Hi there!  Come on in.  It's been an interesting day, don't you think?  Especially for a Saturday.  No, that's alright.  It's wet outside, you can't help the footprints.   Cristobal, something like that?  I don't pay that much attention to these storms, it's just a blow. 

Sox is over there, gave her a bath tonight so she's feeling all girly and pretty.  New collar and everything.  Oh, yea, as long as they're paying attention to her she'll be there for life.  Something to drink?  I think I might have that, I'll check.  Wine OK if I don't?  Grab a seat, be right back.

Hello!  Guarding the frig?  Oh my God, did you make those?  I may have to kiss you.  Give me one, quick, so I don't follow up on my urge .... oh good grief, yuumm!  And you?  I'll be damned, I never really thought you'd stop by.  Why tonight?  Never mind, it doesn't matter.  It's just so good to see you, come here. 

Sometimes friends are hard to comprehend, as are we all.  Some are there wherever you look, they have your back, they never leave your side.  Some are there so seldom that you almost think they're lost.  But you find they're not, because when you say their name there they are.  Solid, but fleeting.  Some are confrontational, challenging, aggravating and obtuse.  And still love, and are loved, deeply.  Sometimes so deeply it demands compromise.  Some are new and refreshing, leading to lots of conversation on the way to finding surprising things in common.  What fun that can be.

Sox, what are you doing?  Yes, you're beautiful.  Everybody says so, even if you are old and fat.  Kidding, sweetheart!  What?  Aren't they delicious?  I swear I think that's what brought Sox over here, she doesn't leave a free hand easily.  Save that last one for me!  

I write this in response to a front page post asking which of John McCain's policy positions has he been consistent over the last 10 years?

Try phasing out Social Security.  John McCain can call it whatever he wants, but he has been consistent -- consistently wrong -- on that issue over the last 10 years. 

How about the use of military force to spread democracy?  On that McCain has clearly been consistent and consistently wrong.

The federal government's role in providing relief to the uninsured?  Again, McCain -- like our current President -- has been consistent and consistently wrong on that issue. 

Increasing the federal minimum wage?  McCain has consistently voted against that, and even voted last year to repeal the landmark law.  Again, consistent like Bush, and consistently wrong. 

So, yeah, on some significant policy issues John McCain has been consistent -- consistently wrong, too.

Can Leah Daughtry Bring Faith to the Party?
By Daniel Bergner, New York Times Magazine, July 20:

On Sundays she is a Pentecostal preacher. During the week she is planning the Democratic convention....

In her positions as Dean’s top aid and the convention’s top official, Daughtry, who is 44 years old, is leading the Democratic Party’s new mission to make religious believers — particularly ardent Christian believers — view the party and its candidates as receptive to, and often impelled by, the dictates of faith. She sparked this crusade, both to transfigure the party’s image as predominantly secular and to take enough votes from the Republicans to win this year’s presidential election, in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s 2004 defeat of John Kerry. And in her vocation as a Pentecostal pastor she stands for faith in an extreme form. There is nothing equivocal about her belief. Hers is a religion not only of divine healing but of talking in tongues....

...in early 2005...Dean....asked her to stay on as chief of staff and backed her plan to hire a team, to be known as Faith in Action, that would help the party to hear, and to be heard by, voters of deep religious conviction. Gradually she put together the F.I.A. group that has met weekly at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington: three evangelicals, a Catholic, a Muslim and a Jew, all with backgrounds blending work in religion and politics. (F.I.A., Daughtry says, will very likely be melded now with the Obama campaign for the coming months, then recommence on its own after the election.)....

This will be the first Democratic convention to start with a religious service, another sign meant to prove that the party is serious about belief, and the F.I.A. members, who have worked for months on how best to inject faith into the convention, want to be sure the gathering is led, and well-attended, by a wide range of the religious....

The big tent theory behind this all is a political good. But it is ok to politely refuse the pompoms and quietly think "ick ick ick, no thanks, I think I will be busy doing other stuff that week?"  This is coming from someone who has often disagreed with the more radical fundamentalist atheist contingent in the blogosphere:  the idea of an "old timey religion" populist revival convention really does turn me off. I really do still like the overall political marketing potential of a moderate version of the separation of church and state thingie, and I think a lot of fellow Americans cynical about politics right and left might agree with me on that front.

Now that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has endorsed Barack Obama's plan to withdraw American combat troops from his country over 16 months, what will John McCain's response be?

Some are hailing al-Maliki's position as bolting the door closed on McCain's candidacy. But I think McCain and Bush will just slide to the left, closing the gap with Obama's solution while claiming an accelerated troop withdraw is now justified by great progress in events on the ground, all courtesy of the surge. The media won't even comment on the shell game McCain and Bush will play.

I would expect Petraeus to give al-Maliki's idea a nod this weekend, as well.

Any other views on this?

The following is a post about golf.  If you want to read something political, stop here.

I was the weird kid who watched tennis and golf.  I first really noticed golf at age 12, a time when this cocky Australian with his stylish outfits and long game ascended to the top of the world rankings and drove TV ratings for the game.  So, I watched golf even before Tiger won his first US Junior Amateur.  And my favorite golfer - as my worn leather Great White Shark glove would attest - was Greg Norman.

Fast forward to July 19, 2008.   Norman is leading the Open Championship by two strokes after three rounds.  Greg freaking Norman.

That's 53-year-old Greg Norman.  Leading a major championship. 

That's Greg Norman, he of the "Saturday Slam" in 1986.  Greg Norman of the Larry Mize and Bob Tway miracles. 

That's Greg Norman, who's got more money than Croesus, thanks to his excellent business acumen.  Greg Norman, who should be enjoying his recent marriage to Chris Evert while sitting on a beach he just bought somewhere.

Of course, Norman being Norman, and Royal Birkdale having 30-mph gusts this weekend, the man may be headed for yet another memorable Sunday collapse.  But only one other 50-something (Julius Boros) has ever held a third-round major lead. 

(Of course, this was the 1973 US Open, where Johnny Miller shot a final-round 63 at Oakmont Country Club to blow everyone away.  So, Boros didn't exactly choke.)

Now, 12 years after the last time he led a major after three rounds, Norman's leading the way once again.  Of course, 12 years ago was 1996, when Norman blew a six-shot lead in the Masters and lost to Nick Faldo. 

That meltdown hurt to watch for any golf fan.  But, 3 years past when he's eligible for the Senior TOUR, Norman would exorcise the ghosts of his major-championship past with a win tomorrow. 

Here's hoping he does some ghostbusting.  

We now return you to your regular Maverick mashing.

How about that for a stunning headline?
 
"Gordon Brown prepared the ground for a historic realignment in the "war
on terror" yesterday by setting out a four-point plan for withdrawal of
British troops from Iraq by the end of next year."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/brown-plans-to-withdraw-troops-as-he-backs-obama-over-war-on-terror-872388.html

I suppose the gazillion dollar question is whether  or not it gets the play it deserves in the US?

