Thursday, November 13, 2003

Take Heart! FEATURED ARTICLES - Move On Supports Democrats in Fight Against Ideologue Judges - An All-Nighter in the Senate - Billionaire Soros takes on Bush - Bill Moyers at the National Conference on Media Reform QUOTE OF THE DAY "Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch's empire to the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates - the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy's best friend." - - Bill Moyers  (Address to the National Conference on Media Reform, 11/8/03) KNOW YOUR HISTORY - NOVEMBER 13th 1974 -- Karen Silkwood murdered during her investigation of a Kerr-McGee Nuclear Power Plant in Oklahoma. All her documentation of safety violations disappear. 1982 -- Poland: Lech Walesa, former leader of the labor union, Solidarnooeæ (Solidarity), freed after 11 months internment during martial law & outlawing of Solidarity. Government declares Walesa "no longer a threat to internal security." RHINO HERE: Lest my consistent calling of your attention to the myriad travesties of the shrub gang get you depressed, please know that there are many fine people declaring their battles in the current war of ideas. Today I offer 3 such efforts: Move On's support of the courageous Senators currently performing round the clock protests of shrub's extremist judicial nominees, George Soro's commitment of millions of dollars to beat bush, and Bill Moyers' challenge to the recent National Conference on Media Reform to fix what's wrong with journalism. Take heart!   The battles are afoot. Move On Supports Democrats in Fight Against Ideologue Judges ...For months, Senate Democrats have been heroically holding out against President Bush's nominations of extremist judges to America's most powerful courts. We've supported these Senators in this fight. Now the right wing is trying to break our resolve. Despite the fact that the Senate has confirmed 168 of his nominees, the right wing is hopping mad that we've blocked just 4 of the most hard-core ideologues. We've insisted that only moderates be confirmed for these lifetime appointments to positions of incredible power over our lives. They're refusing this reasonable compromise. Republicans have scheduled 30 hours of debate in the Senate on this issue, beginning TONIGHT (Wednesday). They're hoping that our friends there, who have courageously supported filibusters* blocking the most extreme nominees, will fold under this pressure. We've got to buck up our friends in the Senate. Please join us in signing an important petition, cosponsored by the Democratic National Committee at: http://www.democrats.org/courts/moveon.html An All-Nighter in the Senate, Washington Post, 11/13/03 GOP Aims to Call Attention to Blocked Judicial Nominees http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34028-2003Nov12.html Billionaire Soros takes on Bush   Ousting president 'central focus of my life,' he says By Laura Blumenfeld, THE WASHINGTON POST, 11/ 11/03 George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush. "IT IS THE central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death." Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush... More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24179-2003Nov10.html 7:15:20 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Bill Moyers Keynote On Media Reform Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform by Bill Moyers, Founding Director, Public Affairs Television President, The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy November 8, 2003,  Madison, Wisconsin (Excerpts) ... What would happen... if the contending giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public's need for news second to free-market economics? That's exactly what's happening now under the ideological banner of "deregulation." Giant megamedia conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state. Consider where we are today. Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and - in defiance of the Constitution - from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly - the word is Barry Diller's, not mine - been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people's need to know. When the journalist-historian Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define "real news", he answered: "The news you and I need to keep our freedoms." When journalism throws in with power that's the first news marched by censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it... ...So what do we do? What is our strategy for taking on what seems a hopeless fight for a media system that serves as effectively as it sells - one that holds all the institutions of society, itself included, accountable? There's plenty we can do. Here's one journalist's list of some of the overlapping and connected goals that a vital media reform movement might pursue... IT'S ALL AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1112-10.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:46:12 AM    comment

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