THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 77, VOLUME 107
Obama, They Want You to Fail
by Robert Parry, Consortium News






















After last year’s elections, a Democratic operative told me that if the Democrats got to 59 seats in the Senate, it would be easy to peel off one or two Republicans to pass key legislation like serious health care reform. I was left wondering what political planet he'd been living on for the past three decades.

For almost as long as I’ve been in Washington (I arrived for the Associated Press in 1977) it has worked the other way. Even when the Republicans appear to be on the defensive and outnumbered, they band together and vote as a bloc, while Democrats bend over backwards to be “bipartisan.”

This dynamic has continued into Barack Obama’s presidency as he and the Democrats have watered down their proposals with the hope of winning over a few Republican votes so they can claim they achieved some bipartisanship, even if it means passing bills that are half-hearted half-measures.

That process dominated the debate over the $787 billion stimulus bill that the Democrats diluted with Republican tax cuts and shrank in size despite warnings from top economists that the package would fall far short of the needed boost in jobs, a bleak prediction that now appears to be coming true as unemployment climbs toward 10 percent.

In exchange for the weaker stimulus bill, the Democrats got three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. (The Republicans then drove one of those GOP senators, Arlen Specter, out of the party, though Specter still won’t count himself as a reliable Democratic vote.)

The pattern of belligerent Republicans and timid Democrats is now repeating itself on health-care reform. Democrats first excluded from the debate the one measure that probably could save significant money – a single-payer system – and they now appear poised to trade away Obama’s proposal for a “public option” to possibly garner a couple of Republican votes.

Though enacting a public option is favored by nearly three-quarters of the American people – and has the potential of at least saving some money by pressuring private insurers to rein in costs – Democrats are so entranced by the siren song of bipartisanship that they appear on the verge of scuttling it.

In doing so, the Democrats could well recreate the worst mistake of Hillary Clinton’s failed health insurance plan of 1994. The fundamental flaw in her complex scheme was that it tried so hard not to harm the insurance industry that it wasn’t clear how it would make matters any better – and the industry still torpedoed it with a misleading public relations campaign.

Helping the Industry

For the status quo to change significantly, the private health insurance companies and other parts of the medical industrial complex must be compelled to extract savings from their bureaucratic waste and excess profits. To do that would require, at minimum, a robust “public option” that forces a revamping of the private health insurance business model.

Not surprisingly, the health insurance industry doesn’t want to undergo such a transformation, so its lobbyists have leaned on the Republicans and a handful of “centrist” Democrats to either kill the “public option” or in Baucus’s phrase “sculpt” it into something that doesn’t threaten the industry.

That’s where Sen. Kent Conrad’s scheme of setting up “cooperatives” comes in. The North Dakota Democrat has proposed building from scratch a network of non-profit “cooperatives” that would lack both the size for administrative savings and the bargaining power to negotiate lower prices.

While a public option could piggyback on the Medicare bureaucracy to maximize savings and have the advantage of simplicity, the emerging Baucus-Conrad scheme would add an array of cooperatives to the already confusing mix of insurance plans. For many Americans, these new entities won’t present an appealing alternative to private insurance.

If such a “compromise” emerges, a few Republicans might vote yes; the industry would be happy; and the Obama administration could have a “bipartisan” signing ceremony.

But the American people might find themselves left out of the celebration. The federal government might even compel the uninsured – under penalty of fines – to sign up with an existing insurance company whether they feel they can afford it or not. Mandated coverage could mean a big windfall for the insurance industry, pushing nearly 50 million new customers into its arms.

Eventually, however, the reality would sink in that very little had improved. Millions of Americans would understand that Washington protected the interests of a cold-hearted industry rather than fashion a health-insurance plan that would do the people much good. With that realization, many Americans would blame Obama and the Democrats.

On the other hand, if Obama demanded a public option and insisted on the support of his party, the dynamic might go very differently. If the Democrats assembled 59 votes for a strong plan – even if Republicans continue their obstruction of Al Franken’s Senate election in Minnesota – that could turn the tables on “centrist” Republicans who would have to decide which side to take.

To get the Democrats to behave in such a disciplined and serious fashion, however, might require a backbone or brain transplant for many of them. But it’s way past time for the Democrats to recognize that their obsession with bipartisanship is unrequited.

The Republicans have a very different agenda. Indeed, with the continuing pratfalls of their supposedly top-tier candidates – like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s Argentine holiday with his mistress – they have only one genuine hope for the future of their party: President Obama must fail and the Democrats must take the blame.

Today, the Obama administration and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have been so proud of getting all the players to sit down at the table (with the exception of single-payer advocates who were excluded) that they have lost track of the hard reality that if the nation is really going to address its health care crisis, there will have to be some financial losers.

Right now, the losers are the tens of millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans, the doctors and nurses who are appalled at the cruelty of the U.S. medical system, and the U.S. businesses that pay for their employees’ health insurance and thus are put at an economic disadvantage to their foreign competitors operating in countries that have single-payer systems.

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THE REAL POLITIK EDITION: ISSUE 77, VOLUME 107
Destroying Indigenous Populations
by Dahr Jamail, Truthout

















The Fort Laramie Treaty once guaranteed the Sioux Nation the right to a large area of their original land, which spanned several states and included their sacred Black Hills, where they were to have "the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of the land.

However, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills, President Ulysses S. Grant told the army to look the other way in order to allow gold miners to enter the territory. After repeated violations of the exclusive rights to the land by gold prospectors and by migrant workers crossing the reservation borders, the US government seized the Black Hills land in 1877.

Charmaine White Face, an Oglala Tetuwan who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, is the spokesperson for the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council (TSNTC), established in 1893 to uphold the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. She is also coordinator of the voluntary group, Defenders of the Black Hills, that works to preserve and protect the environment where they live.

"We call gold the metal which makes men crazy," White Face told Truthout while in New York to attend the annual Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations in late May. "Knowing they could not conquer us like they wanted to ... because when you are fighting for your life, or the life of your family, you will do anything you can ... or fighting for someplace sacred like the Black Hills you will do whatever you can ... so they had to put us in prisoner of war camps. I come from POW camp 344, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We want our treaties upheld, we want our land back."

Most of the Sioux's land has been taken, and what remains has been laid waste by radioactive pollution.

"Nothing grows in these areas - nothing can grow. They are too radioactive," White Face said.

Although the Black Hills and adjoining areas are sacred to the indigenous peoples and nations of the region, their attempts at reclamation are not based on religious claims but on the provisions of the Constitution. The occupation of indigenous land by the US government is in direct violation of its own law, according to White Face.

She references Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

The spokesperson for the TSNTC declares, "We need our treaty upheld. We want it back. Without it we are disappearing. They might have made us into brown Americans who speak the English language and eat a different kind of food, and are not able to live with the buffalo like we are supposed to, but that is like a lion in a cage. You can feed it and it will reproduce, but it is only a real lion when it gets its freedom and can be who it's supposed to be. That's how we are. We are like that lion in a cage. We are not free right now. We need to be able to govern ourselves the way we did before."

Delegations from the TSNTC began their efforts in the United Nations in 1984 after exhausting all strategies for solution within the United States.

Homeland Contamination

There is uranium all around the Black Hills, South and North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. Mining companies came in and dug large holes through these lands to extract uranium in the 1950's and 1960's prior to any prohibitive regulations. Abandoned uranium mines in southwestern South Dakota number 142. In the Cave Hills area, another sacred place in South Dakota used for vision quests and burial sites, there are 89 abandoned uranium mines.

In an essay called "Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism," political activists Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke state that former US President Richard Nixon declared the 1868 Treaty Territory a "National Sacrifice Area," implying that the territory, and its people, were being sacrificed to uranium and nuclear radiation.

The worst part, according to White Face, is that, "None of these abandoned mines have been marked. They never filled them up, they never capped them. There are no warning signs ... nothing. The Forest Service even advertises the Picnic Springs Campground as a tourist place. It's about a mile away from the Cave Hills uranium mines."

The region is honeycombed with exploratory wells that have been dug as far down as six to eight hundred feet. In the southwestern Black Hills area, there are more than 4,000 uranium exploratory wells. On the Wyoming side of the Black Hills, there are 3,000 wells. Further north into North Dakota, there are more than a thousand wells.

The Black Hills and its surroundings are the recharge area for several major aquifers in the South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming regions. The crisis can be gauged from the simple description that White Face gives: "When the winds come, they pick up the [uranium] dust and carry it; when it rains or snows, it washes it down into the aquifers and groundwater. Much of this radioactive contamination then finds its way into the Missouri River."

She informs us that twelve residents out of about 600 of the sparsely populated county of Cave Hills have developed brain tumors. A nuclear physicist has declared one mine in the area to be as radioactively "hot" as ground zero of Hiroshima.

Red Shirt, a village along the Cheyenne River on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has had its water tested high for radiation and local animals have died after consuming fish from the river.

After three daughters of a family and their mother died of cancer, a family requested White Face to have the municipal water tested. The radiation levels were found to be equal to those inside an x-ray machine. Little wonder then that the surviving sons and their father are afflicted with the disease. People procuring their grain and cattle from the region are advised to be extra cautious.

One cannot but feel the desperation of her people when White Face bemoans, "It's pure genocide for us. We are all dying from cancer. We are trying not to become extinct, not to let the Great Sioux Nation become extinct."

The Ogala Sioux are engaged in ongoing legal battles with the pro-uranium state of South Dakota. They are aware of the unequal nature of their battle, but they cannot afford to give up. White Face explains how "... Our last court case was lost before learning that the judge was a former lawyer for one of the mining companies. Also, the governor's sister and brother-in-law work for mining companies [Powertech] and a professor, hired by the Forest Service to test water run-off for contamination, is on contract with a company that works for the mining company. When I found out the judge was a lawyer for the mining company I knew we would lose, but we went ahead with the case for the publicity, because we have to keep waking people up."

Other tribes, such as the Navajo and Hopi in New Mexico, have been exposed to radioactive material as well. Furthermore, the July 16, 1979, spill of 100 million gallons of radioactive water containing uranium tailings from a tailing pond into the north arm of the Rio Puerco, near the small town of Church Rock, New Mexico, also affected indigenous peoples in Arizona.

Her rage and grief are evident as White Face laments, "When we have our prayer gatherings we ask that no young people come to attend. If you want to have children don't come to Cave Hills because it's too radioactive."

The exploitative approach to the planet's resources and peoples that led to these environmental and health disasters collides with White Face's values: "I always say that you have to learn to live with the earth, and not in domination of the earth."

Nuking the Colonies

The US government practices another approach. In occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, the uranium that has caused genocide of sorts at home has proceeded to wreak new havoc.

Two Iraqi NGO's, the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI) and the Conservation Center of Environment and Reserves in Fallujah (CCERF) have extensively documented the effects of restricted weapons, such as depleted uranium (DU) munitions, against the people of Fallujah during two massive US military assaults on the city in 2004.

In March 2008, the NGO's were to present a report titled "Prohibited Weapons Crisis: The effects of pollution on the public health in Fallujah" to the 7th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Muhammad al-Darraji, director, MHRI and president, CCERF, was to present the report with an appeal, "We are kindly asking the High Commissioner for Human Rights to look at the content of the report in accordance with the General Assembly's resolution 48/ 141 (paragraph 4) of 20 December 1993, to investigate the serious threat (to the) health right in Fallujah and Iraq, and to relay the results of this investigation to the Commission on Human Rights to take the suitable decisions."

Attached to the aforementioned is another report co-authored by Dr. Najim Askouri, a nuclear physicist trained in Britain and a leading Iraqi nuclear researcher and Dr. Assad al-Janabi, director of the Pathology Department at the 400-bed public hospital in Najaf. Their report includes a section on the "Depleted Uranium Crisis" from Najaf, 180 miles from where DU was used in the First Gulf War.

Dr. Najim begins the report by noting that Coalition Forces, mostly US, used 350 tons of DU weapons in about 45 days in 1991, primarily in the stretch of Iraq northwest of Kuwait where Iraqi troops were on their retreat. Then, in 2003, during the Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad, the US used another 150 tons of DU. He says that cancer is spreading from the conflict area as a health epidemic and will only get worse. The cancer rate has more than tripled over the last 16 years in Najaf.

According to Dr. Najim, "When DU hits a target, it aerosolizes and oxidizes, forming a uranium oxide that is two parts UO3 and one part UO2. The first is water soluble and filters down into the water aquifers and also becomes part of the food chain as plants take up the UO3 dissolved in water. The UO2 is insoluble and settles as dust on the surface of the earth and is blown by the winds to other locations. As aerosolized dust, it can enter the lungs and begin to cause problems as it can cross cell walls and even impact the genetic system."

One of Dr. Najim's grandsons was born with congenital heart problems, Down Syndrome, an underdeveloped liver and leukemia. He believes that the problems are related to the child's parents having been exposed to DU.

Detailing a skyrocketing rate of cancer and other pollution-related illnesses among the population of Fallujah since the two sieges, the report states, "Starting in 2004 when the political situation and devastation of the health care infrastructure were at their worst, there were 251 reported cases of cancer. By 2006, when the numbers more accurately reflected the real situation, that figure had risen to 688. Already in 2007, 801 cancer cases have been reported. Those figures portray an incidence rate of 28.21 [per 100,000] by 2006, even after screening out cases that came into the Najaf Hospital from outside the governorate, a number which contrasts with the normal rate of 8-12 cases of cancer per 100,000 people.

"Two observations are striking. One, there has been a dramatic increase in the cancers that are related to radiation exposure, especially the very rare soft tissue sarcoma and leukemia. Two, the age at which cancer begins in an individual has been dropping rapidly, with incidents of breast cancer at 16 (years of age), colon cancer at 8 (years of age), and liposarcoma at 1.5 years (of age)." Dr. Assad noted that 6 percent of the cancers reported occurred in the 11-20 age range and another 18 percent in ages 21-30.

"The importance of this information confirms there is a big disaster in this city.... The main civilian victims of most illnesses were the children, and the rate of them represents 72 percent of total illness cases of 2006, most of them between the ages of 1 month and 12 years.... Many new types and terrible amounts of illnesses started to appear [from] 2006 until now, such as Congenital Spinal cord abnormalities, Congenital Renal abnormalities, Septicemia, Meningitis, Thalassemia, as well as a significant number of undiagnosed cases at different ages. The speed of the appearance these signals of pollution after one year of military operations refers to the use of a great amount of prohibited weapons used in 2004 battles. The continued pollution maybe will lead to a genetic drift, starting to appear with many abnormalities in children, because the problems were related to exposure of the child's parents to pollution sources and this may lead to more new abnormalities in the f uture. According to the security situation with many checkpoints and irregular cards to allow the civilians to enter or exit the city until now, all this helps to continue the terrible situation for this time. Therefore, we think that all these data is only 50 percent of the real numbers of illnesses."

The Sioux tell their youth to avoid their radioactive native lands if they wish to procreate and prosper. Those in Iraq have no option but to lead maimed lives in their native land.

On February 4, 2009, Muhammad al-Darraji sent President Barack Obama a letter, along with the aforementioned report. A few excerpts are presented here:

"We have the honor to submit with this letter our report on the effects on public health of prohibited weapons used by the United States during its military operations in Fallujah (March-November 2004). It was our intention to present the report to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations on 4 March 2008, but both security and political reasons played a significant role in making this task impossible. The report, now in your hands, contains vast evidence and documentation on the catastrophic and continuous pollution in Iraq (to prevent) which nobody has taken any real action to help the victims or clean up polluted places. Some months ago, and in June 2008, I sent this report directly to some US congressmen. Two of them went to my town, Fallujah, and visited the general hospital to investigate the claims contained in our report. No substantial result came out of this visit. In February 2009 one of my colleagues, who worked in the hospital's statistical office and helped gather information about the pollution, was killed by unknown individuals. The blood of my friend is the driving force that led me to write to you directly in order for you to release the facts for which my friend paid with his life. Therefore, we are kindly asking you to look at the content of the attached report and to investigate the serious threats to the right to life of the inhabitants of Fallujah and other polluted places in Iraq, as well as to publicly release the results of this investigation under right of information about what really happened in Iraq."

The president has yet to respond.

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THE IRAN EDITION: ISSUE 76, VOLUME 106
NEDA
by Helen Kennedy, Daily News



Her name is Neda, which means "voice" in Farsi, and her death has become the central rallying cry of the Iranian rebellion.

The fresh-faced teenage girl killed by what appears to be a single sniper shot on the streets of Tehran Saturday is now a potent symbol for Iran's pro-democracy protesters.

Her shocking and quick death in the arms of her howling father was captured on closeup video, posted to Facebook and came to life on computer screens across the globe.

"RIP Neda, the world cries seeing your last breath," was one of a flood of messages on Twitter.

