Mentioned on air – Elliot Cohen’s article on Internet Freedom + Link

Elliot D. Cohen was our guest on the 8th and 15th of July, 2007. We mentioned his 2006 first-place Project Censored Award winning article on Internet Freedom. Here it is:  Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story.

We also talked about

Free Press : media reform through education, organizing and advocacy

Show Details for July 15th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

– ELLIOT D. COHEN on media as pawns in the hijacking of America

— JOHN GIDEON on current election transparency issues

– ELLIOT D. COHEN on media as pawns in the hijacking of America

Elliot D. Cohen will be Mark Bebawi’s guest today, discussing his new book, The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship. This is a continuation of the discussion on The Monitor last week. One topic this week will be net neutrality.

“In this chilling account of an America in political and cultural decline, media critics Elliot D. Cohen and Bruce W. Fraser show how mainstream media corporations like CNN, Fox, and NBC (General Electric) together with giant telecoms like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America. Cohen and Fraser show in blunt terms how incredible power, control, and wealth have been amassed in the hands of an elite few while the rest of us have been systematically manipulated, deceived, and divested of our freedom. … [T]his book tells the story of an America quietly being stripped of its democratic way of life on its way to becoming a full-blown authoritarian state. “

Dr. Cohen is a media ethicist and critic, and has written extensively on the media and other areas of applied ethics. He was the 2006 first-place recipient of the Project Censored Award for a Buzzflash article (“Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story”). He is the director of the Institute of Critical Thinking, the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, and ethics editor for Free Inquiry magazine. He got his Ph.D. from Brown University, and lives in Florida.

BOOKS:
The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government
Are Turning America into a Dictatorship (Paperback)
edited by Elliot D. Cohen and Bruce W. Fraser (May 2007)

News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership And Its Threat To Democracy
by Elliot D. Cohen, editor (Hardcover – Feb 2005)

–JOHN GIDEON on current election transparency issues

The guest of co-host Pokey Anderson tonight will be John Gideon, updating us on current election issues, including a possible 2004 election being declared null and void, and a judge forcing it to be held again.

Pokey calls him the “Mr. Encyclopedia” of the election reform movement. John compiles the “Daily Voting News,” a clipping service of voting news articles for activists, attorneys, elections officials, elected officials, and others who are interested in voting reform issues. His personal knowledge of current events on these issues has become a trusted resource for voting integrity activists across the country.

He is Co-Director and Information Manager for VotersUnite! and he frequently writes articles for Bradblog.com. He is a disabled Viet Nam Vet (Navy) and a retired federal employee living in Bremerton, Washington. He has been learning about and working on the issues related to voting reform and voting integrity since early in 2003.

WEBSITES:

Brad Blog www.Bradblog.com

Voters Unite! www.VotersUnite.org

Show Details for July 8th, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  –  ELLIOT D. COHEN on media as pawns in the hijacking of America

  –  Law Professor MARJORIE COHN on current Constitutional issues
 

– ELLIOT D. COHEN on media as pawns in the hijacking of America

Elliot D. Cohen will be co-host Mark Bebawi’s guest today, discussing his new book, The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship.  One description of the book reads:

“In this chilling account of an America in political and cultural decline, media critics Elliot D. Cohen and Bruce W. Fraser show how mainstream media corporations like CNN, Fox, and NBC (General Electric) together with giant telecoms like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have become administration pawns in a well-organized effort to hijack America. Cohen and Fraser show in blunt terms how incredible power, control, and wealth have been amassed in the hands of an elite few while the rest of us have been systematically manipulated, deceived, and divested of our freedom. …  [T]his book tells the story of an America quietly being stripped of its democratic way of life on its way to becoming a full-blown authoritarian state. “

Dr. Cohen is a media ethicist and critic, and has written extensively on the media and other areas of applied ethics. He was the 2006 first-place recipient of the Project Censored Award for a Buzzflash article (“Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored the Story”).  He is the director of the Institute of Critical Thinking, the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Applied Philosophy, and ethics editor for Free Inquiry magazine. He got his Ph.D. from Brown University, and lives in Florida.

 

BOOKS:   
The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-hungry Government
Are Turning America into a Dictatorship    (Paperback)
edited by Elliot D. Cohen and Bruce W. Fraser (May 2007)

News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership And Its Threat To Democracy
by Elliot D. Cohen, editor (Hardcover – Feb 2005)

– MARJORIE COHN on Current Constitutional Issues

 

Law professor Marjorie Cohn is a frequent legal analyst on The Monitor. Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will discuss with her this week’s Sixth Circuit ruling in the NSA warrantless eavesdropping case.

 

In addition, a possible Constitutional showdown looms as Congress’ subpoenas are being stonewalled by the White House. 

 

We also hope to have a chance to look at the Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card George W. Bush gave to former Cheney chief of staffer Scooter Libby this week.

 

Professor Cohn is the President of the National Lawyers Guild, and is a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and international human rights law.

 

Her new book is entitled “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law.”

She lectures throughout the world on international human rights and US foreign policy. Professor Cohn has written columns for the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal, is a news consultant for CBS News, and a legal analyst for Court TV. She has provided legal and political commentary on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Truthout, and Pacifica Radio.

 

She is co-author of the book “Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice.” She was a legal observer in Iran on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and she has participated in delegations to Cuba, China and Yugoslavia. She has lived in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish.

 

WEBSITE:
www.marjoriecohn.com

 

NEW BOOK:       
“Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law”
[The six ways: illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq; the policy of
torture; war crimes; Guantanamo’s kangaroo courts; unconstitutional laws; and the
unlawful surveillance of American citizens.]

 

ARTICLES RELATING TO OUR DISCUSSION:

Yesterday’s ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping
Glenn Greenwald
Saturday July 7, 2007 06:30 EST
Salon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald

White House Will Deny New Request In Attorneys Probe
By Peter Baker
The Washington Post
July 8, 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070807Y.shtml

Illegal T Shirts?

Mentioned on air -

Dan Frazier has sold T-shirts that feature the words “Bush Lied” on one side and “They Died” on the other – over a field of the names of more than 3,000 U.S. service members who died in Iraq.

What is the history of these shirts?

The “Bush Lied They Died” T-shirt  was the first T-shirt ever produced by CarryaBigSticker. It evolved from a bumper sticker that included the names of 500 fallen troops and the words “Bush Lied.”  In June of 2005, we printed about 100 shirts similar to the Bush Lied They Died shirt shown above (but with only 1,693 names). Over the course of about a year, we sold them all. 

We were not planning to print more shirts because the first batch sold slowly. We also knew it would be difficult to fit more names on a shirt.  In early 2006, at the urging of certain family members who lost loved ones in Iraq, legislators in Oklahoma and Louisiana introduced legislation intended to stop the sale of the shirts. Federal legislation was introduced during the summer of 2006 to outlaw such products nationwide.

Thanks to the legislation, stories about the shirts appeared on CNN, Fox-News, NPR, and in the pages of USA Today and many other newspapers. In August of 2006 we decided to print 300 updated shirts partly because of all the media attention that was being paid to the shirts. In less than three months, we sold all of the new shirts we had printed. We have been printing updated shirts every few months since then.

Louisiana and Oklahoma eventually both passed laws targeting the shirts. Nonetheless, we continue to sell shirts in both states. In January of 2007 similar legislation was introduced in Texas, Arizona and Florida.  The Florida legislation  SB116 appears to be headed for passage, and will likely take effect July 1, 2007. The The Texas legislation, SB 277 passed in May 2007 and takes effect in September, 2007. 