I just spent 10 days in the U.K. and Ireland (as in the Irish Republic).  Mostly I was there for work—research on neurological and related genetic disorders, mostly focused on the commonalities among bipolar illness, PTSD, stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and now traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI is the signal injury of this war, as troops survive horrific blasts because of the superior nature of their armor. The high protectiveness of their head armor allows them to survive a blast but results in their brains being shaken tremendously within their helmets after an IED (improvised explosive device).  The effects can be short-term or long-term, and many soldiers are coping with the consequences  4 and 5 years out of their release from active duty—some most likely permanently. Their loss of certain functions mimics some of the losses found with stroke and Alzheimer’s, and not every soldier experiences the same symptoms, so we are trying to understand the anatomical, physiological, and genetic factors involved, so as to find the best treatments. The brain is one complicated and mysterious organ, that’s for sure. The one thing we share with the British is soldiers who need our help.

 

I also had time to visit one of my sons, who was doing a summer semester abroad in Stratford-upon-Avon in central England. He travelled to Dublin with me and then up to some Belfast  veteran’s clinics before we headed back to London for a few days.  He had already spent 4 weeks in England as “an American abroad” and had lots of interesting pub stories to tell about his political conversations, which are woven into my comments below.

 

During my travels I engaged everyone I could about American politics. Sometimes I didn’t have to initiate the conversation—cabbies were the most excited to talk once they found out I/we were from the States.  I was amazed at how engaged the U.K. and Ireland are in this American election cycle (the Irish are proud that Obama has Irish roots!). Maybe cabbies are better informed than anyone else as they universally seemed to have followed the primary, they knew about the battles between Hillary and Obama, and they have watched McCain with some disdain and disbelief. I have to say their assessments were incredibly fair and on the mark. They thought Hillary was an impressive candidate who made an indelible mark on American politics, but they worried tremendously about Bill and the baggage he carries. They are ardent admirers of Obama and hope he will win, but worry about his foreign policy experience. I felt that they were better informed than most Americans.  They have the benefit of emotional detachment but are very involved.

 

As for others I encountered (mostly scientists and clinicians) they too were hopeful about Obama. I cannot tell you how many times I heard people say that Obama reminds them about what they love about America. Really—I ‘m not making this up. I was in the U.K. three years ago—in fact, I was in London on 7.7.05, the day their Tube was bombed. Many Londoners indirectly blamed that terrorism on us, rightly or wrongly—at that time anti-Americanism was quite strong. They still had troops in Iraq/Afghanistan and they were pissed and tired of us and Dubya’s war. They are much closer geographically to these conflicts and resent Bush’s ham-handed and cavalier handling of things. They still have damage from the Blitz on their churches and homes and don’t take war as lightly as we do. Some of these people slept in subway stations during WWII to survive. This isn’t a drill for them.

 

But this time was different. I was amazed that Europeans seem to love Americans again, based on my limited assessment. I stayed at a few places where the hotel staff were young people from Eastern Europe—the Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Georgia—and when they knew I was from “the States” they could not stop asking me questions about Obama.  Many knew his story—that he had been born in Hawaii, that his father was from Kenya, that he was raised in Kansas. I was really amazed. Some had read his books. One older hotel staffer told me that he had read “The Veracity of Hope” in Russian! Wrong title but impressive nonetheless.

My son had an Obama button on his backpack and people, including railway and airline security staff, treated him with kindness and concern—just because of his button!  I actually think he was granted special favors—like not having to remove his shoes in airport security—because of his Obama button. Restaurant staff asked if we were for Obama—cautiously—and when we said we were they could not stop their enthusiasm. They would stand at our table and talk, talk, talk. In my 10 days there I did not encounter a SINGLE PERSON who was hoping for a McCain victory. Not one. And I tried, I really did, to find one. I asked lots of people how they felt about McCain and none were happy about the prospect.

 

So, maybe Europe needs Obama as much as we do. I have to say that after this trip I was humbled and stunned at how much public opinion had changed about “America.” I felt good about it. I tried to assuage their concerns that we would screw it up again. Interestingly, many many people said, “well, we can kind of understand 2000, even with the election problems, but you really screwed it up in 2004—HOW HOW HOW did that happen?” I had no answers for them, but they get it. They really do.

 

So, I said on a previous post that I would report back, and there it is. Anecdotal and unscientific and I’m sure the TPM turkey vultures are ready to swoop in. Go right ahead.  I was glad to get back on U.S. soil for many reasons—not the least of which is the WEAK dollar, but mostly because I just love this country so much and I was so encouraged by our reception abroad .I just wanted you all to know that we still have lots of fans. They still love us and we need to live up to their expectations. I am really excited about Obama’s trip abroad in the coming weeks, and so are they!

Welcome to your official live party blogging thread.

Congrats, TPM-aholics!  We've made it.  It's not Saturday, July 19th, and the fun is about to begin.

(And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then where have you been for the last month?  Er, I mean, read Genghis' latest post.)

An hour from now, we'll begin our conversation with Don Bivens, DNC chair from Arizona.

So let's get ready to rock, roll, and GOBAMA!

And yes, in case you wondering, even if you won't be able to attend on of the parties, you can support this fine effort -- and the Obama campaign -- by contributing through the  TPM-aholics fundraiser page.

This event is neither sponsored nor supported by Talking Points Memo.

Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, DC filed a  FOIA request for the FBI transcripts of their "interview" with the Vice President. CREW is a private organization doing the job of Congress, collecting evidence of VP crimes:

"[R]equesting copies of the interview that the FBI conducted of Vice
President Richard B. Cheney as part of the investigation into the leak
of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity. CREW is requesting the
same records that the House Committee on Government Oversight has
sought through a subpoena and over which the White House has claimed
executive privilege."

AG Mukasey previously refused to respond to a subpoena for similar documents citing executive privilege, prompting Georgetown LawProf Jonathan Turley to (again) suggest Congress (possibly) use inherent contempt to arrest the Attorney General. Waxman prepared a contempt resolution against Mukasey.

Internet References:
A. Date Turley appeared on Olbermann's "Countdown;
B. Transcript for July 17, 2008.

Two years after the 2006 "mandate," Congress is still looking for the light switch:

Turley, Nov 2006, responding to questions about enhanced Congressional oversight: "Well, first, someone has to find where the boxes are to turn lights back on in Congress."

CREW Works, Congress Diddles

Without a table for impeachment investigation, CREW has plenty of space to stomp.   Pelosi has time to attend Netroots, but "no time" to lead an impeachment investigation on torture. Yet Turley after the November 2006 election, anticipated the opposite:

Turley: "You know, one of the reasons we have a government of checks and
balances is not just for this type of partisan bickering, but it’s just
that government works better when there’s more than one set of eyes on
a problem."

Pelosi, with a gleam in her eye relishes the thought of letting the President flounder without challenge. Some observers believe the floundering would increase if there was a serious investigation.

Consider the Federalist Papers on the value of investigations and impeachment: The United States government structure should, in theory, responsibly ensure safety through impeachment:

Federalist 77: "We have now completed a survey of the structure and powers of the executive department, which, I have endeavored to show, combines, as far as republican principles will admit, all the requisites to energy. The remaining inquiry is: Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense -- a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?

The answer to this question has been anticipated in the investigation of its other characteristics, and is satisfactorily deducible from these circumstances; from the election of the President once in four years by persons immediately chosen by the people for that purpose; and from his being at all times liable to impeachment, trial, dismission from office, incapacity to serve in any other, and to forfeiture of life and estate by subsequent prosecution in the common course of law."

Speaker Pelosi has fallen well short of her legal duties and responsibilities, as the Framers intended. Pelosi impermissibly removed impeachment, which the Framers intended to be "at all times" a credible check on the Executive. Had she been committed to obligations as Speaker, there might not be calls to declare the Speaker's position vacant.
 
Conyers in his book expressly mentioned the Presient's crimes of "torture," but we have no official Judiciary Committee-led war crimes investigation.  Conyers promised
a "non basement" impeachment.   We're out of the basement, but still
without an investigation, just a wishy-washy hearing into the "Imperial
Presidency".

What's worse, having a mock investigation in the basement; or leaving
the Constitution in the basement during phony hearings in the Committee?

Let's turn back the clock to when Conyers was in the basement and consider what we should have asked him:

Why do we need a federal government or a democratic "victory" when a
private organization required to collect evidence and do the job of
Congress?

What happened to Checks and balances; what about the light switch called "The Constitution"?

Do you plan to investigate the President when you become Chairman; or are you going to make excuses to pretend that your hands are still tied?

Is there any collusion with the Speaker and President to thwart full invstigations?

No--I wouldn't vote for him.  Actually, not residing in New Jersey, I wouldn't even have the opportunity to vote for him--not that it would make any difference. 

However, I strongly support him throwing his xenophobic hat in the ring [actually, just to be ironic, I think he should throw a sombrero into the ring].  Please Lou, run!  I'm begging you, asking you, daring you.  In fact, if you don't run, it's safe to say that you lack cojones.

The periodic reports that Sweet Lou might challenge New Jersey Governor John Corzine have been music [usually, Tejano music] to my ears.  The self-styled "independent voice" is said to be mulling over the idea [perhaps even taking a siesta].

Just as a brief aside, whenever someone refers to themselves as an "independent voice", i.e., Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly, that means that they are actually Republicans and trying to hide that fact from their viewers/listeners. 

Nothing would make me happier than watching this pompous, rabble-rousing buffoon get his considerably large ass handed to him in a race for the governorship.  I look forward to Sweet Lou campaigning for votes from the 14% of New Jersey's population that is Hispanic.  Perhaps you can sell them your scapegoating poison-pill.  This is a vanity project that I could most definitely get behind. 

How can I help Lou?  What can I do to goad you into taking your pontifical gobbledygook onto the campaign trail?

Please Lou . . . don't deny us your considerable talents for buffoonery. 

So, yesterday, CENTCOM Gen. David Petraeus said that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki doesn't want a firm timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq.

“Again, what [al-Maliki] has said is not a timeline or a timetable. He said time horizons, which, again, we think that there's nothing wrong with talking about time horizons."

Apparently, the Prime Minister didn't get the DoD approved talking points.  Today, Maliki said that he prefers Barack Obama's 16-month timetable proposal.

"US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

So now, the very country that the Reichwingers supported invading - theoretically to make it free - says we should leave. 

If we don't leave, then that puts the lie to said motivation, leaving just oil as the primary reason for attacking. 

If we do leave, then Obama's judgment of withdrawing with all deliberate haste is proven correct.

On the menu at 1600 Pennsylvania tonight:  Sunni crow, with a side of Shi'ite hat, lightly braised in Republican sweat.

Just want to say that I am so proud of Obama for going to the Middle East. He ought rightly to have dismissed McCains cheap political taunt and stayed on the campaign trail; instead he's not only visiting Iraq, but Afghanistan, Israel Palestine and Europe too.

Perhaps McCain himself needs to take another trip over there before the election, given Maliki's recent call for a withdrawal timetable

You may have heard about a TPM-centered group of parties and fundraisers set up for tonight.  Don't be fooled!  Obama doesn't have the nomination yet.  As you have read right here, the convention may flip flop and nominate Hillary, you know.  And whether or not it does, she has a mountain of debt, to hardworking vendors.  That's why her diehards have organized a counterparty and fundraiser.  Our events aren't in pretentious cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, or New York.  Ours are in the places that matter, and that will decide this election:  Charleston, West Virginia, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Unlike the Obama party that struggled to get guests, because the Obama campaign is "busy" or something, the Clinton fundraiser houseparty profits from the fact that her campaign is presently "suspended."  Thus, we have Larry Wolfson, Mark Penn, and Gerry Ferraro on tap by phone conference -- and I'm not promising, but Chelsea may make an appearance!

We don't know if they'll make it, but we've invited Billy Glad to Charleston, readytoblowagasket to Oklahoma City, and David Seaton to Little Rock.

So if you're interested in the big Hillary bash tonight, just click this brief informational piece we put together, which explains where to go in each of the three cities, _and_ how to help relieve Clinton debt!  Thanks for your support!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

During a pivotal scene in the movie 'Network', Frank Hackett, the head of the UBC television network and vice-president of CCA, the corporation that owns UBC, is forced to respond to rumors that CCA has a deal to be bought out by a Saudi company. 

Hackett, played by Robert Duvall, is in a pinch because the deal has just been exposed on UBC's top-rated program, The Howard Beale Show.  During the program, Howard Beale, played by the late Peter Finch, whips the studio crowd into a frenzy by exhorting them and the audience at home to flood the White House with telegrams to stop the deal.

Hackett, left to absorb the consequences of Beale's show, tells the other executives in the room:

CCA has two billion in loans with the Saudis,and they hold every pledge We’ve got. 

We need that Saudi money bad.  Disaster.  The show is a disaster.

Unmitigated disaster. The death knell. 

I'm ruined.  I'm dead.  I'm finished.

Any second that phone’s gonna ring and Clarence McElheny is gonna tell me that Jensen wants me in his office tomorrow so he can personally chop my head off.

Four hours ago, I was the sun-god at CCA.  Mr Jensen’s hand-picked golden boy. 

The heir apparent. 

Now... I’m a man without a corporation.

Four hours ago, John McCain was man with a shot at the presidency.  Not a great shot, mind you, but more then a puncher's chance.  Now . . . he's a man without an issue.

Granted, that 'chance' was almost entirely predicated on being 'right' about the surge in Iraq and his ability to portray Barack Obama as a dangerous foreign policy novice whose election would lead to defeat in Iraq; a reversal of fortune since now we're 'winning'.

That chance is gone. 

Prime Minister Maliki's statement, leaked by the White House on accident [thanks guys!] closes the door on the argument that a time-line would be 'reckless' and lead to 'surrender'.

Maliki endorses the plan of Barack Obama, the Bush Administration is negotiating with Iran & McCain is calling for more troops in Afghanistan.  Seems as if everyone is adopting the foreign policy goals of the 'reckless' 'novice', Barack Obama. 

What's left for John McCain to run on now--the economy?  Good luck with that.

I'm so happy to see Senator McCain pushing more ill-considered policies.  Resuming his gas-tax-holiday promotion, McCain raises some questions about how and why this would work.

There is no excess supply of gasoline - we buy all the gas that's available for sale.  There is little incentive for competition between gas retailers, which is why gas prices vary so little between filling stations.  Sure, labor costs, real-estate values, local/state regulations, and local/state taxes play a role.  But once you account for those disparities, there's not much left - prices are pretty flat.

So eliminating the federal gas tax may change the cost of gas for people selling gas, but it may not lower prices at the pump.  With oil prices fluctuating every day, and worldwide demand continuing to increase, prices will be hard to predict.  Maybe the gas retailers, small and large, will take the tax holiday as a little more margin for themselves, or maybe the oil refiners will raise their gas prices a bit (market conditions?) to offset the gas-tax discount.

