So what exactly are the great historical accomplishments of your race that make you proud it be white? capitalism? slavery? genocide? sitcoms? This article below is your white history my friends.. When will we stop treating humans like biological machines to protect the financial interests of the rich?

Either you don't know or you don't care.. if you don't know, then get out there and get the knowledge. If you don't care, sit back, idly chat and realize your just a pawn in this society that is supposedly so rich and great. I personally rather live in a George Orwellian world than the pacified society of today..



Groups Confront Coke On Alleged Environmental, Labor Abuses

Apr 22 - Dozens of protesters from as far away as India demonstrated outside a Coca-Cola Co. shareholders' meeting Tuesday, calling on the soft-drink giant to stop what they allege are environmental abuses in developing countries and support of violence against labor unions in Central and South America.

Estimates of the number of activists outside the Wilmington, Delaware, Hotel du Pont ranged from 30 to 70. Several groups were represented, including the Georgia Indian American Political Action Committee, Corporate Accountability International, Georgia Kids Against Pollution and the Kick Coke Campaign, a Swarthmore College student group associated with the national Campaign to Stop Killer Coke.

Some protesters also spoke out during the meeting to shareholders and new Coke chairman and chief executive Neville Isdell.

The groups accuse Coca-Cola of taking water from poor communities that already suffer shortages, to sell as bottled water and use to make soft drinks, leaving toxic wastes behind. They also accuse Coke of backing Colombian paramilitaries that murdered a union leader in 1996, and supported attempts to thwart efforts by Guatemalan Coke employees to unionize during the 1980s.

--Dave Reynolds

And Jesus Said: "Call No Man Your Father"

I have a bit of a fetish.

Whenever I come across a calendar where the month is wrong, at the barber, or in a bank or a school say it's June and the one on the wall still proclaims May I either inform them of their tardiness or get up and rectify the situation myself, turning the page and bringing us into the present, bang up to date. I don't know why, but it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

So it was with great difficulty that I managed to suppress the urge to point out to Father Vinander that afternoon years ago, as I bade farewell to him and the brothers of the Calcutta Missionaries of Charity, that the picture of Pope Paul V1 on the wall of his office was way out of date. Since his death there'd been another Pope John Paul the First, who only lasted 33 days before being found dead in his bed by a nun; and that he'd been replaced by the present incumbent, Polish John Paul the Second, the first non-Italian pope since 1542.

I resisted the temptation to point out the picture needed changing the deaths and takeovers had all been very sudden and I'm sure he'd catch up - but as I traveled back overland from India to England by bus I had time to ponder popes and their power over people born to obey them. Somehow, luckily, after a lifetime of fear and thrall I had managed to free myself from the unquestioning obedience demanded by the Church, and gradually over the years since then, looking at it objectively, I've come to find it very questionable indeed.

It seems to me now that the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See, contradicts the instructions of Jesus in very many instances. According to Matthew, Jesus said "Call no man your father on earth", and yet you've got these men of the church swishing around in long skirts, all telling their 'flock' to address them as "father'.

Jesus also said "No one is good but one - God." And yet the Pope is called the 'Holy Father'--double whammy sin!

On prayer, Jesus said:

"And when ye pray thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are for they love to stand praying-- that they may be seen of men. But when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret--" and "But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking--"

But the Church with its elaborate Masses and chanted repetitious litanies goes against this simple advice of the Master.

Again, he says: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth-- but lay up for yourselves treasures in n heaven For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. - Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

And yet the Vatican has billions of dollars in solid gold in its coffers, mostly stored in bullion with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank; the rest in bank accounts in London and Zurich, Switzerland.

With all of its assets added together, the Church possesses more riches in real estate, property, stocks and shares than any other single institution, corporation, bank, government or state, making the Pope, the official rulerof this vast reserve, the richest man in modern history.

The U.N. World Food Summit estimates $150 billion a year could significantly eradicate world hunger.

