Advertisement

Ending world hunger in Sacramento

            They're saving the world from hunger again. This time, the bold crusaders have been mustered in Sacramento, Calif., to proclaim the glories of chemical-industrial agriculture, biotech, genetically modified crops and livestock, and kindred expressions of the modern age. The forum has been a federally sponsored Ministerial Conference and Expo of Agricultural Science and Technology. Under the approving eyes of bigwigs from firms like Monsanto, U.S. officials like Agriculture Secretary Helen Veneman pounded the drum for high-tech agriculture.

            Said Veneman last Monday, "This conference is for those most in need. It (hunger) has to become a global agenda ... new approaches are needed."

            Was there ever a moment, in the long tradition of such overblown rhetoric, that "new approaches" weren't needed? Scour through all the old speeches across the past century about starving billions around the planet or starving millions right here in the USA, and it's always the same professions of noble purpose. "We can end hunger now," declared the sales folk for the Green Revolution that peaked in expectation in 1971 when Dr.

Oppose the FCC's new media ownership rules

On June 19th, we had our first big victory in the fight to overturn the FCC's decision to weaken media ownership rules when the Senate Commerce Committee approved a bi-partisan proposal that we support, S. 1046, that would reinstate the previous limit on how many TV stations a media giant can own. The committee also approved, with minor changes, an amendment reinstating the ban on cross-ownership between the dominant newspaper and television station in most markets.

This happened in part because of the public outcry over the FCC's decision and the large number of people contacting the FCC and their U.S. Senators.

I will keep you informed of where this legislation stands in the Senate, but for now the focus shifts to the U.S. House.

The powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-LA), still supports the FCC decision. After the Senate committee vote, Bloomberg News reported that Rep. Tauzin had vowed to "kill" the Senate bill if it were sent over to the House. Despite over 146 sponsors for the House version of the Senate bill, HR 2052, Rep. Tauzin has blocked its consideration in his committee.

Wolfowitz Sought To Undermine Blix So US Could Launch Preemptive Strike Against Iraq in 02

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, was so eager to see the United States launch a preemptive strike against Iraq in early 2002, that he ordered the CIA to investigate the past work of Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, who in February 2002, was asked to lead a team of U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, in an attempt to undermine the scientist.  

The unusual move by Wolfowitz underscores the steps the Bush administration was willing to take a year before the U.S. invaded Iraq to manipulate and or exaggerate intelligence information to support it's claims that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the United States and that the only solution to quell the problem was the use of military force.  

Anyone But Bush? Watch out, Dems!

            Here I am, enjoying post-solstice sunrise at 5.48 a.m., and, on California's North Coast, sunset at 8.35 p.m. (probably classified info if you ask Tom Ridge). I'm in the early summer of 2003, and already people are acting as though the first Democratic primary was only a month or two away. Already we're wading deeper into the issues that will pulse with increasing intensity across the next 17 months.

            Is the task of booting George Bush out of the White House paramount? Out with the imperial Crusader, the death-penalty-loving, Bill-of-Rights-trashing, drug-war-advocating corporate serf! By all means. But whoa! Who's this we see, galloping out of the mists of rosy-fingered dawn, a knight errant sent by the gods to give the kiss of life to all our fainting hopes? It's . why, it's. yes, it's another imperial Crusader, a death-penalty-loving, Bill-of-Rights-trashing, drug-war-advocating corporate serf. Only he's a Democrat, not a Republican. That changes everything. Or does it?

            Take Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. Right now, he's enjoying a boomlet. Across this great land, ambitious Democrats are hopping

Medicare Prescription Drug Bill: 'This is <i>soooo</i> complicated'

AUSTIN, Texas -- Food fight! Here's a beauty: to vote or not to vote, to favor or not to favor the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill?

        Theoretically, everybody's in favor of a plan to help senior citizens with prescription drug costs, which are truly appalling. Many seniors literally have to choose between their meds or food. Everyone agrees it's awful -- the question is whether the bills currently in the House and Senate are actually an improvement.  

       Those of you who make up your minds based on the if-he's-for-it, I'm-against-it method (quite a few people seem to be doing that these days) are in deep doo-doo on this one. True, Ted Kennedy is for it, and The Wall Street Journal is against it. On the other hand, the White House is for it, and pretty much everyone on the left except Kennedy is against it. The press is helpfully wringing its hands and announcing, "This is soooo complicated."

The Fitrakis Files: Spooks, Nukes and Nazis

Written by Bob Fitrakis
Edited by Brian Lindamood
Published by: Columbus Alive/Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism 246 pages; $15.00

Buy this book at: Free Press Online Store

Great investigative journalists are few and far between these days, but Bob Fitrakis is definitely one of them.

For years in both the Columbus Free Press and Columbus Alive, Fitrakis has been digging up the dirt on a wide range of corporate criminals, death penalty abusers and right-wing fanatics.

This superb compilation of some of Bob's best stuff, written over the years for Columbus Alive, is a welcome addition to the annals of muckraking. In many ways, it serves as a primer on the art of exposing hidden truths, and could serve as a good basic text for high school and college students not yet brain deadened by television or George W. Bush.

The book comes in bite-sized pieces derived from Bob's hard-hitting columns. Starting with a murky global electronic surveillance system known as Echelon

Truth: Weapon of Self Destruction

Just a quick thanks and salute to Harvey Wasserman for the piece "Truth is the weapon of Bush's self-destruction: the Superpower of Peace has the ultimate force," which I first saw tonight on the Common Dreams site before I linked directlly to The Free Press. Perhaps bleak bulleted lists such as this will cause some ostrich heads to emerge from the sands and do something.

Note to Free Press, Please make sure that Wasserman gets this comment!

Nancy, Of ocurse, an excellent article by Wasserman. Thanks for sending it. However, W. made THE mistake that has been the curse of humankind since Day One. He misquotes Jesus with the statement, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jesus did not say that. I know that quotation is incised in stone at the Tower of the University of Texas, in marble plaques in different languages in the entry hall of the library of the former New York University Heights campus, etc. etc.

What Jesus said was said (or is reported to have said) "IF you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and teh truth will make you free." (John 8:310

In other words truth is a condition subsequent of discipleship. While our reptilian brains want to make truth an absolute value, Jesus suggested that turth only comes as a consequence of discipleship. Discipleship is very fluid, changing, adaptive to situations, and situational. Discipleship can only be defined by continuous action and adjustment to changing circumstances.

Truth

Dear Mr. Wasserman:

This article was superb! Thank you so much.

Go get 'em, boys.

Peace,
Connie Johnston

Harvey Wasserman's Article 'Truth is the weapon of Bush's self-destruction'

My congratulations! I am a voracious reader, and have been for several decades, and truly, in all those years, I have never read an article this awesomely, this breathtakingly idiotic; and trust me, I have read Noam Chomsky and would not have believed anyone on the planet, not even Gore Vidal, could so seamlessly weave falsehood after falsehood so wondrously into an article that anyone who lived in reality could allow to be published in their paper. But now I see that you ARE the editor, so you snuck in a masterpiece! I hope you consider re-titling your paper. A free press is vital in any open society, so that citizens can inform themselves of the truth; real freedom is what we find when we cease to be in the thrall of delusional worldviews; I hope you can break away from yours.

Sincerely
Dick Kane

Pages

Subscribe to ColumbusFreePress.com RSS