Let's say we get a gas tax holiday for six months.  Will it affect prices at all?  Probably not.  And that would be fairly horrible for all concerned.  Gas tax holiday proponents would be ridiculed, oil companies would be demonized, and the federal government would be out several billion dollars in revenue. 

But our government, makers and enforcers of laws, some-time arbiter of the market, could lock in the savings.  The feds - in this case, Congress - could set gas prices.  Leaving aside whether or not this is a good idea, it is an implicit element in this gas tax holiday theory.  How else could one guarantee savings for the average gas consumer?  Should we have a gas tax holiday and just hope for lower gas prices?  Last time I checked, hope is not a plan. 

Surely Senator McCain has more behind his gas tax holiday proposal than meaningless pandering, right?  He's a man of substance/character/integrity/steel/heroism/profanity/etc, his gas tax holiday must be legit.

So, in the language of the proprietor, when will the campaign press start asking McCain if he is in favor of price controls on gasoline to insure savings for consumers?  How would those price controls be enforced?  And why does he want to bring Soviet-style, command-economy policies to the United States - didn't we win the Cold War?

Did you know that talks with Iran to negotiate its nuclear program were taking place in Geneva? I didn't. The talks included France, Britain, China, Russia, Germany, and the U.S. Who knew!

Did you know that in a dramatic about-face, the U.S. actually attended the talks? If you didn't know, don't feel bad, I didn't know this myself. That's why I'm writing about it. Undersecretary of State William Burns joined the meeting with Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. As far as I've been able to discover, this was our first face-to-face contact with Iran since 1979.


It's not that I don't pay attention to the news. I tend to pay lots of attention if the news involves Iran. But I found out about the meeting after it had already ended, when a friend from Canada e-mailed me a link to the U.S.'s statement to Iran, made today: You have two weeks to suspend uranium enrichment or else.


Two weeks. That's not very much time. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said:

We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between cooperation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation.

Okay, strong rhetoric that translates to even harsher sanctions. Like what, I don't know. But the difference here is twofold: the U.S. formally attended the talks, and now we have backup. In other words, we are progressing toward a goal. Iran seems to think it will take time to reach that goal. I wonder. What I wonder is, do we really have the same goal Iran does? Or are we going through perfunctory motions as we did before we bombed Baghdad? I also wonder why the news of the U.S.'s attendance at the meeting hasn't been a bigger deal to the MSM? That just irritates the crap out of me.

I won't link to all the articles by journalists and others who think we are headed for a military confrontation with Iran. Seymour Hersh, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, and others have voiced their certainty that we will engage with Iran, and I believe them. It gives me lots of anxiety because I do not trust the current administration to be patient. The only one who seems to be a little patient is, surprisingly, Condoleeza Rice.

Now that Obama is overseas, in the middle of the action, what do you think his response is going to be? Do you think his experience there will change his views about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, or Israel?

In the meantime, for anyone who wants to do something to protest potential U.S. aggression against Iran, United for Peace & Justice is staging discussions and demonstrations in several states across the country July 19 through July 21. Check out the National Days of Action Against War on Iran Calendar here. I didn't know about these events until today, either, so please rec if you want other people to know about them, too. Thanks.

Obama hit two three pointers with ease while visiting troops in a gym in Kawait.  They loved it. 

May seem trivial, but the symbolism...

An extra-marital musical parody, literally ripped from the headlines. It’s a tabloid treasure trove of alleged adulterers, featuring a cast of thousands – a veritable “Who’s Who” of who’s doing who.

They may call it adultery, but there’s nothing adult about THIS video…

http://parodyandson.blogspot.com

OOOPS!

WH Accidentally Sends Press Story About Maliki Endorsement of Obama's Iraq Plan


Inside the Grand Oil War Party's OODA loop...waaaay inside

Can you hear the do-do-do-do music? How about Rod Serling's voice? If not, just close your eyes and think about your current government. (Amazing isn't it?) Welcome To The HUB Zone.

A speeding limo filled with hookers races through the night in downtown DC. Has fate earmarked them for a smokey Mormon ritual? Or, is it just an escape from the clutches of a skin-eating-filthy hottub? do-do-do-do

Numerous companies in the DC area are granted HUBZone status & contracts even though their businesses model resembles a Cayman Islands phone booth operation.

Monitoring of the program by the Small Business Administration is practically nonexistant. This coincides with the nonexistant oversight of the SBA 7(a) Loan Program which last year took a hit for $77 million in fraud.

Adding insult to injury, any enhanced  SBA oversight was crippled by a Bushie 25% budget cut while SBA was still swamped with Katrina work and a 15% increase in loans.

The Hitee on the $77 million loan fraud
was Business Loan Express, a subsidiary of Allied Capital. On the board of Allied sits one Marc Racicot, ex-Chair of the RNC. (Can you hear Serling's voice again?)

And, if I'm not mistaken, the ex-Administrator of this mess, Steven Preston, is the Bush nominee to replace Jackson at HUD. 

On the Army side of things, we have LtCol Jim Blanco, who is their HUBZone Program Manager. I have no idea if this ties up with Abramoff's young crew, including Stephanie Ledger Short, who worked the HUBZone angle & then went to work for Governor Blanco.

But, so far into the HUBZone we've encountered the Shirlington Limo/ hookers caper, the Wilkes-Cunningham-Foggo poker games connection, the Marc Racicot money connection, & the Abramoff young guns selling the program as it relates to Indian Reservations.

Abramoff always seemed to go where the law, rules & regulations, restrictions, & oversight wasn't. He then worked to insure that non of than changed unless it was to his benefit: Indian Reservations, Guam, non-profits, & off-shore gambling boats. And, all of these being connected to the Interior Department.

Interior was the backdoor to the vault that was used by Abramoff, Mitch Wade, Commonwealth Research Institute & I'm sure that there must be many more.

Commonwealth was awarded their contract that is currently under investigation through Interior's National Business Center located at Ft Huachuca, Arizona, an Indian Reservation HUBZone.

So, tune in next time, or, just turn on Fox News, and you'll be transported to another dimension. But, hide your wallet - you may be entering a HUBZone. 

 

 

The paper below is from projectcensored.org at Sonoma State University.

This from the "about" section of projectcensored.org:

"Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, Project Censored is a media research
program working in cooperation with numerous independent media groups
in the US. Project Censored’s principle objective is training of SSU
students in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy
for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States. 
Project Censored has trained over 1,500 students in investigative
research in the past three decades.

Through a partnership of faculty, students, and the community,
Project Censored conducts research on important national news stories
that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US
corporate media."

Walter Cronkite said this about project censored: 

"Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to,
to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are
practicing thorough and ethical journalism."
— Walter Cronkite

The Media Can Legally Lie

in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2005

CMW REPORT, Spring 2003


Title: “Court Ruled That Media Can Legally Lie”


Author: Liane Casten

ORGANIC CONSUMER ASSOCIATION, March 7, 2004


Title: “Florida Appeals Court Orders Akre-Wilson Must Pay Trial Costs
for $24.3 Billion Fox Television; Couple Warns Journalists of Danger to
Free Speech, Whistle Blower Protection”


Author: Al Krebs

Faculty Evaluator: Liz Burch, Ph.D.


Student Researcher: Sara Brunner

In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with
an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or
falsifying the news in the United States.

Back in December of 1996, Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson,
were hired by FOX as a part of the Fox “Investigators” team at WTVT in
Tampa Bay, Florida. In 1997 the team began work on a story about bovine
growth hormone (BGH), a controversial substance manufactured by
Monsanto Corporation. The couple produced a four-part series revealing
that there were many health risks related to BGH and that Florida
supermarket chains did little to avoid selling milk from cows treated
with the hormone, despite assuring customers otherwise.

