Editorial: Irony of Bush's Mideast “Policy” Not Lost on Thinking Observers

June 3, 2003. Addressing a meeting between Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, Mr. Bush claimed that the United States would not let a few killers—a few terrorists—destroy the dreams of the many. He has also been assiduous in his refusal to meet with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader for decades. And this well intentioned meeting follows many “exhortations” to American occupiers of Iraq to foster “democracy” and diversity of representation of all factions within the Iraqi populace.

The all-too-obvious ironies abound. Three stand out. Mr. Bush's promise not to sacrifice the many to benefit the few would be laughable in its egregious falsehood—except that the threat to the average American “many” in favor of the obscenely rich American “few” is too painfully clear to the American public to afford even the blackest humor. It is laughable, however, that presidential pretender Bush refuses to meet Yasser Arafat, a leader with far more legitimacy and experience than himself.

But perhaps the greatest irony lies in the greatest lie: Mr. Bush's stated desire for a democratic Iraq at a point in history where the democracy in America is being torn apart and carried off in chunks as if by packs of wild dogs. Case in point: in a media climate that already stifled diversity and discouraged women- and minority-ownership of radio, TV, and other media outlets, the FCC voted to relax ownership rules intended to limit if not preclude media monopolies. Democracy relies and thrives on diversity of expression and representation of many voices. This is impossible when the media solely represent one side of the issue—in this case, the conservative, big-business-friendly voice. With American democracy rapidly devolving into religious fundamentalist plutocratic hegemony, it is more sad than laughable that Mr. Bush would pretend to promote democracy abroad ... unless, of course, he is promoting the usual export variety of democracy: the typical U.S.-friendly puppet dictatorship. This seems to be borne out by the Bush viceroy du jour's recent refusals for the indefinite future to establish even the semblance of a democratic council in Iraq in favor of assigning hand-picked authorities. The American public, of course, is only marginally aware of these facts, what with the administration's weapons of mass distraction, including the deliberately inflicted post-invasion chaos.

The Bush junta is imposing a regime in post-invasion Iraq that promises to be everything Saddam Hussein's was—only the names were changed to protect the guilty.

The writer, Zoe Owens, is a Ph.D. philosopher and author of religious works and books, such as the introspectively religious book "Jesus Holy Christ Almighty."

FCC’s Powell Awards Nation’s Media to Murdoch

June 2, 2003. Despite public clamor and outcry from FCC critics to postpone the vote on relaxing media ownership regulations to allow public scrutiny, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell, held the vote anyway, with predictable results.

“Personally, I like President Bush’s approach to label anybody you disagree with as a ‘focus group’ and then ignore them,” Michael Powell remarked. “It’s so much more convenient that way. I get to do whatever I want and am accountable to no one because great men like George W. Bush have empowered me to dismiss inconvenient dissent wherever I find it.”

When questioned about the implications of turning over the nation’s media to the obscenely wealthy and highly conservative Rupert Murdoch, who already owns more media outlets than the average consumer can shake a stick at, Powell bubbled, “Oh, it’s going to be wonderful! Again, following the robust leadership of the administration, we will engage in bait-and-switch spin-doctoring to tell the public that the changes really benefit them while we all know that they really only benefit the fat cats, like my new best friend, Mr. Murdoch. It’s all so simple now. We wave our hands and say, ‘Media monopoly fosters democracy, diversity, and local news and information’ and—bling!—if we proclaim it to be so, then it is so. But we all know that monopolies promulgate homogeneity: one source for news and information necessarily implies one voice, one viewpoint. And it had better be our viewpoint. While we’re pleased to be a part of the effort to steer, shape, and manipulate the thoughts, minds, and wills of Americans young and old to suit our liking, we’re really excited for [Attorney General] Mr. Ashcroft’s subliminal message project to begin.

“But let me get back to the lies we’re lining up to feed unsuspecting the American public. We can tell them that the new media monopoly fosters increased women-and minority-ownership of media outlets and—bling!—now, that’s true, too. We all know that, before the Great Satan, Bill Clinton, actually did something right in 1996 by deregulating radio ownership, it was comparatively easy for the average Joe or Jane to scrape up a few bucks, go to a bank, and get financing to start a radio station. Now that Clear Channel owns over twelve hundred stations, it’s impossible for anyone to get financing to start up a new radio station—they’d need a few mil to start up a cluster in order to compete with powerhouses like Clear Channel, who already own clusters of stations. Otherwise, not only will the bank not finance them but the advertisers wouldn’t support them because there’s just not enough potential audience share in it for them. So, we are enjoying the opportunity to tell the public that it’s much easier for women, blacks, and other minorities to start up and own radio stations when we know for a fact that commercial radio is becoming more and more white, male, and conservative. And that’s only right: the rich white males are the ones with the money. Freedom of speech ain’t free, buster—it costs big bucks, you know!

“Another myth we at the FCC are promulgating is that the new American media under Mr. Murdoch will promote even more local news. That is such an unmitigated pile of bull patties that I can hardly say it with a straight face. The truth is that the new monopoly absolutely must generate its news with fewer and fewer journalists to be profitable. Remember: profit is the media’s first and only mission; forget about public service because those days are long gone, ha ha! We will just fire all the local journalists, come up a hand-wave at local events, and point to it and say, ‘There it is’ to satisfy the whiners. But we refuse to give it any more attention than that. If you want more local news than that, then you’d better go hang out at the diner or give out tin cans and string to all your neighbors.

“But the real laugh is that the new monopoly will provide even better service for consumers. Oh, I split my sides each time I even think about this little lie! Anyone with pay-TV knows that each station only carries about a dozen show episodes each year. Take The Learning Channel, for example: they’ve mastered the fine art of showing repeats across every time slot and every day until the viewer simply cannot escape seeing any given program episode at least a half-dozen times in any six-week period. And they overlap those shows with three or four of their sister stations. Pure genius! In addition to offering fewer programs and fewer type programs, we plan to expand on Clear Channel’s brilliant station automation coup. Remember the ammonia disaster in Minot, North Dakota, where local authorities couldn’t reach a human at any of the local radio stations to warn the public to evacuate the area because all the stations were owned by Clear Channel and were running on autopilot? Well, that’s what the American public can expect from all their media from now on: the media won’t be asleep at the wheel—they won’t even be at the wheel! And the quality of the programs, well, we all know that’s driven by advertising dollars, so only a very naïve person would expect any improvement there. As for quality of service, well, we plan to take our cue from all the cable monopolies, who have proven time and again that it doesn’t matter how crappy your signal quality or service response is: if you’re the only show in town, people have no choice but to pay your exorbitant prices for your shitty, unresponsive service.

“Everyone on the right side of the issue testified today that there are hundreds of channels on cable and satellite and that the viewer can no longer distinguish between these paid services and broadcast TV. What they all neglected to say—and what we’re counting on the American public to be ignorant of—is the fact that, even before today’s vote, these channels are already indistinguishable from each other because they’re all homogenized. It’s all really only one channel! If you’ve ever turned on your satellite TV and flipped across any three channels, if you have more than two working brain cells, you’ve already noticed that the same programming and commercials playing across all possible stations where there’s the least conceivable overlap. Mr. Murdoch’s new media monopoly will improve upon this industry standard by offering fewer programs, fewer types of programs, fewer but more greatly homogenized children’s programs, and greatly diminished diversity of all programs everywhere, all presented in the one unchallenged conservative voice.

“I can't thank the committee enough for letting Mr. Murdoch and me get to be such good friends,” Michael Powell concluded. He giggled, “I’ve spent half my kickback already!”

Microsoft Now Financially Bankrupt, Says Message from Ten Years in Future

June 1, 2003. A mysterious message purported to be from June 1, 2013—ten years in the future—was received by editors of The Scallion this morning. The message arrived inexplicably in one of the pneumatic tubes usually used for delivering letters to the editor—after the system had been verified to be empty and subsequently locked down for the evening. The strange message announced the financial collapse of the giant American software company, Microsoft, and the conditions that effected the bankruptcy. The following excerpts have been taken from the original message.

“My name is Zora. I have perfected a wormhole-based time machine that can, in effect, translate limited quantities of information from my time frame into the not-too-distant past or future. My mission is to bring hope to the downtrodden of your era, and delivering this message seemed like a good start.

“The message of hope that I bring you is that the evil, greedy, tyrannical software giant, Microsoft, is dead: ever morally bankrupt, it is now financially bankrupt as well. It devoured itself out of existence, leaving its creators, founders, executives, and stockholders penniless—a fitting end to their quest for perpetual world domination.

“But how did this welcome collapse come to be—how did the once great cyclops fall? My friends, the complex scenario unfolding before me today stems from the complexities that whirl before you in your own time. Consider the single party system of government you now behold. Don’t be fooled by the names ‘Democrat’ or ‘Republican’—your politicians all comfortably reside in the back pockets of corporate America in the time-honored tradition of ‘consumer be damned’ plutocracy. You can thank your present leader, George W. Bush, for taking these once taboo tenets out of the closet and parading them under your noses, making them less unacceptable by repeated exposure and proving beyond any shadow of a doubt which side of the issue he is on. In his relentless pandering to big money, he weakened many consumer protections and tacitly discouraged competition and encouraged monopolies. As it did after bombing Afghanistan—despite many civilian casualties and the fact that the promise of establishing a local democracy was never realized, leaving women and other underprivileged populations worse off than under the Taliban—his administration conveniently announced their ‘success’ in the hostile annexing of Iraq, despite countless civilian casualties and massive destruction on both sides. Through relentless propaganda and spin-doctoring, he was able to conceal the post-invasion civilian death, disease, and devastation from the American public. Using the same tactics, he was able to buy his second term in the presidency, albeit with a seemingly greater show of legitimacy than before. This allowed him to continue his highly profitable domestic and foreign policies.

“Among these policies was the government’s effort to collect alarming amounts of information on individual citizens and increasingly to control their thoughts and actions. The average American didn’t suspect much at the time because the government continued to beat the terrorism drum and clamor for increased homeland security. These approaches were embraced by Microsoft even before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Under the guise of adding service and enhancing security, Microsoft had already developed and begun distributing its XP operating system, which included a suite of spyware. Invisible to the user, this spyware was designed to report back to Microsoft on the user’s activities. It was even designed to disable the operating system—requiring the hapless user to purchase a new copy—if the Microsoft powers-that-be deigned that said user had made ‘too many’ hardware changes to his or her system. At the same time, more consumers began to realize that the giant software company had a blackmailer’s stranglehold on the hardware industry as well: if computer makers didn’t suck up to Microsoft’s demands, Microsoft would not do business with them, effectively crippling them. In addition, the company spent huge quantities of money eliminating all competition in any form, especially its arch-nemesis, freeware. Since Microsoft had slithered itself into position as the industry standard, it was allowed to continue unchallenged with its unsavory practices throughout the second Bush term in office. It imposed many more sinister, invasive measures on its unwitting users and unfortunate business 'partners' during that time.

“Yet its success became its downfall. Just as McDonald’s did in 2004-2005, Microsoft saturated its market, and it did so at a time when its customers began to revolt. With McDonald’s, worldwide consumers began to realize the myriad disadvantages of a regular, steady diet of fast food; they began to abandon McDonald’s for healthier choices. Similarly, worldwide computer users became disgusted with being controlled like sheep; with the exorbitant prices they were being forced to pay; with the non-deterministic, barely functional software that the company foisted upon them; and so on. This resulted in worldwide boycotts, stunning the industry. Some desperate boycotters threw over their computers in favor of the reliability and efficiency of pencil and paper; others built themselves elaborate computers from old stashes of components that Microsoft had not yet managed to find and destroy. Impervious to Microsoft’s reporting and controls, these homemade computers sparked a revival of the freeware movement. The availability of deterministic, functional, thoroughly-tested, carefully-debugged software that any consumer could easily obtain, use, and modify on his or her own terms sparked a black market in computer components—a market that was happily supplied by Chinese and other Asian manufacturers. Before long, even the faithful proponents of Microsoft saw how wonderful these homemade computers were and how well they worked. They were invulnerable, for the time being, to spam, viruses, and pop-up ads—soon, everybody wanted one.

“And that, my friends, was the beginning of the end. Microsoft tried everything to salvage its position as world leader in the software industry. Bill Gates and his cronies spent money like water trying to resuscitate their dying empire. But the sad truth is that, by comparison to the friendly and useful freeware, Microsoft couldn’t even give its shoddy products away! Last year, the company officially went into chapter 11 bankruptcy—and long oppressed users everywhere sighed with relief. This morning, after a last-ditch effort to assuage its creditors failed, the Microsoft corporation was officially dissolved. Today is a day that the worldwide freeware community will forever cheer as a welcome new holiday in celebration of the hard-fought, newly won freedom of computer users all over the world.

“But Microsoft’s timely demise is just the beginning of the story. It foreshadows a new era in American business practices: consumer-based business. No longer will the consumer be a mere pawn to be raped for every penny or injured or killed by faulty, unsafe products. With the death of Microsoft, corporations large and small are finally beginning to realize that the best way to make money is to provide a helpful product at a fair price. This dawning realization is already beginning to reach critical mass, shaking the very foundations of consciousness of the wealthiest, most powerful men and women at the top of the economic food chain.

“This, my friends, is what you have to look forward to if you survive the terrorist aftermath of the Iraq invasion and Bush’s second appointment as president: the men and women with the real power and money in your society’s industries and government will slowly realize that it’s not about helping themselves but helping society at large and benefiting as a byproduct.

“A revelation this monumental couldn’t have come soon enough.”