http://www.newswithviews.com/Briley/Patrick.htm


Informant: elvis one

If we have learned anything over the past 18 months it is this: that the first rule of politics—power must never be trusted—still applies. The British government will neither regulate itself nor be regulated by the institutions that surround it. Parliament chose to believe a string of obvious lies. The media repeated them, the civil service let them pass, the judiciary endorsed them. The answer to the age-old political question—who guards the guards?—remains unchanged. Only the people will hold the government to account. They have two means of doing so. The first is to throw it out of office at the next election. This works only when we are permitted to choose an alternative set of policies. But in almost every nation, a new contract has now been struck between the main political parties: they have chosen to agree on almost all significant areas of policy. This leaves the people disenfranchised: they can vote out the monkeys but not the organ-grinder. So, voting is now a less important democratic instrument than the second means: the ability to register our discontent during a government's term in office.

Applying the first rule of politics, we should expect those in power to seek to prevent the public from holding them to account. Whenever they can get away with it, they will restrict the right to protest. They got away with it again recently.

http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_12034.shtml


From:

Aftermath News
Top Stories - September 7th, 2004

George Lakoff, AlterNet

George W. Bush yet again used the crutches of "liberty" and "freedom" to frame his candidacy.

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19783/

Mike Ruppert spoke at San Francisco's prestigious Commonwealth Club of California

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/Commonwealth.pdf


Informant: Debi Clark

by Peter Phillips

The First Amendment of the US constitution, guaranteeing freedom of the press, was established to maximize citizen cognition of critical issues in society. It was understood clearly by the founders that Democracy could only be maintained through an informed electorate. A daily newspaper, along with the three major TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, are the major sources of news and information for most Americans. News stories and the invidious entertainment segments from these corporate sources generally have similar themes and common frames of understanding. This concentration of access to media sources leaves most Americans with very narrow parameters of news awareness and an almost complete lack of competing opinions.

Important questions that impact most Americans are generally ignored. Why are 45 million American without health care? Why is poverty increasing in the US? What happened to the safety net of social programs for the disadvantaged? What are the underlying reasons - other than oil - for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan? Will the military draft be re-instituted in the US after the 04 election? What is the truth behind global warming and extreme weather conditions? Where have all the living wage jobs gone? Why is minimum wage now at 60% of its value in 1968? Who got rich in the 90s and kept the money? Who owns the electronic voting machine companies?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept04/Phillips0904.htm

by Jeff Milchen and Jeffrey Kaplan

When Tom Paine published his pamphlet “Common Sense” in January of 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, he had a clear objective: to transform protest into rebellion. Though armed clashes began several months earlier in Massachusetts and the South, colonists generally viewed themselves as English subjects fighting a tyrannical king and government. For all of their anger, colonists were protesting the king and Parliament for disregarding rights, not challenging the government's legitimacy. . . .Common Sense” was wildly successful. By the spring of 1776 newspapers were reporting on "innumerable converts to independence,” including “tens of thousands of common farmers and tradesmen.” Though Paine called with burning urgency for the colonies to break away from Britain, he began by persuading readers that the source of the colonists' problems went far beyond corrupt or abusive English government to the very structure of rule by hereditary kings and nobility.

Paine's approach may inform our own strategy as we struggle to halt oppression at the hands of the dominant institution of our time -- the corporation. Today's corporations not only wield immense power over our law and government, they also control many physical conditions of our existence. Agribusiness dominates our food supply; the oil, energy and chemical industries determine what's in the air we breathe; and, to a frightening extent, corporations influence whether we live in peace or in war....

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept04/Milchen-Kaplan0904.htm

I Have A Dream: by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963

Audio and text
http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/ihaveadream.htm


From Information Clearing House

The US and UK governments use the war on terror to curtail our freedoms. Where does the greater threat lie?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6817.htm

Our political parties are no longer governed by the people but by the extremely wealthy

Nick Cohen

Sunday August 29, 2004

The Observer

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1293120,00.html

Informant: ECOTERRA Intl.