joseph C. Spear showed how the Reagan White House adopted his predecessor Richard Nixon's trick bag of press appeasement, evasion and intimidation to shape opinion and mould public perceptions. Spear called Ronald Reagan's presidency "probably the best staged one in history thanks to his acting abilities and the expertise of his media specialists."
As It Was Then, So It Is Today
The reporters who were infatuated with Reagan's charisma and appeal during his life remained as infatuated after his death.
Ironically, in keeping with the secrecy Republicans are known for, up until the end, Reagan's own office had been downplaying the President's deteriorating condition. The New York Times reported in its early edition before Reagan's death was confirmed that "his office denied his condition had changed."
When the "Breaking News" broke, television reporters quickly brought us every detail live from the gates of the Reagan ranch. The news anchors rushed back to their studios to fill the air with their personal reminiscences and play by play, while their show producers dipped back into time-worn Rolodexes to book the loyalist footmen and handlers who fostered the Reagan myth in the first place, and now had a chance to give it new legs.
Defying any pretense of diversity in media, Time and Newsweek remade their covers with the SAME photo of Reagan as cowboy. The usually competitive New York Daily News and The New York Post showed the same lack of imagination with cloned front pages. Network specials were cranked up overnight.
60 Minutes dropped a promised segment with Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who claims she saw evidence that the government knew of planned terrorist attacks for a special segment by Mike Wallace who introduced himself as "Nancy's friend" before he became a journalist.
Dan Rather was called on to introduce a segment on Reagan's funniest bits, as if this was original. CNN's Jeff Greenfield had a similar report the night before. Neither bothered to interview Reagan's skilled Virginia-based joke writer who scripted his every word.
The TV archivists worked over time dredging up old footage as Reagan as hero took over the networks -- bumping President Bush's extravaganza at Normandy to CSPAN
Program after program on network after network ran interviews with former Secretary of State and longtime Reagan ally James Baker. Newt Gingrich hailed Reagan on CBS while Sam Donaldson, Cokey Roberts and George Will outdid each other with praise on ABC. NBC did not pre-empt tennis matches for more of the same.
It was all Ronnie all the time, a non-stop Televisual Reaganathon, with nary a negative word or honest assessment. The contra war, the military buildup, the growing inequality, the attack on unions, the alliance with the Islamic crazies -- including Bin Laden -- in Afghanistan, the embrace of Saddam, the crazy SDI star wars systems, the support for white South Africa etc., etc. . . had "disappeared" from view like an Argentinian dissident from the same era. Reagan was reborn again as the quintessential folk hero. It was morning in America one more time. Throughout this next week, it will be mourning in America with a planned State funeral.
This all flows out of the widely held perception that Reagan was a popular president because he restored our confidence in a mythic America after the decline of Nixon, the folly of Ford, and the "malaise" of Carter.
The networks clearly wanted some of that popularity to rub off on them as they pandered to the audience with what were essentially apolitical or even anti-political profiles of a master politician who supposedly was popular because of his plainspoken personality. There was little in the coverage that deviated from that self-fulfilling perspective. There was little that explained how constant positive TV coverage of the kind we were seeing constructed and reinforced the image of Reagan as superhero.
Just as Reagan often invented stories that were traced back to movies he saw, many in the public do the same when they respond to him.
Last night, I heard Noam Chomsky on Air America say that educated people tend to be the most indoctrinated, and that the people who convey propaganda have often propagandized themselves first. In short, they believe their own hype.
Media Amnesia -- Reagan's Record Goes Unmentioned
Website www.Geeze.US dug into his past to reminds us what the TV commentators haven't: "Reagan can be remembered for his consideration of ketchup as a vegetable so as to not require additional expenditures for children's lunches. Neither can we forget 'If you've seen one redwood, you've seen em all' to justify the cutting down every standing tree in California. Does anyone want to remember his California Kitchen Cabinet? No thanks. Besides the Beirut loss and the Grenada victory, 52/444 and the Iran-Contra scandal (trading arms for hostages and using the profits from the arms sales to fund the Reagan sanctioned anti-Sandinista CIA death squads), perhaps the most disgusting of the Reagan-as-President legacy was the re-naming of National Airport (DCA) after Ronald Reagan."