The Arizona legislation may be the most significant because CarryaBigSticker is based in Arizona, and is subject to Arizona legislation. Like other state legislation, Arizona’s legislation SB 1014 aims to prohibit the use of the names of fallen troops in advertising unless permission is first obtained from their families. The bill was signed into law on May 24, 2007 by Governor Janet Napolitano. The bill was an emergency measure and thus took effect immediately. We continue to sell shirts in Arizona despite the new law. 

The proposed federal legislation would go even further. The bill introduced in the House, HR 269 says, “no person may knowingly use the name or image of a protected individual in connection with any merchandise, retail product, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to connect the protected individual with that individual’s service in the armed forces.” 

In May of 2007, the sponsors of HR 269, Congressmen Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Charles W. Boustany Jr. (R-La) announced in a press release that the House of Representatives had approved an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment is similar in its effect to HR 269.  The bill now goes to the Senate.

Despite the new laws and pending legislation, we continue to sell the shirts because we believe the message is important. Our customers seem to agree. In January 2007, the “Bush Lied They Died” shirt became our fastest-selling product. The most recent version of the shirts features the names of more than 3,000 troops who have died in Iraq (see product description above for current figure). 

In March of 2007, we introduced two new shirt designs featuring the names of the fallen. One of the new designs says, “Support our Remaining Troops – Bring the Rest Home Alive.” The other design says, “If any Question Why we Died, tell Them Because Our Father’s Lied.” The latter design is a quotation taken from the writings of Rudyard Kipling. The words were penned in response to World War l, during which Kipling lost a son. Kipling is best known as a writer of children’s stories, including a collection called “The Jungle Book,” and another called “Just So Stories.”  

With the Bush presidency entering its final phase, we wanted to offer our customers new products that did not focus so much on Bush. We hope to continue selling these new shirts, and other products like them, until all U.S. troops have returned from Iraq.  

Show Details for July 1st, 2007

This week’s Guests:

  –  WAYNE MADSEN on the CIA’s 1970s secrets, released

  –  Texas journalist LOU DUBOSE on Dick Cheney

 

– Wayne Madsen on the CIA’s 1970s secrets, released

 

At the request of the private National Security Archive, the CIA last week released 700 pages of internal reports relating to its 1970s activities.  Some inside the agency have called the documents “The Family Jewels.”  Some of the documents are still heavily censored.

Even so, the AP reports, “the documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, the testing of mind- and behavior-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China, break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.”  The CIA was forbidden by charter from spying on Americans, but did so anyway.

 

The NY Times writes of the documents that “in 1967, for instance, President Lyndon B. Johnson became convinced that the burgeoning American antiwar movement was controlled and financed by communist governments, and he ordered the C.I.A. to produce evidence.”

The Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi will talk about the document release with guest Wayne Madsen.  Wayne is a freelance investigative journalist, and has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, Counterpunch, and the Intelligence Newsletter. Mr. Madsen is the author of The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan, 1992), an acclaimed reference book on international data protection law.

Madsen has some twenty years experience in computer security and data privacy. As a U.S. Naval Officer he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.

 

ARTICLES:
“Declassified C.I.A. Archives Detail Illegal Activities”
By Mark Massetti and Tim Weiner
June 27, 2007
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27cnd-cia.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

 

“CIA Releases Key 1970s Files, Including Spying on Journos”
by Michael Sniffen
June 26, 2007
Associated Press
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/26/2119

 

WAYNE MADSEN’S WEBSITE:  www.waynemadsenreport.com

 

– Texas journalist LOU DUBOSE on Dick Cheney

 

  

 

Lou Dubose is a veteran Texas journalist.  He has been a frequent co-author with Molly Ivins, and is in fact working on a new book they started together on the Bill of Rights.

Lou’s book released last fall, though, is taking on new urgency.  The book is Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency. 

This week, the Washington Post published a lengthy four-part series on Dick Cheney.  After over 200 interviews, the Post authors concluded that many of the things we like least about the Bush administration have Cheney’s fingerprints all over them … well, they WOULD have his fingerprints all over them, except he has worn gloves, and used surrogates to push them forward. 

 

A bill to impeach Cheney for “high crimes and misdemeanors” now has ten co-sponsors in the House of Representatives (Dennis Kucinich, Keith Ellison, William Clay, Janice Schakowsky, Albert Russell Wynn, Yvette Clarke, Hank Johnson, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters).

Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will talk with Lou about the Veep.

Lou lives in Austin.  He is a former Texas Observer editor, and has also written books on Bush, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay.

BOOKS by LOU DUBOSE:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency (co-written with Jake Bernstein)

 

Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch’s Assault Against America’s Fundamental Rights  (co-written with Molly Ivins)  –   forthcoming in October 2007

The Hammer Comes Down: The Nasty, Brutish, and Shortened Political Life of Tom DeLay (co-written with Jan Reid)

Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (co-written with Molly Ivins)

 

Bushwhacked (co-written with Molly Ivins)

 

Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect Of George W. Bush’s Remarkable Political Triumphs (co-written with Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon)

 

 

WASHINGTON POST SERIES ON CHENEY:

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker (4 parts)

‘A Different Understanding With the President’

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/chapter_1/

 

Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/pushing_the_envelope_on_presi/

 

A Strong Push From Backstage

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/a_strong_push_from_back_stage/

 

Leaving No Tracks

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/

Show Details for June 17th, 2007 – update

I was out of the country for this show and never put the details up. Here they are…sorry for the delay. MB

This week’s Guests:

  – Prof. Michael Klare on the US military’s huge use of fossil fuels

  — Prof. Howard Karger on piling on the debt: who wins, who loses

 

– Prof. Michael Klare on the US military’s huge use of fossil fuels

Our first guest tonight is Michael Klare. He has written extensively about fossil fuels and geopolitics. In his new article, “The Pentagon v. Peak Oil,” he finds that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels of oil every day, more than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland.

Professor Klare concludes his article:

“Along the way, the American military has been transformed into a “global oil-protection service” for the benefit of U.S. corporations and consumers, fighting overseas battles and establishing its bases to ensure that we get our daily fuel fix.

“It would be both sad and ironic, if the military now began fighting wars mainly so that it could be guaranteed the fuel to run its own planes, ships, and tanks — consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could instead be spent on the development of petroleum alternatives.”

Professor Klare is Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies (a joint appointment at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst).  He serves on the board of directors of the Arms Control Association, the National Council of the Federation of American Scientists, and the advisory board of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch.

He is the author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict; Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws; and Low Intensity Warfare. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

His most recent book is Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependency.

ARTICLE:

“The Pentagon v. Peak Oil:
How Wars of the Future May Be Fought Just to Run the Machines That Fight Them”
By Michael T. Klare
June 14, 2007
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174810

 

– Prof. Howard Karger on piling on the debt: who wins, who loses

 

Debt is increasingly a way of life in America.  Those who can least afford it are hurt the most.  But, as our guest says, “The business of America is not products, it’s lending!”
Howard Karger writes, ” Instead of the poor relying on governmental emergency assistance, they are increasingly turning to payday lenders, pawnshops, and auto title lenders. As such, much of the economic functions that were once the responsibility of federal and state governments have been surreptitiously turned over to the predatory economic sector.”
Prof. Karger’s book, “Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy,” (2005, Berett-Koehler) was Winner of the 2006 Independent Publishers Award in Economics/Finance.

His recent article “The Home Ownership Myth” (in “Dollars & Sense” Spring 2007)  looks at whether home ownership really benefits low-income families.
Prof. Karger is Professor of Social Work at University of Houston.  His teaching interests focus on social welfare policy, community economic development, and social justice.
Here at the Monitor, we have looked at predatory lending earlier this year, with Danny Schechter, and his DVD, “In Debt We Trust” (www.indebtwetrust.com)