According to Akre and Wilson, the station was initially very excited
about the series. But within a week, Fox executives and their attorneys
wanted the reporters to use statements from Monsanto representatives
that the reporters knew were false and to make other revisions to the
story that were in direct conflict with the facts. Fox editors then
tried to force Akre and Wilson to continue to produce the distorted
story. When they refused and threatened to report Fox’s actions to the
FCC, they were both fired.(Project Censored #12 1997)

Akre and Wilson sued the Fox station and on August 18, 2000, a
Florida jury unanimously decided that Akre was wrongfully fired by Fox
Television when she refused to broadcast (in the jury’s words) “a
false, distorted or slanted story” about the widespread use of BGH in
dairy cows. They further maintained that she deserved protection under
Florida’s whistle blower law. Akre was awarded a $425,000 settlement.
Inexplicably, however, the court decided that Steve Wilson, her partner
in the case, was ruled not wronged by the same actions taken by FOX.

FOX appealed the case, and on February 14, 2003 the Florida Second
District Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the settlement awarded
to Akre. The Court held that Akre’s threat to report the station’s
actions to the FCC did not deserve protection under Florida’s whistle
blower statute, because Florida’s whistle blower law states that an
employer must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation.” In a
stunningly narrow interpretation of FCC rules, the Florida Appeals
court claimed that the FCC policy against falsification of the news
does not rise to the level of a “law, rule, or regulation,” it was
simply a “policy.” Therefore, it is up to the station whether or not it
wants to report honestly.

During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules
against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First
Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort
news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s
claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply
maintained that it was their right to do so. After the appeal verdict
WTVT general manager Bob Linger commented, “It’s vindication for WTVT,
and we’re very pleased… It’s the case we’ve been making for two years.
She never had a legal claim.”

UPDATE BY LIANE CASTEN: If we needed any more proof that we now live
in an upside down world, the saga of Jane Akre, along with her husband,
Steve Wilson, could not be more compelling.

Akre and Wilson won the first legal round. Akre was awarded $425,000
in a jury trial with well-crafted arguments for their wrongful
termination as whistleblowers. And in the process, they also won the
prestigious “Goldman Environmental” prize for their outstanding
efforts. However, FOX turned around and appealed the verdict. This
time, FOX won; the original verdict was overturned in the Appellate
Court of Florida’s Second District. The court implied there was no
restriction against distorting the truth. Technically, there was no
violation of the news distortion because the FCC’s policy of news
distortion does not have the weight of the law. Thus, said the court,
Akre-Wilson never qualified as whistleblowers.

What is more appalling are the five major media outlets that filed
briefs of Amici Curiae- or friend of FOX - to support FOX’s position:
Belo Corporation, Cox Television, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., Media
General Operations, Inc., and Post-Newsweek Stations, Inc. These are
major media players! Their statement, “The station argued that it
simply wanted to ensure that a news story about a scientific
controversy regarding a commercial product was present with fairness
and balance, and to ensure that it had a sound defense to any potential
defamation claim.”

“Fairness and balance?” Monsanto hardly demonstrated “fairness and
balance” when it threatened a lawsuit and demanded the elimination of
important, verifiable information!

The Amici position was “If upheld by this court, the decision would
convert personnel actions arising from disagreements over editorial
policy into litigation battles in which state courts would interpret
and apply federal policies that raise significant and delicate
constitutional and statutory issues.” After all, Amici argued, 40
states now have Whistleblower laws, imagine what would happen if
employees in those 40 states followed the same course of action?

The position implies that First Amendment rights belong to the
employers - in this case the five power media groups. And when
convenient, the First Amendment becomes a broad shield to hide behind.
Let’s not forget, however; the airwaves belong to the people. Is there
no public interest left-while these media giants make their private
fortunes using the public airwaves? Can corporations have the power to
influence the media reporting, even at the expense of the truth?
Apparently so.

In addition, the five “friends” referred to FCC policies. The five
admit they are “vitally interested in the outcome of this appeal, which
will determine the extent to which state whistleblower laws may
incorporate federal policies that touch on sensitive questions of
editorial judgment.”

Anyone concerned with media must hear the alarm bells. The Bush FCC,
under Michael Powell’s leadership, has shown repeatedly that greater
media consolidation is encouraged, that liars like Rush Limbaugh and
Ann Coulter are perfectly acceptable, that to refer to the FCC
interpretation of “editorial judgment” is to potentially throw out any
pretense at editorial accuracy if the “accuracy” harms a large
corporation and its bottom line. This is our “Brave New Media”, the
corporate media that protects its friends and now lies, unchallenged if
need be.

The next assault: the Fox station then filed a series of motions in
a Tampa Circuit Court seeking more than $1.7 million in trial fees and
costs from both Akre and Wilson. The motions were filed on March 30 and
April 16 by Fox attorney, William McDaniels-who bills his client at
$525 to $550 an hour. The costs are to cover legal fees and trial costs
incurred by FOX in defending itself at the first trial. The issue may
be heard by the original trial judge, Ralph Steinberg-a logical step in
the whole process. However, Judge Steinberg must come out of retirement
if he is to hear this, so the hearing, set for June 1, may go to a new
judge, Judge Maye.

Akre and her husband feel the stress. “There is no justification for
the five stations not to support us,” she said. “Attaching legal fees
to whistleblowers is unprecedented, absurd. The ‘business’ of
broadcasting trumps it all. These news organizations must ensure they
are worthy of the public trust while they use OUR airwaves, free of
charge. Public trust is alarmingly absent here.”

Indeed. This is what our corporate media, led by such as Rupert Murdoch, have come to. How low we have fallen.

Jane Akre and be reached at:
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jakre@bellsouth.net.

www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/

I want to preface this with one idea that I think someone already mentioned:  Every time we turn on the TV or read a paper that has paid advertisements, we support the MSM. Media outlets make the majority of their money from advertisements. If Americans  consumers decide to stop patronizing  unbalanced media outlets and head to places with fairer coverage of events, that means the advertisers will eventually follow.

So when the MSM outlets are under threat of losing a significant number viewers, it seems very likely that the advertisers will leave or put pressure on these outlets to make the changes their customers are looking for. In other words, one of SCAAMD's most powerful points of leverage will be its ability to successfully encourage media consumers to move to more objective media outlets.

The following is a comprehensive article  from 2001 that   provides some useful points and background on efforts to restore balance to the MSM.

Robert A. Hackett, professor of communication, co-directs NewsWatch Canada at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver. His recent publications include (with Richard Gruneau et al.) The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada's Press, and (with Yuezhi Zhao) Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. E-Mail: hackett@sfu.ca

www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_Reform/Bldg_Media_Demo.html

Building a Movement for Media
Democratization
by Robert A. Hackett
Project Censored 2001
by Peter Phillips and Project Censored
Seven Stories Press, 2001, paper
 
Project Censored has identified critical flaws in America's corporate media system. Through its strong domestic market and the export of not just particular media products but its entire model of organizing the media, that system influences the flow of news, ideas, and entertainment around the world.

Any citizen, any social movement, concerned with promoting social equality, justice, and democracy within and between nations will sooner or later have to confront and challenge an increasingly globalized corporate media system. Why is that the case? Essentially, transnational corporations in the communication and information industries have become key bulwarks of global capitalism both ideologically and economically.

 Since the 1980s, the emerging global media system has vastly enhanced the communication infrastructure of international commerce, constituted a crucial site of investment (think of Nasdaq), and through its news, movies, television programs, and other media formats created a cultural environment which promotes the politics and values of consumerism and free market fundamentalism.

Undoubtedly, the global communication system has enhanced (unevenly) the affluence of a minority of the world's countries and people. It has also sometimes contributed to the political liberalization of old-style authoritarian regimes like those of Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the journalism offered in such a hyper-commercialized, corporate-dominated system in many ways contradicts fundamental democratic values and ideals, such as equal opportunity for informed participation by all citizens in discussing and deciding matters of public concern. In journalism, as Project Censored's work highlights, marketing imperatives are overriding the ethos of public service.

Affluent consumers and business are relatively well-served with a press that reflects their generally conservative political dispositions. The rest of us are offered a steady diet of trivia and scandal-"junk food news." Unprecedented transnational media concentration creates potentially centralized power over the public agenda. Increasingly, newsrooms promote or censor stories based not on their relevance to the public, but rather their ability to help or hurt the commercial and political interests of the media empires.

Some people argue that new media technology, particularly the Internet, is the solution to the "democratic deficit" of the corporate media system. But the Internet, while an extremely valuable organizing tool for grassroots activists, is not likely to fundamentally shift the balance of political power. Quite apart from the inequalities in access to computers and telecommunication networks, the Net itself is becoming commercialized and colonized by many of the same corporations which dominate the conventional media.

While they offer some openings for alternative and progressive views on particular issues, the dominant transnational media on the whole are significant obstacles to movements promoting progressive social change. Any fundamental challenge to the current distribution of wealth and power within global capitalism is also a challenge to the dominant media. How can ecologically sustainable economies be achieved without addressing a media/advertising complex that cultivates the desire for limitless consumption? Can a level playing field for diverse political parties be achieved in the U.S. without bitter opposition from the television networks, who have a vested interest in hyper-expensive political advertising? Can ethnic and gender equality be achieved while media representations and employment practices continue (despite some progress) to stereotype, marginalize, or underrepresent women and minorities? Can social programs and workers' rights be sustained in the long run when the agenda-setting media are closely tied to the corporate elite and its interests? Can progressive social movements succeed when they are demonized, trivialized, or ignored by the media on which they generally depend to reach broader publics? And most crucially, can democracy itself flourish without a political communication system which nurtures equality, community, and informed engagement with public issues?

The pivotal role of the media leads Robert McChesney to observe, "Regardless of what a progressive group's first issue of importance is, its second issue should be media and communication, because so long as the media are in corporate hands, the task of social change will be vastly more difficult, if not impossible, across the board."
Encouragingly, there are growing signs of organized grassroots activity within many countries to challenge the "corporatization" of public communication. Such activism for media democratization takes different forms in different national contexts, and I do not attempt a global overview here.

In the U.S. and Canada alone, there are hundreds of local and national projects and groups engaged in one or more of the following dimensions of media activism, each of which is typically associated with specific kinds of actors. These forms include building autonomous or "alternative" media independent of state and corporate control, which add diversity to the media system insofar as they give voice to the marginalized, convey counter-hegemonic information, and/or offer models of organization and communication more democratic than the dominant commercial media.

Other major avenues of activism include the media education movement, which is especially advanced in Europe, and media analysis and monitoring projects such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and Project Censored in the U.S., and NewsWatch in Canada. Also present are campaigns and publicity strategies to use and enhance openings for progressive voices within the existing media (media skills training, media relation strategies to gain access by achieving newsworthiness, etc.). We see also satirical "culture jamming," which aims to subvert the intended meanings of commercial and corporate media, and challenges to ideological hegemony and the logic of the marketplace from within mainstream media. Culture jamming is represented by the struggles of journalists and other media workers and public interest interventions in legal, regulatory, and political arenas to challenge the processes and substance of state policy towards media. Efforts to build national and international coalitions around "the cultural environment," "media and democracy," "press and broadcasting freedom," or "the right to communicate" are ongoing as well. In some countries-as diverse as New Zealand, India, Brazil, Sweden and Finland-such commitments are also represented directly in elected legislatures from emerging progressive political parties.

Behind their diversity, democratic media activism displays a fairly consistent and enduring commitment to change media messages, practices, institutions, and contexts (including state communication policies), in a direction which enhances democratic values and subjectivity, as well as equal participation in societal decision-making. A Polish public broadcasting planner suggests that a key principle of democratic public communication is the ability of each segment of society "to introduce ideas, symbols, information, and elements of culture into social circulation" so as to reach all other segments of society. This is at the heart of the progressive project of a more equitable distribution of economic, social, cultural, symbolic, and informational resources.

To be sure, there are important ambiguities within the concept of media democratization. Debates over censorship, pornography, and hate speech suggest the sometimes uneasy combination of commitments to social solidarity, egalitarian social transformation, and individual freedom from state or corporate power.

Nevertheless, media democracy manifestos exhibit an impressive degree of convergence around the goals of expanding the range of voices accessed through the media, building an egalitarian public sphere, promoting the values and practices of sustainable democracy, and offsetting or counteracting political and economic inequalities found elsewhere in the social system. Indeed, Jakubowicz suggests adopting the term "communicative democracy" rather than "democratic communication," in order to underscore that the idea of democracy itself is premised upon communication between equals.

It is probably premature to describe these various forms of media activism as a coherent social movement, but they are laying the groundwork for one. In the rest of this chapter, I reflect on both the obstacles that such a movement would face, and the social resources it could draw upon. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for strategic priorities.

OBSTASTACLES TO A MEDIA DEMOCRATIZATION MOVEMENT

Without doubt, a media democracy movement will face formidable obstacles. Of the relatively few published case studies from which to draw historical lessons, one of the best is McChesney's analysis of an early U.S. media reform movement: the coalition to support public broadcasting and oppose the commercialization of radio as it emerged as a mass medium in the 1930s.3 Within a few years, that coalition's goal of reserving significant spectrum space for public interest, noncommercial broadcasters had been decisively defeated; conversely, the dominance of the corporate networks was entrenched through legislation and regulatory practice. The reformers failed partly due to their own avoidable shortcomings-their political incompetence, their lack of coordination, and in some cases, their elitist sympathies which militated against organizing a popular base. Moreover, the onset of the Depression drastically shifted national priorities towards more obviously bread-and-butter issues.

Other obstacles confronting the reformers, however, were more fundamental and long-term-primarily, the ideological, political, and structural power of their main opponents, the broadcasting corporations. The American corporate media, McChesney argues, "have actively and successfully cultivated the ideology that the status quo is the only rational media structure for a democratic and freedom-loving society." More broadly, American political culture since the early twentieth century has virtually precluded public discussion of the fundamental weaknesses of capitalism, forcing media reformers to argue defensively that commercial broadcasting is a special case of market failure. This constraint has been reinforced by the near-absence of a viable Left, and by the dominant culture's sanitized images of capitalism.

In the 1930s the structural power of corporate media was already evident in their dominance over politicians' access to voters and over the terms of public debate, including debate about media issues themselves. Today, the weapons of globalized media conglomerates include their sheer financial resources and their ability to use cross-promotional synergy, brand-name recognition, distribution muscle, high entry costs, and economies of scale. Oligopolistic markets give them the power to marginalize or take over smaller players. They also have the ability to pre-empt or co-opt politically troublesome opposition through token concessions.

Canada, Britain, and many other Western countries succeeded, where the U.S. failed, in establishing a viable, mass-audience public broadcasting service, one which could to some extent counterbalance the democratic shortcomings of a purely corporate, commercial system. Today public broadcasting around the world faces severe challenges. These include declining audiences related to channel multiplication, the decline of social democratic governments in western Europe, governmental pressure to become more commercial, the resulting identity crisis and dislocation, right-wing attacks on its perceived left-liberal bias, and broader critiques that see it as obsolete or irrelevant.

The broader context for public broadcasting's crisis is the worldwide hegemony of market liberalism, and the process of media globalization. The flipside of the concentrated power of global media capital is the social and political indeterminacy of the groups that would potentially benefit from media democratization. For the most part, they are diffused, marginalized, and/or difficult to mobilize. The apathy of media audiences is not surprising during "normal" times of social and economic stability in the advanced capitalist societies. There is no widespread popular clamor for participation in mass communication (on the production side), nor for more access to a greater range of views (on the consumption side). If anything, given marketing and cultural pressures towards social fragmentation, many consumers want fewer voices and less complexity in their daily media fare, not more. Many consumers also identify with the branded images, products, programs, and celebrities that constitute the corporate mediascape.
The culture of consumerism and the sheer burdens of daily life militate against all movements for social change, but especially one with goals as seemingly remote from daily concerns or immediate successes as media democracy. According to some theorists, accessible and diverse media programming may be a "merit good" like education, training, or health; left to themselves, consumers "tend to take less care to obtain it than is in their own long-term interests.''
The current absence of mass involvement in media democratization, however, should not be taken as unduly discouraging. Demands for participatory communication are historically more frequent in times of revolutionary upheaval when people's stories, actions, and protests are prominent in public communication. Michael Traber identifies three such waves of change. The eighteenth-century middle-class revolutions in France and America established the democratic rights of the individual vis-a-vis despotic government. The early "utopian" years of twentieth-century socialist revolts in Mexico and Russia posited a second generation of human rights in which the state has, in principle if not practice, a positive role in promoting citizens' well-being, including their access to the means of communication. The third wave of communication rights derives from the postwar Third World anticolonial struggles; these "solidarity" rights emphasize the duty of states and social organizations to place common human interests before national and individual interest.

During more stable periods, however, demands for expanded public communication rights are typically confined to advocacy groups, creative cultural producers, alternative journalists, mainstream media workers, scholars, and others with occupational or political incentives to seek media access. Indeed, some of the most articulate and energetic spokespeople for media democracy, at least in the U.S., have come from their ranks. But the interests of these groups are not identical, and in many cases they are marginalized, lacking the power resources strategically to intervene in a media system dominated by huge companies which integrate production and distribution.

Moreover, without brand-name products to sell, media democracy groups in a market economy are perpetually short of money. Typically, they depend on supporters' donations, short-term contracts, memberships, government or foundation grants, or sponsorship by institutions, such as the several trade unions which help underwrite the British Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF). While the CPBF itself has largely maintained its democratic autonomy, such funding is elsewhere often tied to specific projects or institutional agendas. Even foundation grants, a major funding source for progressive groups in the U.S., have important limitations. They increase the sense of rivalry between groups pursuing the same funders, and they are often time-consuming to pursue: unlike their right-wing counterparts, "liberal" foundations still tend to fund specific projects rather than long-term institution-building.

SOCIAL BASES FOR A MOVEMENT

While the obstacles are formidable, there are also deep and persistent social bases for media democratization. I do not want to suggest that social movements simply reflect existing tensions and interests; they have a creative role in raising new issues and forging new identities. But, extrapolating from the political economy approach to communications analysis, it is possible to suggest some of the structural conditions and social dynamics most favorable to media democracy activism.

The conflicting interests and inequalities generated within a capitalist social structure have spurred various forms of social, cultural, and political resistance, most classically the organized workers' movement and socialist parties. Communicative democracy can be seen as a product of the ways that subordinate social classes constitute themselves through their own media and culture. The struggles of workers and social democratic parties have been a major backbone in western Europe of both the Left press, and advocacy for reformist state media policies. The CPBF in Britain is an exemplar. It was founded in 1979 as an alliance between journalists, academics, and public sector workers facing hostile press coverage, and print media unions facing technological annihilation. CPBF attempted to increase workers' influence over media employment and coverage, and to influence, with some success, the communications policy stance of the Trade Union Congress and the Labour Party during its long stay in opposition. While Britain's current "New Labour" government clearly has no interest in challenging the media conglomerates, CPBF continues to be probably the most impressive progressive advocate of media reform in western Europe. It also inspired the formation, in 1996, of a fledgling Canadian counterpart to oppose growing press concentration. It was spearheaded by several media unions and the country's largest progressive advocacy coalition, the Council of Canadians. In the U.S., unions have to date shown little interest in coalitions for media reform, preferring to put most of their eggs in the basket of conventional public relations strategies. There are signs, however, that under pressure from media mega-mergers, layoffs, and management assaults on editorial integrity, once reticent American media workers are becoming less reluctant to join unions and form alliances.

Indeed, while the point has been contested, some political economists regard the cultural industries as more fertile sites for worker resistance, compared to other industrial sectors. Bernard Miege points to the tendency to define divisions, the inherent "creativity crisis," and the tension between different technical and social "logics" at work in cultural industries. One challenge and opportunity for a media democratization movement is to find the common ground between worker resistance from within, and the demands for media access and diversity from without.

Some forms of nationalism generate localized resistance to the logic of globalized capitalism. The centrality of language and culture in nationalist politics gives it immediate relevance to struggles over communication policies and structures. Anticapitalist Third World nationalism was a driving force behind the movement for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) in the 1970s and 1980s. A landmark for this movement was the UNESCO-commissioned report Many Voices, One World, authored by a commission headed by Sean MacBride.

While a sympathetic critic described the report as "ambiguous, contradictory, and deficient" in its efforts to straddle different positions, its commitment to the right to communicate and to a "balanced flow" of information between North and South-arguably the report's most important legacies-implied the structural reform of the dominant, western-based corporate media system.
 Not surprisingly, these ideas were anathema to the corporate media and their political allies. NWICO's demise as an intergovernmental movement was ensured by the relentless hostility of the Reagan and Thatcher governments, the collapse of the Soviet bloc which had supported aspects of NWICO, the global hegemony of market liberalism, and the retreat from socialist and anti-imperialist versions of nationalism by Third World political elites. Those elites have abandoned NWICO "in favor of negotiating national and regional relationships with the global media powers."

Nevertheless, the impetus behind NWICO has not altogether disappeared. Rather, given its appeal to the "communication imagination" of the Third World, it has arguably become a "people's movement" with "deep roots in a historic sociopolitical and cultural process" of decolonization, participatory development, and democratization. Since the 1980s, NGOs, social movements, local cultural producers, and some communication policy experts and institutes have been the main torchbearers for more equity and autonomy within global communication, and/or for more participatory communication institutions and stronger indigenous cultural expression within nations.

Such developmental communication needs in the South have become the major focus of the ecumenical World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), which explicitly promotes media democratization and the right to communicate. Based in London and financed largely by development agencies and Protestant churches in the North, the WACC sponsors training programs and over 100 communication projects in the South, many of which give voice to marginalized people's criticisms of existing social injustices.

Even in the North Atlantic geopolitical region, cultural nationalism in countries like France has helped put some brakes on global trade liberalization. Moreover, even such liberalization has a "silver lining," according to a leading Irish communications researcher: as the state deregulates and commercializes media, the ethic of public service (still strong in many liberal democracies other than the U.S.) can be used to lever state funding for democratic alternative and community media. The opportunity lies in the state's need for legitimacy, and in the widely perceived centrality of media to society's own image and sense of identity.

The defense of minority languages is a related wellspring of demands for media access and diversity. Economic and media globalization contributes to cultural homogenization, as a handful of dominant languages are expanding at the cost of others. Within the next century, 90 percent of the world's languages may die out. Control over language, crucial to cultural and personal identity, is a primary means of exerting power over other aspects of people's lives. Millions of people are denied the right to use their own language (and may even be legally penalized for doing so) in state-supported education or public communication. Forced linguistic assimilation is not peculiar to authoritarian Third World regimes. Residential schools still haunt the living memories of aboriginal people in Canada, where dominant media still arguably contribute to their marginalization and misrepresentation. A 1998 referendum in California, intended to deny Spanish-speaking children bilingual education, was one of five international cases selected by supporters of the People's Communication Charter (PCC) for the first public hearing on languages and human rights at the Hague in 1999.

Access and expression through public communication is the oxygen for such developmental and cultural needs. This point can be expanded: Media democratization is essential if human values in private and public life- values like friendship, citizenship, and the nurturing of children-are to be successfully defended against the corrosive logic of commercialization. Rejection of the idea that all aspects of human life can be bought and sold in the marketplace is developing. We now see resistance to the erosion of public broadcasting, the commodification of public information, the targeting by advertisers of children at home and in schools, and the intrusion of violent television programming in family life. Perceptions of commercial television's negative impact on the socialization of children have led parents and educators to media activism. Librarians have joined alliances to defend public access to information.

Religious commitments, too often ignored by the contemporary Left as a potential agent for progressive social change, have also inspired media activism. In one analysis, if religion is to survive in a modern world polarized between the strictly private sphere and the mass media, then it has no choice but to project itself through public communication and to challenge the dominance of commercial and political speech. Does such religious intervention constitute media democratization? That depends. Patriarchal, monolithic and exclusionary forms of religious fundamentalism have fuelled efforts to censor and demonize gay people, for example. But the ecumenical, inclusive and dialogical vision of the WACC and other progressive religious organizations, committed to values of human dignity, love, and solidarity, has inspired critique and action against the materialistic, consumerist, and narcissistic individualist biases of commercial media.

The communicative needs and practices of "new" social movements emerging since the 1960s have been another crucial springboard for challenges to the corporate media. The anti-Vietnam war protests and "counterculture" of the 1960s generated an upsurge of oppositional media forms, notably "underground" or alternative urban newspapers. To be sure, most of these papers commercialized or disappeared as the youth counterculture re-integrated into the middle-class mainstream. According to one of its veteran editors, however, the alternative press enjoyed a revival during the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s, in response to the mainstream media's political timidity and the emergence of a culturally progressive baby-boomer market.

Other movements have had more staying power than the youth counterculture. Most notably, movements for civil rights-first for blacks, then Latinos, aboriginal peoples, and other ethnic minorities-have generally sought not the revolutionary transformation of the social or media system, but rather fairer and greater representation within it. (The most militant such groups either politically marginalized themselves or, like the Black Panthers, were crushed by state repression.) Nevertheless, the reformist civil rights movement has generated significant demands for change in the dominant media-against exclusion or stereotyping of minorities in media content, and for more diversity in media employment and ownership.
Since the 1970s, movements for gender equality have engaged in similar kinds of media activism. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD), "Great strides have been made toward more accurate and inclusive representation" of gays in the dominant U.S. news and entertainment media. Arguably, the value to advertisers of the affluent gay male market has given the latter media leverage not enjoyed by many other minorities, like African Americans.

Likewise, feminism has unleashed energy for media transformation. At the national level, some elements of the feminist movement have long specialized in monitoring and advocacy work around media representation of women. Canada's MediaWatch and the Women's Desk at FAIR in New York are two examples. At the international level, no longer inhibited by the 1980s backlash against NWICO, women's rights conferences have increasingly placed the question of media power on their agenda. Women have expressed specific concerns about their commodification in advertising, their victimization in media violence, and their degradation in pornography. Definitions of communication rights, feminists argue, must take into account women's perspective before they can be considered genuinely "universal." At the same time, many feminists argue that their struggle is not simply for their own power but rather for a more just, sustainable, peoplecentered (rather than capital-dominated) world order. Because of the social construction of gender, women may be better placed than men to understand the need for, and to implement, more empowering and inclusive patterns of communication.

To be sure, there is no single feminist approach to media analysis or action; one must speak of feminisms. Michele Mattelart distinguishes between liberal feminists seeking equal participation in existing media structures dominated by patriarchal codes of professionalism and "objectivity," and a more radical questioning of the role of media structures and codes in constructing gender difference and colonizing women's definitions of themselves.
Other critical social movements have also emerged in anglo-North America during the 1970s and 1980s-notably movements for environmental sustainability, for peace and nuclear disarmament, and against American military intervention in Central America and elsewhere. One example of media-oriented activism engendered by these movements was a 1986 campaign by peace groups and their allies against the ABC network production Amerika, a film depicting a UN-backed Soviet occupation of the U.S. One legacy of this campaign was the creation of America's leading progressive media watchdog group, FAIR.

By and large, however, while the peace and environmental movements sought to use the media to promote their primary political objectives, they have generated relatively few efforts to democratize the media themselves, by comparison with movements for gender and ethnic equality. Why would this be the case? One reason may be the relative self-satisfaction on the part of the environmental movement with its ability to convey its concerns through the existing media during the 1980s and early 1990s. Most notably, Greenpeace seemed to have spectacular success in building itself as the globe's leading environmental advocacy group precisely through staging media events. Greenpeace leaders apparently regarded the media, particularly television, as a politically neutral tool, available for exploitation by those who understood its technological logic. A second reason for the relative absence of media challenges by environmental and peace movements was their focus on challenging state policies, and thus finding openings in the existing media to mobilize public opinion. By contrast, movements for gender and ethnic equality are comparatively more concerned about their cultural status and recognition. For these latter groups, the media loom more immediately as part of the landscape they wish to change.

As a hothouse for social movement media activism, the special case of the province of Quebec, a predominantly French-speaking enclave in North America, should be noted. It has a unique context of "cultural resistance to the centrifugal forces of the great North American melting pot." Rapid political and social modernization during the 1960s, growing working-class militancy, and a crystallizing polarization between the political options of preserving or leaving the Canadian federation in the 1970s all created "some unique examples of social and political uses of media," covering all kinds of activism. Taken together, these elements have created "a distinctive media culture and a situation in which media are considered as part of the normal terrain of social struggle"-undoubtedly to a greater extent than elsewhere in North America, where national and class conflicts have not overlapped, and public media have not been used to forge and defend collective identities to the same degree.

The most recent emerging "new" social movement today is international rather than regional or national in scope. The growing opposition to corporate-driven trade liberalization-and conversely, the defense of democratic human ri