"They killed Neda, but not her voice," read another. "Neda is everyone's sister, everyone's daughter, everyone's voice for freedom," said a third.

Within hours of her death, posters of the girl's face, open-eyed and bloody, were being brandished by demonstrators in Los Angeles and New York City.

The graphic video was originally posted to Facebook by an Iranian expatriate in Holland who said it was sent to him by a friend in Tehran, a doctor who tried to save the girl.

He identified her as Neda Soltani, a 16-year-old philosophy student.

A Facebook group created to mourn her calls her "The Angel of Iran."

In Tehran on Sunday, the streets were quiet for the first time in a week, but the city was bracing for more unrest today when thousands are expected to mourn the girl's death.

"To protest against lies and fraud is your right," opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi told his followers in a statement.

"Be hopeful in exercising your rights and do not allow those who try to instill fear in you to make you angry."

An ABC reporter in Dubai said she was told the girl was rapidly buried to forestall a funeral rally.

In the holy city of Qom, turmoil was reported among the ruling clerics. There were reports that some dissident clerics were trying to replace the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The regime is under threat after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a suspiciously huge landslide in the June 12 election, sparking accusations of vote rigging and days of mass protests.

Saturday's brutal crackdown, in which at least a dozen people were killed and hundreds wounded, hardened opposition to the supreme leader as well as Ahmadinejad.

In apparent retaliation, the daughter of powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and four of his other relatives were arrested and held for a day, according to state TV.

State radio said Monday that 457 people were arrested in the clashes.

Rafsanjani's kin were held for a day for their own protection, but it was seen in most quarters as a clear warning to curb his support for Mousavi.


CONTINUED

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THE IRAN EDITION: ISSUE 76, VOLUME 106
A LETTER FROM IRAN
by Anahita



I received an email from a close friend who knows that I am a blogger. She forwarded me an email from a friend, George, who's a photographer and spent a great deal of time in Pakistan and Iran. George received a letter from Anahita, a student he met while in Iran. Anahita was recently accepted into Cornell's Architecture graduate program, but waits in limbo for a visa from her government. Like all bloggers who are sustaining Iran's uprising by spreading their voices loud and proud through citizen journalism, I am honored to be passing on another voice in the chorus for change.


Dear George

You can not even imagine what is happening in my country. We will continue our defiance against this fraud election and dictatorship. we are all confederate to prove our vote. They attack the dorms every night, they wound the students who wants their right to choose their president based on peace. Last night two of my friends were killed. Our university burned in fire and they attacked us and our professors. They have disconnected our SMS and mobile and ADSL internet, we have just low speed dial up connection to the internet, most of the websites are filtered, so it is so difficult to share the news to the world and even to other cities in my country. Please, transmit our voice to the world, share all the photos and videos of the people who wants peace and democracy. I want you my friend to do this for the people of Iran.

Anahita

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THE SELLOUT EDITION: ISSUE 75, VOLUME 105
THE 'ANTI-WAR' DEMOCRATS WHO SOLD OUT
by Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet









Photo by Luke Wolagiewicz ©

In a historic vote, only 30 of 256 Democrats stood against $100 billion for more war.

In a vote that should go down in recent histories as a day of shame for the Democrats, on Tuesday the House voted to approve another $106 billion dollars for the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and increasingly Pakistan). To put a fine point on the interconnection of the iron fist of U.S. militarism and the hidden hand of free market neoliberal economics, the bill included a massive initiative to give the International Monetary Fund billions more in U.S. taxpayer funds.

What once Democrats could argue was "Bush's war," they now officially own. In fact, only five Republicans voted for the supplemental (though overwhelmingly not on the issue of the war funding). Ron Paul, who made clear he was voting against the war, was a notable exception.

This vote has revealed a sobering statistic for the anti-war movement in this country and brought to the surface a broader issue that should give die-hard partisan Democrats who purport to be anti-war reason for serious pause about the actual state of their party. Only 30 Democrats voted against the war funding when it mattered. And these 30 did so in the face of significant threats to their political future from the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That means that only 30 out of 256 Democrats are willing to stand up to the war and the current president presiding over it. Their names are listed below; I would encourage people to call them and thank them for standing up and voting no when it counted.

Two other Democrats, not expected to vote against the war funding, joined the anti-war Democrats. Brad Sherman and Pete Stark brought the total number of Democratic votes against the supplemental to 32.

