John Edwards, our next Vice President

If you didn't get the opportunity to watch John Edwards as he accepted his Vice Presidential nomination last night, click HERE to do so.

If you prefer, you can just listen to the audio by clicking HERE.

Barack Obama and Ilana Wexler

If you watch or listen to just a few people's words from the Democratic National Convention, 2 that I would wholeheartedly recommend are:



Barack Obama is a very moving and exceptionally bright Democratic Senatorial candidate from the state of Illinois. He is the son of a Kenyan and Kansan and has a very compelling story to tell. Click HERE to watch him tell it. If you prefer, you can just listen to the audio of his speech by clicking HERE.



The other very short speech I highly recommend listening to was delivered by Ilana Wexler, the 12-year-old founder of the national "Kids for Kerry" organization. Click HERE to watch Ilana. If you prefer, you can just listen to the audio of her short speech by clicking HERE.

More Public Servants and Celebrities

Today, while again working at the Democratic National Convention here in Boston, I spotted a few more public servants and others who many are familiar with.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), who represents the 6th Congressional District of California covering all of Marin County and part of Sonoma County north of San Francisco deep in the heart of the famous California wine country and towering Redwood trees, took time to talk with a few of us volunteering at the Ritz Carlton-Back Bay. It wasn't a lengthy conversation, but she definitely left a really positive impression on me!

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was the first female to take this post, also took a few moments to say "hi, how are you?" as she headed out of the hotel after attending a Women's Luncheon there.

Here are some of the people I spotted today:



Above: Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1997-2001).



Above: Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Democratic Congresswoman from California.



Above: Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Democratic Congresswoman from Ohio.



Above: Rep. Henry Waxman, Democratic Congressman from California.



Above: New York State Democratic Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.



Above: Dave Barry, humor columnist from the Miami Herald.

I also saw Robert Novak, infamous conservative columnist.

Public Servant and Celebrity Sightings

On a lighter note...

While I was working my first shift at the Democratic National Convention here at the Ritz Carlton-Back Bay in Boston today, I spotted or came in contact with the following public servants and celebrities:



Above: James Carville, author, Democratic Political Advisor/Analyst, CNN Political Commentator and co-host of CNN's show, "Crossfire."



Above: Rep. John Lewis, Democratic Congressman from Georgia who fought for Black Civil Rights with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in the 1960s.



Above: Larry King, host of CNN's show, "Larry King Live."



Above: Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Congresswoman from California.



Above: Paul Begala, author, Democratic Political Advisor/Analyst, CNN Political Commentator and co-host of CNN's show, "Crossfire."



Above: Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., Democratic Congressman from Tennessee.



Above: Tom Delonge of the band, "Blink 182."



Above: Rep. Robert Matsui, Democratic Congressman from California.



Above: Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island, and son of Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.



Above: Mark Warner, Democratic Governor of Virginia.



Above: Anita Hill, infamous figure from the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.



Above: Gary Hart, former Senator from Colorado.



Above: David S. Broder, Washington Post Political Writer.

The Victims of War

Above: Iraqi child with extreme hydrocephalus, and defects of cerebral nerves.



Above: Iraqi child with extreme hydrocephalus, and defects of cerebral nerves.



Above: Severe malformation of face. This condition is sometimes refered to as 'Zyklopie.'

HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH?

These Iraqi children have had enough war, too!!

They are suffering from birth defects resulting from their parents' exposure to radioactive dust from exploded American and British shells manufactured with depleted uranium.

What is depleted uranium? It's essentially nuclear waste. While the term 'depleted' implies it isn't particularly dangerous, in fact, this waste product of the nuclear industry is 'conveniently' disposed of by producing deadly weapons.

Depleted uranium is chemically toxic. It is an extremely dense, hard metal, and can cause chemical poisoning to the body in the same way as can lead or any other heavy metal. However, depleted uranium is also radiologically hazardous, as it spontaneously burns on impact, creating tiny aerosolised glass particles which are small enough to be inhaled. These uranium oxide particles emit all types of radiation, alpha, beta and gamma, and can be carried in the air over long distances.

Depleted uranium was first used on a large scale in military combat during the 1991 Gulf War, and has since been used in Bosnia in 1995, in the Balkans war of 1999 and, most recently, in the 2003 Iraq war.

These children now have to live with our hasty decisions to load our weapons up with depleted uranium and bomb the countries they're born into. This is SERIOUS AND VERY REAL, people, and not even the top public official in the United States can admit our most recent invasion of Iraq was wrong. LOOK AT THESE PHOTOS--look at what our government's decisions do to people!

If you didn't previously experience even a shred of doubt about war and, more specifically, the 2003 war in Iraq, ask yourself what the children in the photos above think of war.

Don't Be A Sucker for Corporate Propaganda

Take a look at THIS SHORT VIDEO to learn a little bit about how to arm yourself against today's sophisticated propaganda, which is commonly called "public relations" or "advertising."

Learn how propaganda firms manipulate the news, information and public opinion in an attempt to shape your behavior and to ensure you consume and purchase as many "things" as possible.

