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September 11, 2006 –
Forget a day to remember the past. On this 9/11, Americans need
to look to their present and future. September 10, 2006 is a
far more important day in American history that 9/11/01.
The day started with Democratic National
Committee Chair Howard Dean appearing on "Fox News Sunday."
The day wrapped up with ABC airing the right-wing smear propaganda
series 'Path to 9/11' despite protests from both top Democratic
Congressional leaders, former President Clinton, hundreds of
thousands of people, and the Democratic National Committee. 4
hours of free air time - commercial free - over two days - even
better, with President Bush popping in in the middle of the second
day for a free 20 minutes of airtime to give a speech. All of
this timed just at the kick-off of the 2006 election season.
Most Americans, including the Democratic
bloggers who were so up in arms about 'Path to 9/11', don't realize
it but the first event - Howard Dean appearing on "Fox News Sunday"
- is the far larger problem. And it explains why Disney/ABC
went ahead and aired 'Path to 9/11' despite all the protests, and
why the Fall elections are irrelevant.
Many of you have been wondering why we
haven't been "covering" the 2006 elections cycle. Where are
our analysis articles? Will the Democrats regain power?
Etc., etc.
As we did with the Disney situation,
calling for a boycott of Disney 2 years before anyone else was ready
to, we have explained the results of the next election, not just in
terms of what will happen in the next couple months, but what things
will be like far in the future. In my May 13, 2006 article, I
wrote:
"...Five to ten years from now, after a
brief interlude of Democratic power, the GOP, led by a generation
raised to think its FOX-led propaganda machine is a normal thing,
will return to lead the nation into all out Nazism."
I didn't write this as some joke, just
as we didn't call for a boycott against Disney two years ago for no
reason.
CBS pulled the Reagan mini-series amid
protests. Dan Rather was fired from his twenty-plus year
career because of one story being questioned.
ABC was faced not just with protests by
some left-wing bloggers, but from a former President directly, the
DNC, 9/11 Commisioners, with actors pointing out the story was
inaccurate, with hundreds of thousands of signatures, e-mails, and
calls in protest, and with the basic, obvious reality that this
movie was a creation of right-wing activists and that it had not
just a slant but flat-out lies.
Disney/ABC's response: air it
anyway.
Even better, they had nothing to lose by
not airing it as they sold zero commercial time for it, yet they
aired it anyway.
Partly they aired it because they know
the Democrats and liberal bloggers will not stand behind their
threats to boycott Disney. Democrats are like a runt kitten at
this point. You can beat them all you want and they'll just
whine.
But more importantly, Disney knew who to
really fear, and they dared not cut bait on this project.
If you don't get what 'The Path to 9/11'
really was, just think about the second night. Right as the
movie gets to the Bush response to 9/11 - the part of the movie ABC
says is unflattering to the Bush administration - ABC will cut away
from the film and give 20 minutes of free air time to, yes,
President Bush.
Get it yet?
This project is a coordinated campaign
2006 kickoff for the Republican Party. Don't you think Disney knows
who the people are who made this project, that they are right-wing
propagandists pretending to be filmmakers? Do you think Disney
gave two prime-time nights of airtime to people having no idea about
who they were or what they were about?
For years Disney operated right-wing
radio coast-to-coast (WABC New York, KABC Los Angeles, etc.)
Remember when Disney wanted to put Rush Limabugh on Monday Night
football as a "sports commentator"? That was a hint.
(They went with Dennis Miller, another right-wing blowhard,
instead.) Remember that Disney then later did hire Rush as a
"sports commentator" for ESPN (they had to fire him after a few
weeks for making racist comments about Eagles' quarterback McNab)?
Remember that Disney refused to let its film subsidiaries
distribute Michael Moore's film? And remember, most recently,
that Disney had Mel Gibson lined up - the outspoken anti-semite - to
make a movie about, you guessed it, the Holocaust (they only
cancelled the project after Mel's recent drunken tirade - but had
that not happened, they would have given the right-wing anti-semite
air to do what he would to the Holocaust's memory, like has now been
done to 9/11's.)
The movie 'Path to 9/11' is essentially
an episode of the Rush Limbaugh show - that man Disney keeps trying
to sneak on the air as a "sports" guy. All the "shocking" lies
contained and the general story line are just what Limbaugh and
friends have been saying all along - on Disney-owned-and-operated
radio stations. Sunday night was no different from any other
Disney day, except they aired the right-wing lies on their TV assets
this time instead of just 24 hours-a-day on their radio assets.
And in case you didn't get that this is
a campaign project coordinated by and with the Republican Party,
after 2 days of blaming Clinton for 9/11, President Bush gets to pop
in and try and make himself look good with 20 minutes of free
airtime mid-movie. All paid for by ABC, no commercials
necessary.