Now, there are many Democrats who consistently vote for war funding, including Nancy Pelosi, but not many of them have such little shame that they dare characterize themselves as anti-war. Remember, 221 voted Tuesday in favor of the war funding. But for those who campaign as anti-war and signed pledges not to continue funding war and then vote for billions more for wars they claim to oppose, Tuesday should be remembered as a day of shame and cowardice. Here are the Democrats who voted against war funding when it didn't count and yes (on Tuesday) when it did--and when refusing to do so might have affected them personally: Yvette Clarke, Steve Cohen, Jim Cooper, Jerry Costello, Barney Frank, Luis Gutierrez, Jay Inslee, Steve Kagen, Edward Markey, Doris Matsui, Jim McDermott, George Miller, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal (MA), James Oberstar, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Thompson, Edolphus Towns, Nydia Velázquez, and Anthony Weiner. These legislators should be called and asked why they voted for war funding they claimed to oppose last month.

Tuesday's vote came after an intense campaign by progressive bloggers, activists and anti-war Congressmembers Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey and Jim McGovern to get the 39 Democrats needed to block war funding to vote against it. This was made possible due to a roller-coaster-like series of events in the weeks and days preceding the vote.

The White House and the Democratic Congressional Leadership played a very dirty game in their effort to ram through the funding. In the crosshairs of the big guns at the White House and on Capitol Hill were anti-war legislators (particularly freshmen), and the movement to hold those responsible for torture accountable.

In funding the wars post-Bush, the Obama White House has been able to rely on strong GOP support to marginalize the anti-war Democrats who pledged back in 2007 to vote against continued funding (as 51 Democrats did in May when the supplemental was first voted on). But the White House ran into trouble on this bill because of Republican opposition to some of the provisions added to the bill (primarily the IMF funding) and one removed (the Graham-Lieberman amendment that would have blocked the release of prisoner abuse photos). This created a situation where the White House and pro-war Democrats actually need a fair number of anti-war Democrats (whose votes seldom matter this much) to switch sides and vote with them. That is why this battle was so important for the anti-war movement.

Many Democrats (who may not have necessarily been against the supplemental) were up in arms when the Graham-Lieberman provision (which the White House “actively” supported) was on the table. Facing warnings that it could derail the funding package, the White House stepped in, deploying Rahm Emanuel to the Hill to convince legislators to drop the amendment, while at the same time pledging that Obama would use his authority to continue to fight the release of more photos:

MORE...

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THE MEDIA EDITION: ISSUE 74, VOLUME 104
THE REANIMATION PROJECT
by Malik Isasis






















Several weeks ago the Republican Party got a very bright idea—to rename the Democratic Party, to the Democrat Socialist Party . The Republican Party in the midst of a collapsed economy, and two failed illegal occupations bequeath to us by the Bush Administration, made it a priority to rename their opposition. So, for the purpose of this blog, I’m going to rename the Republican Party. From hence forth they will be known as the Bitter White Man’s Party ®

The corporate media went along with the Bitter White Man’s Party’s ® scheme as if it had legitimacy, it didn’t but it was another opportunity for the corporate media to call the Democratic Party and President Obama socialists for pursuing progressive policies. The subterfuge is this: Bitter White Man’s Party ® comes up with a false outrage, or an argument against health care reform, for example, and the corporate media gives Bitter White Man’s Party’s ® turd of an idea the same level of seriousness and weight as the truth, or facts. The corporate media job is to muddy the water, to convolute what is fact and what is fiction. But no matter, a shiny turd, is still shit.

The Reanimation Project

The Bitter White Man’s Party ® hasn’t learned a thing after losing two major election cycles, in fact, they have doubled-down on their ignorance and have become even more extreme in their rhetoric and logic. They have no scruples even in the age of Youtube and other technologies, or Jon Stewart from the Daily Show, illustrating their hypocrisy.

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Since losing several national elections over the past four years, the corporate media has been on a mission to reanimate the stinking corpses of the Bitter White Man’s Party ®. Even after a generation of governance through Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II has shown the Bitter White Man’s Party ® digressive policies to be failures, they are still given access to the corporate media as if the last eight years of the Bush Administration hadn’t happen. Day in and day out, I see former Bush Administrators, as pundits on CNN and Fox News discussing everything from the economy to war. The same people, who brought us eight shitty years under Bush, are now our pundits on the news channels, waiting in the wings to make their move. Though former Vice President Dick Cheney is a pathological liar at least and a sociopath at best, he is given free range to spew his hate—even after eight years of failure with the Bush Administration.

