Moved to New Blog Address

I've moved to a new blog: http://independent.myblogsite.com

Iraqi Media: American Style

A young Iraqi woman's blog--Riverbend Baghdad Burning has a new entry re: the American Media. Quote:

Sunday, April 03, 2005. Two years ago, the major part of the war in Iraq was all about bombarding us with smart bombs and high-tech missiles. Now there’s a different sort of war- or perhaps it’s just another phase of the same war. Now we’re being assailed with American media. It’s everywhere all at once...

The first time I saw 60 Minutes on MBC 4, it didn’t occur to me that something was wrong. I can’t remember what the discussion was, but I remember being vaguely interested and somewhat mystified at why we were getting 60 Minutes. I soon found out that it wasn’t just 60 Minutes at night: It was Good Morning, America in the morning, 20/20 in the evening, 60 Minutes, 48-Hours, Inside Edition, The Early Show… it was a constant barrage of American media. The chipper voice in Arabic tells us, "So you can watch what *they* watch!" *They* apparently being millions of Americans...

I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so… clean. It’s like hospital food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once...

Ordinary Iraqis are struggling daily to simply survive and we're forcing them to watch Terri Schiavo coverage? Haven't we tortured these people enough without additionally subjecting them to our mindless ‘corporate propaganda’ mass media drivel?

Commenting further on American’s fascination with reality shows, Riverbend opined, Quote:

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)...

I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode.

I would suggest that rather than simply sending 'Bush supporters' for such a reality TV show, we should send Bush&Co, Tom Delay, Bill Frist and other Terry Schiavo ‘culture of life’ vultures to experience 'freedom' in Iraq. Think of the ratings such a show would draw!!!

If only those who chose to hold vigils in front of Terri Schiavo’s hospice, had bothered to put their energy toward protesting the start of the ‘Iraqi conflict’. As Jeffery Feldman from Frameshop puts it, Quote:

"Imagine people camping out for weeks on front of the White House, screaming at the top of their lungs, pulling their hair out with anxiety, sending their children into police lines--all in the name of stopping more American soldiers and more Iraqis from dying for a war based on a series of lies".

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

John Lennon – ‘Imagine’ lyrics

Imagine if those Terry Schiavo protestors took John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ lyrics to heart, joined other voices demanding peaceful resolutions and tried to realize a world where 'all the people…will live as one'. Perhaps then, such Graphic Photos would never have been taken.



More on Iraqi TV: Trial by television.In Iraq, captured rebels are shown confessing live on air, Quote:

Al-Iraqiya was once widely scorned as a dull Iraqi government mouthpiece; all that changed in January when Mosul started feeding the confessions to the main studio in Baghdad, giving the network a national primetime hit. Iraqis switch on their televisions at midday and 9pm to catch the latest confessions, which are then debated in homes, offices, taxis and cafes. Akin to Jerry Springer-meets-Newsnight, it is the government's most effective propaganda against a rebellion still raging two years after a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein...

Human rights activists worry that the programme marks a return to Saddam-style public humiliations and coerced confessions, which undermine subsequent trials. Others complain that a complex insurgency which includes Islamic radicals, former regime loyalists and Arab Sunni nationalists is being depicted as nothing more than a coalition of thieving scumbags, a caricature which could deepen religious tensions...

It is no secret that the television station relies on Washington largesse. Built in 1969 to broadcast light entertainment and Ba'athist regime propaganda, the Mosul network was bombed by coalition planes in the Gulf war and again in 1999. In the chaos of the March 2003 invasion it was looted but re-opened months later as part of the Iraqi Media Network, which is funded by the US and operates from the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad...

Khalid Jarrar, a viewer from Iraq comments on the show:

Saturday, March 12, 2005
Good morning, afternoon and evening, wherever you are...

On an Iraqi government TV channel, a daily show started recently, where police, interrogates real criminals who were arrested in Iraq, in front of the camera; we don't get to see the police faces, we only hear their voices. The camera is focused on the criminals' faces and they are the ones that are doing -supposedly- the beheading and the killing of the national-guard and police operations, and also the kidnapping and stealing, rape and thefts, and every other thing that you might think of.

The police ask them: "Why do you do that?"
"For money, sir!"

"How much are you getting paid?"
"$100 for an operation, sir!"

"And what do you do with that money?"
"We buy alcohol and drugs, sir!"

"What is your advice for all the terrorists that are still fighting?"
"I advice them to surrender, sir, and to cooperate with the authorities, sir!"

This is exactly what each and every one of them said and then you learn details: they confess that they kidnapped girls and raped them, then slaughtered them. A captive confessed that his mother is a pimp, and that his friends used to come to his house to "have fun" with his sisters; another claimed that he is gay and was caught having sex with another man inside the mosque.

And when these "confessions" are almost over, this question would always come:

"Where does that money come from?"
"From the Syrian intelligence, sir!"

The police voice would then preach how low they are and how they stained the word "jihad". The police would also say: if you were real mojahideen we -police- would have been the first to follow you, but you are simply thieves, rapists and thugs. Can you see dear audience? Those are the mojahideen that you hear about in your country, those are the so-called resistance, low worthless scum, real Iraqis should help capture; however, if they attack only Americans, the police would have been the first to follow them!

People in the street talk about this show, and they have different opinions, a lot say that its all a theatre just to discredit resistance and to blame Syria, the Iraqi so called government is waging its tail to the Americans and trying to find more things against Syria to support the issue of their masters, other think that those people are real people and that all what is said is true.

