Silencing the opposition...
Today is the third Friday of January 2008 and another Iraq War Moratorium Day.
The war is a horrible waste of humanity and treasure - but things are actually much bleaker than any thinking citizen can contemplate.
In America, the Presidential "selection" process has just started. One might expect that citizens would get the opportunity to hear from all of the candidates - far right, middle, and far left - blue, green, orange, whatever, but that would be incorrect. Kucinich was excluded from the Iowa debates by the AARP - one of the nations largest insurance companies and since then Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have been silenced by the media giants - Disney and General Electric.
Both of these candidates offer ideas outside of the narrow corporate and party boundaries. And both were deliberately excluded from broadcasts over the people's airwaves with the major political parties helping to silence them. What, you say?
What about the group vying to be the leader of the "free world" - those who were allowed to speak and claim to want to be President? Did any of them speak out about an insurance company, a network, or their party excluding candidates from a discussion of ideas?
No... and the silence is deafening.
These are the "leaders" who want us to believe that they will actually "preserve and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic"?
Here was a golden opportunity for a civics lesson - a lesson in democratic leadership.
Candidates Obama, Clinton and Edwards said NOTHING about Kucinich being barred. Apparently they consider that maiming an opponent and disenfranchising his/her voters is a better path to victory rather than educating and explaining why he or she is the best candidate.
These actions speak louder than their words about how far we've come from being a democracy of free citizens.
I searched for news about this and Kucinich is right - you won't see it on the networks, you won't see it on public television, Amy Goodman wrote a piece about it but that just might be the total coverage. Why would we let the corporate owned mega-media decide who gets to speak to the American people?
For a far-ranging in-depth interview with Dennis Kucinich that will give you a small inkling of how different he would make our country if he were President read this post by Chris Hedges.
And...ho hum the totally asleep at the wheel masses - don't notice? Don't care? Don't what?
We the people or we the sheep?
The war is a horrible waste of humanity and treasure - but things are actually much bleaker than any thinking citizen can contemplate.
In America, the Presidential "selection" process has just started. One might expect that citizens would get the opportunity to hear from all of the candidates - far right, middle, and far left - blue, green, orange, whatever, but that would be incorrect. Kucinich was excluded from the Iowa debates by the AARP - one of the nations largest insurance companies and since then Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich have been silenced by the media giants - Disney and General Electric.
Both of these candidates offer ideas outside of the narrow corporate and party boundaries. And both were deliberately excluded from broadcasts over the people's airwaves with the major political parties helping to silence them. What, you say?
What about the group vying to be the leader of the "free world" - those who were allowed to speak and claim to want to be President? Did any of them speak out about an insurance company, a network, or their party excluding candidates from a discussion of ideas?
No... and the silence is deafening.
These are the "leaders" who want us to believe that they will actually "preserve and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic"?
Here was a golden opportunity for a civics lesson - a lesson in democratic leadership.
Candidates Obama, Clinton and Edwards said NOTHING about Kucinich being barred. Apparently they consider that maiming an opponent and disenfranchising his/her voters is a better path to victory rather than educating and explaining why he or she is the best candidate.
These actions speak louder than their words about how far we've come from being a democracy of free citizens.
I searched for news about this and Kucinich is right - you won't see it on the networks, you won't see it on public television, Amy Goodman wrote a piece about it but that just might be the total coverage. Why would we let the corporate owned mega-media decide who gets to speak to the American people?
For a far-ranging in-depth interview with Dennis Kucinich that will give you a small inkling of how different he would make our country if he were President read this post by Chris Hedges.
And...ho hum the totally asleep at the wheel masses - don't notice? Don't care? Don't what?
We the people or we the sheep?
posted by Mark Sherman at 1:01 PM
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