Instead of making proclamations on such "issues" such as the sanctity of marriage and so-called family values, the pope and his church should regain the true Christian mission of charity. Imagine the sweeping effect to cure hunger and sickness around the world of a Church founded on genuine goodwill, not human hypocrisy.

But it's too late now for Pope John Paul 2, who has finally shuffled off his mortal coil. So, while the media is at its sickening feeding-frenzy orgy of eulogies and sycophancy, let's grieve over the dead billionaire and praise his homophobic successor on the Vatican throne.

The Only Thing to Fear

President (sic) George W. Bush and company have scared half the voters to death with stories about terrorists...so they'll vote for him.

Senator John F. Kerry (JFK2) and his surrogates on the soft left have scared the other half to death with stories about creeping fascism...so they'll vote for him.

Of course, anyone with an iota of objectivity left realizes the terror threat is laughably exaggerated...and there's infinitely more danger in operating a motor vehicle than all the "evildoers" in the world combined.

But what should we make of the claims of the Democrats (and the disturbing number of lefties who support them)? What about all the yarns spun about liberties lost...solely due, we hear, to one inarticulate puppet from Texas?

Whether we want to accept it or not; we've heard it all before. The fascists are perpetually at the gate, it seems. But, I submit: Are Bush's efforts truly more frightening than, say, Woodrow Wilson's repressive behavior during World War I?

"Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty," Wilson warned...and he had the newly minted Espionage and Sedition Act to back him up.

Passed in June 1917, it cast a wide net and trampled civil liberties. In Vermont, for example, a minister was sentenced to 15 years in prison for writing a pamphlet, distributed to five persons, in which he claimed that supporting the war was wrong for a Christian. Here's a sample of that law:

"Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both."

"The Espionage Act had very little to do with espionage," says Howard Zinn.

"Instead it made it a crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison, to say or print anything that would 'willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States.' The Sedition Act, which was an amendment to the Espionage Act, made it even a little more drastic. In fact, two thousand people were prosecuted under those acts and about a thousand went to prison."

(For those keeping score at home, the Espionage and Sedition Act is still on the books.)

All this "fascism" was in addition to the Palmer Raids and the deportation of Emma Goldman for saying and writing things often less radical than those that appear on this website.

If all this wasn't worse than a Tom Ridge Code Orange, how about lefty hero FDR interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process in 1942?

How does that stack up against Dubya's holy crusade?

We had McCarthyism in the 1950s...COINTELPRO in the 60sm and 70s...Eight years of Reagan in the 80s. And I've left out volumes.

Does anyone recall the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed into law on April 24, 1996 by the alleged liberal king, Bypass Bill Clinton? This USA PATRIOT Act prequel contained provisions that Clinton himself admitted "makes a number of ill-advised changes in our immigration laws, having nothing to do with fighting terrorism." An unconstitutional salvo that did little to address so-called terrorism but plenty to limit the civil liberties of anyone-immigrant or resident-who disagrees with U.S. policies, foreign or domestic, the bill severely restricted habeas corpus and expanded the number of federal capital crimes...and the Patriot Act is mostly an extension its legal foundations.

News Flash: JFK2 voted for the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and wrote parts of the USA PATRIOT Act. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming:

Things are bad under Bush.

Things will be bad under Kerry.

Things have been bad under every president.

Nothing will change until we change our minds...until we discover what Proust called "new eyes." Because, frightened readers, the facade of power is remarkably fragile. Consider the words of David Hume, written in 1758:

"Nothing appears more surprising...than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and popular."

Fascism, to me, is not a bigger or more urgent concern than irreparable environmental damage, and I certainly lose less sleep over facile Bush/Hitler comparisons than I do a planet populated with oppressed and starving humans.

Things are bad...but Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rice, Ridge, Wolfowitz, Powell, et al did not invent these problems. Not even close. Replacing them with JFK2 will not eliminate these problems. Not even close. The fascists aren't at the gate. In a country this conditioned, they don't have to be.

"The corporate grip on opinion is the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World," says Gore Vidal. "No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity-much less dissent."

That corporate grip, obscured by layers of fear, is a very,very weak grip...but until we recognize that reality, we'll be too busy running scared from terrorists and fascists to inspire genuine change.

Settling for the System

Although for many of us the last four years have brilliantly demonstrated the undemocratic nature of American democracy, it seems that some radicals have missed their cues. Presented with endemic alienation as a result of the failure of American political structures, most strikingly expressed in the 2000 election, many activists have actually chosen to channel residual anger into the very system that generated it. As the facade of capitalist democracy crumbles, the usual suspects are rallying the public--and preparing to charge, full-force, back into the smoldering rubble.

One such vanguard is Punk Voter (www.punkvoter.com), a coalition of over 130 bands and about 30 independent record labels recently formed with the goal of registering and mobilizing "punk rockers" in the 2004 election. Their site introduces readers with a reminder that, "Punk rock has always been on the edge and in the forefront of politics". And what could be more edgy than the ballot box?

A quick perusal of Punk Voter's website reveals more than a few ironies. While the layout is typical of the punk subculture--complete with black on red lettering and DIY cut-and-paste imagery--the message is constructed in a clumsy attempt to sound "legitimate". On one page, the Bush administration's policies are derided as "chaotic", a humorous complaint from a group that cites as influences bands like the Sex Pistols ("Don't know what I want / But I know how to get it / I wanna destroy"). Elsewhere in a guest column, Jesse Michaels of Operation Ivy laments that, "if there is a prolonged war as a result of American global aggression, the consequences will come to our nice little suburbs."

Attempts to reconcile youth rebellion with mainstream politics would be funny if the underlying message wasn't so dangerous.

Punk Voter's goal of mobilizing 500,000 youths for the Democratic Party is, at best, a huge misdirection of time and energy or, at worst, a destructive initiative that will serve to strengthen the very political system that punk has made its reputation attacking. Under the pretense of being a force for social change, the punk subculture has signed up to do capitalism's dirty work by reinforcing the fundamental mythology of representative democracy: The system works--change comes from within.

Indicative of the shift away from punk's tradition of confrontation with capitalism is the fallout that occurred between radical punk band Propagandhi and Mike Burkett, founder of Punk Voter.

Last March Propagandhi withdrew from Punk Voter's Rock Against Bush Vol. 1 compilation after Burkett requested that they remove a jab at billionaire George Soros from their song contribution. The liner notes to the song stated, "This message not brought to you by George Soros". Burkett explained his request in a post on Propagandhi's website. Although he acknowledged that Soros was involved in selling weapons of war and had "screwed a bunch of countries to make his money", Burkett also noted that Soros was bankrolling "many great organizations such as Moveon.org and America Coming Together, and these organizations help support us." Finally he noted that, "MoveOn [helped push] the 'Uncovered' DVD and it sold 40,000 more copies because of them".

Punk Voter didn't want to step on any toes if doing so would threaten its ability to sell records. So much for punk's independence.

Many radicals will be reluctantly casting a ballot come , might be a good idea to discuss strategic voting coupled with a robust skepticism of political parties . But the message that Punk Voter is bringing to its largely politically inexperienced audience is discouragingly artless. Perhaps most conspicuous is Punk Voter's adoption of the "2000-proved-that-every-vote-counts" spin that is being pushed by the Democratic Party. This attempt to rewrite presidential history would lead us to believe that Bush won the election based on 537 votes in Florida rather than rampant election fraud, voter disenfranchisement, and a break down of the electoral system--all of which are well documented.

Mike Burkett is the first to admit that political analysis isn't his strong point. In an interview posted to AlterNet he confesses, "I don't actually read as much as I should because the more I read the more bummed out I get, when I read political books." And so it may come as no surprise that Punk Voter is pushing a perspective without a significant critique to differentiate it from the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council.

Young people who browse punkvoter.com, seeking some direction or insight from the artists that they look up to, will be treated to inane nationalism (American flag imagery, constant references to "our government", etc) and a regurgitation of tired liberal themes (Nader was responsible for the Republican victory, etc.). Shocking statements like, "We must remember that today's politicians are servants to their constituents..." illustrate Punk Voter's disconnect from the reality of Belt-way politics.

Nowhere is there any discussion of the limitations of representative democracy. Or for that matter, the legal exclusion of 10% of the American electorate (including immigrants, ex-felons, and the homeless), corporate dominance of the political system, the Democratic Party's history of imperialism and warmongering, the Help America Vote Act and the problematic shift toward paperless ballots, or even Kerry's own position on domestic and foreign policy issues.

Senator Kerry's abysmal record has been well covered by a variety of sources, but apparently some people aren't listening. His foreign policy is virtually identical to that of Bush. He supports first strike and unilateral military action in defense of American "interests" (read: "business interests") and has openly called for an escalation of the Iraqi occupation. As a senator, he voted for Plan Colombia and NAFTA. On the home front Kerry supported the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and No Child Left Behind--policies that many of the bands endorsing Punk Voter have vocally rejected!

But Burkett says he thinks Kerry is "all right" because "he's a snowboarder and used to play in a band."

Is this what punk is about? If not, it is time that politically conscious music fans hold artists accountable for their duplicitous support of fascism--be it the "conservative" variety espoused by men like Bush or the "liberal" brand of men like Kerry.

Rock Against Bush Vol. 1 sold 20,000 copies in its first week, but one is left wondering what punk icons have really accomplished, self-promotion aside. In a particularly disturbing moment of clarity, Burkett told CNN that, "Bush getting elected was good for punk music. Now people have something to get pissed off about."

Over 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed, but record sales are up.

Is Your Car Vegan?

With that irrational question, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Sharon Bernstein begins an August 23, 2004 press release...I mean, article called "Automakers Getting a Taste for Vegan Values." Bernstein is referring to the Toyota Prius...a car she claims not only "impeccable green credentials," but is vegan to boot.

What is a vegan car? According to Toyota, the L.A. Times, and other uninformed, trendy souls, the Prius qualifies because its seats aren't leather. That's it. Simple, huh?

Not wanting to miss out on the corporate greenwashing, Ford Motor Company recently ran what Bernstein calls "an eight-page advertisement in the New Yorker magazine touting the company's green credentials. The ad led off with the boast that 11 members of the design team for the company's soon-to-be-released hybrid Escape SUV are vegetarians, and its leader is a vegan."

Even Mercedes Benz, Bernstein informs us, will offer a "non-leather package starting with the 2005 model year, in response to customer requests."

This is what democracy, uh...drives like?

"As a marketer you want to identify with the passionate group," said Bob Kurilko, vice president of marketing for the automobile website Edmunds.com.

"The middle of the bull's-eye is where you want to focus your marketing, and then you want to expand your message around that. If you draw these concentric circles, the middle of the bull's-eye right now is the vegan."

The revolution may not be televised...but it could get stuck in traffic.

The rest of Bernstein's piece falls into the blah-blah-blah category but no matter; she's already done a fine job of lying...lying that car companies give a shit about the environment or animal rights and lying that automobiles can magically become "vegan" merely by replacing leather with vinyl.

News flash: Automobiles can never have "impeccable green credentials" (by any reasonable definition)...and the car culture is unambiguously anti-animal.

Each week in the U.S., roughly one million animals are flattened by cars, trucks, SUVs and other fossil-fuel burning killers. That number, of course, does not include household "pets" or insects. It also does not count those living things (human, animal, and otherwise) that suffer or die due to exhaust emissions and the role they play in pollution and global warming.

