hydrarchist writes:

The Media Companies' FCC Wishlist

By Jeffrey Chester, Center for Digital Democracy

March 18, 2003

Anonymous Comrade writes

WE, THE PEOPLE

Ida Dominijanni

Il Manifesto, 16 feb 2003

www.ilmanifesto.it

Translated by Snafu

"We, the people, do not want this war: millions of Americans are with you and challenge President Bush" says from the stage of San Giovanni in Rome, Mss Campbell the first woman priest of the council of churches of United States - firstly welcomed with coldness and then applauded with warmth. "We the people", the signature that inaugurate the American Constitution, a formula than returns a plural conception of "the people", which is one, just as long as it is aware to be made of many and different, "we". "We the people" will say few hours later the demonstrators of New York. But even in Rome, it is not only from the mouth of Mss Cambpell that the formula resounds in the air.

nolympics writes

Space Shuttle Disappears on TV...

Dan Rather Crestfallen

"The space shuttle Columbia is 12 minutes late, so the CBS correspondent reports seriously from Florida. He explains, with the aid of a model, how the shuttle enters the atmosphere at a very particular angle and that a couple of degrees this way or that would spell, well, disaster. It is a little after 9am and none of the TV people will come out with it. The space expert with the toy shuttle insists that there is no going back, that the vehicle resembles a gliding brick and that 12 minutes late, once it enters the atmosphere, means never. The early morning Saturday anchor man, who on a normal shift would be introducing children?s cartoons about now, resembles someone packing a knife who has just realised he?s in the middle of a gunfight. Painfully overwhelmed he repeatedly gaffes the gliding brick metaphor. Our man in Houston corrects him. ?Not a floating brick, a gliding brick.? In the background the NASA announcer directs the Houston personnel to lockdown and save all the info on their computers. It seems the mission is over.

Mandela Blasts Bush on Iraq

Warns of 'Holocaust'

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters), Thu Jan 30, 2003 -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela
lashed out at U.S. President George Bush's stance on Iraq on Thursday,
saying the Texan had no foresight and could not think properly.

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Chief U.N. weapons inspectors told the Security Council on Monday that Iraq was still resisting international efforts to ensure it disarms, but inspectors should have more time to complete their work.

"Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace," said chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

Mass Arrests of Muslims in Los Angeles

BBC News, Thursday, 19 December, 2002

Families protested against the detention of relatives
US immigration officials in Southern California have
detained hundreds of Iranians and other Muslim men who
turned up to register under residence laws brought in
as part of the anti-terror drive.

Reports say between 500 and 700 men were arrested in
and around Los Angeles after they complied with an
order to register by 16 December.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Marx's Intellectual Legacy

Marx After Communism

From The Economist print edition, Dec 19th 2002

As a system of government, communism is dead or dying. As a system of ideas, its future looks secure

When Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, nobody could say that it had failed on a technicality. A more comprehensive or ignominious collapse -- moral, material and intellectual -- would be difficult to imagine. Communism had tyrannised and impoverished its subjects, and slaughtered them in the tens of millions. For decades past, in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, any allusion to the avowed aims of communist doctrine -- equality, freedom from exploitation, true justice -- had provoked only bitter laughter. Finally, when the monuments were torn down, statues of Karl Marx were defaced as contemptuously as those of Lenin and Stalin. Communism was repudiated as theory and as practice; its champions were cast aside, intellectual founders and sociopathic rulers alike.

hydrarchist writes:

"Global Elites Must Realise that US Imperialism Isn't in Their Interest"

Michael Hardt

The Guardian, Wednesday December 18, 2002

Some of the worst tragedies of human history occur when elites are
incapable of acting in their own interest. The waning years of ancient
Rome, for example, were full of misguided political and military adventures
that brought death and destruction to the elites, their allies and their
enemies alike. Unfortunately we are again facing such a situation.
It seems inevitable that the United States will soon conduct a full-scale
war in Iraq. The US is also engaged in a war on terrorism that may extend
to all regions of the globe. And, most importantly, the US has embarked on
a foreign policy of "security" that dictates that it not merely react to
threats but anticipate them with pre-emptive strikes.

from the London Guardian:

"In Life as in Fiction, Greene's Taunts Left Americans in a Quiet Fury:

US Compiled Secret Reports on Novelist for Years, FBI Files Show"

Rob Evans and David Hencke

The Guardian, Monday December 2, 2002

Graham Greene's classic tale "The Quiet American," released this week in
cinemas starring Michael Caine in a potentially Oscar-winning role, is still
stirring up controversy over its apparent anti-Americanism.

smygo writes:

"Fear is only another form of awareness and awareness is
only a form of love. Total fear is total awareness. Once you
give in to fear completely, it ceases to exist, and all
that's left is awareness. All that's left is love."
--Charles Manson

"George Bush's Big Brother"

Jonathan Turley, LATimes November 17, 2002

Orwell would recognize the plan to monitor citizens using
databases.

In George Orwell's book "1984," the government used
"doublespeak" to change the meaning of words to make the
horrific appear commonplace. Thus the war department was
called the Ministry of Love, and citizens were instructed
that "slavery is freedom."