I believe that it might be true, and it might be a theatre, but it's obviously a "designed" show for a particular purpose, to discredit resistance and attack Syria... but: What about the rest of the resistance, who aren't put on TV? The ones that are dedicating their lives to fight the occupation? The ones that volunteer all their money and time, and risk their lives without getting paid? Does that mean that, if someone, were fighting the Americans, who wasn't gay or a rapist or paid by the Syrians, but simply fights the Americans because he has faith in his cause and kills so many American soldiers every day, would he then get the full support of the Iraqi government?

Such a naive propaganda, with bad broadcasting quality and horrible shooting too, I could have done much better work myself, with the small experience I have in the film making world! Man they can't do anything right even the propaganda!

The irony is the position that the Iraqi "government" finds itself in: they want to make a show that affects ordinary Iraqis in the street, so they can’t just say the crap that they always say in the media cause they know that nobody would listen and nobody would watch; so they forget that Americans are our ‘liberators’ and modified their attitude to be acceptable in the street by adopting a totally anti-American / anti-occupation attitude, supporting the attack on Americans, and insisting that those who attack the national guard are fighting the wrong enemy, since both the national guard and police are Iraqis! At the same time, the show is honoring mojahideen by saying that jihad is a very honorable value and that those criminals couldn’t be mojahideen (which I agree with), which means that they support the others that they don’t show on TV, who are the real mojahideen!

The Iraqi government, through this show unknowingly confessed that regular Iraqi are anti American and anti occupation, so they tried to look anti American to attract viewers. And at the same time the government confessed that jihad is a very legitimate and honorable thing, as long as it's done right: by attacking the American soldiers only. Thank you very much propaganda makers!...Have a good day all of you :)

In effect, American tax dollars are paying for propaganda, which advocates the legitimacy of killing American soldiers.

All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

John Lennon – ‘Give Peace A Chance’

Media Lap Dogs

Bonnie M. Anderson won 7 Emmy Awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize during her 27 year career as a print and broadcast journalist. Now, as author of News Flash: Journalism, Infotainment, and the Bottom-Line Business of Broadcast News, she turns a critical eye on what passes today as America's free press. BuzzFlash Interview: Part 1 and Part 2, Quote:

BuzzFlash: The White House has been outed for using, on at least two occasions, if not more, promotional video releases presented as news. These pre-packaged videos imply that a journalist is covering the story, when it’s really an actor.

Bonnie M. Anderson: To me, this was a huge development and it’s what's wrong with journalism in this country. You have an Administration lying to the public to advance their own agenda. Call me old fashioned, but I think government should be about protecting the Bill of Rights. Government should be truthful to the American public and not try to manipulate the public as well as the media. We also had commentators who were pretending to give their honest opinion on issues, when they were being paid by the Administration to promote an agenda. This, to me, is very, very frightening. Red flags should be going up all over this country...

BuzzFlash: You mentioned "product." We saw in the beginning of the Iraq war a lot of government preparation of the media. And the night of the attack on Baghdad, the news coverage we saw on CNN and other stations really treated this, as though it were almost a fireworks show.

Bonnie M. Anderson: Yes, "shock and awe." This is propaganda. And news networks fell for it hook, line and sinker. They did not want to be seen as anti-patriotic, they wanted to be seen as supporting the troops, which means supporting the Administration. If you remember, the President had said you’re either with us or against us. And that was taken literally by the network honchos and the corporations that own the networks...
I would maintain that we’re drowning in garbage, not in news. We may have far more news outlets, but there’s far less news being given to the public. There’s far more entertainment. Producers will spend a minute and a half on the story of the dog that jumped out of a car and traveled 500 miles to get home across country, instead of on what is happening on the West Bank, or in Somalia or in Lebanon.

BuzzFlash: Let me ask about soldiers dying in Iraq. We’re all aware that the Bush Administration won’t allow photographs of soldiers returning in caskets to the United States. What is the justification for that with the media? With the Vietnam War, we felt we were there when we watched the news. We saw soldiers dying, we saw the blood and guts. Today the media completely comply with the Bush Administration request not to show injuries or deaths of soldiers. It's almost a war that doesn’t exist, except in sound bites and accounts in the newspaper.

Bonnie M. Anderson: It exists only within the framework in which this Administration wishes to show the war. It’s an outrage that networks are going along with this. The American people need to know the cost of war, and the cost of war is body bags coming home. The cost of war is the injured coming back. This is what the public needs to know. It's a perfect example of the lack of integrity or ethics in the news organizations that are going along with another propaganda move by an administration.

I want to say very clearly, I would say the same thing if it were a Democratic administration. My issues are not left or right. My issues are journalistic principles and ethics. We’re not informing the American public, we don’t want them to see these things. But we will, of course, allow them to spend hours watching the statue of Saddam Hussein come tumbling down, because that glorifies and justifies the invasion of Iraq.

Journalists need to remember that we’re watchdogs / attack dogs and not lap dogs, and it is our responsibility, whether it’s popular or not, to tell the truth.

When I was five years old, my Dad was tortured--had the blood removed from his body prior to being put up against a wall... As I grew up, I realized that, had there been a free press in Cuba at the time, there’s no way Fidel Castro and his regime could have gotten away with murdering, not just my Dad, but 20,000 others, and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people because of their belief in democracy. I realized the importance of a responsible free press.

With my book, I’m trying to remind people in this country that it can happen anywhere. We should value a free press. Support the media. Support investigations, whether they are uncovering something that is for or against the government you may like. We need to nourish exchange of information and support the people who are doing it. We need to demand higher standards. We need to remember that news is not just a business. I’m not saying you can’t make money from it, but there is a higher calling here.