In addition, that weekly one million death count does not do justice to the innumerable creatures who perish when entire eco-systems are exterminated in order to make way for highways, off-ramps, parking lots, strip malls, airports, and other auto-centric structures. Then there's the use of non-vegan substances like anti-freeze, bio-diesel fuel, hydraulic brake fluid, and asphalt binder-all of which contain animal ingredients. Finally, consider the faceless animals that suffer and die during the scientifically useless and morally indefensible laboratory testing of gasoline fumes.

The L.A. Times dug up a handful of alleged vegans ready to offer their stamp of approval to an internal combustion engine wrapped in steel as long as the seats weren't leather. As a result, millions will sleep better believing that conditions are improving and corporations are getting the message.

Question: why would anyone trust a corporate-owned media to report the truth about corporate behavior?

During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S. which requires maintenance costing over $200 million a day...the surreptitious cost of the car culture totals nearly $464 billion a year in the U.S. alone, much of that going to the sustentation of waging perpetual war to keep the world safe for petroleum.

You might bicker with the specifics surrounding issues pertaining to veganism, animal rights, and the environment...but allowing the auto industry to anoint itself "green" is an unambiguously giant step in the wrong direction.

Skip the Prius and get yourself a used bicycle.

Making the Myth, Forgetting the Man

In the bad old days of the Cold War, we would learn that a Russian leader died when their TV screens went dark and martial music was all that we heard. Afterwards, their channels filled with non-stop accolades and tributes to a "great proletarian leader." It was this type of Cold War propaganda posing as news that was held up as an example of the kind of information control the Free World was fighting to overturn -- and had, thanks to the brilliance of our 40th President.

Deification like this had its origins in the Church. When a great religious leader died, church organs responded with divine adoration. Scriptures like Hebrews 1:1-3 were recited to bless the departed with glowing language: "He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of is power."

When word of the passing of former President Ronald Reagan reached American newsrooms on Saturday, they went into a similar overdrive as hagiography displaced journalism. Like praise singers in ancient cultures, our modern day alchemists, went to work transforming a sick and aging political leader into a demi-god.

Suddenly, our news networks resembled religious broadcasters with a Pravda-like, Soviet echo. In many ways this was consistent with the way Ronald Reagan was treated when he was in office. C.T. Hanson, a one-time Washington editor of The Columbia Journalism Review used this frame in an analysis of the same man decades ago, writing then:

"The White House Press served with unusual frequency during Reagan's first two years as a kind of Pravda of the Potomac, a conduit for White House utterances and official image mongering intended to sell Reaganomics."

The best book written in that period on a most deferential White House press corps was called "On Bended Knee." Needless to say the Reaganauts praised their captive media. Lynn Nofziger, Reagan's campaign press secretary said in March 1982, "Overall, I don't have any real complaints about the way the press covered this administration."

Indeed.

In his book length assessment of "Presidents and the Press," Joseph C. Spear showed how the Reagan White House adopted his predecessor Richard Nixon's trick bag of press appeasement, evasion and intimidation to shape opinion and mould public perceptions. Spear called Ronald Reagan's presidency "probably the best staged one in history thanks to his acting abilities and the expertise of his media specialists."

As It Was Then, So It Is Today

The reporters who were infatuated with Reagan's charisma and appeal during his in life remained as infatuated after his death.

Ironically, in keeping with the secrecy Republicans are known for, up until the end, Reagan's own office had been downplaying the President's deteriorating condition. The New York Times reported in its early edition before Reagan's death was confirmed that "his office denied his condition had changed."

When the "Breaking News" broke, television reporters quickly brought us every detail live from the gates of the Reagan ranch. The news anchors rushed back to their studios to fill the air with their personal reminiscences and play by play, while their show producers dipped back into time-worn Rolodexes to book the loyalist footmen and handlers who fostered the Reagan myth in the first place, and now had a chance to give it new legs.