As I said before, the corporate media is a blunt tool for corporatists to destroy democracy. Corporatists manufacture need and exploit the American people with constant fear—whether it is of death, disease, Arabs, Mexicans or black people. Fear is how the corporate raiders build consent, and nobody is better at striking fear in the heart of Americans than the Bitter White Man’s Party ®

Mainstream Media is Corporate Media

So-called liberal pundit Chris Matthews, seems obsessed with a Bitter White Man’s Party ® comeback. Everyday he is seeking to find out who will lead the next Bitter White Man’s Party ® revolution, or revival. The clip below is an example of the idiocy of mainstream punditry.

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Carlos Watson, what a tool. “Republican Revival”? Can I pimp slap this corporate whore? no offense to whores. Bitter White Man’s Party ® have done nothing to change their philosophy on governance—nothing, as you heard from Newt Gingrich in his political speech, they are just as rightwing as they were under Bush and yet these pundits are discussing potential presidential candidates as if the Bitter White Man’s Party ® had nothing to do with the state of the United States. It is never about content or policy, just strategy and tactics.

The Media Industrial Complex is not a conspiracy theory, it is, what it is, a tool to conform the American citizen into a consumer. It pretends to offer choices, but those choices are consumer ones. An obtuse public has been convinced that they have political choices when in reality, there is very little. Pundits just repackage the same shit and resell it to the American people; we consume it and began to cannibalize all common sense.

The corporate media always bet on the Bitter White Man’s Party ® because they understand fascism when they see it. And know that a member of the Bitter White Man’s Party ® will use their power to get their way, and to the detriment of the country, and humanity.

Don’t be fool by the repackaging.

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THE MEDIA EDITION: ISSUE 74, VOLUME 104
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
by Malik Isasis



The corporate media is not really interested in advocacy journalism, where facts actually have a place in reality. The corporate media is really like a sewing circle, peddling gossip, innuendos to blur and obfuscate the truth. It is the small things, insignificant things that go on in the world of politics in which the media takes and uses to suck all the oxygen out of the room.

The right wing strategy is death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s effective. They take a big bucket of shit and fling it against the wall and whatever sticks, they make hay out of it by force-feeding the corporate media; the corporate media then regurgitates this shit as ‘controversial’ or truth, thereby forcing usually a Democrat, off message to defend him/herself.
The corporate media is wittingly a host for the right wing virus, helping to spread political petulance. The corporate media often gives facts, lies, and spin equal weight, which gives the right wing hate machine the cover they need to maintain a veer of legitimacy.

Symbiotics

It is scary how the corporate media so easily fosters the Republican false outrage strategies by reporting it as legitimate news. Let’s take Obama’s recent Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Republican political hitmen have dug up a few quotes (taken out of context) and a ruling to discredit her intellectuality, dignity and to dehumanize.


(and this is just one news channel, one pundit).

Here is another small thing:




As Bush ate cake, New Orleans drowned. Where was the outrage in the corporate media? There was none. The corporate media covered the Bush Administration’s antics with an unbelievable sense of disconnectedness as if one thing had nothing to do with the other.
The corporate media is one of the most destructive forces in American culture. Remember the Roman gladiatorial combats? Man versus man—man versus beast? Thousands would pack the coliseum just to watch the bloody carnage; what about some of the theocratic governments in the Middle East where there are government sponsored stonings or beheadings in a soccer stadium? Or how about in the early 20th century America, where people would get dressed in their Sunday’s best to see a lynching? This is our corporate media, keeping us dumb and focused on the immaterial while political power players stunt progressive policies.

The corporate media is constantly trying to bamboozle Americans by treating us as consumers rather than citizens. When they run tabloid stories of husbands killing their wives, celebrities losing their minds, or a white woman claiming to have been kidnapped by a black man, remember that they spend a great deal of time, hedging their bets with the political power players. It is why on the Sunday talk shows and cable news shows, news puppets continue to give credibility to Republicans who’ve proven over the last 25 years that their policies and so-called principles have completely failed. Only in a world created by rabid capitalism, where failure is actually success, does this makes any sense at all.

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