So now the pattern of what is happening
is clear. But you are probably asking: why would Disney
do this? Why would they run this mini-series? Why would
they give up that much prime-time air without commercials at all?
Why would they then cut away during this series they didn't want to
interrupt to let the President interrupt? And, most
importantly, why would Disney/ABC run blatantly right-wing,
dishonest propaganda while being publicly called on it?
Cut to Howard Dean on "Fox News Sunday."
How does the head of the DNC, and, few
would argue, one of the most passionate, outspoken, and liberal of
the Democrats, respond to Fox News being not news at all but just a
GOP propaganda outlet?
By going on their "News Sunday" program
as if it were an actual news program. Giving it credibility.
Helping hold up the charade that it attempts to give voice to both
sides.
Yes, the Democrats cannot even manage to
boycott Fox "News." Dean goes on it. Hillary goes on it.
Kerry went on it. The DNC let Fox host three of the Democrats'
debates last election.
"...Five to ten years from now, after a
brief interlude of Democratic power, the GOP, led by a generation
raised to think its FOX-led propaganda machine is a normal thing,
will return to lead the nation into all out Nazism."
What exactly is going on that CBS pulls
mini-series if the right-wing wants but ABC ignores even the highest
level of Democratic protest? How is it Fox and MSNBC
right-wingers can lie regularly and not have consequence but Rather
gets one story possibly wrong and his career ends?
People want us here at The Moderate
Independent to cover what they think is the news - the coming
elections - and not the actual news. That won't happen.
The real news is that what will happen
this fall is irrelevant. That the right-wing has such control
of not just the media, but the nation, that it doesn't matter.
They used it to get a mentally incompetent man who was on the wrong
side of every issue, George W. Bush, elected by telling the nation,
starting two years before the 2000 election, that he was unbeatable.
They used it to fix the 2000 election. The used it to fix the
2004 election with unauditable e-voting on machines made by a Bush
campaign chair - Bush's Ohio campaign chair, the state that decided
the election - machines which, everywhere they were used, skewed the
vote compared to exit polls by 3-5 percent, always toward Bush.
I know, it's a little hard to get a
handle on mentally at first. A lot of information to take in.
To understand what the situation is,
start with what Eisenhower said in 1961, during his farewell
address:
Our military organization today
bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in
peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or
Korea.
Until the latest of our world
conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. But
now... we annually spend on military security more than the
net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new
in the American experience. The total influence -- economic,
political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every
State house, every office of the Federal government. We
recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must
not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very
structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we
must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of
this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted.
An election will not change a little
spoken fact: that basically every board room in America is
Republican run. That the entire media is
corporate-owned-and-operated. And, yes, guess who runs these
corporations? Boards. Guess who runs the boards.
We just answered that.
The nation is completely and totally
dominated, media-wise, corporate-wise, militarily, and
governmentally, and spiritually, by right-wing Republicans.
And no silly little mid-term will change that.
To top it off, nothing has been done to
fix the vote fixing problem. It is open knowledge that in
Mexico computer voting has been used in the past to fix elections.
We know ours are tamperable. And not only aren't the Democrats
doing anything to fix the media bias problem, they are are going on
even Fox News, helping the success of even the worst of the worst
offenders.
Like with "The Path to 9/11"
mini-series, nothing will get fixed or eliminated. Because
there are no consequences for crossing the left or middle.
There is nothing but consequence for not serving the right.
The right possesses wealth, from our military spending and their oil
assets, beyond what the entire rest of the nation combined could
ever drum up. The right controls and dominates virtually every
board room. The right dominates our religious institutions.
The right controls our military and intelligence communities.
So you really think a few more Democrats
- and corporately inclined ones at that - in office, is really going
to address any of these issues? Why don't you pose that
question to Howard Dean - though you likely would have to ask Fox
News to ask it for you, since that's where he goes to do his
interviews.
The Republicans dominate this country,
and nothing in the short term, no election or anything else will
change the situation. A mini-series like 'Path to 9/11' shown
on ABC when the nation is sick of the GOP might not have so much
effect. But it is a window into the dominating power they
wield, which, some day down the road, when the public forgets - as
they always do - and they manage to get the Democrats on the ropes
again, will make the ugliness of the post-9/11 era seem like a good
day for America.
Unless there is a movement to actually
and usefully address the issues of right-wing media and corporate
domination.
Hint: the Democrats might want to
start by not going on Fox News anymore, instead referring to it as
the non-news, propaganda outlet it is. And second - back up
your threats, and make Disney pay for what it has done.
On this, the holiest of American days,
the anniversary on 9/11, the GOP pissed on the corpses of our
brothers and sisters by using their memories to spread lies for
political purposes. If that is not a call for good Americans
to take serious action, nothing ever will be. The biggest of
the big Democratic and liberal blog guns have threatened action if
ABC aired 'Path to 9/11.'
Let's see if you actually will defend
your country.
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