Don't let these propaganda firms manipulate you any more! Click HERE to learn how it works and what you can do to arm yourself against propaganda.

Click HERE to learn more about John Stauber and The Center for Media and Democracy, which he founded.

New Movie: "The Corporation"

The following is a description of the new movie, "The Corporation," which recently hit movie theatres in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia after becoming an unprecedented box office hit in Canada:

One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives.

Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history.

In this complex and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.

Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.

Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, THE CORPORATION charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

In THE CORPORATION, case studies, anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Each illuminates an aspect of the corporation’s complex character.

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing; in addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are interviewed.



LEGAL “PERSON"

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal “person.“ Imbued with a “personality“ of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation’s rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth. But at what cost? The remorseless rationale of “externalities”—as Milton Friedman explains: the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third—is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES

To more precisely assess the “personality“ of the corporate “person,“ a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social “personality”: It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.

Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a “psychopath.”

MINDSET

But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the institution or the individuals within it be held responsible?

The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities—but none of that matters when they enter the corporation’s world. As Sam Gibara, Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, “If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you’d act differently.“

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?

MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS

A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange between himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell), his wife and a motley crew of Earth First activists who arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The protesters chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read, “MURDERERS.“ The response of the surprised couple was not to call the police, but to engage their uninvited guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about human rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea on their front lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize for not being able to provide soy milk for their vegan critics’ tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts of gas, making it one of the world's single worst sources of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell's environmental practices in the Niger Delta.

The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was: “How much is gold up?“

PLANET INC.

You’d think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.

Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred.

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT

The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide placing its clients’ advertising in every imaginable—and some unimaginable—media. One new medium: very young children. Their “Nag Factor“ study dropped jaws in the world of child psychiatry. It was designed not to help parents cope with their children’s nagging, but to help corporations design their ads and promotions so that children would nag for their products more effectively. Initiative Vice President Lucy Hughes elaborates: “You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying your products. It’s a game.“

Today people can become brands. And brands can build cities. And university students can pay for their educations by shilling on national television for a credit card company. And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular song “Happy Birthday.” Do you ever get the feeling it’s all a bit much?

Corporations have invested billions to shape public and political opinion. When they own everything, who will stand for the public good?

THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows’ metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people’s resistance to disease.

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida’s whistle-blower statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have had them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award. [For more information on the case see www.foxbghsuit.com]

DEMOCRACY LTD.

Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn’t understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy’s absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black’s recounting IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany—one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.

FISSURES

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put a corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government’s patent on Neem was revoked.

As global individuals take back local power, a growing re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere institutional version.

© Copyright 2003 - 2004, Big Picture Media Corporation MMIII

Click HERE to locate where THE CORPORATION is playing at a theatre near you!

Click HERE to watch the movie trailers.

The Corporation wins Audience Award at Sundance. Read More

Fox News: UNfair & UNbalanced

Fox News is clearly a propaganda machine for the radical conservative agenda, but it continues to use the slogan "Fair & Balanced." Finally, Fox News is being challenged.

Featuring "interviews with former Fox employees and leaked policy memos written by Fox executives," the film "Outfoxed" is "an obsessively researched expose" by Hollywood director Robert Greenwald, who shows how the network "distorts its coverage to serve the conservative political agenda of its owner, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch."

In one scene, Fox News's chief White House reporter Carl Cameron is shown hamming it up with President Bush, telling the president that his wife was campaigning for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

As LA Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote, Fox has become "the most blatantly biased major American news organization since the era of yellow journalism." The movie highlights a trend whereby the broader right-wing media is parroting the conservative line on everything from the war to the economy to coverage of the presidential campaign – leaving facts and objectivity by the wayside.

"Outfoxed" examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know.

The film explores Murdoch's burgeoning kingdom and the impact on society when a broad swath of media is controlled by one person.

Media experts, including Walter Cronkite, Jeff Cohen (FAIR) Bob McChesney (Free Press), Chellie Pingree (Common Cause), Jeff Chester (Center for Digital Democracy) and David Brock (Media Matters) provide context and guidance for the story of Fox News and its effect on society.

This documentary also reveals the secrets of Former Fox news producers, reporters, bookers and writers who expose what it's like to work for Fox News. These former Fox employees talk about how they were forced to push a "right-wing" point of view or risk their jobs. Some have even chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect their current livelihoods. As one employee said "There's no sense of integrity as far as having a line that can't be crossed."



Click HERE to watch the movie trailer.

Click HERE to learn more about "Outfoxed," or to purchase the DVD.

Massachusetts Legislature: Health Care is a Constitutional Right

Massachusetts has taken a HUGE step toward protecting the health of the citizens of this great Commonwealth as much as it protects automobiles registered here.

This has been one of the great insurance protection hypocrisies of our time: states that require compulsory auto insurance but have no such requirement for the basic human need for health insurance--they leave it to the private sector to protect its citizens' health. We all know how well THAT works given that 44 million Americans lack health insurance and 8 out of 10 of those 44 million people come from WORKING FAMILIES!

