I will have a lot more coming on this.

For now, here's the EFF's Deep Links page on this, and the YouTube video below will paint the scene a bit.

In the "No way, this can't be happening in America" department, we have good citizens David Ritz and Ed Falk being sued for saying the truth about Jerry Reynolds being a spammer on a usenet group over 6 years ago.

You can download a zip of all the legal docs here.

Here's how Mary Hodder explains it:

He's apparently filed (complaint here) SLAPP suits against two people, David Ritz and Ed Falk, who found that in the late 1990's, he was the largest spammer online (email wasn't so big then, but he had the largest porn spam operation on UUnet, with Sexzilla and Netzilla which were registered to Jerry Reynolds). And now he's using C&D's and these lawsuits to get whatever traces of the information that documents his spam and porn operation off of Google including search results and groups. He denies owning the site, btw, even though he was listed as administrative contact.

Reynolds has even gone so far as to subpoena Ritz' and Falk's computers and put a gag order on one, but the other one is out of jurisdiction (the suit is in North Dakota, though Falk lives and does business in CA).

Tomorrow, Ed Falk has to give a copy of all his computer harddrives to lawyers, who are still fighting over the jurisdiction issue. I think though that if this case went before a judge in CA, it would immediately be dismissed. All the evidence shows Reynolds was the SpamKing in 1999. Unfortunately, though, the case won't be resolved before Reynolds costs these guys thousands of dollars, and not before he has stopped at least Ritz from speaking out about the case.

The most recent lawsuits and C&D's have been filed by John Doe's or by Reynold's company, Sierra Corporate Designs.

The thing that is so despicable about this is not that he was once the biggest spammer and has moved on to other sorts of (legitimate?) business, but rather, that he would use the courts to have a few pieces of information about his old spam work removed, as if he were trying to rewrite history and squash people's rights to free speech. He was tracked as a spammer early in the 90's, but hit a peak in 1997 with porn spam, at least as far as UUNet / Usenet was concerned. He actually helped kill that community by turning it into a garbage heap for spam. And now he wants to evade responsibility for it. And in the process, cost Ritz and Falk a lot of money and time, defending the truth. Disgusting!

Read more about the lawsuit here.

Time constraints prohibit me from elaborating on this. Read for yourselves :-)
(Thanks, Kevin.)

Help Free The Berkeley 3!

11-17-03- Drop All Charges Against The Berkeley 3!

Free speech at Berkeley is under attack. Anti-war student organizers need your immediate help.

Call, email or write to: Asst. Chancellor John Cummins Office of the Chancellor 200 California Hall #1500 Berkeley, CA 94720-1500 jcummins@uclink4.berkeley.edu 510-642-7464

**Please CC your emails to the administration to: DefendBerkeley3@aol.com

Dean of Students Karen Kenney turned the clock back decades by approving sanctions against three Berkeley students for their part in a peaceful on campus sit-in on March 20 (for more details go to www.antiwarnetwork.org). The protest was organized by the Berkeley Stop the War coalition and involved 4,000 students at a rally with 400 participating in the sit-in. Rachel Odes and Snehal Shingavi face 20 hours of community service and a letter of reprimand permanently placed on their academic record. Michael Smith faces 30 hours of community service, plus a stayed suspension for one semester. Outrageously, Smith will be forced to submit to "anger management" at the university's infirmary. If he completes that "successfully," his suspension might be commuted to a letter of reprimand. This use of psychological treatment as punishment for a political activity recalls the classification of dissent as a "psychiatric disorder" in Stalinist Russia. Dean Kenney's actions mock Berkeley's reputation as a haven for freedom of speech and progressive political action.

Besides the obvious chilling effect on student's exercising their civil liberties on campus, the university continued its disregard for due process procedure in sentencing the students. For example:

*Chair of the Disciplinary Hearing Board Prof. Robert Jacobsen arbitrarily ruled that only 25 members of the Berkeley campus community could attend the hearing, despite repeated requests on the students' part that the hearing be open. At least 15 university police and private security guards barricaded the entrance to the hearing site to enforce this decision.

*Jacobsen missed the university-mandated deadline for issuing the disciplinary report.

*The university provides only unpaid undergraduates "advocates" to help with the defense. When the three students obtained legal representation on their own initiative, Jacobsen announced that he would allow the lawyer to participate only marginally in the hearings at his discretion as chair.

Following the hearing, the university announced that it would eliminate students' right to legal counsel so as to make the process more "educational." The Berkeley Daily Cal student newspaper editorial board correctly noted that: "To suggest students have something to learn from defending themselves already assumes their guilt." (http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13525)

Perhaps the most shocking component of the administration's prosecution stemmed from its conception of "progressive discipline." Under this theory, students who take part in more than one political protest face harsher and harsher punishments. So, for instance, the university based its argument to prosecute Shingavi, at least in part, on the fact that he was the "point person" for a previous protest conducted by the Students for Justice in Palestine. Although he was not arrested or charged in connection with that protest, his association with that organization and protest helped single him out for "progressive discipline." This legal theory of "guilt by association" led the Daily Cal to editorialize that "by picking out only three, the message sent from the university seems to be that free speech includes the right to participate in a protest, but not the right to organize one." (http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=13176)

As the Bush administration carries out unprecedented attacks on hard won civil liberties, the Berkeley administration is shamefully jumping on the band wagon. Now that Dean Kenney has rubber-stamped Jacobsen's verdict, the last appeal goes to Asst. Chancellor John Cummins. He will issue his final decision within 15 days.

Ironically, on November 20, Amy Goodman from Pacifa Radio's "Democracy Now!" will receive the Mario Savio prize for free speech at a mass meeting on campus. The Berkeley Stop the War coalition plans to work with her to make sure that Asst. Chancellor Cummins hears the support for the Berkeley 3 loud and clear. We urge everyone who cares about free speech, the right to protest and academic freedom to take immediate action, by calling, emailing or writing to Cummins this week to demand that he drop all charges against the Berkeley 3. Especially, the frightening and irresponsible use of psychological "treatment" as a punishment for political activity.

We thank you in advance for you solidarity,

Todd Chretien Committee to Defend Student Civil Liberties

PS Many of you generously sent contributions towards the printing of a full page ad in the Daily Cal defending the Berkeley 3. That ad ran on October 27 and we believe it played an important part in forcing the university to back down from even harsher punishments for the students. (It can be viewed at www.antiwarnetwork.org) Some of you may have had your checks returned to you. That is because after the university found out that the Berkeley Stop the War coalition was soliciting defense donations, they took the unprecedented action of freezing all mail to that on-campus address. We are sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you. If you'd like to re-send your contributions (or send one for the first time), you can send them to: BSTW PO Box 4001 Berkeley, CA 94704-0001

I just started reading this myself, but I'm about to go to dinner and I didn't want to risk forgetting to get this up tonight. So here it is.

Update 10/14/03 - recordings of this speech are now available. I've also re-archived them here.
(Thanks, Mark!)

Bill Moyers' Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform

that the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same. …David Broder is not Matt Drudge. “Meet the Press” is not “Temptation Island.” And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the media” speaks for us all.

That’s how I felt when I saw Oliver North reporting on Fox from Iraq, pressing our embattled troops to respond to his repetitive and belittling question, “Does Fox Rock? Does Fox Rock?” Oliver North and I may be in the same “media” but we are not part of the same message. Nonetheless, I accept that I work and all of us live in “medialand,” and God knows we need some “media reform.” I’m sure you know those two words are really an incomplete description of the job ahead. Taken alone, they suggest that you’ve assembled a convention of efficiency experts, tightening the bolts and boosting the output of the machinery of public enlightenment, or else a conclave of high-minded do-gooders applauding each other’s sermons. But we need to be – and we will be – much more than that. Because what we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.

Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public...

We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, non-profit organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville.

Here is the entire text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/111403E.shtml

'Our Democracy is in Danger of Being Paralyzed'
Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform
By Bill Moyers
t r u t h o u t | Address

Saturday 08 November 2003

Thank you for inviting me tonight. I’m flattered to be speaking to a gathering as high-powered as this one that’s come together with an objective as compelling as “media reform.” I must confess, however, to a certain discomfort, shared with other journalists, about the very term “media.” Ted Gup, who teaches journalism at Case Western Reserve, articulated my concerns better than I could when he wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education (November 23, 2001)

that the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same. …David Broder is not Matt Drudge. “Meet the Press” is not “Temptation Island.” And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the media” speaks for us all.

That’s how I felt when I saw Oliver North reporting on Fox from Iraq, pressing our embattled troops to respond to his repetitive and belittling question, “Does Fox Rock? Does Fox Rock?” Oliver North and I may be in the same “media” but we are not part of the same message. Nonetheless, I accept that I work and all of us live in “medialand,” and God knows we need some “media reform.” I’m sure you know those two words are really an incomplete description of the job ahead. Taken alone, they suggest that you’ve assembled a convention of efficiency experts, tightening the bolts and boosting the output of the machinery of public enlightenment, or else a conclave of high-minded do-gooders applauding each other’s sermons. But we need to be – and we will be – much more than that. Because what we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.

Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public. That’s a cliché, I know, but I agree with the presidential candidate who once said that truisms are true and clichés mean what they say (an observation that no doubt helped to lose him the election.) It’s a reality: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. Here’s an example: Only 13% of eligible young people cast ballots in the last presidential election. A recent National Youth Survey revealed that only half of the fifteen hundred young people polled believe that voting is important, and only 46% think they can make a difference in solving community problems. We’re talking here about one quarter of the electorate. The Carnegie Corporation conducted a youth challenge quiz of l5-24 year-olds and asked them, “Why don’t more young people vote or get involved?” Of the nearly two thousand respondents, the main answer was that they did not have enough information about issues and candidates. Let me rewind and say it again: democracy can’t exist without an informed public. So I say without qualification that it’s not simply the cause of journalism that’s at stake today, but the cause of American liberty itself. As Tom Paine put it, “The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.” He was talking about the cause of a revolutionary America in 1776. But that revolution ran in good part on the energies of a rambunctious, though tiny press. Freedom and freedom of communications were birth-twins in the future United States. They grew up together, and neither has fared very well in the other’s absence. Boom times for the one have been boom times for the other.

Yet today, despite plenty of lip service on every ritual occasion to freedom of the press radio and TV, three powerful forces are undermining that very freedom, damming the streams of significant public interest news that irrigate and nourish the flowering of self-determination. The first of these is the centuries-old reluctance of governments – even elected governments – to operate in the sunshine of disclosure and criticism. The second is more subtle and more recent. It’s the tendency of media giants, operating on big-business principles, to exalt commercial values at the expense of democratic value. That is, to run what Edward R. Murrow forty-five years ago called broadcasting’s “money-making machine” at full throttle. In so doing they are squeezing out the journalism that tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth; they are isolating serious coverage of public affairs into ever-dwindling “news holes” or far from prime- time; and they are gobbling up small and independent publications competing for the attention of the American people.

It’s hardly a new or surprising story. But there are fresh and disturbing chapters.

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law – padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution struck those weapons out of their hands. But they’ve found new ones now, in the name of “national security.” The classifier’s Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a silencer as a writ of arrest. And beyond what is officially labeled “secret” there hovers a culture of sealed official lips, opened only to favored media insiders: of government by leak and innuendo and spin, of misnamed “public information” offices that churn out blizzards of releases filled with self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally, just plain damned lies. Censorship without officially appointed censors.

Add to that the censorship-by-omission of consolidated media empires digesting the bones of swallowed independents, and you’ve got a major shrinkage of the crucial information that thinking citizens can act upon. People saw that coming as long as a century ago when the rise of chain newspaper ownerships, and then of concentration in the young radio industry, became apparent. And so in the zesty progressivism of early New Deal days, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 was passed (more on this later.) The aim of that cornerstone of broadcast policy, mentioned over 100 times in its pages, was to promote the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” The clear intent was to prevent a monopoly of commercial values from overwhelming democratic values – to assure that the official view of reality – corporate or government – was not the only view of reality that reached the people. Regulators and regulated, media and government were to keep a wary eye on each other, preserving those checks and balances that is the bulwark of our Constitutional order.

What would happen, however, 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.

Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. 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. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is a surer way to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalism than to be the boss.

If you doubt me, read Jane Kramer’s chilling account in the current New Yorker of Silvio Berlusconi. The Prime Minister of Italy is its richest citizen. He is also its first media mogul. The list of media that he or his relatives or his proxies own, or directly or indirectly control, includes the state television networks and radio stations, three of Italy’s four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, fifty magazines, the country’s largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet services. Even now he is pressing upon parliament a law that would enable him to purchase more media properties, including the most influential paper in the country. Kramer quotes one critic who says that half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have to. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian State to work to guarantee his fortune – or that his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of interest, bribery, and money laundering. Nonetheless, “his power over what other Italians see, read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming.” The editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, was asked recently why a British magazine was devoting so much space to an Italian Prime Minister. He replied that Berlusconi had betrayed the two things the magazine stood for: capitalism and democracy. Can it happen here? It can happen here. By the way, Berlusconi’s close friend is Rupert Murdoch. On July 3lst this year, writes Jane Kramer, programming on nearly all the satellite hookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch’s Sky Italia

So the issues bringing us here tonight are bigger and far more critical than simply “media reform.” That’s why, before I go on, I want to ask you to look around you. I’m serious: Look to your left and now to your right. You are looking at your allies in one of the great ongoing struggles of the American experience – the struggle for the soul of democracy, for government “of, by, and for the people.”

It’s a battle we can win only if we work together. We’ve seen that this year. Just a few months ago the FCC, heavily influenced by lobbyists for the newspaper, broadcasting and cable interests, prepared a relaxation of the rules governing ownership of media outlets that would allow still more diversity-killing mergers among media giants. The proceedings were conducted in virtual secrecy, and generally ignored by all the major media, who were of course interested parties. In June Chairman Powell and his two Republican colleagues on the FCC announced the revised regulations as a done deal.

But they didn’t count on the voice of independent journalists and citizens like you. Because of coverage in independent outlets – including PBS, which was the only broadcasting system that encouraged its journalists to report what was really happening – and because citizens like you took quick action, this largely invisible issue burst out as a major political cause and ignited a crackling public debate. You exposed Powell’s failure to conduct an open discussion of the rule changes save for a single hearing in Richmond, Virginia. Your efforts led to a real participatory discussion, with open meetings in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. Then the organizing that followed generated millions of letters and “filings”at the FCC opposing the change. Finally, the outcry mobilized unexpected support for bi-partisan legislation to reverse the new rules that cleared the Senate – although House Majority Leader Tom De Lay still holds it prisoner in the House. But who would have thought six months ago that the cause would win support from such allies as Senator Trent Lott or Kay Bailey Hutchinson, from my own Texas. You have moved “media reform” to center-stage, where it may even now become a catalyst for a new era of democratic renewal.

We working journalists have something special to bring to this work. This weekend at your conference there will be plenty of good talk about the mechanics of reform. What laws are needed? What advocacy programs and strategies? How can we protect and extend the reach of those tools that give us some countervailing power against media monopoly – instruments like the Internet, cable TV, community-based radio and public broadcasting systems, alternative journals of news and opinion.

But without passion, without a message that has a beating heart, these won’t be enough. There’s where journalism comes in. It isn’t the only agent of freedom, obviously; in fact, journalism is a deeply human and therefore deeply flawed craft – yours truly being a conspicuous example. But at times it has risen to great occasions, and at times it has made other freedoms possible. That’s what the draftsmen of the First Amendment knew and it’s what we can’t afford to forget. So to remind us of what our free press has been at its best and can be again, I will call on the help of unseen presences, men and women of journalism’s often checkered but sometimes courageous past.

Think with me for a moment on the reasons behind the establishment of press freedom. It wasn’t ordained to protect hucksters, and it didn’t drop like the gentle rain from heaven. It was fought and sacrificed for by unpretentious but feisty craftsmen who got their hands inky at their own hand presses and called themselves simply “printers.” The very first American newspaper was a little three-page affair put out in Boston in September of 1690. Its name was Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick and its editor was Benjamin Harris, who said he simply wanted “to give an account of such considerable things as have come to my attention.” The government shut it down after one issue – just one issue! – for the official reason that printer Ben Harris hadn’t applied for the required government license to publish. But I wonder if some Massachusetts pooh-bah didn’t take personally one of Harris’s proclaimed motives for starting the paper – “to cure the spirit of Lying much among us”?

No one seems to have objected when Harris and his paper disappeared – that was the way things were. But some forty-odd years later when printer John Peter Zenger was jailed in New York for criticizing its royal governor, things were different. The colony brought Zenger to trial on a charge of “seditious libel,” and since it didn’t matter whether the libel was true or not, the case seemed open and shut. But the jury ignored the judge’s charge and freed Zenger, not only because the governor was widely disliked, but because of the closing appeal of Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton. Just hear him! His client’s case was:

Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of Liberty, and. . . every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as Men who. . .by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for securing to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of our Country have given us a Right, -- the Liberty – both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power…by speaking and writing – Truth.

Still a pretty good mission statement!

