December 3, 2001
The Big Brother Files #16: Another Earful of CorpoDictatorial News
Hello everyone
Lots of powerful, compelling, eye-opening stuff in this one, especially the first article by Starhawk -- originally intended for the Rising Phoenix Series #1 coming your way tomorrow -- passionately calling us to break the spells that bind us into apathy.
Feel free to share widely ;-)
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
"All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
- Adolf Hitler
Taken from http://www.island.net/~lbnews/9_11/9-11Files/9-11Files.html
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
- GW Bush during a photo-op with Congressional leaders on 12/18/2000.
CONTENTS
1. Spells and Counterspells: Why Act Now?
2. The Globalization of Repression
3. Renowned U.S. Economists Denounce Corporate-Led Globalization
4. UK media
5. Quote from The Enemy Within - the Illusion Without: Vested Interests
6. Freedom of the press is dying
OTHER ARTICLES AND WEBPAGES OF INTEREST
These 2 sites give instructions on how to remove the new Badtrans virus I mentioned earlier.
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@mm.removal.tool.html
http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@mm.html
To avoid any more worm virus (if you use Outlook Express) go to http://www.softwarepatch.com/internet/ieeyedog.html and download the security patch
Seizing Dictatorial Power
http://www.truthout.com/11.16A.Safire.htm
GW Bush on 9/11 Conspiracy Theories by Robert Lederman
http://baltech.org/lederman/bush-conspiracy-11-23-01.html
"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty." - GW Bush speaking before the UN General Assembly 11/10/2001. When President Bush spoke of "outrageous conspiracy theories" he was for the first time acknowledging something of great significance. There are informed viewpoints completely missing from the propaganda war being relentlessly waged on Americans about 9/11 and its aftermath, viewpoints which are as opposite from the official story as it is possible to get."
Congress Will Challenge, Bush and Ashcroft on Secret Tribunals
http://www.truthout.com/11.28C.Dems.Tribunal.htm
Bush Proposes Heavily Arming Egypt
http://www.truthout.com/11.28A.Bush.Egypt.htm
DOMESTIC UNREST STILL GROWING IN UNITED STATES
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/18/18529.html
Gore's Victory
http://www.jamesdonahue.com/10gorewon.html
THE Biggest Cover-up in History
http://www.dieoff.org
Lots of interesting stuff at http://www.jamesdonahue.com
THIS IS QUITE COMPELLING - AND MOST COURAGEOUS!
1.
Sent by "Phyllis von Miller" <violetvisions@surf1.ws>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001
From: Starhawk <stella@mcn.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001
Spells and Counterspells: Why Act Now?
By Starhawk
The days are short and cold, the streets are univiting. The political climate seems as chilly as the winter winds, and everybody is saying that 911 changed everything. Why take action now? The government, the media, even some of our own allies warn us that public opinion is no longer with us, that repression will be high, that any action we take will be too costly both personally and politically, that we should hold back and wait.
But The WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, and the other institutions of corporate capitalism are not waiting. They continue to meet, to argue for a new round of trade negotiations, to impose policies that result in a widening gap between rich and poor, and a staggering global death toll. And as winter nears, the potential rises for massive starvation in Afghanistan if relief trucks cannot deliver supplies because of our bombs.
And so on bad days we hear our own inner voices murmuring, 'It's hopeless. We've lost. The forces we face are too strong for us. Give up."
These voices seem reasonable, sensible. But any Witch can recognize a spell being cast.
A spell is a story we tell ourselves that shapes our emotional and psychic world. The media, the authorities tell a story so pervasive that most people mistake it for reality. We're fighting a righteous war against the Source of All Evil, and everyone supports Bush, and corporate control is the only way to be safe and to provide what we need, and to question is Evil, too.
The counterspell is simple: tell a different story. Pull back the curtain: expose their story for the false tale it is. Act 'as if'.
Act as if we weren't doomed, as if what we did in the next weeks and months could shift the balance of fate.
Act as if the movement were coming back stronger than ever, attracting thousands and hundreds of thousands who have had their eyes opened by the war.
Act as if this movement were the most creative, visionary, inspiring, funny, welcoming, transforming and truly revolutionary movement that had ever been. As if we had new language, new tactics, new ways of communicating that could waken the dormant dissent and the sleeping visions in every heart.
Act as if a whole new public dialogue was beginning outside the boxes drawn by our traditional political lines and our TV sets.
Act as if all the different factions in our movement were learning how to support each other, how to work in true coalition and act with true solidarity. As if all who should be allies were able to come together and work for our common goals.
Act as of we were going to win.
But won't these actions alienate and polarize people? Maybe, if they're ill conceived, gratuitously violent, or simply a matter of screaming the old slogans of the sixties over bullhorns. Or if they're timid, apologetic, whining, they may simply leave people bored and yawning. But our silence will not change public opinion, will not educate people or get them thinking again about larger issues. Actions that are creative, vibrant, confident and visionary, actions that directly and clearly confront the institutions we oppose and pose alternatives can be empowering both to those who take part and to those who hear of them.
We need to advance, not retreat, to take the political space we want and claim it. If we silence ourselves, we're tacitly agreeing that our protests are indeed some distant kin to the terrorists' acts. If we insist that our voices be heard, that open dissent is not terrorism, but the deepest commitment to democracy, once the inevitable vitriol wears off, we'll find that we've gained legitimacy and shifted the ground of the dialogue. The longer we wait to claim that space, the more rigidified the patterns of oppression will grow. We need to act now, while the future is still fluid, and set the pattern ourselves.
Since 911, I've been to more rallies and marches than I can count. I've marched with Gandhian pacifists and white-haired women in wheelchairs. I've marched with dancing, drumming Pagans. I've marched with Socialists and militants screaming about imperialism. I've marched with black masked anarchists surrounded by riot cops. And you know what? It's been okay. The police have behaved like police behave, sometimes restrained, sometimes provocative, occasionally vicious -- but that's not new. At times we met counter demonstrators, but never been more than a handful. And we often received unexpected support. I've seen construction workers flash peace signs at the Black Bloc.
Of course, our fears aren't just based on fictions. The authorities command real force, real tear gas, real clubs, real guns, real jails. Real people do die, go to prison, suffer. So might we. But fear makes things worse than they are. Fear limits our vision and our ability to take in information, makes the power holders seem omnipotent, and leads to our suppressing ourselves, saving the authorities the cost and trouble of doing it. And despair leads to paralysis.
The counterspell for fear is courage: facing the possibility of the worst and then going ahead with what you know is right. The counterspell for despair is action in service of a vision. The counterspell for paralysis is stubborn, persistent passion. Even if we're wrong, if nothing we do does makes a difference, courage and passion are a better place to be than hopelessness, cynicism and fear. If the authorities repress us, that's better than becoming people who repress ourselves. If we see our dreams ripped out of our hands, that's better than never daring to dream at all.
And if we tell our own stories with enough intensity and focus, we'll start to believe them, and so will others. We'll break the spells that bind us. We'll start to want that other world we say is possible with such intensity that nothing can stop us or deny us. All it takes is our willingness to act from vision, not from fear, to risk hoping, to dare to act for what we love.
http://www.starhawk.org
---
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our problem."
- Howard Zinn, "Failure to Quit", p. 45
2.
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001
From: Antares <Antares@time.net.my>
The Globalization of Repression: A Special Report to the European Parliament
Censored Stories: 'The Technologies of Political Control'
The following is an edited version of a 112-page "Special Report to the European Parliament" prepared by the Omega Foundation for the European Parliament's department of Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA). While this report and its subsequent updates are widely known throughout Europe, it has never appeared in the US media. The full report is available from STOA, Luxembourg, +352-4300-22511, fax: -22418, http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/166499/execsum_en.htm.
Luxembourg (January 6, 1998) - Nearly 30 years ago, the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) warned that a new technology of repression was being spawned in an effort to contain civil unrest. In 1977, BSSRS published The Technology of Political Control which analyzed the function of these new technologies. Largely created as a result of research and development undertaken as part of Britain's colonial wars, work on this technology was further enhanced by technical developments achieved by the US' military-industrial complex.