Blogger Steve Gilliard contrasted the way American journalists treat the death of politicians as opposed to the way it is handled in the UK "The British have a tradition: when someone dies, their newspaper obituary tells the truth. Americans like to say something kind about the dead, no matter how scummy they were. Even Nixon got a halo in death, where only Hunter Thompson reminded people of who exactly he was and how the honors given him were, well, wrong."
The network coverage this weekend achieved its goal: to leave us with a warm and gooey feeling towards Reagan while erasing our memory of his actual deeds. It is in moments like these that we see the continuity of conservative news coverage and its larger function to re-package politics into the mythology of a triumphant America.
Ronnie's handlers couldn't have written a better final scene. Cut to credits . . .
-- News Dissector Danny Schecher writes a daily blog for Mediachannel. He is finishing WMD, a feature-length documentary on the media coverage of the War in Iraq based on his book "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception." (Prometheus)
Essay Link
Independent Media in a Time of War
Democracy Now
Check out this excellent questioning of whether we have a free, democratic media. This is a powerful documentary and is very disturbing/painful to think about.
(Website description) Part scathing critique, part call to action, "Independent Media In A Time Of War" is a hard-hitting new documentary by the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. This film is composed of a speech given by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! illustrated by clips of mainstream media juxtaposed with rare footage from independent reporters in Iraq. The documentary argues that dialogue is vital to a healthy democracy. "Independent media has a crucial responsibility to go to where the silence is," says Amy Goodman, "to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent." She makes
a compelling argument that the commercial news media have failed to represent the "true face of war."
Watch Independent Media in a Time of War
Watch other Democracy Now Videos
------------------------------------------------------------------
Similar questionings of the media can be seen in Spin (1995) by Brian Springer
The cumulative effect of this video is startling... we know this is how the mediatized world is produced and reproduced, but it is surreal and disturbing to step behind Oz's screen and see how the machine operates.
Video Data Bank description:
Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contempt for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV out-takes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly-spun fabric of television—a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors, and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. riots and the floating TV talk-show called the 1992 U.S. presidential election.
Illegal Art description:
Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.
Watch Brian Springer's documentary "Spin":
Stream Real Video
or
Download--24MB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So then what we have to ask is do we have to become Propaganda Critics and Disinformation Experts in order to understand anything about the world?
For more information, opportunities and critiques check out the Indy Media Movement
Check out this excellent questioning of whether we have a free, democratic media. This is a powerful documentary and is very disturbing/painful to think about.
(Website description) Part scathing critique, part call to action, "Independent Media In A Time Of War" is a hard-hitting new documentary by the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. This film is composed of a speech given by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! illustrated by clips of mainstream media juxtaposed with rare footage from independent reporters in Iraq. The documentary argues that dialogue is vital to a healthy democracy. "Independent media has a crucial responsibility to go to where the silence is," says Amy Goodman, "to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent." She makes
a compelling argument that the commercial news media have failed to represent the "true face of war."
Watch Independent Media in a Time of War
Watch other Democracy Now Videos
------------------------------------------------------------------
Similar questionings of the media can be seen in Spin (1995) by Brian Springer
The cumulative effect of this video is startling... we know this is how the mediatized world is produced and reproduced, but it is surreal and disturbing to step behind Oz's screen and see how the machine operates.
Video Data Bank description:
Pirated satellite feeds revealing U.S. media personalities’ contempt for their viewers come full circle in Spin. TV out-takes appropriated from network satellite feeds unravel the tightly-spun fabric of television—a system that silences public debate and enforces the exclusion of anyone outside the pack of journalists, politicians, spin doctors, and televangelists who manufacture the news. Spin moves through the L.A. riots and the floating TV talk-show called the 1992 U.S. presidential election.
Illegal Art description:
Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.
Watch Brian Springer's documentary "Spin":
Stream Real Video
or
Download--24MB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
So then what we have to ask is do we have to become Propaganda Critics and Disinformation Experts in order to understand anything about the world?
For more information, opportunities and critiques check out the Indy Media Movement
Tuesday, June 08, 2004
Planet Reagan
Planet Reagan
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
- e.e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's Defunct"
Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.
The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.
In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, "The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads."
The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.
How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?
The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.
Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.
Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.
The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the henhouse.
Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the "welfare queen," who punched out babies by the barnload, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'
Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.
The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.
Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth.
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
- e.e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's Defunct"
Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.
The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.