Defying any pretense of diversity in media, Time and Newsweek remade their covers with the SAME photo of Reagan as cowboy. The usually competitive New York Daily News and The New York Post showed the same lack of imagination with cloned front pages. Network specials were cranked up overnight.

60 Minutes dropped a promised segment with Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who claims she saw evidence that the government knew of planned terrorist attacks for a special segment by Mike Wallace who introduced himself as "Nancy's friend" before he became a journalist.

Dan Rather was called on to introduce a segment on Reagan's funniest bits, as if this was original. CNN's Jeff Greenfield had a similar report the night before. Neither bothered to interview Reagan's skilled Virginia-based joke writer who scripted his every word.

The TV archivists worked over time dredging up old footage as Reagan as hero took over the networks -- bumping President Bush's extravaganza at Normandy to CSPAN.

Program after program on network after network ran interviews with former Secretary of State and longtime Reagan ally James Baker. Newt Gingrich hailed Reagan on CBS while Sam Donaldson, Cokey Roberts and George Will outdid each other with praise on ABC. NBC did not pre-empt tennis matches for more of the same.

It was all Ronnie all the time, a non-stop Televisual Reaganathon, with nary a negative word or honest assessment. The contra war, the military buildup, the growing inequality, the attack on unions, the alliance with the Islamic crazies -- including Bin Laden -- in Afghanistan, the embrace of Saddam, the crazy SDI star wars systems, the support for white South Africa etc., etc. . . had "disappeared" from view like an Argentinian dissident from the same era. Reagan was reborn again as the quintessential folk hero. It was morning in America one more time. Throughout this next week, it will be mourning in America with a planned State funeral.

This all flows out of the widely held perception that Reagan was a popular president because he restored our confidence in a mythic America after the decline of Nixon, the folly of Ford, and the "malaise" of Carter.

The networks clearly wanted some of that popularity to rub off on them as they pandered to the audience with what were essentially apolitical or even anti-political profiles of a master politician who supposedly was popular because of his plainspoken personality. There was little in the coverage that deviated from that self-fulfilling perspective. There was little that explained how constant positive TV coverage of the kind we were seeing constructed and reinforced the image of Reagan as superhero.
Just as Reagan often invented stories that were traced back to movies he saw, many in the public do the same when they respond to him.

Last night, I heard Noam Chomsky on Air America say that educated people tend to be the most indoctrinated, and that the people who convey propaganda have often propagandized themselves first. In short, they believe their own hype.

Media Amnesia -- Reagan's Record Goes Unmentioned

Website www.Geeze.US dug into his past to reminds us what the TV commentators haven't: "Reagan can be remembered for his consideration of ketchup as a vegetable so as to not require additional expenditures for children's lunches. Neither can we forget 'If you've seen one redwood, you've seen em all' to justify the cutting down every standing tree in California. Does anyone want to remember his California Kitchen Cabinet? No thanks. Besides the Beirut loss and the Grenada victory, 52/444 and the Iran-Contra scandal (trading arms for hostages and using the profits from the arms sales to fund the Reagan sanctioned anti-Sandinista CIA death squads), perhaps the most disgusting of the Reagan-as-President legacy was the re-naming of National Airport (DCA) after Ronald Reagan."

Blooger Steve Gilliard contrasted the way American journalists treat the death of politicians as opposed to the way it is handled in the UK "The British have a tradition: when someone dies, their newspaper obituary tells the truth. Americans like to say something kind about the dead, no matter how scummy they were. Even Nixon got a halo in death, where only Hunter Thompson reminded people of who exactly he was and how the honors given him were, well, wrong."

The networks coverage this weekend achieved its goal: to leave us with a warm and gooey feeling towards Reagan while erasing our memory of his actual deeds. It is in moments like these that we see the continuity of conservative news coverage and its larger function to re-package politics into the mythology of a triumphant America.

Ronnie's handlers couldn't have written a better final scene. Cut to credits . . .