The BSSRS was the first report to identify a whole class of technology whose principal function was to achieve social and political control. "This new weaponry ranges from means of monitoring internal dissent to devices for controlling demonstrations; from new techniques of interrogation to methods of prisoner control," BSSRS reported.
The Technology of Political Control predicted that, with the deployment of these technologies, governments would no longer reach for the machine gun when threatened at home. They would have plastic bullets that kill only occasionally, interrogation that tortures without leaving physical scars, electronics for telephone taping and night surveillance, and computers to build files on dissidents.
A massive Police Industrial Complex has been spawned to serve the needs of police, paramilitary and security forces. An overall trend is towards the globalization of these technologies.
Many major arms companies have established paramilitary/internal security operations and diversification into these markets is increasing. Weapons specifically designed to quell dissent are incredibly cheap compared to major warfare counterparts like ships, aircraft and tanks. The move into a post-Cold War world has been accompanied by a change in the nature of warfare.
The militarization of the police often begins via "special weapons and tactics squads," such as the Grenz Schutz Gruppe in Germany, the Gendarmerie Nationale in France, the Carabinieri in Italy, the Special Patrol Group in the UK or the federal police paramilitary SWAT teams in the US (FBI, DEA and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). Security companies now produce weapons and communications systems for both the military and the police.
The Evolution of Repression - The 1972 US National Science Foundation's Report on Non-lethal Weapons listed 34 different weapons including: chemical and kinetic weapons; electrified water jets; combined stroboscopic light and pulsed sound weapons; infrasound weapons; guns that fire drug-filled, flight-stabilized syringes; stench darts that give off an obnoxious odor; the Taser, which shoots 50,000 volts into the target; and "instant banana peel," which makes roads slippery and impassable.
Many of these weapons have since achieved operational status. They include: electronic riot shields and electro-shock batons; bulk chemical irritant distributor systems (delivered by British water cannon or Israeli backpack sprayers); plastic bullet guns; hydraulically fired, slingshot rubber-bullet machines; and biomedical weapons, such as the compressed-air-fired drug syringe now commercially available both in the US and China.
Some 856 companies across 47 countries have been or are currently active in the manufacture and supply of such weapons. This global proliferation has been fueled by private companies wishing to tap lucrative security markets.
Portable electrified riot shields (manufactured since the mid-1980s) comprise a transparent polycarbonate plate through which metal strips are interlaced. A button-activated induction coil in the handle sends 40,000 to 100,000 volts arcing across the metal strips, accompanied by intermittent indigo flashing sparks and an intimidating crackle as the air between the electrodes is ionized. Deaths have been reported from both Tasers and from shock shields.
A wire barrier system dispersed by the Volcano Mine System shoots out a thin wire with something like fish hooks along it in enough mass to cover a soccer-field sized area. "It's intended to snag. It's not going to kill you," said Volcano marketing manager Tom Bierman.
Full article
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=279&journalID=49
3.
Also from Antares
Renowned U.S. Economists Denounce Corporate-Led Globalization
Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and internationally acclaimed economist Paul Krugman decry undemocratic, unsound, and unethical corporate agenda
by James L. Phelan
It seems critics of corporate-led globalization have some new allies.
Recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, along with well-known economist Paul Krugman, have of late made a flurry of public statements critical of the policies and processes of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank / IMF, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) while leaving plenty of harsh words for the blatantly pro-corporate actions of the Bush Administration. Both economists point to the disruptive and distorting influence of large corporate entities through their dominance over both domestic and international institutions.
Stiglitz and Krugman have begun to voice their indignation more frequently in the press, raising many of the same concerns that social justice and environmental advocates have long made about the disproportionate influence of big business and the hypocrisy of "free market" dogma.