In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, "The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads."
The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.
How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?
The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.
Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.
Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.
The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the henhouse.
Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the "welfare queen," who punched out babies by the barnload, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'
Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.
The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.
Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth.
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
Catholic University Won't Recognize NAACP Chapter as Student Group
Catholic U. Won't Recognize NAACP Chapter
By CANDACE SMITH, Associated Press Writer
Yahoo
The president of the NAACP is criticizing a decision by Catholic University of America not to recognize a chapter of the civil rights group on campus. "It is outright discrimination and intolerance all rolled into one," NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said Friday, just outside the campus and surrounded by about 20 activists and student chapter leaders from other universities.
He said it was the first time in decades that a university had not allowed a student chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (news - web sites). He threatened to sue if the group was unable to come to an agreement with the Roman Catholic university.
The university rejected a student's attempt to start a chapter in April on the ground that the campus already had two groups that represent black students: the Black Organization of Students at Catholic University of America and Minority Voices, an umbrella group for minority organizations.
"He did not demonstrate in the view of university officials ... that this chapter of the NAACP would fill a need that isn't already being met by organizations in existence," said Victor Nakas, university spokesman.
William Jawando, 21, who tried to start the chapter, dismissed the school's reasoning, saying there are no civil rights groups on campus.
"I think they're scared of the NAACP name and protests," said Jawando, a recent undergraduate, who will attend the university's law school in the fall.
School administrators also raised concern about the group's support of the April 25 "March for Women's Lives," an abortion rights rally. Nakas said student groups are not allowed to advocate positions that are contrary to the teachings of the church, which opposes abortion. But he said that was not the main reason for rejecting the NAACP chapter.
Official NAACP policy does not take a side in the abortion debate, Mfume said.
Nakas said the university's president, the Rev. David M. O'Connell, hopes to meet with Mfume next week. University officials plan to meet with students interested in the issue this fall. Jawando said about 30 students were committed to joining the campus group.
The NAACP has chapters at 150 colleges, including Georgetown, Fordham and St. John's universities and Trinity College — all Catholic schools.
Report Link
___
On the Net:
NAACP
Catholic University of America
By CANDACE SMITH, Associated Press Writer
Yahoo
The president of the NAACP is criticizing a decision by Catholic University of America not to recognize a chapter of the civil rights group on campus. "It is outright discrimination and intolerance all rolled into one," NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said Friday, just outside the campus and surrounded by about 20 activists and student chapter leaders from other universities.
He said it was the first time in decades that a university had not allowed a student chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (news - web sites). He threatened to sue if the group was unable to come to an agreement with the Roman Catholic university.
The university rejected a student's attempt to start a chapter in April on the ground that the campus already had two groups that represent black students: the Black Organization of Students at Catholic University of America and Minority Voices, an umbrella group for minority organizations.
"He did not demonstrate in the view of university officials ... that this chapter of the NAACP would fill a need that isn't already being met by organizations in existence," said Victor Nakas, university spokesman.
William Jawando, 21, who tried to start the chapter, dismissed the school's reasoning, saying there are no civil rights groups on campus.
"I think they're scared of the NAACP name and protests," said Jawando, a recent undergraduate, who will attend the university's law school in the fall.
School administrators also raised concern about the group's support of the April 25 "March for Women's Lives," an abortion rights rally. Nakas said student groups are not allowed to advocate positions that are contrary to the teachings of the church, which opposes abortion. But he said that was not the main reason for rejecting the NAACP chapter.
Official NAACP policy does not take a side in the abortion debate, Mfume said.
Nakas said the university's president, the Rev. David M. O'Connell, hopes to meet with Mfume next week. University officials plan to meet with students interested in the issue this fall. Jawando said about 30 students were committed to joining the campus group.
The NAACP has chapters at 150 colleges, including Georgetown, Fordham and St. John's universities and Trinity College — all Catholic schools.
Report Link
___
On the Net:
NAACP
Catholic University of America
Annecy Film Festival "Short Films for the Internet" Nominees
For those not familiar with Annecy, it's an international film festival held every year in France with 5500 attendees, 350 journalists, over 1400 films from 50 countries with more than 260 films in the official selection. This festival is dedicated solely to animation.
