Redefined War On Terrorism

How do we pick and choose when we want to fight terrorism?
In the 90's, Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh laid a plot and successfully bombed at Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. Lots of women and children were killed. It was a direct attack on "The People" of the United States - striking at the very fabric of our Federal Government. The two seemed to have ties with right wing extremists in the United States, and preached a message of hatred toward the United States and our Government. They were clearly terrorists - terrorists representing an extreme anti-government hatred from within our own borders.
Clinton could have declared a "War on Terrorism", I suppose, and spent hundreds of billions of money that we didn't have on trying to create a myth of security. But that didn't happen for two reasons:

• I think he was wiser than that, and not reckless with trying to scapegoat one particular group in order to take our eyes off of the real problems that we should be working to correct.
• The right wing in this country, and the vast media empire that they control, would never have allowed it, as it would have struck at the heart of movements that they actually seem to support.

Then, the next big terrorist attack occurred. This time they didn't strike at "The People" of our nation as represented by our government and our government agencies. Instead they struck at the symbol of corporate greed and the emerging Plutarcy that is taking control of our nation. This time, the death toll was much bigger, and the financial impact was even bigger. This time, the terrorism didn't come from the right wing cancer within our own country, but instead from the right wing cancer within the Islamic world - extreme Islamic Fundamentalism. This time, the right wing within our own country was firmly in power, and they pounced on the event to galvanize the sort of "demonization" that they could rally people around. They did a great job of manufacturing a "War on Terror", and using this guise to rape the public treasury of hundreds of billions of money that belong to The People.
Sure, we may have created some short term security gains in our country as a result. We seem to have been able to continue to thwart potential threats that were related to the right wing Islamists. However, just last week, a nut-case of another brand successfully executed another terrorist attack in our country. This time, there was not the great loss of life as the terrorist flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas, but the symbolism was the same as the McVeigh terrorist attack on OKC. This was an attack directly on The People of the United States of America, as represented by our government.
And where is the right wing and their giant media machine in this country?
I know that it is hard to believe, but now, instead of supporting a War on Terror, they actually appear to be supporting the Terrorists. They have kept the story very low-key in their media, and they have actually begun to spin up support for the "underlying causes" of this attack.

Hard to believe, I know, but apparently true. I continue to see media pieces focused on the sympathy for the sorts of frustration with the actions of our government that would lead to an outcry like this bombing.

Now, I'm no great supported of the IRS, or many of the ways that our government operates. But our government continues to be YOU AND ME. When someone attacks us in this manner, it is an act of terrorism, plain and simple. Our response should be the same in all cases. If we think that the appropriate response to 9/11 is to spend a trillion dollars on invading a couple of countries, then why isn't an appropriate response to OKC and the IRS bombing to spend at least a few hundred billion inside our own borders rooting out and destroying the sort of anti-government rhetoric and fundamentalism that makes this sort of thing happen?
Let me be very clear - I do not thing that is an appropriate or productive response, just like I don't think that what we have done in Iraq and Afganistan is appropriate or productive.

My point is very clear - the right wing in this country continues to control the message that gets to us, and grows ever more effective in their "big brother" role of thought control. Nobody seems outraged at this terrorist attack, and even worse, the right wing media seems to have done a GREAT job of getting us all to think that maybe what happened was OK - maybe we should open our minds to having a little sympathy for the underlying causes of the attack - the sense of oppression and injustice that seems to have been there.
Where was this sort of open-minded thought process in 2001? Those who suggested it were crucified.
All three attacks were equally wrong. They all three deserve similar response on our part. The people who carried them out, and the people who supported them, should be prosecuted. Period. I sympathize with none of them. However, in all cases, we SHOULD look at the underlying causes, and do what we can to correct the real problem. More on that later...

I'm just saying...
We need to wake up and see what the right wing is doing to manipulate us. Big Brother grows more effective every day, and this little example demonstrates it so very clearly.

Campaign Finance Reform - A Simple Solution

The simplest solutions are often the ones that get overlooked. In the case of campaign finance reform, there is a very simple solution that could alter the face of politics in America, dramatically reducing the level of corruption and nearly eliminating the ability of big money organizations (corporations or unions or anyone else) to own the political agenda.

