News of the Month
February 9, 2002
“The News of the Month.” What news of the month? You already know what’s going on out there (what the corporate-owned media are allowed to tell you, anyway).
King George II is still waging his war of terrorism against the people of Afghanistan. Last month I told you that we had murdered more innocent civilians – men, women, and children – than were killed on September 11, and that total has continued to climb during this past month. The United States takes the world championship – we are now the number one international terrorist nation in the world. Doesn’t that make you all kinds of proud? Now the king wants to widen his war to North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and … The Philippines? Yeah. You know – the Philippines were once a US colony; and I’m wondering if some of his super-rich corporate investors want it back, so they can start pulling in the profits from exploiting it again. So what’s new?
Vice President Dick Cheney is
obstructing justice, again, trying to pull the mantle of Executive Privilege,
up to now applicable only to the sitting president, over himself as protection
against an investigation by the General Accounting Office of the fact that he’s
been in Enron’s pocket for years. (Oh –
did you hear that he came out of his bunker last Saturday? He saw his shadow, so we’ll have 6 more
weeks of war.) Anyway, corruption
marches on. Bill Moyers broadcast interviews
with Dick Cheney and Ken Lay last week, showing just that. So what’s new?
Attorney General John Ashcroft has
decided that a statue of a woman with one breast exposed is obscene, and is
forcing you and me to spend $8,000 to cover that offensive breast. ’Course, the real trouble was that some
photographer got a shot of him speaking in front of the statue, and framed it
so you could see the breast over his right shoulder. Once again
the Attorney General chooses to ignore the enormous crimes of Enron and the
other corporate criminals, and waste our money on useless
prissiness. So what’s new?
The corporate media are presenting
only the news they’re told to present.
Example? Last month a national
presidential candidate came to Austin, accompanied by two internationally known
musicians and two nationally known political commentators. Over 5,000 people came to the event; that’s
news! Buuuut … there were exactly zero
corporate-owned media outlets there. No
TV cameras – even though gatherings of 30 demonstrators draw every station in
town – and the Statesman’s coverage the next day consisted of a report
on an interview Mr. Nader gave them earlier in the day. Why did the corporate-owned news ignore
him? Do I have to tell you? They were told by their bosses to stay away,
because anyone who poses a serious threat to the current regime cannot
be allowed to be heard. And, just as
they’re scared to cover Green Party events such as that one, they’re scared to
cover Libertarian Party events, or Natural Law Party events, or any event that
might defeat the bought and paid for Republicrats they have so cozily in their
pockets. The media, controlled by their
corporate bosses, decide what’s news, and ignore or actively hide the
rest. Why do you think they pay more
attention to Leslie Cochran, the transvestite candidate for state attorney
general than to John Roland, the Libertarian candidate for that office? Because Leslie’s not a threat to their
power, and John would be. So what’s
new?
It’s coming out that top Enron
executives have been artificially inflating the corporation’s profit figures
for years – for example, by claiming money they borrowed as actual income. (If you don’t know what’s wrong with that,
ask an accountant.) The objective? To justify the mega-millions of dollars that
those executives were drawing in bonuses for “profitability”. Hah!
I suppose you all know by now that those same executives sold their
stock early in Enron’s nose-dive, reaping huge profits? They knew Enron was going to fail, and they
bailed out in time to pull in even more mega-millions. The ordinary workers there, though, got the
other end of the shaft – when the corporation started tanking, and they
tried to sell the stock they had in their retirement funds, they were prevented
from doing it – by those same executives.
The super-rich get richer, and those who loyally served them lose their
life savings. And did you know that Enron
paid no income taxes in 4 of the last 5 years? So what’s new?
What’s new? I’ll tell you what’s new: a small, but
steadily growing minority of the people in this country are waking up. They’re seeing what the actions of King
George and his court are doing to this nation, what his war of terrorism is
doing to other nations in the world, what the multinational corporations are
doing to our economy and the economies of other nations, and what his
unconstitutional clampdowns are doing to all our liberties. I want to ask you – urge you – to
join that growing minority. Look at
what’s going on around you, and what’s going on around the world in your
name. Unless a lot of us wake up, and
speak up, and then act up, this nation is in serious danger of becoming
a dictatorship. We have a would-be
dictator on the throne right now, and he shows all the signs of moving steadily
into that role. Read Michael Ventura’s
column in the Austin Chronicle
two weeks ago listing the things that King George has done to move himself into
that dictatorial role. And then work
to stop it, for your sake and for the sake of your children.
You know, the Libertarian Party and the Green Party disagree on a lot
of things. But we agree on the one
thing that is the most important political issue facing us – that the
Republicrat Party must be kicked out if this nation is ever to gain the
greatness we envision for it. The
principles on which the United States was founded are being subverted – or,
rather, sold out – by the Republicrats now in power in this country. The Libertarian Party offers a political
home to all who seek to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity.” But if Libertarianism
isn’t for you, there are other alternatives to the bloated, corrupt Republicrat
machine. Those who have ears, let them
hear.
And though a lot of our attention has been focused on Enron recently, let’s not forget that there are still a lot of other corporate criminals out there – like Monsanto. Take, for example, this bit from last week’s News of the Weird in the Chronicle:
Trial got underway in January in which residents of Anniston, Alabama, are suing for compensation for Monsanto’s … routinely having dumped deadly PCBs into the ground and local rivers for 15 years after it knew, from the company’s own research, that the pollution was so deadly that fish in the rivers died bloody deaths 10 seconds after initial exposure to the water. According to documents from a chemical safety organization and published in the Washington Post, Monsanto and its executives actively hid the dangers from its factory’s neighbors while also dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. (Monsanto no longer produces chemicals, but it does make genetically engineered food which, it assures consumers and the government, is totally safe for human consumption.)
Well, it’s obvious to anybody that Monsanto has changed their tune, and become zealous guardians of the people’s health and welfare – and that this time they’re telling the truth. Yeah. Right.
Oh, did you hear about King George’s latest royal edict? He has ruled, ex cathedra, that unborn children are, by definition, human beings. “It’s all an insurance scam,” he says, “a way to allow pregnant women to get around the law and enroll in the state-run children’s health insurance programs. For their unborn children’s sake, of course.” What’s wrong with that? Well, for one, he seems to feel he can just issue a royal edict on anything, whether the subject of his decree is legally within his purview or not. (While he was still governor, he tried to decree that Wicca is not a religion – an act every bit as unconstitutional as what he’s doing nowadays.) The second problem with the current edict is that he’s trying to get around the law, rather than change the law, to achieve a goal. What would happen if you or I tried that? And, finally, the third thing wrong with this new abuse of power is that it’s obviously his way of paying back his anti-abortion investors for all the money they gave him to help accomplish his coup d’etat at the end of 2000. I can just hear him: “The Supreme Court? Naaah – they won’t bother us; didn’t we pay them to validate my coup last year? Another few mil, and they’ll fall in line on this one, too.”
Illegal edicts seem to be all the rage these days. Even the Austin Police Department has decided that it can get away with declaring something that’s perfectly legal to be illegal on one particular day this month. Texas has an equal rights amendment. (Did you know that, by the way?) It has been judged under that law that any place a man may be top-free, a woman may be top-free. That’s the law. But the Austin Police, emboldened by the king’s imperial example, have decreed the law to be illegal on Mardi Gras night in downtown Austin. Men may still walk the streets top-free, but women will be arrested if they choose to exercise their right under the Texas Constitution to do that very same thing. The police have declared the law to be illegal. Wow.