The role of government is to fill in the gaps that the private sector neglects, and health care has become one of those gaps. It's about time government steps in to do what the private sector is incapable of--to ensure adequate health care is a RIGHT, not just a priviledge.

Hopefully, more states will follow Massachusetts' lead. Here is a reprint of the story from the Boston Globe and boston.com:

Legislature Approves Health Care Coverage as a Constitutional Right

By Jennifer Peter, Associated Press, 7/14/2004 14:25

BOSTON (AP) Comprehensive and affordable health care coverage would become a constitutionally protected right for all Massachusetts citizens under an amendment overwhelming approved Wednesday by the House and Senate.

If approved by lawmakers again during the 2005-2006 session, the question would go before voters in November 2006. If successful, the state would then develop a specific plan for providing and paying for health care, which would again go before voters, in November 2008 at the earliest.

"We're trying to provide justice in health care so that every single citizen has a health care plan," said Sen. Steven Tolman, D-Boston. "It is the citizens of Massachusetts that we are all looking out for here."

Because the amendment was initiated by a citizens' petition, it required support from only 51 of the 200 state representatives and senators as part of the constitutional convention. The vote, however, was overwhelming with lawmakers supporting the right to health care 143-41.

The amendment states that "it shall be the obligation and duty of the Legislature and executive officials...to enact and implement such laws as will ensure that no Massachusetts resident lack comprehensive, affordable and equitably financed health insurance coverage for all medically necessary preventive, acute and chronic health care and mental health care services, prescription drugs and devices."

Following the vote, Senate President Robert Travaglini, D-Boston, adjourned the constitutional convention that began earlier this year with the much-debated approval of a ban on gay marriage that would simultaneously legalize civil unions if approved again by the Legislature during the next two-year legislative session and by voters in the fall of 2006.

The adjournment effectively killed amendments that would have led to the election of judges an initiative fueled by a high court decision that legalized gay marriage and made it more difficult for citizens to put policy questions on the ballot.

July Surprise?

According to The New Republic, several Pakastani official sources have confirmed that the Bush Administration has not only increased pressure recently on the Pakastani government to find and/or kill Osama Bin Laden and other "high-value targets" (HVTs) but has also set a deadline of July 26, 27 or 28 in which to do so.

Why July 26-28? That's when the Democratic National Convention will be in full-swing here in Boston.

According to an official with Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, a White House aide told Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July."

This despicable administration will stop at NOTHING to gain power. They see the Kerry-Edwards ticket increasing their lead on them and they don't like it. They'll do anything to try to ensure the reelection of the incompetent, bumbling Bush. Well, the gig's up, Shrub! The secret's out!

Keep your eye on this story. If nothing happens by the end of the Democratic National Convention, it doesn't mean we won't see an August, September or October surprise.

Click HERE to read the article from The New Republic.

In John Edwards' words...

“Today, under George W. Bush, there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life. One America -- middle-class America - whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America - narrow-interest America - whose every wish is Washington's command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a President.”

“I've been fighting this fight my whole life. For 20 years, I have sat in courtrooms across from these people. I have been an advocate for families and their children against armies of lawyers. I've won most of those battles. In the Senate, I fought for the Patients' Bill of Rights, against big HMOs, against big insurance companies. I fought to bring down prescription drug costs for every American, against big drug companies. I fought to do something about drug company advertising on TV when others weren't willing to do it. I fought to create energy independence in this country.”

“I believe the backbone of the American economy is the hard work, determination, and ingenuity of the middle class, not the insiders. I believe the way to grow the economy is to grow and strengthen the middle class, not shrink its size and add to its burdens. I believe the way a rich nation gets richer is by giving all its citizens the chance to get richer, not by only helping those like me who've already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. I believe the way to create new wealth is by rewarding work and responsibility, not coddling the privileged and going soft on executives, accountants, and analysts who squander other people's money.”

“For every man and woman who is worried about paying their bills; for every child who needs health care and a strong school to go to, and for every American who waits for the 1st and the 15th of every month -- together we will end this era of anxiety. We will replace the crass politics of greed and the current politics of rage with a new politics of opportunity.” (As Prepared, Des Moines, IA, 12/29/03)

Click HERE to listen to Edwards' speech in South Carolina. Real Audio Player Required

It's Kerry-Edwards!!

Kerry-Edwards for One America

Click HERE to learn more about how this dynamic duo will work for all of US, not just the wealthy and powerful.

Happy 4th of July

"War President," is a mosaic of Shrub made from the faces of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. The artist is identified only as "Joe."

Average American CEO

In 1980, the average American CEO made 42 times more than the average hourly worker.

In 1990, the average American CEO made 85 times more than the average hourly worker.

In 2000, the average American CEO made 531 times more than the average hourly worker!!!

"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

--Boston attorney Joseph Welch as he questioned Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin at the Army-McCarthy hearings, which was the beginning of the end of Sen. McCarthy's Communist witch-hunt rampage; June 9, 1954