Citizens Media Resource: October 2013

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Americans' Misinformation Level Threatens Democracy

Polls reveal the propaganda of misinformation about the Affordable Care Act has worked. Ignorance threatens democracy and progress in the U.S.

Read Justin Doolittle's story in truthout.

Nothing New about U.S. Thought Police Dogging Us

Living the Orwellian Life

Dorothy Comingore, who played the role of Kane's mistress in the 1948 movie Citizen Kane, would never have dreamed how the U.S. government would smear her after her portrayal angered publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Meanwhile, about the time Citizen Kane was released, George Orwell was finishing up his prescient novel, 1984.

While spying on and smearing innocent American citizens who have "the wrong kind" of political beliefs is nothing new, we have taken it to a new level that would have stunned Orwell himself.

Read Kathleen Sharp's story on truthout. "Living the Orwellian Life."

Wish List of Research

1. Who makes money on war? And on military buying, protecting and occupying? Yeah, we already know, but let's audit this with excellent research that lays out who profited and continues to profit from our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afganistan....or any other military activity and occupations, past or present. We have at least 823 foreign bases that the U.S. admits to; those are paid for by taxpayers, and the military bases are there principally to guard the oil for Exxon-Mobil. I believe we will find that taxpayers spend a huge amount on corporate welfare and subsidies to giant corporations, whose profits obviously are more important than the lives and limbs that are sacrificed in military actions. While we are at it, we should study who makes money from natural disasters, and how they get handed huge government contracts---in a no-bid rush, of course, since it is an emergency. There are capitalistic exploiters who feed off this as an industry; they are just not so long-established as what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex."

2. Economic impact of legalizing use and sale of marijuana. There's another economic stimulus and revenue raiser. It would be regulated for safety and legal for individuals and small outfits to grow and sell. With the chance for broad participation, and the exclusion of monopolistic takeover of the market, many Americans would have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs.