American Freedom and the Surveillance Society

The United States has a long history of illegally spying on its citizens. One infamous example is the FBI COINTELPRO program, which reached its prime during the Vietnam War. The FBI, under the watchful eye of then-director J. Edgar Hoover, infiltrated social justice and anti-war groups like the Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement and the American Indian movement in order to, among other objectives, plant documents and incite violence to discredit these groups and their leadership (similar to the NYPD monitoring and infiltrating anti-war protests in 2005). They also kept extensive folders detailing Washington politician's dirty little secrets, and thereby ensured those politicians would never oppose the program publicly.

However, since our President Bush continues to claim that we're the freest nation on Earth, there must be something wrong with all of us who notice that since the good old days of COINTELPRO, spy agencies have just been growing bigger and more secretive. In fact, there are now 16 separate agencies monitoring electronic communication, hard-line telephone, and near-Earth orbiting satellites taking high-res images of the God-knows-what 24 hours a day. (see this and this for illegal spying unrelated to the post below.)


'The Bush NSA wiretapping scandal'

The most recent attack on the United States citizen is the recently passed Senate bill to give retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunication companies who participated in the government's illegal wiretaps over the last five years. The Bush administration (specifically D. Cheney) were playing hard ball, as usual-- initially, Cheney refused to give anyone any documents at all. That all changed when a federal judge ruled that the NSA wiretapping program was illegal and unconstitutional. This cause a lot of administration and spy staff to shit their collective pants, and simultaneously gave me great (albeit perverse) pleasure.

Now the powers-that-be are attempting to cover their tails and get legal immunity from public lawsuits against the telecom companies. The Senate Democrat who's spearheading this effort is none other than West Virginia representative Jay Rockefeller, a man with a personal fortune of over $100m who, ironically, represents one of the poorest states in America. (Yes, by the way, he's related to that Rockefeller). Here's a pic of him giving his good buddy Bill Clinton an intimate little rub-down... after all, they vacation at the same ranch.


Now here's the best part. Since we still live in a free country, nonwithstanding all the liberties we've lost due to Fighting for Freedom and the War on Terror, Rockefeller's campaign donors are open to inspection. Let's see who's been sliding this respectable gentlemen cash under the table.

Shockingly, it's the very telecommunication companies who have the most to lose in public lawsuits against their illegal and spineless acquiescence to the government's spying program on US citizens.


Bonus Points: The money started flowing in right before this bill began to be worked out with the White House.

In Frame: Exiled former PM Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan to the sound of suicide blasts

Media and Empire

Turning on "the news" is a common experience across America. But who are the people actually deciding what is "newsworthy"?

For many years democracy-supporters have warned how much of the "media" (meaning radio, television, film, newspapers, magazines, music labels and book publishers) is controlled by just 7 mega-corporations. Some people call these wealthy organizations corporate media monopolies. Check out that PBS link to see for yourself who owns what.

But what's the big deal? Aren't these corporate media monopolies just the most efficient way media can be fed to the American people and the world itself?

The fundamental problem (from Wikipedia):

If it is in the best interests of the media conglomerates not to run a story or allow a particular opinion, but in the best interests of the public interest to run it, it arguably makes better business sense to opt for the former over the latter. On the local end, reporters have often seen their stories refused or edited beyond recognition, in instances where they have unearthed potentially damaging information concerning either the media outlet's advertisers or its parent company.

For example, in 1997, the Fox affiliate in Tampa, Florida fired two reporters and suppressed a story they had produced about one of the Fox network's major advertisers, Monsanto, concerning the health effects of Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH). Fox took action after Monsanto threatened to sue over the story.

But don't take Wikipedia's word for it. This is from the CEO of CBS:

"We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d’etre."

While it may be easy to shove the blame onto the advertisers, in truth corporate media companies are gigantic corporations themselves who also have "desires" to make more and more money. To this end, they lobby the U.S. government using millions of dollars to ease media rules that are supposed to protect American democracy and freedom of speech. After all, if you're free to speak but no one can hear you... what good is it really? Corporate media controls the platform, for now.

This corporate media control over information extends further into politics than just donations to political candidates and parties. Most Americans find out about politicians and hear debates EXCLUSIVELY through the corporate media-owned distributors. Ron Paul, the libertarian-turned-Republican now running for the Republican national ticket, was seemingly deliberately given less airtime than any other candidate. This is despite his much wider base of popular and financial support than many others who were given more air-time and more questions from the corporate-media hired "moderator".

Check out Ron Paul's responses below and see what corporate media doesn't want Americans to hear.



The full story is here.

What's the solution? Get involved yourself. Start a free blog or just read news from a wide variety of sources online. The internet and the power of networking ultimately up-ends the "news-distribution" business model that these corporate media monopolies rely on.

Note: For an interesting example of alternative internet distribution models, check out Radiohead's new album, released without corporate media money and available directly to you for as little or as much as you feel the album is worth.

Massive hurricane hits southeast Chinese coast

More than one million people were evacuated from the path of the massive hurricane that hit southeast China yesterday. The storm had already killed six in Taiwan before hitting the mainland with wind speeds of up to 78 mph. Chinese meteorologists are calling this typhoon 'Krosa'.


The Chinese government authorized 3.5 m yuan in relief funds and tens of thousands of tents, quilts, water and rice. In the end more than 1.41 million people were evacuated, a massive logistic feat which seems to have prevented many casualties from the typhoon.

Observers of this Chinese crisis can't help but compare the Chinese government's response to hurricane Krosa and the American government's relief efforts following the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. That was one of the nation's poorer cities and nearly 120,000 people lacked private transportation or the funds to travel out of the city to safety, causing thousands of U.S. deaths and massive loss of personal savings and property.

Maybe it's time to check what the American government is actually giving the taxpayer in exchange for all the tax they take every year? Ten billion in emergency funding for Katrina and 190 billion for the war? Why this strange set of priorities?

In January 2007, former FEMA director Michael D. Brown charged that partisan politics had played a role in the White House's decision to federalize emergency response to the disaster in Louisiana only rather than along the entire affected Gulf Coast region, which Brown said he had advocated. "Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'" Brown said, speaking before a group of graduate students at the Metropolitan College of New York "'We can't do it to Haley [Mississippi governor Haley Barbour] because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" The White House denied Brown's charges through a spokeswoman.

link

In Frame: Burmese military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters