An essay from the desk of The Scallion's Editor in Chief --
Approaching the End of 2004:
Where's a Time Machine when You Need One?
December 28, 2004. As we of The Scallion prepare to wave goodbye to one eventful year and look forward with trepidation to another, we could not resist offering a retrospective of sorts.
One excellent source of information for looking back over the previous year is Project Censored, which covers stories omitted or distorted through minimization by the U.S. corporate, commercial media:
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/
#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Holds Corporations Accountable
#3: Bush Administration Censors Science
#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians
#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources
#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics
#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments
#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy
#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11
#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits
#11: The Media Can Legally Lie
#12: The Destabilization of Haiti
#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron's Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall
#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies
#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses
#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens
#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization
#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies
#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming the World's Supermarket
#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN
#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs
#22: Censoring Iraq
#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America
#24: Reinstating the Draft
#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World
Clearly, 2004 was not a good year for progressive causes. Apparently, neither was 2003:
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/
#1: The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance
#2: Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberty
#3: US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq U.N. Report
#4: Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists
#5: The Effort to Make Unions Disappear
#6: Closing Access to Information Technology
#7: Treaty Busting by the United States
#8: US/British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Despite Massive Evidence of Negative Health Effects
#9: In Afghanistan: Poverty, Women's Rights, and Civil Disruption Worse than Ever
#10: Africa Faces Threat of New Colonialism
#11: U.S. Implicated in Taliban Massacre
#12: Bush Administration Behind Failed Military Coup in Venezuela
#13: Corporate Personhood Challenged
#14: Unwanted Refugees a Global Problem
#15: U.S. Military's War on the Earth
#16: Plan Puebla-Panama and the FTAA
#17: Clear Channel Monopoly Draws Criticism
#18: Charter Forest Proposal Threatens Access to Public Lands
#19: U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro: Another Reason for the Invasion of Iraq
#20: Pentagon Increases Private Military Contracts
#21: Third World Austerity Policies: Coming Soon to a City Near You
#22: Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization, but Still No Safety Net
#23: Argentina Crisis Sparks Cooperative Growth
#24: Aid to Israel Fuels Repressive Occupation in Palestine
#25: Convicted Corporations Receive Perks Instead of Punishment
However, both years showed the Bush regime's lavish support for causes that only a fascist could love. But wait -- aren't we capitalists? How does fascism enter into it? In his recent book "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy," Bobby Kennedy Jr. distinguishes between capitalism, in which corporations pay fairly for the resources they use, and fascism, in which corporations exploit the public commons with impunity. As he states in an interview with Grist Magazine (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/07/13/griscom-kennedy/), "The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won't cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy -- a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market." Escaping the discipline of the free market is a pithy analysis of the problem at the heart of fascist America.
So, what, then, are the fascists who run the corporations -- and, therefore, the government -- up to? Why, any number of keep-away games designed to lock out, if not trample, the masses. Take privatization. For the time being, we can influence how public institutions are run with our votes. Once our institutions are privatized, the corporations own them, not us, and we lose all ability to direct how the institutions that affect us are run. By divesting the public of a voice in the direction of its institutions, privatization threatens the very core of our democracy while turning our institutions over to the highest bidders. By privatizing the now-solvent social security (http://www.cepr.net/publications/facts_social_security.htm), the fascists would enjoy a delicious double-play: they would get to clean out the existing funds to pay for invading Iraq (Iran, Syria, Cuba, etc.) while gaining complete control of social security as an institution from that day forward. As listed by Project Censored, other fascist wet-dream pursuits include imperialism, replacing the last remaining vestiges of true media with state propaganda-driven Politburo-style lock-down of the relentlessly inconvenient truth; punishing dissent; rewarding corporate criminals; destroying civil liberties and the middle class; and, as Bobby Kennedy Jr. laments, raping the environment.
Note especially item 19 in the 2003 list: currency as a reason the U.S. invaded Iraq. Conspicuously absent from American corporate media -- yet broadly and repeatedly featured in "Democracy Now!" and Al Jazeera -- the story describes Saddam Hussein's decision to deal in euros rather than dollars as a major contributor to his downfall. This is notable because, within the past year, Cuba's Fidel Castro opted to stop dealing in dollars and start dealing solely in euros. Is it any wonder, then, that the Bush administration now plans to "liberate" Cuba? With a regime that has proven itself only too willing to install the "leaders" of its choice at home and anywhere it chooses around the world, one can easily imagine the headlines we'll see come 2005.
Speaking of installing leaders, the Bush regime has made it abundantly clear that, not only does it prefer the usual U.S.-backed pro-corporation dictators, but it also prefers thugs, rogues, and scoundrels. Just look at Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq -- and our own Oval Office. We of The Scallion strongly believe that, in a truly free and fair election where each citizen who wanted to vote voted and in which each vote counted as cast, John Kerry would have won by a landslide. As it is, given the widespread, systematic suppression of the Democratic vote and the plethora of "irregularities," we of The Scallion still believe that America elected John Kerry as its 44th President, just as we elected Al Gore as Kerry's predecessor. (Funny ... what would have happened if Gore had run for his second term?) The question is whether a sufficient number of rigged, spoiled, under-counted, and over-counted votes can be corrected in Kerry's favor in time to assure his inauguration in January 2005. This is a miracle well worth praying for.
While the American corporate media has been in strict lock-down regarding the issues of importance, they have been only too vocal in drowning us with distraction and demonization, including bashing John Kerry's honorable military service record so that AWOL Bush could come up smelling like a rose. One distraction-and-demonization du jour is the Bush regime's and the Christian right's faux morals, which include rabid homophobia. Good for display purposes only, these so-called morals crumble under the slightest scrutiny, such as that offered by the recent United Church of Christ's commercial featuring a burly bouncer admitting only a chosen few into the church looming up in the background behind him. Asking which of His followers Jesus would exclude, the advertisement states, "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you're welcome here." An innocuous, uplifting message, right? Apparently too unsettling for our mainstream media milquetoasts: having their noses rubbed in Bush-cum-Christian-right's hypocrisy proved too much for the likes of ABC, CBS, and NBC, all of which banned the ad from their -- our -- broadcast airwaves. A chilling sign of the censorship to come, especially as our illustrious, right-wing extremist government begins to plot and plan the future of the Internet.
But wait ... there's more. In a stunning detour from its usual tactic of decreeing that the American public do as it says and not as it does, when it comes to censorship and suppressing dissent, the Bush regime has hand-picked a rare opportunity to lead by example. Given the "mandate" resulting from its rigged 51-49% "victory" over John Kerry in the "election" (translation: privatized voting system), the Bush regime has opted to indulge in an alacritous bit of early Spring cleaning: a purge of any and all dissenters or otherwise non-yes-men among political appointees. The dragnet even swept up -- and out -- some of the more rank-and-file federal employees, including many in the CIA. Congress is far from immune to the witch-hunt, as "moderate Republican" becomes synonymous with "endangered species." We of The Scallion are waiting to see how long it takes for them to come for us and our humble little webzine that insists on speaking the truth -- or at least satire -- to power. (We would suggest a reader pool -- "When will the feds shut down The Scallion?" -- but only one diehard Reader took us up on our "When will Osama be 'captured'?" pool. Given that The Scallion predicted August and our Reader predicted October, there were no winners -- except Osama bin Forgotten.)
Clearly, while Bush's first term as figurehead victor of a bloodless coup was a four-year-long black mark in America's history, things were far worse for our neighbors abroad, many of whom died as a direct result of Bush's actions and inactions. So, where does that leave us for 2005, which promises to see Bush inaugurated yet again? The extremists that now run this poor, benighted country invested over a generation to buy and mold politicians and media to their liking. Arguably, progressives don't have that luxury of time, but we certainly don't have the largess of money. So it would be unrealistic to expect overnight results.
Our first priority must be either to take back our media by ruthlessly boycotting advertisers or to build ourselves a new media empire capable of taking on the Rupert Murdochs and Clear Channels of the world toe to toe. The battle cry "No more stolen elections" needs a cooperative media to become reality. For that, the entire American progressive movement must be prepared to stage and honor ruthless mass boycotts of media advertisers because hitting the supporters of fascism in their wallets seems to be the only way to get a point across. Locally, each of us must take responsibility to educate those around us who have been hoodwinked and imposed upon by the neoconservatives' new reality of fear and false morals. We must also strive to organize ourselves into one cohesive progressive movement that comprises Democrats, Greens, Move On, Code Pink, True Majority, Common Cause, America Coming Together, and every other organization that fought tooth and nail to restore sanity to America and the world in the November election. How do we do this? We of The Scallion are not yet sure, but we suspect the Green party may be willing to lead the way if the Democrat donkey persists in masquerading as a horse-sized, Republican-Lite elephant with telltale hoofs peeping out from beneath its suit.
But there is some decidedly good news. As John Kerry's overflowing campaign coffers showed, Americans do care about their country and how it is run. We are willing to get involved, make sacrifices, and fight for a cause. Millions of us who woke up to politics in order to fight George W. Bush will never, ever go back to sleep. We may not have become activists willingly, but we are here to stay. And there are more of us than there are those who would destroy us -- far more than the "election" would have us think. Just from traveling across this great nation and speaking to people as he finds them, Michael Moore puts our numbers at over 70%; we of The Scallion believe that his estimate is more accurate than not. Imagine how our numbers would swell if we could disabuse our friends, families, neighbors, and co-workers who bought the Bush regime's lies in good faith -- if we show them the truth, and if they were willing to hear it. According to Bill Moyers, there is a sizeable sub-population of Americans who willingly eschew the truth of science in favor of believing in "the rapture," which apparently frees its believers from most responsibilities that progressives hold dear: compassion, tolerance, egalitarianism, selflessness, preservation of the environment, and more. In addition to these whitened sepulchres, there is a significant proportion of average Americans being bamboozled simply because they are good-natured and patriotic enough to want to believe what their government tells them. Through these, Karl Rove has shown us that it is indeed possible to fool people into believing lies if the lies are repeated loudly and often enough. Therefore, we must be equally persistent in spreading the truth.
This will not be an easy task, but we of The Scallion believe that there is hope yet for us and, with us, the country and the world.