Taking Care of Business
In a recent column appearing in the New York Times, Krugman stated: "Cynics tell us that money has completely corrupted our politics, that in the last election big corporations basically bought themselves a government that will serve their interests. Several related events last week suggest that the cynics have a point." As evidence of heavy-handed corporate opportunism, Krugman takes issue with the recent claims by security interests that federalizing airport security would represent a "taking" a bald move by private interests to maintain a questionable security status quo free from public calls for more systematic scrutiny.
Krugman then assails the House "Stimulus Bill", stating that the "remarkable thing we learned from that bill was that conservative politicians who used to claim that they were improving incentives by reducing marginal tax rates, and that it was just an incidental side effect that big corporations and wealthy individuals were so richly rewarded no longer feel the need to disguise their payoffs." As he states, the principal goal of the bill is to repeal retroactively the corporate alternative minimum tax, "which means that selected companies would immediately receive huge lump sum payments from the government, totaling around $25 billion, with no incentive effect at all." What's worse is that "there are no strings attached to those gifts: if the companies want to, say, pay huge bonuses to top executives, they can. Republicans have always depended on the kindness of corporations, but this bill takes that faith to extremes."
Very little here, says Krugman, is representative of sound economic policies aimed at economic recovery, not to mention the need for shared sacrifice in times of belt-tightening. Corporate interests, as Krugman rightly points out, have friends in convenient political circles. In a blunt conclusion, Krugman sums it up saying that "the truth must be spoken. Lately our government has not exactly inspired confidence; its response to terrorism is starting to look a bit scatterbrained. But on some subjects our leaders are quite clearheaded: whatever else may be going on, they make sure that they are taking care of business."
Corporate-Led Globalization
When it comes to decrying the disruptive influence of the corporate agenda internationally whether in the WTO or the FTAA most critics have focused their energies on denouncing the anti-democratic nature of international trade and investment regimes and their narrow focus on liberalizing markets at all costs.
A recent interview with Joseph Stiglitz, however the ultimate World Bank/IMF insider sheds new light on what many have long suspected: documents and testimony on secret industry-governmental meetings, the behind the scenes agenda-setting of transnational corporate interests, and the apparent hidden agenda of the WB/IMF.
This conspiratorial assessment of hidden agendas could easily be shrugged off as baseless except that this account comes to us from a fired-up and increasingly political Stiglitz. Fired from the World Bank in 1999 for his criticism of the WB/IMF's policies, Stiglitz has refused to keep quiet as these institutions largely serving under the dictates of the U.S. Treasury Department impose policies internationally that he claims have "condemned people to death."
Full article at http://www.earthisland.org/ggn/ggn_article2.html
4.
INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE ON THE UK MEDIA
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001
From: Palden Jenkins <palden.jenkins@btopenworld.com>
Subject: UK media
Hello Jean and others...
For your interest, here are a few bitties concerning the British media and powers that be. I thought I'd send a little info on the standing of British media which nowadays are being widely quoted by folks like you.
Generally, British quality media are high standard and intelligent, though they still have their biases and soap-boxes to stand on, but in comparison to many other countries' media, UK does quite well in terms of objectivity and content quality.
The Daily Telegraph is a quality right-wing newspaper, owned by Conrad Black (Canadian). Since the right wing in Britain is in total disarray and free-fall, their political identity is probably in doubt at present, but they still cater for towards-right, well-heeled customers.
The Guardian (daily) and the Observer (Sundays only) are liberal to left-wing, towards younger generation (under 55ish) bias, British owned by the same company. Interestingly, their sales have grown recently. They're liberal-to-left politically, though when you get to para-political issues such as alternative therapies, crop formations and such things, they generally omit them altogether - very Londonish, too sophisticated and rational for such 'flakey' stuff. Strangely, the righter-wing papers give these subjects more space, as it goes - connected with the funny progressive streak that runs through the British upper classes (such as Prince Charles, a strangely enlightened man, organic farmer and community patron who wears tweeds and still goes shooting birds with his fellow nobs).
The Times was once Britain's flagship newspaper, towards right-wing, owned by News Int'l (Rupert Murdoch), but it has fallen from grace and has become much less significant. Generally for 'toffs'.
All the above papers were founded in the late 1700s, with a long heritage to maintain. The Observer was founded in response to the French Revolution.
The Independent is liberal, founded in the 1980s during Maggie Thatcher's time. Tried to become the big, balanced authority replacing the Times, but didn't quite make it. Generally enlightened, with good judgement and reporting, but not doing so well on sales and influence. Quite quotable and as politically neutral as can be, though a little sterile.
BBC is generally liberal in approach, though mixed too. Owned by the British government and mostly paid for by the British public through annual TV licence fees, with independence safeguards which generally work well. It tends toward the establishment position, though with a liberal bent. Generally, their news service can be middle-roadish, towards 'official line', though their off-peak programmes and features can be quite enlightened, even radical at times. It's a massive organisation which includes BBC World Service, which competes with CNN for world news and current affairs - it also has five national radio channels, numerous local stations, two terrestrial TV channels and several satellite channels. Their news is generally reliable, and they have a strong neutrality standard and philosophy, though, of course, when it comes to paranormal and alternative stuff, which is 'extreme' from the mainstream 'neutral' viewpoint, they're biased. Their website is Europe's biggest, and they invest $400m in it annually - very good integration between broadcast media and Internet.
CLIP - Palden had also included here his take on Tony Blair, the British government and the E.U. but there was not enough room left to include it here unfortunately.
I thought you might be interested in the above...
Palden
5.
NOTE FROM JEAN: It is interesting to contrast this survey above with the following taken from "The Enemy Within - the Illusion Without" by Ivan Fraser - from Truth Campaign Magazine, issue 22 - .
From: http://www.vegan.swinternet.co.uk/articles/conspiracies/enemy_within.html
(...)
Vested interests
Independence Day is just one example of how much subliminal programming we are exposed to by the entertainment media. A comprehensive list of examples would take many pages.
Considering how controlled Hollywood is by Jews, it is not surprising that there is a severe lack of Islam in the movies, except to portray Muslims as the bad guys. The following is a brief overview of just how Jewish US movie and entertainment industry is, consider the following (although the following lists may be a few years out of date, they serve well enough to make the general point):
The Walt Disney Company, is the largest movie corporation. Chairman and CEO is Michael Eisner,
The Disney empire includes several television production companies: Walt Disney Television, Touchstone Television, Buena Vista Television), its own cable network with 14 million subscribers, and two video production companies.
The Walt Disney Picture Group is headed by Joe Roth and includes Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures, Miramax Films (run by the Weinstein brothers).
In addition to TV and movies, the corporation owns Disneyland, Disney World, Epcot Center, Tokyo Disneyland, and Euro Disney.
AOL/Time Warner, Inc. The chairman of the board and CEO is Gerald M. Levin.
Time Warners subsidiary HBO is the countrys largest pay-TV cable network.
Viacom Inc. is headed by Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein). It produces and distributes TV programs for the three largest networks, owns 12 television stations and 12 radio stations. It produces feature films through Paramount Pictures, headed by Sherry Lansing; and also owns Blockbuster video stores.
Viacoms publishing division includes Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, and Pocket Books.
Viacom is also the worlds largest provider of cable programming, through its Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, and other networks.
Rupert Murdochs News Corporation, owns Fox Television Network and 20th Century Fox Films. Murdoch is a Gentile, but Peter Chernin, who heads Murdochs film studio and also oversees his TV production, is a Jew.
The Japanese Sony Corporation, whose U.S. subsidiary, Sony Corporation of America, is run by Michael Schulhof. Alan J. Levine heads the Sony Pictures division.
New World Entertainment is owned by Ronald Perelman, who also owns Revlon cosmetics. The chairman at New World, is Brandon Tartikoff - formerly head of entertainment programming at NBC.
DreamWorks SKG is run by David Geffen, former Disney Pictures chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and film director Steven Spielberg.
MCA and Universal Pictures, are both owned by Seagram Company Ltd. The president and CEO of Seagram, the liquor giant, is Edgar Bronfman, Jr., who is also president of the World Jewish Congress.
Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Paramount (Viacom), and Universal (Seagram) accounted for 74 percent of the total box-office receipts for the year to date (August 1995).