During the War for Independence itself most of the three dozen little weekly newspapers in the colonies took the Patriot side and mobilized resistance by giving space to anti-British letters, news of Parliament’s latest outrages, and calls to action. But the clarion journalistic voice of the Revolution was the onetime editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, Tom Paine, a penniless recent immigrant from England where he left a trail of failure as a businessman and husband. In 1776 – just before enlisting in Washington’s army – he published Common Sense, a hard-hitting pamphlet that slashed through legalisms and doubts to make an uncompromising case for an independent and republican America. It’s been called the first best seller, with as many as 100,000 copies bought by a small literate population. Paine followed it up with another convincing collection of essays written in the field and given another punchy title, The Crisis. Passed from hand to hand and reprinted in other papers, they spread the gospel of freedom to thousands of doubters. And why I bring Paine up here is because he had something we need to restore – an unwavering concentration to reach ordinary people with the message that they mattered and could stand up for themselves. He couched his gospel of human rights and equality in a popular style that any working writer can envy. “As it is my design,” he said, “to make those that can scarcely read understand, I shall therefore avoid every literary ornament and put it in language as plain as the alphabet.”

That plain language spun off memorable one-liners that we’re still quoting. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” “Virtue is not hereditary.” And this: “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” I don’t know what Paine would have thought of political debate by bumper sticker and sound bite but he could have held his own in any modern campaign.

There were also editors who felt responsible to audiences that would dive deep. In 1787 and ‘88 the little New-York Independent Advertiser ran all eighty-five numbers of The Federalist , those serious essays in favor of ratifying the Constitution. They still shine as clear arguments, but they are, and they were, unforgiving in their demand for concentrated attention. Nonetheless, The Advertiser felt that it owed the best to its readers, and the readers knew that the issues of self-government deserved their best attention. I pray your goal of “media reform” includes a press as conscientious as the New-York Advertiser, as pungent as Common Sense, and as public-spirited as both. Because it takes those qualities to fight against the relentless pressure of authority and avarice. Remember, back in l79l, when the First Amendment was ratified, the idea of a free press seemed safely sheltered in law. It wasn’t. Only seven years later, in the midst of a war scare with France, Congress passed and John Adams signed the infamous Sedition Act. The act made it a crime – just listen to how broad a brush the government could swing – to circulate opinions “tending to induce a belief” that lawmakers might have unconstitutional or repressive motives, or “directly or indirectly tending” to justify France or to “criminate,” whatever that meant, the President or other Federal officials. No wonder that opponents called it a scheme to “excite a fervor against foreign aggression only to establish tyranny at home.” John Ashcroft would have loved it.

But here’s what happened. At least a dozen editors refused to be frightened and went defiantly to prison, some under state prosecutions. One of them, Matthew Lyon, who also held a seat in the House of Representatives, languished for four months in an unheated cell during a Vermont winter. But such was the spirit of liberty abroad in the land that admirers chipped in to pay his thousand-dollar fine, and when he emerged his district re-elected him by a landslide. Luckily, the Sedition Act had a built-in expiration date of 1801, at which time President Jefferson – who hated it from the first – pardoned those remaining under indictment. So the story has an upbeat ending, and so can ours, but it will take the kind of courage that those early printers and their readers showed.

Courage is a timeless quality and surfaces when the government is tempted to hit the bottle of censorship again during national emergencies, real or manufactured. As so many of you will recall, in 1971, during the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration resurrected the doctrine of “prior restraint” from the crypt and tried to ban the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times and the Washington Post – even though the documents themselves were a classified history of events during four earlier Presidencies. Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, and Katherine Graham of the Post were both warned by their lawyers that they and their top managers could face criminal prosecution under espionage laws if they printed the material that Daniel Ellsberg had leaked – and, by the way, offered without success to the three major television networks. Or at the least, punitive lawsuits or whatever political reprisals a furious Nixon team could devise. But after internal debates – and the threats of some of their best-known editors to resign rather than fold under pressure – both owners gave the green light – and were vindicated by the Supreme Court. Score a round for democracy.

Bi-partisan fairness requires me to note that the Carter administration, in 1979, tried to prevent the Progressive magazine, published right here in Madison, from running an article called “How to Make an H-Bomb.” The grounds were a supposed threat to “national security.” But Howard Morland had compiled the piece entirely from sources open to the public, mainly to show that much of the classification system was Wizard of Oz smoke and mirrors. The courts again rejected the government’s claim, but it’s noteworthy that the journalism of defiance by that time had retreated to a small left-wing publication like the Progressive.

In all three of those cases, confronted with a clear and present danger of punishment, none of the owners flinched. Can we think of a single executive of today’s big media conglomerates showing the kind of resistance that Sulzberger, Graham, and Erwin Knoll did? Certainly not Michael Eisner. He said he didn’t even want ABC News reporting on its parent company, Disney. Certainly not General Electric/NBC’s Robert Wright. He took Phil Donahue off MNBC because the network didn’t want to offend conservatives with a liberal sensibility during the invasion of Iraq. Instead, NBC brought to its cable channel one Michael Savage whose diatribes on radio had described non-white countries as “turd-world nations” and who characterized gay men and women as part of “the grand plan to cut down on the white race.” I am not sure what it says that the GE/NBC executives calculated that while Donahue was offensive to conservatives, Savage was not.

And then there’s Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary – and taking kudos for its glory days when it was unafraid to broadcast “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon” – the network’s famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee – and at a time when its parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible – CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. The chief honcho at CBS, Les Moonves, says taste, not politics, dictated his decision. But earlier this year, explaining why CBS intended to air a series about Adolf Hitler, Moonves sang a different tune: “If you want to play it safe and put on milquetoast then you get criticized…There are times when as a broadcaster when you take chances.” This obviously wasn’t one of those times. Granted, made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s – and even less authentic – granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is looking.