No other business has protection from the Bill of Rights--no other business. The media does. But along with those special protections comes a responsibility. The responsibility is to inform the public as best we can. And as U.S. citizens, it’s our responsibility to protect our First Amendment, and protect the rights we have, and not give them up because there is the threat of terrorism. Don’t give up your rights to privacy and your rights to a free press and your rights to speak freely. Unless you’ve lived someplace where you have lost all freedom of speech, where you have no ability to speak or publish freely, it’s hard to understand. I just don’t want people to learn the hard way, as I did...

News Alert re: Government Propaganda

Monday, March 14th, 2005 (Democracy Now) State Propaganda: 'How Government Agencies Produce Hundreds of Pre-Packaged TV Segments the Media Runs as News'

According to a major expose in The New York Times, at least 20 federal agencies under the Bush administration - from the State Department to Agriculture to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) - have been producing hundreds of pre-packaged TV segments that were broadcast on local stations as real news. For the past four years, many ‘pre-packaged government news releases’ were presented on local TV stations without crediting the government as the source of the information. Viewer Beware is a timely warning to all of us, as we continue to endure the onslaught of ‘fake’ government propaganda news stories.

When I first saw the report on the news re: ‘Outstanding TSA Security Measures at Area Airports’, I thought: "How absurd, I know from personal experience that the ‘security hassles’ TSA puts one through doesn't increase travel safety; esp. since air cargo is not screened (by cargo I don't mean passenger bags, but rather US mail, packages, etc. that the airlines carry in their cargo hold)". More at: PBS: 'Safe cargo?' Additionally, according to recent reports,pilots had given airline security a failing grade. Nevertheless, the TSA video was professionally done and seemed to seamlessly fit into the overall news story, that I really didn't pay much attention to it. However, when I read that the whole video was a GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA piece, I was OUTRAGED.

I know, I know you're saying to yourself, she's always OUTRAGED over something. But the sneaky way, they passed off that video as a "news" story, just made angry. As it is, I already don't trust this administration; incidents such as this simply reinforce my distrust. This is not what America, land of the free/just, stands for.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that the videos violate laws that ban ‘covert propaganda’ and called such ‘pre-packaged news segments’ illegal propaganda. A defiant White House, intent on continuing to crank out "video news releases" that look like television news stories, has told department agency heads to disregard the GAO's directive. The Bush administration continues to shamelessly defend this reprehensible and illegal practice, by claiming that the videos are appropriate as long as they are a factual.

Below are two organization dedicated to ‘Stopping News Fraud’:

Freepress.Net
Stop Fake News.org

'Corporate Media' Bias

On the Randi Rhodes Message Board (RRMB), I started the thread: "F**k MSNBC, CNN, Fox,etc., The Fourth Estate is dead".

Once again we've been outmaneuvered by the "Corporate Media" and portrayed in a bad light. See: Daily Kos article F**k MSNBC Quote:

As if you needed any more evidence that the media has been hijacked by multi-national corporations acting in self-interest to the detriment of this country, this to me shows just how biased they have become.

Democrats test debt xenophobia as 2006 issue

The use of such a biased headline undercuts something which should be a real concern to patriotic Americans. If this is an "ownership society", who owns our country? Shouldn't we all be concerned about the debt holdings of Communist China, which seems to be leading to the appeasement of its authoritarian regime, including a growing unwillingness of our government to protect Taiwan?

Furthermore, the gist of the article is obvious. "There go those Democrats again, responding to polling." ...

No responsible citizen should rely on the corporate media without questioning their motives and thinking critically, which is exactly the purpose blogs serve. Fuck MSNBC, Fuck CNN, Fuck Fox!

Corporate Media framing is killing us!!! We need to fight back. There is a desperate need for more informed liberal bloggers!!! Use Frameshop as a tool and hit back hard.

Lauren, a liberal from Arizona, actually took the time to write Tom Curry, author of this piece of drivel, to complain about his bias reporting and lack of journalistic ethics. More of us should follow her example and protest whenever we notice reporters regurgitating Republican ‘talking points’/ acting as a megaphone for the Bush administration.

The National Press Club (NPC): lacking integrity / journalistic ethics.

From the Randi Rhodes Message Board (RRMB): a discussion on the merits of the National Press Club (NPC).

'The Mother Lode,' an article available from Information Clearing House (News You won't find on CNN), points our how: "Bush lied. He stole. He murdered. In broad daylight. And he got away with it. That's the story. But you'll never hear it at the Press Club". Quote:

February 11, 2005, "Moscow Times:" The hoary adage that "there are none so blind as those who will not see" should be carved in stone at the National Press Club in Washington. Surely there can be no better motto for the cozy clubhouse of America's media mavens, who seem preternaturally incapable of recognizing the truth -- even when it stands before them, monstrous and unavoidable, like a giant Cyclops smeared with blood.

For just as they botched the most important story of our time -- the Bush Administration's transparently deceptive campaign to launch a war of aggression against Iraq -- the clubby mavens are now missing the crowning achievement of this vast crime: the mother of all backroom deals, a cynical pact sealed by murder, unfolding before our eyes.

The objective was revealed -- yet again -- in a recent Washington appearance by Iraqi Finance Minister Adil Abdel-Mahdi. Standing alongside a top State Department official, Abdel-Mahdi announced that Iraq's government wants to open the nation's oil fields to foreign investment -- not only the pumped product flowing through the pipes, but the very oil in the ground, the common patrimony of the Iraqi people. The minister said plainly that this sweet deal -- placing the world's second-largest oil reserves in a few private hands -- would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies," InterPress reports. These are the spoils for which George W. Bush has killed more than 100,000 human beings.

The American media completely ignored Abdel-Mahdi's declaration, but this is not surprising. After all, it occurred in the most obscure venue imaginable: an appearance before oil barons and journalists at the, er, National Press Club. Where better to hide open confessions of war crimes than in the very midst of the Washington hack pack?"

It infuriates me that in order to read a story like this, I have to go to "Moscow Times". Our vaunted 'free press' is worthless!!!

Introducing Gannon/Guckert, a gay male prostitute working a second job as a ‘White House’ correspondent. Watch the Bill Maher video on Gannon/Guckert!!!

March 29, 2005, The National Press Club Welcomes ... Jeff Gannon? Quote:

Yes, the same day that the prestigious Washington, D.C., journalism organization plans to present a lunch talk by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, it will also allow the former White House reporter/sex site operator to be on a panel discussing bloggers and online journalism. Still, Press Club leaders will include Gannon on the panel April 8 that includes Wonkette.com editor Ana Marie Cox, National Journal's John Stanton, and others.

Gannon told E&P today that he always considered himself a legitimate journalist, and "perhaps their invitation is recognition of that."

When asked if giving Gannon a spot on the panel wrongly legitimizes him as a journalist, Madden disagreed. "It depends on how you look at it," he said. "He is there because the panel is presumably going to talk mostly about his case. He was, in large part, the central figure in the case that got us interested in the topic."

The Press Club's Web site, however, does not tout the event as focusing on Gannon but rather the differences between "bloggers" and "journalists." John Aravosis at AMERICAblog, which first reported the Press Club event, wrote: "What is Gannon/Guckert doing there at all? Like he's an expert on the difference between blogging and journalism? How so? He thinks journalism means parroting press releases and transcripts. As for blogging, again, he started a so-called blog 3 weeks ago and now he's representative of all bloggers?"

Originally the NPC limited attendance on its Gannon/Guckert (GG) panel to: "press club members and credentialed journalists". The restriction would exclude from the audience almost everyone who brought the GG affair the attention that made it newsworthy in the eyes of the press club in the first place. Update: On April 1, 2005, the NPC re-invited bloggers to watch Gannon/Guckert panel; however, noted bloggers such as John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, say: "no, thanks".

I have no respect for the "Corporate Media" anymore. The hypocrisy, coward kowtowing and self-censorship is an indication that the Fourth Estate is dead. Articles like 'The Mother Lode,' and 'Press Club Welcomes Jeff Gannon' simply prove once again that they have no standards.

Letters of protest to the National Press Club

National Press Club (NPC) Online
Agonist.org: Open Letter to NPC
Agonist.org: National Press Club Correspondence

To summarize, the journalists' role in holding government accountable has been rendered moot—like castrated lap dogs, the press corps kowtows to the Bush administration for table scraps.

Additional Info:

Phil Donahue, one of the best-known talk show hosts in the history of television in the United States, thought he could present a forum where dissent—Anti War voices—could be heard. He was wrong. In 2003, MSNBC fired him for having the temerity to question the Bush administration’s pro war stance.

Journalism.org (Content analysis)

Journalism.org (State of the Media)

A Culture of Secrecy: 'What has happened to the principle that American democracy should be accessible and transparent?' By Charles Lewis
Due to a pervasive 'Culture of Lying' and 'Politics of Fear', there is a "regressive shift in public accountability".

The nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy works to strengthen democracy by promoting media that are "of, by and for the people." Projects include PR Watch, a quarterly investigative journal; several award-winning books by CMD staff; Spin of the Day, which offers daily reporting on spin and propaganda in the news; and SourceWatch, a wiki-based investigative journalism resource to which anyone can contribute.

Easter Sermons: The State of our Hearts

The Easter Sermons below resonated within me, reminding me once again of Mahatma Gandhi’s clarion call that we must "be the change we want to see happen in the world."
Two Easter Sermons Reflecting on the State of our Hearts: From the Daily Kos, Quote:

"So, I have a few questions for those on the streets, in the media, and in the legislatures who have invested so much time, energy, and money into this personal family tragedy through appeals to a "culture of life." Is a culture of life encouraged when the poor continue to fall ill and die because of inadequate access to health care? Is a culture of life nurtured when governments and corporations facilitate the destruction of the ecological systems that make life itself possible? Is a culture of life celebrated when we are encouraged to value that which we can buy, rather than those whom we could love? Is a culture of life embraced when people die as a result of terrorism and war, crushing poverty, and preventable diseases? With all due respect, I think I would have to call that something else. A culture of death, perhaps? Focussing on individual life-and-death tragedies is a sideshow at best, a diversion from what I believe are true culture of life issues. Sadly, I don't expect to see the media or legislators rushing to deal with them.

How can we have the courage to say "yes" in a culture that glorifies death in its consumerism, its militarism, and its institutionalization of spirituality? We have to overcome fear, first of all by accepting the perfect love that casts out all fear. We make that love possible every day in the choice we make to follow the path of God, building a realm of justice, peace, and love in our families, our neighborhoods, our world".

From livejournal, Quote:

"This Maundy Thursday marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a Catholic priest in El Salvador whose experiences with his peoples’ suffering transformed in three short years from a shy, anxiety-ridden, conservative defender of the status quo to a mighty voice for the poor and disadvantaged of his country. The death of a fellow priest and friend prompted him to action, to speak up on behalf of those living in poverty, and to keep speaking even as forces powerful as the Salvadorean government, the United States, and his own Catholic church sought to silence him.

Unsurprisingly, this work did not win him many friends. He received death threats both oblique and direct. Posters went up around the country: ‘Be a patriot - kill a priest.’ Death squads murdered his fellow priests and nuns. When he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, he was also offered asylum outside his country, for everyone knew that if he were to return, he would be killed. And Oscar replied: ‘I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.’ Months later, he was assassinated.

You don’t get back what you lose; you can’t recover what’s over. Oscar Romero was murdered, gunned down as he celebrated the eucharist. And, on that Good Friday in Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth was nailed to a cross and left there until he died. In both cases, their killers believed that their spirits were tied to their bodies, and that the death of the latter would extinguish the former. For both men, death was supposed to put a stop to the work they had been doing. Death was supposed to be the end.

And yet…

Romero’s death galvanized the poor and those who live in El Salvadore today say his presence continues to be felt among the people…

The real miracle of Easter is that – the vessel that was Jesus, the teacher, the man, broke wide, and his spirit spilled out onto the rest of us. Every one of us is capable of receiving and practicing the grace and mercy that Jesus embodied with his life".

By accepting ‘death’, we accept that we will never regain what we’ve lost. We don’t get back the physical manifestations--the carpenter with the kind heart and the wry sense of humor, the brave priest ready to take on the world for the poor, the loving mother, the trusting child, or the patient soldier—but we can choose to honor their spirit by living our lives fully and dedicating ourselves to the principles expressed in the Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

when there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand,

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.

Choose peace…
'12 Peace Prayers'

DVD: Rumi: Poet of the Heart Leave the 21st Century for a about an hour and watch "Rumi: Poet of the Heart," and return enriched...

In the late 1990’s the surprising bestselling poet in America is a thirteenth-century Sufi poet and mystic named Jelaluddin Rumi. For seven hundred years, Rumi’s writings have enchanted, inspired, and enlightened Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists. Rumi’s poetry celebrates the sacred in everyday existence and transcends boundaries of time, place, and religion to speak to all people.

I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small, but they see enormous things - Rumi

This is a poetry that calms and transforms. It's like finding an oasis amidst the desert of modern politics.

Main Street Music (Peter, Paul and Mary) preview albums, esp. the song ‘El Salvador’ in the album ‘No Easy Walk To Freedom'

State of the Nation.

How could I possibly add anything to the commentary below. John S. Ashton, the resident firebrand of the 'Moderate Independent', reflects my feelings exactly.

SOMEONE'S GOT TO SAY IT: HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THE NATION?!? I Turn My Back On George For A Few Years, And Jesus F'ing H. F'Ing Jesus! Did I Accidentally Get Off The Plane In Honduras???

by resident firebrand John S. Ashton

MARCH 15, 2005 – I mean holy friggin' Jesus friggin holy shit! Has anyone else seen this yet?

I mean, I guess last time I paid attention was a few years back or so. We were a superpower, we had peace, prosperity, democracy. The nation wasn't perfect but... holy friggin Christ.

Gas costs how much? Georgie was pissed off that oil was over $24 a barrel when he ran for office - for sure if I thought there was anything he could fix it would be that - he's a damned oil guy who sleeps with the Sheik of Saudi Arabia, for crying out loud. And then he even went into Iraq to steal the oil.

But let me get this straight. Our President is an oil man from Texas, his lover the dictator of the biggest oil producer on the planet, and we now rule the place with the second biggest reserves, and oil is up near $60 fucking dollars a barrel? And now all he can say is, well, maybe we'll find something to help under a bird's ass in Alaska?

For crying out loud, people! Hasn't every media outlet blown a nugget over this one already?

And Jesus Christ, I actually believed George that his deficit-creating tax cuts wouldn't really lead to deficits. The money would be multiplied back at us, through investment or some shit.

But holy fuck! Have you seen the debt? Or the deficit?

Or how about the trade debt? I just saw today, not only did it just go up to a new record, but it went up 25% this year alone. 25 fucking percent?!? In one year? Over an already record above record high? I'm sure that's the top story all over the news today, right? I mean, it just came out those numbers... God Damn!!!... they must be everywhere! I was hoping to find out the verdict about some second-rate former TV actor who hasn't worked in 20 years, but no way will that make the news with this story all over the place!!!

Jesus Christ what a mess! Long-term unemployment: at a record.

And when I last paid attention only about 1 or 2 people were dying a day in Iraq - and I thought that massive, end-all Fallujah assault that was timed to play out exactly on election week was going to "break the back" of the insurgency, or that the insurgents were just "making a last gasp" and would be done "after the election." But shit, now it's 20 a day, dead, 30, 40!

George! What the fuck are you doing?

I mean, I knew he might cause some shit, but... Fuck!

Okay, I better calm down and get some perspective.

Record debt, national deficits, trade deficits, oil at $56 and climbing, dirtier air, propaganda on TV, record long-term unemployment, record personal bankruptcies, the world friggin' hates us now, our cat dick-sized coalition of the sort-of-there in Iraq can't even keep Portugal or Poland on board? We're even losing our mafia buddies from Italy? I mean when even the mafia decides you're too low to associate with, how low have you sunk?!?

And wait, we're caught on film taking pictures of Arab penises? And some poor dog had to go sniffing Iraqi dicks for these pictures?

What the fuck?

Jesus Christ, George, I thought you quit using years ago? I mean, this shit doesn't just happen on two NA beers a night!

Come on, fess up. You hitting the Everclear again? Or maybe the Pine-Sol? Something. Sniffing magic markers? The pen you use to sign the spending bills?

Fuck. I mean, what the hell else can a person say? Fuck.

Russia has built up it's structure so it now is the second largest oil supplier, only behind the Saudis. Europe is going balls out to develop alternative energy technology. India is even taking over our phone banking/telemarketing.

And what the hell have we accomplished in the past four years? What?

There's got to be some upside? Some positive part of what's been going on here?

Anyone?

Oh yeah, limited local elections in Saudi Arabia, that's what I heard the non-Moderate Independent media saying made all this worth it. "Limited," "local" elections - in a dictatorship that is Bush's butt buddy and is reaping almost $60 for a barrel of oil now. No, that wasn't just a PR show to try and help Bush out, it was real progress that makes all this worth it.

But wait, Syria also... I don't know, did some shit related to some entirely insignificant hole named Lebanon. Wow, I feel better and safer and like record deficits, unemployment, debt, bankruptcies, oil prices, and no progress in science or anything else has been worth it. Because of something about something in... fucking Lebanon? When the hell were they about to attack us?

Fuck George. Stay focused. You're fucking up. Stay... stay focused Georgie. Look... no, don't tell me somewhere down the road... no, don't do it. George, stop!!! George!

Look, I would, you know, really like to believe what you're about to say about how things will work out someday or year down the road, but there's the little problem of EVERYTHING YOU'VE SAID SO FAR BEING WRONG! Oil is not cheaper! There are record deficits! Unemployment is a record! Iraq didn't have WMD's! It hasn't just taken "months not years"! George, you haven't gotten one fucking thing right!!

Fuck, look at this mess... no, stop... stop... stop saying I should ignore it, that it's all about to get better. George. George!!!!

Well, at least I'm sure the rest of the media isn't buying into any of this "it's all going really well" coke-head-liar talk. I'm sure the Democrats have made this oil disaster the massive story it should be, like it was in the Carter days. I wonder if they've activated the Emergency Broadcast System yet? Is GWB up in Air Force One for safety in case riots break out?

What a fucking mess!

Fuck.

At least I'm sure there's no one at this point still dumb enough to support the President or think he's done anything but wholly holy suck. I mean, anyone who did that would make a Cretan eunuch seem like a tough-guy genius. I mean, we always had stupid people, but fuck, that would take a mutant-strength moron like only appears after a Chernobyl-like accident or something. Thank goodness we haven't had any meltdown here that I know of, so it must mean no one is mutant-stupid enough to still not see what a fucking mess things are.

Fuck. What a fucking mess. What an asshole!

Ok, I'm done. Sorry if I got a bit overheated. Just happened to actually look at my nation for a second and decide to say something honest.

Fact vs Fiction

I believe the meatrix clip is significant in today’s political discourse. If you’ve watched the clip you’ll know that one version of ‘reality’ is really a comforting sham; the harsh truth is almost unbearably tragic. Only by being willing to take the ‘red’ pill are our eyes opened and do we see the world through ‘reality-based’ lenses.

I see the Republicans as the ones who refused to take the red pill. They live in a comforting alternate reality cocoon, which tells them: "America is safer—we’re a Christian Nation","Freedom is on the March—God is on our side" and "Ownership Society—Bushco. & the GOP have our (America’s) best interest at heart". No matter how much ‘reality based’ information they receive, they’ll choose to listen to the ‘spin’ and use those lies to bury themselves deeper into their insulating cocoons.

For example if you tell a ‘devout Republican’ that: "our borders are wide open and more illegal immigrants are coming ashore, our cargo containers are not screened and the rest of the world hates us ", he will look at you serenely and say: "Well, Bush and God have kept us from harm, another 9/11 hasn’t happened under OUR LEADER, therefore, America must be safer". If you tell a ‘GOP believer’ that: "thousands have died for a lie, we are torturing our prisoners, our military is dangerously over-stretched / ill equipped and ‘Democracy sprouting up in the Middle East’ is a myth", he’ll yawn and say: "War is messy, ‘collateral damage’ is to be expected and besides the Iraqis have shown us their purple fingers as proof that they’ve voted—Freedom is on the March".

Finally, if you try to explain to an ‘evangelical Bushites’ that: "Ownership society means ‘you’re on your own’ to face illness, bankruptcy and a deteriorating environment / infrastructure; under Bush’s new laws ‘curbing class action lawsuits’, you will have no recourse to sue greedy corporations who poison the environment or put harmful products on the market, he’ll nod politely back away and say: "Bush knows what’s best for us, he has a good heart / talks to GOD and if you don’t support him you’re a "Liberal Elitist" who doesn’t support our troops and wants gay marriage".

WHAT?????

Reading through some conservative sites, one can see how this fictional account is perpetrated.

From a conservative blog entry: 'Standing on the shoulder of giants' Michael Barone briefly catalogues the great accomplishments of Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Could Bush be on course to leave the same type of footprint on American history?

Quote:

"GWB's presidency may come to be seen as another turning point, and one in which the president's character, and the choices he need not have made but did make, could shape the nation for a lifetime to come.

Bush... has transformed American foreign policy more than any president since Roosevelt and has decided to wield America's power proactively to advance liberty and democracy around the world. The recent advances toward democracy in the Middle East suggest he is on the side of history.

Bush is also working to transform government from the industrial era programs of Roosevelt's day to post-industrial era programs and has had some successes -- but how much is still uncertain. There will be turns in the road ahead, but Bush seems to be setting America on a course that was not inevitable and which could shape the nation for a lifetime to come".

Sometimes, I wish I could live in their ‘fantasy world’, since their perspective is so...much preferable than mine. But since I did take the red pill and therefore am part of the ‘reality-based community’, I cannot bury myself in the comforting cocoon of lies. No president has done more to destroy freedom in America than George W. Bush... Bush should be impeached for presenting duplicitous statements to Congress and the American people. His administration's secrecy and deception took us into an unnecessary war, which cost billions of dollars and untold lives. Together, the Bush White House and his Republican-controlled Congress have created the largest deficit in history, refused accountability for their actions and brought international respect for America to an all-time low. Thanks to Bush’s irresponsible lies and arrogance without limits, this nation is suffering world-wide condemnation and stands alone and unprotected in a hostile world community.

Not all conservatives, however, share this unshakeable belief system which claims that ‘Bush’s truth is God’s truth’. Pat Buchanan, an arch conservative, for example writes: ‘Bush's legacy is a Stillborn Empire :

Yet as one watches the Old Republic (U.S.A) spend herself into bankruptcy, run up trade deficits that debauch her currency, decline to defend her own bleeding borders, permit rivals to loot her technology and cart off her manufacturing plants, America does in a way resemble Rome. But it is,unfortunately, the Rome of the late fourth century.

For America 2005, unlike the America we knew not long ago, has become a newly dependent nation, dependent on the Gulf for oil to run our economy, on imports for the necessities of our national life, on Beijing and Tokyo to buy the bonds to subsidize our self-indulgent lifestyles.

The Kipling of the late Victorian era was speaking of folks like us when he wrote in his poem "Recessional": "For frantic boast and foolish word/Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!"

It frightens me when I agree with anything Pat Buchanan has to say.

A 'reality-based'response from Libertas regarding the claim that "Bush...has transformed American foreign policy more than any president since Roosevelt and has decided to wield America's power proactively to advance liberty and democracy around the world." is as follows:

Bush... has chosen to wield America's power recklessly to advance his own agenda and beliefs around the world. Under his administration Bush allowed not one, but two nations to develop the means to create nuclear weapons and invade one that didn't.

Bush's foreign policy will lead the Russians to trade military weapons with China and may very well re-start the Cold War.

Bush let the leader of the world's biggest criminal organization, Al-Qaida, to escape and allow Afghanistan warlords to increase the world's heroin poppy supply by over 50%. Bush's arrogance will provide Al-Qaida with the necessary elements to transform this international terrorist organization into a more dangerous, more powerful Narco-terrorist organization that will pose a threat to not only nations, but an entire hemisphere.

History will remember Bush not as a FDR or Lincoln. He will be remembered as a world conqueror, a divider and a buffoon. A ludicrous figure.

Taken from the Randi Rhodes Message Board (RRMB): Revised U.S. Constitution.

Here's the original U.S. Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is where we are today--Bush's version of the Constitution:
We the Sheeple of The Republican Party, in Order to form a more biased Oligarchy, establish Theocracy, insure domestic Polarization, provide for the military industrial complex, promote the general Hatred of those who have nothing, and secure the Tyranny of Slavery to ourselves and our Masters, do prop-up and establish this Fabrication for the Headquarters of Corporate America.

Any objections?

911 + What We Say = Shut the F**k Up!

With America in grave danger, none of us can afford to ‘Shut Up’. It is our duty as Americans to 'Speak Out' and expose this traitorous regime that is turning a great nation into a 'rogue state'!!!

For the Sake of Our Children

Why don't we care enough to safeguard the planet—for future generations? Three voices speak out against the plundering of our children’s birthright--a wholesome, livable and thriving planet.
In For the Sake of Our Children—Jan 2005. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., author of 'Crimes Against Nature',wrote, Quote:

"I have been an environmental advocate for twenty years, and I've been disciplined during that period about being nonpartisan in my approach to this issue. The worst thing that can happen to the environment is if it becomes the province of a single political party. Most of the environmental leaders in our country agree with me. Five years ago, if you asked the leaders of the major environmental groups in America, What's the gravest threat to the global environment?, they would have given you a range of answers: overpopulation, habitat destruction, global warming. Today, they will all tell you one thing: it's George W. Bush. This is the worst environmental president that we have ever had.

You simply cannot speak honestly about the environment in any context today without speaking critically about this president. If you go to the Natural Resources Defense Council's web site you will see over 400 major environmental rollbacks that have been promoted by this administration over the last three and half years. It is a concerted, deliberate attempt to eviscerate thirty years of environmental law. It is a stealth attack, one that's been hidden from the public...

We are living today in a science fiction nightmare, a world where, because somebody gave money to a politician, our children are brought into a world where the air is too poisonous for them to breathe… my children and the children of millions of other Americans can no longer enjoy fishing with their father or mother and come home and eat the fish...

I flew recently over the coal-fields of the Appalachians. I saw something that if the American people could see there would be a revolution in this country. We are cutting down the mountains, literally cutting them down. The coal companies blow off the tops of the mountains, using 2,500 tons of dynamite in West Virginia alone every year..."

________________

ZNet Commentaries by Vandana Shiva.
Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for bio-diversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent books are 'Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge' and 'Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply'.

In an article ‘Tsunami Teachings: Reflections for the New Year— Jan, 2005’ she wrote, Quote:

"Hopefully governments will learn a lesson that the earth has tried to give - "development" that ignores ecological limits and the environmental imperative can only lead to unimaginable destruction…A world organized around markets and profits, forgetting nature and people, is ill equipped to deal with such disasters. The information technology embedded 21st century cultures lacked the Gaian intelligence to connect to the earthquake and Tsunami in time to protect themselves. We need to revisit our dominant concepts of intelligence and information and take lessons from Gaia about living intelligently on the planet…"

In ‘The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation, Feb, 2004’ Dr. Shiva wrote, Quote:

"The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a crisis of extinction. In 1998, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.

As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness. As debts increase and become un-payable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide.

Under globalisation, the farmer is loosing her / his social, cultural, economic identity as a producer. A farmer is now a "consumer" of costly seeds and costly chemicals sold by powerful global corporations through powerful landlords and money lenders locally…"

__________

Upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, Bill Moyers’ gave the following speech, Excerpts: 'Welcome to Doomsday':

"For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad, but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

The Grist, an environmental magazine, reminded us recently of how James Watt, Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." James Watt and his compatriots across the country are the people who believe the bible is literally true -- one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index.

Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

The true believers will tell you that they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements…in order to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144: just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

You can understand why people in the grip of such fantasies cannot be expected to worry about the environment: why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? Why bother to convert to alternative sources of energy and reduce dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East? Anyway, until Christ does return, the Lord will provide.

America's Providential History is a high school history book used in fundamentalist circles. Students are told that "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie…that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." The Christian, however, "knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth.... While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

The corporate, political, and religious right's hammerlock on environmental policy extends to the US Congress. Once upon a time I believed that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that -- it's just that I read the news and connect the dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:

• that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the national Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources;


• that wants to relax pollution limits for ozone, eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport utility vehicles, and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment;


• that wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public;


• that wants to drop all its New-Source Review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies;


• that wants to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America;


• that is radically changing the management of our national forests to eliminate critical environmental reviews, open them to new roads, and give the timber companies a green light to slash and cut as they please.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars; $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council -- to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study…

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer: pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know now what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to our moral imagination? The news is not good these days. But as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free not only to feel but to fight for the future we want… We must engage our capacity to see and feel and then to act as if the future depended on us.

_______________

As the voices of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Vandana Shiva and Bill Moyers clearly state, it is imperative that we protect the earth’s bio-diversity. Not only for our own sake, but more importantly for future generations. It is therefore essential that we maintain a secularist society where empiricism in science is valued over the ‘fake science’ that is generated by ‘faith-based’ special interest groups.

A secularist position is simply that the American government has no business spending any money on any institution whose purpose is the promotion of any religion. According to Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers, Quote:

"Free public education for the many rather than the few was essential to the secularist vision of a society in which every individual, unhampered by gatekeepers who sought to control the spread of dangerous knowledge, could go as far as his or her intellect would permit. In the view of freethinkers, the most pernicious gatekeepers were religious authorities; thus, education must be both secular and publicly financed. Indeed, by the 1870s the word secularist was used not only as a general philosophical term but as a specific definition, in either the affirmative or the pejorative sense, of those who advocated public schooling free of religious content".

To see the chilling effect of "religious" propaganda / education, consider the Moslem madrasahs which instill in children the belief that everyone who is not Moslem should be annihilated. Quote:

Some Musims launched a movement for a "purified Islam" and wanted only what they considered a proper Islamic curriculum to be taught in the madrasah. The demand for purist schools took a unique turn in the part of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, where universal education has never been adequately provided. These strict fundamentalist madrasahs receive foreign support to teach and house young men with few prospects. There, they learn a crude version of Islam and a fierce contempt for what they see as the moral degeneracy of the West. The savage puritanism of the Taliban regime and its emphasis on militant struggle were born in such madrasahs...

Equally frightening is the insistence by some fundamentalist Christian 'gatekeepers' who wish to prevent their children from gaining scientific knowledge that doesn't support the bible's creation story; simply put 'intelligent design' does not belong in a high school biology curriculum. Their zeal to keep children ignorant is evident in the Christian fundamentalist recent outcry over an IMAX movie that cites evolution. On March 19, 2005: It's the Bible vs. the Volcanoes; religious dogma currently triumphs over science, as several Imax theaters caved into pressure from the ‘Religious Right’ and refused to show ‘Volcanoes’, a movie that dared to use the dreaded E-word: evolution.

When Religion and Government become closely intertwined, the government becomes intolerant of other view points. See:14 signs of fascism. Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

The Question of American Guilt--March, 2005,

by MANUEL GARCÍA, Jr. opined, Quote:

"Today, America wields what many see as absolute power, hence…the decay of our social consciousness and sense of commons. For example, we are at war with the entire concept of public education because we are at war with any idea of contributing resources into a socialism that breeches our tribal and class barriers.

Americans' collective guilt for the continuing impact of American power on non-American lives is continually suppressed…Our SUVs are…cocoons free of the Iraqi screams emitted as we squeeze the earth for black blood to burn. If ignorance is bliss, then America is paradise…"

If we were to continue on the reckless path that we’re on presently, we will be known as the ‘greediest generation’— guilty of stealing from our children their birthright: clean air, fresh water, nature’s bountiful beauty….
We would have rejected our parents' generous legacy—the ‘greatest generation’ known for their willingness to sacrifice and extend a helping hand to others. The America they left us held the promise of the 'New Deal' and offered hope and opportunities for numerous people. Currently, we are in a fight about the kind of world we would leave to the next generation. The choice is ours: is our legacy going to be a world governed by social / environmental justice and respect for science, or one ruled by corporate greed and religious dogma?

Additional Information:

High Levels of Mercury Found in Vermont Birds (March 11, 2005.)

Study Links Mercury Emissions to Autism (March 18th, 2005.)
A new scientific study has found a link between mercury released from coal-fired power plants and the increasing number of cases of autism. Last month the U.S. blocked attempts to launch formal talks on a global treaty to ban mercury which has also been linked to other serious ailments in pregnant women and children.

Polluting Paradise (March 18, 2005.)

When Courage Was Called For, She Punted: Ex-EPA Leader Whitman Caved in to Bush Instead of Doing the Brave Thing (March 20, 2005) by Bill McKibben

EPA Chided for Disregarding Mercury Study (March 22, 2005.)

For Bush, Science is a Dirty Word (March 22, 2005.)

Save the environment: Yellowstone (March 22, 2005.)

Trophy Hunting Advocate, Matthew J. Hogan, Named Acting Director of US Fish and Wildlife Service (March 25, 2005.) Hogan was formerly the chief lobbyist for Safari Club International (SCI), an extreme trophy hunting organization that advocates the killing of rare species around the world.