IT IS SOMEHOW STRANGE THAT THIS POST DISAPPEARED; THIS IS A RE-POST

Radicalman

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Fri Jan-20-06 11:34 PM
Original message

IT IS SOMEHOW STRANGE THAT THIS POST DISAPPEARED; THIS IS A RE-POST

Edited on Sat Jan-21-06 12:06 AM by Radicalman

The current ruling oligarchy owns the media. It controls the American masses by perpetuating such myths as the American people are "free" and are informed by a "free" press. In actuality, the media give the American people an historical lobotomy by not providing proper context to current news stories. For example, there is much similarity between the watergate conspiracy under Nixon and soft fascism practiced by the Bush Junta. Under Nixon, American almost became a police state. If James W. McCord had not confessed to breaking into the Watergate Democratic Headquarters and the uncovering of the cover up we indeed would have had a police state. Today, the United States is the victim of a coup. It has been perpetrated by Cheney, President Junior, and company. A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder. The Bush coup is a coup of the oil barons, and the huge multinational corporations and, in particular, the U.S. military-industrial-complex. It is given respectability by the millions of evangelicals who support it as being God given.

The late Bertram Gross has written," The subversion of constitutional democracy in the United States is more likely to occur not through violent and sudden usurpation but rather through the gradual and silent encroachments that would accustom the American people to the destruction of their freedom." Of course, the whole state apparatus of secrecy, warrant-less wiretaps, sneak and peak, the Justice (!) Departments having billions of of Internet Users' search records from Yahoo and others (As reported in today's L.A. Times), intimidation of peace activists by putting them in cages in "free speech"zones, the blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaty obligations, the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and, perhaps most importantly, the Bush Junior junta's theory of the unlimited powers of the "Unitary Executive" are simply the tips of the iceberg of the junta's "soft fascistic" destruction of the American Constitution and the freedom of the American people.

To return to my opening comments, I believe it is only the fourth estate - the media - that can bring down this coup by enlightening the voting public about its dangers. ( Of course, I include such forces for good as Democratic Underground and numerous blogs on the internet.) But how can we rely on the mass media? We can't. When Howard Dean or Al Gore speaks truth to power they are marginalized, if not ridiculed, by the media. That we cannot trust the media to expose the attack on the Constitution and freedom is perhaps best exemplified by the coverage of the Downing Street Memo. As we all know, The Downing Street memo, first published by the Times of London is a document that records the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of British government officials that indicates that the Bush administration had already made a decision to invade Iraq, justified by intelligence
and facts that were being fixed around the policy. Of course, the coverage of the memo by the U.S. media was superficial, sometimes non existent and almost always devoid of context and explanation. The issue was so important that, as frequently happens, the media engaged in, what amounts to, collaboration with the Bush-Cheney coup to destroy
our democracy.

The websites that allowed for the detailed examination of the memo and its importance, and continue to support and analyze issues that relate to free speech and Constitutional democracy must be supported by all of us. I fear for the day when the internet comes under the iron boot of junta fascists.