You can view all the "short films for the Internet" nominees' movies at
Annecy Film Festival
You can view all the "short films for the Internet" nominees' movies at
Annecy Film Festival
S.N.A.F.U., Prison Abuse, College Pranks and No RNC Movement
Check out The S.N.A.F.U. Principle for a good mapping of the media spin on the Abu Ghraib prison abuses as being similar to college-boy pranks.
SNAFU also provides a link to the growing movement to confront the RNC convention in New York this september. Check out these posters at No RNC Poster Project
SNAFU also provides a link to the growing movement to confront the RNC convention in New York this september. Check out these posters at No RNC Poster Project
Whither Media Reform?
WHITHER MEDIA REFORM?
Danny Schechter, Media Channel
Alternet
A year ago, nearly three million Americans wrote letters to members of Congress protesting media consolidation. So why are we cracking down instead on indecency?
Entire Article
Danny Schechter, Media Channel
Alternet
A year ago, nearly three million Americans wrote letters to members of Congress protesting media consolidation. So why are we cracking down instead on indecency?
Entire Article
Remembering Guitarist Robert Quine
Punk Rock Guitarist Robert Quine Found Dead
By Chris Morris and Jonathan Cohen
Yahoo
Guitarist Robert Quine, one of punk rock's most daring soloists, was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment. He was 61.
According to close friend and guitar maker Rick Kelly, who discovered Quine's body, the musician died of a heroin overdose Memorial Day weekend. He had been despondent over the recent death of his wife.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine was heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, whose music he recorded obsessively while living in San Francisco. He moved to New York in 1971 and became the lead guitarist for bassist Richard Hell's important group the Voidoids, with whom he recorded two albums. His skittering, unpredictable work with Hell defined the possibilities of punk guitar.
During the '80s, he recorded and toured frequently with Lou Reed (news) and played on saxophonist/composer John Zorn's best-known albums. Quine made key guest appearances on Tom Waits (news)' "Rain Dogs" (1985) and Marianne Faithfull (news)'s "Strange Weather" (1987). In 1989, he began a long association with Matthew Sweet (news); he also worked regularly with Lloyd Cole (news).
In 2001, Universal released a three-CD box of Quine's live 1969 recordings of the Velvet Underground, "The Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes."
"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast," Reed said in a statement released to Billboard.com. "He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock 'n' roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical son. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone. Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear' (from Reed's 1982 album "The Blue Mask"), well, it's probably something else by Robert."
"He was a marvelous guitarist, a soulful music lover with high standards and had an eviscerating wit," Patti Smith (news) Band drummer Jay Dee Daugherty told Billboard.com. "He did not suffer fools gladly, but made up for it with a thinly disguised generosity of spirit."
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By Chris Morris and Jonathan Cohen
Yahoo
Guitarist Robert Quine, one of punk rock's most daring soloists, was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment. He was 61.
According to close friend and guitar maker Rick Kelly, who discovered Quine's body, the musician died of a heroin overdose Memorial Day weekend. He had been despondent over the recent death of his wife.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine was heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, whose music he recorded obsessively while living in San Francisco. He moved to New York in 1971 and became the lead guitarist for bassist Richard Hell's important group the Voidoids, with whom he recorded two albums. His skittering, unpredictable work with Hell defined the possibilities of punk guitar.
During the '80s, he recorded and toured frequently with Lou Reed (news) and played on saxophonist/composer John Zorn's best-known albums. Quine made key guest appearances on Tom Waits (news)' "Rain Dogs" (1985) and Marianne Faithfull (news)'s "Strange Weather" (1987). In 1989, he began a long association with Matthew Sweet (news); he also worked regularly with Lloyd Cole (news).
In 2001, Universal released a three-CD box of Quine's live 1969 recordings of the Velvet Underground, "The Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes."
"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast," Reed said in a statement released to Billboard.com. "He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock 'n' roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical son. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone. Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear' (from Reed's 1982 album "The Blue Mask"), well, it's probably something else by Robert."
"He was a marvelous guitarist, a soulful music lover with high standards and had an eviscerating wit," Patti Smith (news) Band drummer Jay Dee Daugherty told Billboard.com. "He did not suffer fools gladly, but made up for it with a thinly disguised generosity of spirit."
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Monday, June 07, 2004
Slow Poke
This is one of the best comic strips I have ever read--please do yourself a favor and visit this site and be thoughtfully amused!
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