Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Commander AWOL FEATURED ARTICLES - The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003, Democracy Now! - "A Multigenerational Family of Fibbers" - History of the Bush Family, Democracy Now! QUOTE OF THE DAY  (From today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE) "I don't agree with what Michael Moore said that George W. was a deserter from the Texas Air National Guard. I think that's excessive. You certainly cannot prove it. But what seems almost beyond a doubt was that he was Absent Without Leave, and I think he should be renamed for the duration of this fighting in the Middle East, Commander AWOL. " - - Kevin Phillips (former Republican party electoral theoretician) KNOW YOUR HISTORY - FEBRUARY 18th 1873 -- US House of Representatives reports on "Credit Mobilers Scandal". Reveals the government allotted far more money than needed to subsidize the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. With those US taxpayer dollars, Credit Mobiler Corporation was set up to build the railroad, & stock in it was gratefully sold, at a fraction of its true value, to the congressmen & government officials responsible for providing the excess grants. 1961 -- England: 20,000 -- including 89-year old Bertrand Russell -- march against nuclear weapons & 5,000 stage a sit-down at Ministry of Defense in the Committee of 100's first public demonstration, London. The desperado Russell is jailed for 7 days. 1985 -- Feb 18-21 South African police kill 18 demonstrators at Crossroads, in Capetown, injure 200. Before the month is out, they will kill another 69 on 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre (1960). Also, some 1900 people are arrested in the US demonstrating against South African apartheid in last several months. RHINO HERE: The Rhino hasn't raved enough lately about one of his heroes. A woman whose undying courage and wise perspective keeps me going in these too strange times. Amy Goodman, & her partner Juan Gonzalez broadcast, "Democracy Now," the national, daily news program, to over 140 stations in North America. Rhino sez, "If you haven't tuned into Democracy Now today, you haven't heard the news!" They're pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., reaching the Pacifica radio community, National Public Radio stations, public access cable television stations, satellite television (on Free Speech TV, channel 9415 of the DISH Network), and shortwave radio and the internet. They've launched an expanded, 2 hour War & Peace Report providing trustworthy, independent news in this time of war. You can download each day's program in video or audio at their website: http://www.democracynow.org Support for the good work of Democracy Now can be sent via: https://store.democracynow.org/?pid=25 Position Available! Democracy Now! is looking to immediately hire a full-time TV news producer to work on our national grassroots newshour that airs daily on over 180 non-commercial radio and tv stations. Democracy Now! is based in lower Manhattan. Requirements: News production and journalistic experience, excellent camera skills and editing in Final Cut Pro. After Effects, Photoshop and web experience helpful. Salary negotiable, starting immediately. People of color and women strongly encouraged to apply. Please send resumes by email in text or PDF format to job@democracynow.org . Tuesday's Democracy Now! featured Russell Mokhiber of Corporate Crime Reporter and Robert Weissman of Multinational Monitor with their list (in alphabetical order) of The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003. The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003 Democracy Now!, Tuesday, February 17th, 2004 Bayer, Boeing, Brighthouse, Clear Channel, Diebold, Halliburton, HealthSouth, Inamed, Merrill Lynch, Safeway ...We look at a long list of corporate wrongdoers, and then we sort of subjectively choose what we consider to be the ten worst. The choices this year, the winners this year are Bayer, for pleading guilty to fraud charges and paying a $250 million fine. There were -- they also were involved in problems with their drug, Bacol, which allegedly caused a fatal muscle disorder. Boeing, was engaged in perhaps one of the grandest rip-offs in corporate welfare history, where they engaged in a tanker leasing arrangement, where instead of selling planes to the government, they leased them, and they made billions more than it would have cost to just sell them to the government.  Brighthouse, which is a company that has a Neurostrategy Institute that undertakes research to see how the brain responds to advertising campaigns. Clear Channel, which has radio stations all over the country and is consolidating its power, dominating the airwaves, pushing out -- pushing out alternative music and alternative views... READ IT ALL AT: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/17/160218 Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE also comes from Tuesday's Democracy Now! It's an interview Amy Goodman did last month with author and former top Republican strategist, Kevin Phillips, looking at the history of scandals & cover-ups that is the Bush Family Dynasty. Phillips became known in '69 with his book "The Emerging Republican Majority" which Newsweek dubbed "the political bible of the Nixon Administration." After Reagan's election in '80, Phillips was acknowledged as the Republican's principal electoral theoretician. In '82, the Wall Street Journal called him "the leading conservative electoral analyst -- the man who invented the Sun Belt, named the New Right, and prophesied 'The Emerging Republican Majority' in 1969." He writes prolifically & critically on the current state of the Republican Party. ("Wealth and Democracy" and "The Politics of Rich and Poor." His latest, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" examines how shrub's family has been consolidating power for 4 generations,& staging their ascent to national power even since World War I. This brief interview says so much, in so brief a time. 7:38:46 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - A Multigenerational Family of Fibbers "A Multigenerational Family of Fibbers" Fmr. Top Republican Strategist Examines the History of the Bush Family Transcript of Interview of Kevin Phillips by  Amy Goodman At The Berkeley Community Theatre, January 18, 2004 ...Let me start by talking about the question of "lying Presidents." Because obviously, it didn't start with the Bushes. We can all remember Linden Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton. These were major league prevaricators. That's a fact. But they were all first-generation fibbers. What we're looking at with the Bushes is a multigenerational family of fibbers. And they share aspects of this, and rationales and antecedents for the pattern. They have a distinct logic. From the beginnings of the Bush Dynasty, in the period around World War I, with two of the current President's great-grandfathers, what we have had is a family that has emerged over the years in close contact with what Eisenhower later referred to as the "military industrial complex," and very close relations with the intelligence community, and in a whole series of episodes that drew on the relations with armaments, arms dealers, intelligence, rogue banks, all kinds of things like that. And there's enough of a pattern that you would think that when the dynasty was about to become fulfilled, if that's the word, by the advent of George W., that this would have been worth some comment. Now, it's hard for me to make something funny out of this. It's kind of tragic. As I go through these five episodes quickly, you will notice that some of the people that I refer to, who were involved in blowing the whistle on them, were Republicans. Part of what I think is at stake here tonight is understanding that there's much more involved here than ordinary ideology. You're not in some respects talking as much about left and right as you might think. This is a development in American history that's rife with negative meaning, for democracy with a small d and for republicanism with a small r, for American traditions going way back...   THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW'S AT: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/17/1530204 "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 6:31:02 AM    comment

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