Which is exactly why COMA (Corporate Oligarchy Money in America) will do all that they can to assure that such a simple solution is never implemented. They will paint it with all of the normal paintbrushes of emotional fear that they have used for years. They will call it socialism, and if that doesn’t work, they will call it communism. They will hammer on these themes until enough people fall back into their place with the rest of the sheep, and let their COMA masters have their way yet again.
First, a starting place:

• We must reaffirm the notion that there is such a thing as the “Public Commons”. This was an important notion when our country was founded – the idea that each person had a right to stand in public and say whatever they wanted to say. If there were no Public Commons, then there could be no free speech, right? If all space were private, then landowners would control speech completely – they would decide what got said on their property. Unless you were a landowner – part of the aristocracy – you would not be able to speak freely. The right to speak freely was completely dependent on the existence of public space.
• At the time of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, electronic media obviously did not exist. The Public Square was the place where we expressed our freedom of speech, as well as the written word.
• As the electronic airwaves came into existence, there seems to have been an understanding that these airwaves were public property. In order to use these electronic waves, a person or organization must “lease” a particular space in the public square of the airwaves. They are granted the privilege to use that bandwidth for a particular period of time.
  So let’s stop there. It’s important. Can you imagine if our founding fathers had decided to lease the public commons, and allow the leaseholder to control and profit from speech in their little corner of the public square? It would be absurd. It would completely destroy the notion of free speech, quieting the voice of the individual completely, giving voice ONLY to those who were granted the privilege of controlling a portion of the commons.

So let’s stop there. It’s important. Can you imagine if our founding fathers had decided to lease the public commons, and allow the leaseholder to control and profit from speech in their little corner of the public square? It would be absurd. It would completely destroy the notion of free speech, quieting the voice of the individual completely, giving voice ONLY to those who were granted the privilege of controlling a portion of the commons.This sounds a lot like the feudal systems in Europe that our forefathers were trying hard to avoid, doesn’t it? There would be a small aristocracy who would be in complete control of speech, and through that control of all speech and communication, would further consolidate their hold on power, influence, and money.


I think that we understood this to some degree as print media became more influential, and electronic media began to explode. We put in place laws and limits on how much of this huge power could rest in any single hands. Radio stations, TV stations, newspapers, etc. needed to be owned locally rather than as part of big national corporate voices. We rightfully feared the ability of big barons of money and power to completely control the public conversations, and put strong limits to try and curb this.
Over the past 3 decades, these protections have been rapidly eroded. We have a very few mega-corporations who own essentially all of the media in our country. Is it any surprise that the explosion of corruption and corporate ownership of our represented officials has coincided with this handoff of the Public Commons to this small handful of the super-rich and super-powerful?
The first step in fixing this uber-corruption is to remove control of the election process from the hands of COMA, and put it back in the hands of the American People. This is the simple step:

• If I broadcast over public airwaves, I am granted this privilege by The People, as represented by the government. One of my responsibilities in order to maintain this privilege is that I must grant voice to people who seek to represent The People.
• It should be illegal for me to charge any fee when I fulfill this responsibility. I MUST provide free voice to people seeking election in my coverage area. There will surely be some definitions regarding where lines might be drawn, but the bottom line is that a big portion of my airtime is held by the public in order to express their right to free speech.
• It is illegal to buy time on the airwaves, and it is illegal to charge for that time.
• Period

Notice what this does? It takes money out of the equation completely. The big media giants will whine and cry about all the revenue we are keeping them from taking in. Tell me why this is the problem of The People? I run a small business, and there is no “Bill of Rights” that guarantees me revenue or profit as a business person. If Fox and NBC don’t like it, they can fold their tents and go home – I am absolutely positive that there are many other organizations who would LOVE to have the privilege to use their bandwidth, and will find a wonderful way to make excellent profit within these rules.
For us – The People – we take money completely out of the election process. Well, we don’t eliminate it, but we reduce it dramatically. Sure, this means the media companies take a huge hit – maybe we can find a better way to deploy those resources…
Pretty simple, right? I wonder why we never hear about it? Could it be that the way we hear about ideas is through Big Media, and this would be a crushing blow to Big Media?