As is the case with Hollywood, so it is with American news media. Consider the following:
American Broadcasting Companies (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and National Broadcasting Company (NBC) are all controlled by Leonard Harry Goldenson and staffed all the way down by hand-picked Jews.
The Newhouse media empire owns 31 daily newspapers, including Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the nations largest trade book publishing conglomerate, Random House, with all its subsidiaries; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of 12 television broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV systems, including some of the countries largest cable networks-the Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 22 million copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, Madamoiselle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, HQ, Brides, Gentlemens Quarterly, Self, Home & Garden....etc.
The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Daily News and the Washington Post (run by Katherine Meyer Graham) are all Jewish controlled.
Time under AOL/Time Warner - see above), Newsweek (run by the Washington Post), and U.S. News & World Report (owned and published by Mortimer B Zucherman) are the most significant US news magazines.
The three largest book publishers: Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Time Inc. are owned or controlled by Jews
Western Publishing has more than 50 per cent of the childrens book market. Its chairman and CEO is Richard Bernstein.
The White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is also a Jew.
Surely such monopoly on politics, news media and entertainment by such a minority is ludicrous? Of course it is. But then, its a ludicrous world, isnt it?
CLIP
Also from: http://www.vegan.swinternet.co.uk/articles/conspiracies/enemy_within.html
"While the American people are shocked grieving, running telethons, gathering in the streets to proclaim their support for their 'great' leadership and the plan to rid the world of 'evil', the fact that their own government is responsible for their tragic suffering is ignored. The pain and unbridled truth is that the general populous of America are gullible and naïve. They are brainwashed into their illusory mindset that America is the 'land of the free', whilst America is in fact the very evil empire they believe they are opposing. Those same masses of programmed Americans are not only the victims of this terrible event, but are also the cause of it. It is they who give their support to the tyrants who control their country and the world through terrorism and deceit. Without their support in thought and deed, this whole charade could never work."
Plenty more articles at http://www.vegan.swinternet.co.uk/mainpages/magazines_frame.html
See also
FREE SPEECH, R.I.P.
http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=22
FEAR AND NUMBING IN THE TV ZONE
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11954
6.
From: InnerSkies@aol.com
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001
Subject: Freedom of the press is dying
Humanity is at a crossroads, we can decide to fight the system that exists or we can work towards a transformation. Many of us have had dreams that media can be changed, returned to ethical reporting, but what we have found is that it is an up hill struggle and that there are many obstacles in place which prevent change. A question we could ask ourselves is why has the federal Communication Commission and the Justice Department or any of the agencies that regulate information monopolies not acted to stop the consolidation of media ownership? People like Rupert Murdoch control The New York Post, The Weekly Standard, Mushroom Records, Fox Network and 15 TV stations and much more. The same is true for GE Receptor and the Viacom Receptor corporate conglomerates.
I wanted to add briefly that even the so-called "alternative" presses in large metropolitan areas, such as my hometown of Berea (Cleveland), Ohio, are owned by colidated corporations. The biggest "alternatives" in my area are owned by corporations in New York City and Phoenix, Arizona, and these conglomerates are making it a point to buy up oodles and oodles of once independent "alternatives" and then continuing to call the newspapers independent long after they have lost independence. I have a hard time getting certain chain run video shops, bookstores, coffee shops, convenient stores, etc., carry my community newspapers in my own community, while newspapers owned by media moguls who could care less about my neighbors and friends are given automatic access to distribute their "news" and "information" because the corporate consolidation and control has taken absolute authority over freedom, while the people sleep.
This is dangerous and so well hidden from public awareness. Freedom of the press is not only dying out because of press ownership but also because of the way press distribution is also monopolized and controlled. If anyone would ever wish to see a genuine, natural, actual newspaper/free forum "of the people, by the people, for the people," free samples would gladly be mailed out.
Much Love
Ron McEntee
President/Publisher, Active Communications, Inc.,
Active Voice/The Weekly Farce,
P.O. Box 394, Berea, OH 44017