[PAA-Discuss] [codepinkhouston] A suggested project

[Bart Boyce]

I agree Madeleine.
 
Great ideas Charley.
 
But shorter talking points.
 
Sound bite sized.
 
b

--- On Mon, 12/6/10, Madeleine Crozat-Williams <magicas at pdq.net> wrote:


From: Madeleine Crozat-Williams <magicas at pdq.net>
Subject: Re: [codepinkhouston] A suggested project
To: codepinkhouston at lists.riseup.net, Discuss at paa-tx.org
Date: Monday, December 6, 2010, 10:22 PM


Good idea, Charlie.  I agree.  I just think we need to really simplify these.  Unfortunately, the people we are trying to arouse are used to very short sound bites.  Can they even read details???
      
     Madeleine

On 12/6/2010 1:32 PM, ChasMauch at aol.com wrote: 

Our primary problem today is that most people are not political junkies and are therefore unaware of many important things they desperately need to know. Consequently they are easily misled by the hate mongers and corporate criminals who manipulate them to vote against their own best interests, and we will never have the necessary popular groundswell demanding total basic change until some way if found to get the truth out. So rather than endlessly debate about our situation with the other members of the choir, let's try to take some positive action to do whatever little bit we can to help set the record straight. Here is one suggestion - I am open to others.
 
We could generate and distribute a list of the 10 or so most important facts/events/ideas that we believe most people do not know about or understand because they are routinely either misrepresented or suppressed by the MSM, since they are subversive of the status quo and therefore unmentionable. Which of course is the very reason we ought to "mention" them as often and loudly as we can.
 
Once we can agree on the list I propose we make a simple talking-head video, post it on YouTube, and distribute it as widely as possible. All we would need is an articulate person to read the list (possibly with a few simple illustrations). We have people in our community who could make the video and post it on YouTube. It would be easy to do and would cost very little. Hopefully this exercise - if distributed widely - would be educational for many people and might help us to organize and rank order some of our own thinking.. 
 
Ten possible topics off the top of my head are listed below (in no special order of importance). Please provide additions, revisions, or other recommendations that you think would be useful. Should the list be longer? I am not thinking about items such as Project Censored normally provides which it considers the least covered stories - we need fairly obvious and easily provable facts/events/ideas that are essentially not covered at all or are the subject of propaganda or disinformation. Your help and/or comments on the 10 items below and this project in general would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
Charlie

 
1.   Bush and Cheney have committed multiple horrendous crimes and do not even bother to deny it - in fact they write books and give interviews bragging about it - but there is no condemnation of any of this in congress or in the media, and no indication that they will ever be made to answer for their crimes. Why is it not obvious that this is unacceptable?
 
2.   Our elected "representatives" do not remotely represent the best interests of their constituents. Due to our corrupt electoral system they must raise vast sums of money and are therefore beholden to their major contributors and serve their best interests, not those of the people they supposedly represent. Isn't it clear this will not change until we get the big special interest money out of politics and go to a system of public financing of campaigns?
 
3.   Criticism of Israel is totally suppressed and brings swift retaliation to anyone who dares to violate this rule. The latest of many examples is the case of Helen Thomas, an outstanding journalist who recently told a workshop on anti-Arab bias in Dearborn, Michigan that Jewish influence made it impossible to criticize Israel in the United States. She said "Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists." She was immediately blasted by the ADL and others as a racist anti-semite, and all institutions that have presented her with awards were called on to withdraw them.
 
4.   Noam Chomsky has been called "A global phenomenon...perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet" by the NY Times Book Review but has been  totally suppressed by all major U.S. print and broadcast media for years. This is also generally true of communists, socialists, and any others considered too far left of center. Why is the MSM afraid of free speech and critical voices?
 
5.   The CIA is a rogue organization that operates virtually without supervision all over the world conducting assassinations, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, torture, subverting elections, overthrowing legally elected governments, and other unknown "black ops" with little or no "interference" from nominal congressional oversight. It has a secret budget of unknown size and is essentially unaccountable for its use. The victims all over the world are only too well aware of all this - it is only the American people who do not know. This does not serve our country well and goes against everything it is supposed to stand for . 
 
6.   Class warfare is clearly being waged but seldom if ever mentioned. The rich object to "wealth redistribution" unless it is from the lower and middle classes upward into fewer and fewer hands of the already wealthy. This is not a natural occurrence but the result of the capture of both political parties by the special interests and ruling elites of the military-industrial-banking complex.
 
7.   The World Health Organization ranks the U.S. 38th in health-care quality, below Dominica and Costa Rica and above Slovenia and Cuba, even though we spend half again as much per capita as our nearest competitor. Allowing private for-profit insurance companies to control the system is the problem here, since they obviously have incentive to charge as much for and deliver as little health care as possible. But the primary thing they WERE able to "insure" was that their lobbyists delivered enough money to key members of congress during the recent debate about reforming the system to make sure that public financing (Medicare for all) was considered "off the table" right from the start.
 
8.   The U.S. has been practicing military Keynesianism since World War II using the false rational that maintaining a big military is a good way to provide jobs and keep the economy going. In reality it is one of the least efficient but is maintained by the military-industrial complex which always needs an enemy, with the latest being the totally bogus "War on Terror."
 
9.   Corporations complain about taxes but in 2008 the Government Accountability Office found that two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes at all from 1998 through 2005. The worst example of this type of problem is Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record profit of $45.2 billion but paid no federal Income tax.
 
10.   The official investigation report of the 9/11 disaster leaves many troubling questions unanswered and raises widespread suspicions of a false-flag operation and possibly even an inside job but congress and the MSM refuse to consider these things, refer to those who continue to ask for a more through investigation as "conspiracy theorists", and insist that the matter is closed.

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