So what must we devise to make the media safe for individuals stubborn about protecting freedom and serving the truth? And what do we all – educators, administrators, legislators and agitators – need to do to restore the disappearing diversity of media opinions? America had plenty of that in the early days when the republic and the press were growing up together. It took no great amount of capital and credit – just a few hundred dollars – to start a paper, especially with a little political sponsorship and help. There were well over a thousand of them by 1840, mostly small-town weeklies. And they weren’t objective by any stretch. Here’s William Cobbett, another Anglo-American hell-raiser like Paine, shouting his creed in the opening number of his 1790s paper, Porcupine’s Gazette. “Peter Porcupine,” Cobbett’s self-bestowed nickname, declared:

Professions of impartiality I shall make none. They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense, when used by a newsmonger; for, he that does not relate news as he finds it, is something worse than partial; and . . . he that does not exercise his own judgment, either in admitting or rejecting what is sent him, is a poor passive tool, and not an editor.

In Cobbett’s day you could flaunt your partisan banners as you cut and thrust, and not inflict serious damage on open public discussion because there were plenty of competitors. It didn’t matter if the local gazette presented the day’s events entirely through a Democratic lens. There was always an alternate Whig or Republican choice handy – there were, in other words, choices. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, these many blooming journals kept even rural Americans amazingly well informed. They also made it possible for Americans to exercise one of their most democratic habits – that of forming associations to carry out civic enterprises. And they operated against the dreaded tyranny of the majority by letting lonely thinkers know that they had allies elsewhere. Here’s how de Tocqueville put it in his own words:

It often happens in democratic countries that many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately. All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.

No wandering spirit could fail to find a voice in print. And so in that pre-Civil War explosion of humanitarian reform movements, it was a diverse press that put the yeast in freedom’s ferment. Of course there were plenty of papers that spoke for Indian-haters, immigrant-bashers, bigots, jingoes and land-grabbers proclaiming America’s Manifest Destiny to dominate North America. But one way or another, journalism mattered, and had purpose and direction.

Past and present are never as separate as we think. Horace Greeley, the reform-loving editor of the New York Tribune, not only kept his pages “ever open to the plaints of the wronged and suffering,” but said that whoever sat in an editor’s chair and didn’t work to promote human progress hadn’t tasted “the luxury” of journalism. I liken that to the words of a kindred spirit closer to our own time, I.F. Stone. In his four-page little I.F. Stone’s Weekly, “Izzy” loved to catch the government’s lies and contradictions in the government’s own official documents. And amid the thunder of battle with the reactionaries, he said: “I have so much fun I ought to be arrested.” Think about that. Two newsmen, a century apart, believing that being in a position to fight the good fight isn’t a burden but a lucky break. How can our work here bring that attitude back into the newsrooms?

That era of a wide-open and crowded newspaper playing field began to fade as the old hand-presses gave way to giant machines with press runs and readerships in the hundreds of thousands and costs in the millions. But that didn’t necessarily or immediately kill public spirited journalism. Not so long as the new owners were still strong-minded individuals with big professional egos to match their thick pocketbooks. When Joseph Pulitzer, a one-time immigrant reporter for a German-language paper in St. Louis, took over the New York World in 1883 he was already a millionaire in the making. But here’s his recommended short platform for politicians:

1.Tax luxuries

2. Tax Inheritances

3. Tax Large Incomes

4. Tax monopolies

5. Tax the Privileged Corporation

6. A Tariff for Revenue

7. Reform the Civil Service

8. Punish Corrupt Officers

9. Punish Vote Buying.

10. Punish Employers who Coerce their Employees in Elections

Also not a bad mission statement. Can you imagine one of today’s huge newspaper chains taking that on as an agenda?

Don’t get me wrong. The World certainly offered people plenty of the spice that they wanted – entertainment, sensation, earthy advice on living – but not at the expense of news that let them know who was on their side against the boodlers and bosses.

Nor did big-time, big-town, big bucks journalism extinguish the possibility of a reform-minded investigative journalism that took the name of muckraking during the Progressive Era. Those days of early last century saw a second great awakening of the democratic impulse. What brought it into being was a reaction against the Social Darwinism and unrestrained capitalistic exploitation that is back in full force today. Certain popular magazines made space for – and profited by – the work of such journalists – to name only a few – as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Samuel Hopkins Adams and David Graham Phillips. They ripped the veils from – among other things – the shame of the cities, the crimes of the trusts, the treason of the Senate and the villainies of those who sold tainted meat and poisonous medicines. And why were they given those opportunities? Because, in the words of Samuel S. McClure, owner of McClure’s Magazine, when special interests defied the law and flouted the general welfare, there was a social debt incurred. And, as he put it: “We have to pay in the end, every one of us. And in the end, the sum total of the debt will be our liberty.”

Muckraking lingers on today, but alas, a good deal of it consists of raking personal and sexual scandal in high and celebrated places. Surely, if democracy is to be served, we have to get back to putting the rake where the important dirt lies, in the fleecing of the public and the abuse of its faith in good government.

When that landmark Communications Act of 1934 was under consideration a vigorous public movement of educators, labor officials, and religious and institutional leaders emerged to argue for a broadcast system that would serve the interests of citizens and communities. A movement like that is coming to life again and we now have to build on this momentum.

It won’t be easy, because the tide’s been flowing the other way for a long time. The deregulation pressure began during the Reagan era, when then-FCC chairman Mark Fowler, who said that TV didn’t need much regulation because it was just a “toaster with pictures,” eliminated many public-interest rules. That opened the door for networks to cut their news staffs, scuttle their documentary units (goodbye to “The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon”), and exile investigative producers and reporters to the under-funded hinterlands of independent production. It was like turning out searchlights on dark and dangerous corners. A crowning achievement of that drive was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the largest corporate welfare program ever for the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the world – passed, I must add, with support from both parties.

And the beat of “convergence” between once-distinct forms of media goes on at increased tempo, with the communications conglomerates and the advertisers calling the tune. As safeguards to competition fall, an octopus like GE-NBC-Vivendi-Universal will be able to secure cable channels that can deliver interactive multimedia content – text, sound and images – to digital TVs, home computers, personal video recorders and portable wireless devices like cell phones. The goal? To corner the market on new ways of selling more things to more people for more hours in the day. And in the long run, to fill the airwaves with customized pitches to you and your children. That will melt down the surviving boundaries between editorial and marketing divisions and create a hybrid known to the new-media hucksters as “branded entertainment.”

Let’s consider what’s happening to newspapers. A study by Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America reports that two-thirds of today’s newspaper markets are monopolies. And now most of the country’s powerful newspaper chains are lobbying for co-ownership of newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same market, increasing their grip on community after community. And are they up-front about it? Hear this: Last December 3 such media giants as The New York Times, Gannett, Cox, and Tribune, along with the trade group representing almost all the country’s broadcasting stations, filed a petition to the FCC making the case for that cross ownership the owners so desperately seek. They actually told the FCC that lifting the regulation on cross ownership would strengthen local journalism. But did those same news organizations tell their readers what they were doing? Not all. None of them on that day believed they had an obligation to report in their own news pages what their parent companies were asking of the FCC. As these huge media conglomerates increase their control over what we see, read, and hear, they rarely report on how they are themselves are using their power to further their own interests and power as big business, including their influence over the political process.

Take a look at a new book called Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering published as part of the Project on the State of the American Newspaper under the auspices of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The people who produced the book all love newspapers – Gene Roberts, former managing editor of The New York Times; Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism; Charles Layton, a veteran wire service reporter and news and feature editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as contributors such as Ken Auletta, Geneva Overholser, and Roy Reed. Their conclusion: the newspaper industry is in the middle of the most momentous change in its three hundred year history – a change that is diminishing the amount of real news available to the consumer. A generation of relentless corporatization is now culminating in a furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling and consolidating of newspapers, from the mightiest dailies to the humblest weeklies. It is a world where “small hometown dailies in particular are being bought and sold like hog futures. Where chains, once content to grow one property at a time, now devour other chains whole. Where they are effectively ceding whole regions of the country to one another, further minimizing competition. Where money is pouring into the business from interests with little knowledge and even less concern about the special obligations newspapers have to democracy.” They go on to describe the toll that the never-ending drive for profits is taking on the news. In Cumberland, Maryland, for example, the police reporter had so many duties piled upon him he no longer had time to go to the police station for the daily reports. But newspaper management had a cost-saving solution: put a fax machine in the police station and let the cops send over the news they thought the paper should have. In New Jersey, the Gannett chain bought the Asbury Park Press, then sent in a publisher who slashed fifty five people from the staff and cut the space for news, and was rewarded by being named Gannett’s Manager of the Year. In New Jersey, by the way, the Newhouse and Gannett chains between them now own thirteen of the state’s nineteen dailies, or seventy three percent of all the circulation of New Jersey-based papers. Then there is The Northwestern in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with a circulation of 23,500. Here, the authors report, is a paper that prided itself on being in hometown hands since the Johnson administration – the Andrew Johnson administration. But in 1998 it was sold not once but twice, within the space of two months. Two years later it was sold again: four owners in less than three years.

You’d better get used to it, concluded Leaving Readers Behind, because the real momentum of consolidation is just beginning – it won’t be long now before America is reduced to half a dozen major print conglomerates.

You can see the results even now in the waning of robust journalism. In the dearth of in-depth reporting as news organizations try to do more with fewer resources. In the failure of the major news organizations to cover their own corporate deals and lobbying as well as other forms of “crime in the suites” such as Enron story. And in helping people understand what their government is up to. The report by the Roberts team includes a survey in l999 that showed a wholesale retreat in coverage of nineteen key departments and agencies in Washington. Regular reporting of the Supreme Court and State Department dropped off considerably through the decade. At the Social Security Administration, whose activities literally affect every American, only the New York Times was maintaining a full-time reporter and, incredibly, at the Interior Department, which controls five to six hundred million acres of public land and looks after everything from the National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there were no full-time reporters around.

That’s in Washington, our nation’s capital. Out across the country there is simultaneously a near blackout of local politics by broadcasters. The public interest group Alliance for Better Campaigns studied forty-five stations in six cities in one week in October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were devoted to local public affairs – less than one-half of 1% of local programming nationwide. Mayors, town councils, school boards, civic leaders get no time from broadcasters who have filled their coffers by looting the public airwaves over which they were placed as stewards. Last year, when a movement sprang up in the House of Representatives to require these broadcasters to obey the law that says they must sell campaign advertising to candidates for office at the lowest commercial rate, the powerful broadcast lobby brought the Congress to heel. So much for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

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.

First, we have to take Tom Paine’s example – and Danny Schecter’s advice – and reach out to regular citizens. We have to raise an even bigger tent than you have here. Those of us in this place speak a common language about the “media.” We must reach the audience that’s not here – carry the fight to radio talk shows, local television, and the letters columns of our newspapers. As Danny says, we must engage the mainstream, not retreat from it. We have to get our fellow citizens to understand that what they see, hear, and read is not only the taste of programmers and producers but also a set of policy decisions made by the people we vote for.

We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, non-profit organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville.

We must fight for a regulatory, market and public opinion environment that lets local and community-based content be heard rather than drowned out by nationwide commercial programming.

We must fight to limit conglomerate swallowing of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and other information sources. Let the message go forth: No Berlusconis in America!

We must fight to expand a noncommercial media system – something made possible in part by new digital spectrum awarded to PBS stations – and fight off attempts to privatize what’s left of public broadcasting. Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America!

We must fight to create new opportunities, through public policies and private agreements, to let historically marginalized media players into more ownership of channels and control of content.

Let us encourage traditional mainstream journalism to get tougher about keeping a critical eye on those in public and private power and keeping us all informed of what’s important – not necessarily simple or entertaining or good for the bottom line. Not all news is “Entertainment Tonight.” And news departments are trustees of the public, not the corporate media’s stockholders

In that last job, schools of journalism and professional news associations have their work cut out. We need journalism graduates who are not only better informed in a whole spectrum of special fields – and the schools do a competent job there – but who take from their training a strong sense of public service. And also graduates who are perhaps a little more hard-boiled and street-smart than the present crop, though that’s hard to teach. Thanks to the high cost of education, we get very few recruits from the ranks of those who do the world’s unglamorous and low-paid work. But as a onetime “cub” in a very different kind of setting, I cherish H.L. Mencken’s description of what being a young Baltimore reporter a hundred years ago meant to him. “I was at large,” he wrote,

in a wicked seaport of half a million people with a front seat at every public . . [B]y all orthodox cultural standards I probably reached my all-time low, for the heavy reading of my teens had been abandoned in favor of life itself. . .But it would be an exaggeration to say I was ignorant, for if I neglected the humanities I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer or a midwife.

We need some of that worldly wisdom in our newsrooms. Let’s figure out how to attract youngsters who have acquired it.

And as for those professional associations of editors they might remember that in union there is strength. One journalist alone can’t extract from an employer a commitment to let editors and not accountants choose the appropriate subject matter for coverage. But what if news councils blew the whistle on shoddy or cowardly managements? What if foundations gave magazines such as the Columbia Journalism Review sufficient resources to spread their stories of journalistic bias, failure or incompetence? What if entire editorial departments simply refused any longer to quote anonymous sources – or give Kobe Bryant’s trial more than the minimal space it rates by any reasonable standard – or to run stories planted by the Defense Department and impossible, for alleged security reasons, to verify? What if a professional association backed them to the hilt? Or required the same stance from all its members? It would take courage to confront powerful ownerships that way. But not as much courage as is asked of those brave journalists in some countries who face the dungeon, the executioner or the secret assassin for speaking out.

All this may be in the domain of fantasy. And then again, maybe not. What I know to be real is that we are in for the fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism; the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals. Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.”

That’s the flame of truth your movement must carry forward. I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

Looks like there will be a whole lot of political statements being misinterpreted as death threats if all you gotta do is hold up a "No War For Oil" sign to qualify.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be there tomorrow myself yet, when the Shrubbery himself pulls into Burlingame for an instant tomorrow afternoon (morning?), but I think I can speak for a lot of other people when I say:

'See you tomorrow, Mr. "President." No death threats. No violence. Just a whole lotta love for each other and our country. Something you probably wouldn't understand...'

S.C. Man Charged with Threatening the President’s Safety For Holding Protest Sign
On the Democracy Now website.

Real Stream Including an Interview With Britt Bursey

Brett Bursey goes on trial today for simply holding a sign that read “No War For Oil” outside a President Bush speech last October. Bursey is being charged with the federal crime of threatening the president’s safety.

He is believed to be the first protester to ever be arrested on these charges for simply holding a sign.

He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Back in October he was originally charged by the state with trespassing at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. But the state dropped the trespassing charges perhaps because they knew the courts would rule in Bursey’s favor.

In fact they did 33 years ago when he was also arrested at the same airport for protesting Richard Nixon. He was charged with trespassing. Bursey challeneged his arrest and the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

But much has changed since then.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/24/1459249

Democracy Now!

Join our mailing list.

Archives

Search for

Browse archives by date
The War & Peace Report
Invasion of Iraq
Iraq Occupation
Eyewitness Reports
Civilian Casualties
Iraqi Voices
Peace Movement
Media Criticism
Weapons of War
Arming of Iraq
Key Players
Oil
Int'l Response
United Nations
Women and War
Palestine/Israel
Syria
Iran
Afghanistan
North Korea
Immigrants
Civil Liberties
Surveillance
Youth Voices
Art and Politics
Economy
Labor
Corporate Crime
Campaigns/Voting
The 2000 Election
Police Brutality
Prisons
Political Prisoners
Affirmative Action
Abortion
Globalization
Environment
Africa
Asia-Pacific
Europe
Latin America
Caribbean
Middle East

Tuesday, June 24th, 2003
S.C. Man Charged with Threatening the President’s Safety For Holding Protest Sign

Listen to: Segment || Show
Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream
Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend
Brett Bursey goes on trial today for simply holding a sign that read “No War For Oil” outside a President Bush speech last October. Bursey is being charged with the federal crime of threatening the president’s safety.

He is believed to be the first protester to ever be arrested on these charges for simply holding a sign.

He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Back in October he was originally charged by the state with trespassing at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. But the state dropped the trespassing charges perhaps because they knew the courts would rule in Bursey’s favor.

In fact they did 33 years ago when he was also arrested at the same airport for protesting Richard Nixon. He was charged with trespassing. Bursey challeneged his arrest and the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

But much has changed since then.

After the state dropped the trespassing charges the local US Attorney, Strom Thurmond Jr., filed the much more severe charges of threatening the safety of the president.

The federal charges have not sat well with some members of Congress.

A few weeks ago Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank and 10 other members of Congress wrote a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft condemning the arrest. They wrote: “This prosecution smacks of the use of the Sedition Acts two hundred years ago to protect the President from political discomfort. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. We urge you to drop this prosecution based so clearly on the political views being expressed by the individual who is being prosecuted.”

Today Brett Bursey goes to trial. We spoke to him earlier this morning.

* Brett Bursey, South Carolina man charged with threatening the president’s safety for holding up a sign that read “No War For Oil” outside a Bush fundraiser.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (800) 881-2359.

Here's a thoughtful piece by Jon Stewart that he wrote up when he realized that if you combine the Shrub's new policy of continuing to relax the last 30 years of EPA regulations with last week's (undoubtedly unconstitutional) Amendment that was passed in one of the Houses banning burning the flag as a form of political speech, it would appear that the flag is the only thing you aren't allowed to burn in the U.S.

Flag burning: A Jon Stewart Perspective (Small - 7 MB)

The Daily Show (The best news on television.)

Bruce Springsteen has spoken out in support of the Dixie Chicks!

And he did it using his blog (of sorts):

Bruce On The Dixie Chicks

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American.

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

I don't know what happens next, but I do want to add my voice to those who think that the Dixie Chicks are getting a raw deal, and an un-American one to boot. I send them my support.

Bruce Springsteen

I'm still not sure if this is a lesson in Free Speech or HR/Public Relations...

I mean, sure, this isn't "right," in terms of it not being "fair" that things happen this way. But it does seem like it could be expected when you criticize or say anything that could be construed as remotely negative about your principal funder in the press.

Don't sweat it Theo. You didn't want any of their dirty money anyway :-)

(It's not like anything useful ever comes out of that DARPA place anyway...except for the Internet itself, I suppose...)

It does mean, of course, that now we'll have to find some alternative funding so that the secure, free operating system that Theo was going to build for DARPA can still be built. Any ideas people?

Peace Talk Halts Defense OS Job
By the Associated Press, as reprinted in Wired News.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency halted the contract less than two weeks after The Globe and Mail of Toronto published a story in which programmer Theo de Raadt was quoted as saying he was "uncomfortable" about the funding source.

"I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built," de Raadt told the newspaper.

Within a few days, de Raadt said he received an e-mail from Jonathan Smith, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the grant's lead researcher, expressing discomfort over the statements.

On Thursday, Smith notified de Raadt of the cancellation.

"A tenured professor was telling me not to exercise my freedom of speech," de Raadt said.

Smith declined to comment on the matter, and DARPA did not return telephone messages Friday. De Raadt's suspicions about the cancellation could not be confirmed.

The $2.3 million grant had funded security improvements to the OpenBSD operating system since 2001 as well as related projects.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58553,00.html

Peace Talk Halts Defense OS Job

Associated Press Page 1 of 1
02:54 PM Apr. 18, 2003 PT

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The U.S. military's research agency cut off grant money for helping to develop a secure, free operating system after a top programmer made anti-war statements to a major newspaper.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency halted the contract less than two weeks after The Globe and Mail of Toronto published a story in which programmer Theo de Raadt was quoted as saying he was "uncomfortable" about the funding source.

"I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn't get built," de Raadt told the newspaper.

Within a few days, de Raadt said he received an e-mail from Jonathan Smith, a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the grant's lead researcher, expressing discomfort over the statements.

On Thursday, Smith notified de Raadt of the cancellation.

"A tenured professor was telling me not to exercise my freedom of speech," de Raadt said.

Smith declined to comment on the matter, and DARPA did not return telephone messages Friday. De Raadt's suspicions about the cancellation could not be confirmed.

The $2.3 million grant had funded security improvements to the OpenBSD operating system since 2001 as well as related projects.

OpenBSD, a variation of Unix designed for use on servers, is touted as so secure that its default installation has had only one bug in the past seven years.

Thousands of copies of OpenBSD have been downloaded in the past six months. It's not clear, however, how many are in use.

De Raadt estimates about 85 percent of the DARPA grant has been spent, with about $1 million being used to pay for OpenBSD developers. Much of the work has been handled by a team of 80 unpaid volunteers.

Another $500,000 of the money funded the work of United Kingdom-based researchers on a related project called OpenSSL, which is used to encrypt data.

DARPA, which oversees research activities for the Pentagon, is best known for developing the network that evolved into the Internet.

End of story

This is going on in Minnesota right now, courtesy of Governer Tim Pawlenty (R).

Hey, I get it. This is great. If legislation like this becomes the norm, only rich people will be able to afford to assemble in public places and/or perform acts of civil disobedience.

Pawlenty wants antiwar protesters to pay arrest costs
By Patricia Lopez and Sarah T. Williams for the Star Tribune.

With protests against the war continuing and arrests of demonstrators mounting, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he wants those arrested to pay the law-enforcement costs they incur or face prosecution.

Press secretary Leslie Kupchella said that "effective immediately," Pawlenty wants judges to begin ordering restitution for the costs of arrest. While he does not have the authority to require judges to do so, he is considering proposing legislation that would require such restitution.

Kupchella said Pawlenty recognizes that charges against protesters typically are dismissed. "He would like that dismissal contingent on restitution," she said. "And he would like to see it happen effective immediately."

Kupchella said the administration has not determined the extent to which protesters should be charged -- whether, for instance, fees would cover the officer's time and the cost of booking and possible prosecution. However, she said, Pawlenty would like to keep the costs "nominal," perhaps $200.

"He thinks that is perfectly reasonable," Kupchella said. "The governor recognizes the rights of people to protest lawfully and have their own opinions. But when they go beyond that and break the law, they should pay the cost."

Kupchella said Pawlenty has found the diversion of law enforcers to protests "very frustrating."

Some members of the legal community expressed skepticism about the proposal's constitutionality, and one recent protester called it an infringement on free speech.

Karen Redleaf, a St. Paul war protester who was arrested twice this week at antiwar demonstrations, called Pawlenty's proposal "really shocking and distressing."

Redleaf, 39, a former stock analyst, said such a move would limit constitutionally protected free speech to those who could afford the price of arrest and prosecution.

"We do this to get news coverage for our views," she said. "They're not charging rapists for the costs of arresting and prosecuting them. We're not hurting anyone. We're just trying to make statements that need to be made."

Retired Hennepin County District Judge J. Bruce Hartigan was dubious about the idea.

"Lots of luck," he said. "It's never going to stand the test of appeal. . . . You're talking about the delicate balance between the First Amendment and governmental power. Chances are [such a fine] would be looked at as an improper infringement on the right to free speech and the right to assemble."

Hartigan, who retired last year after 14 years on the bench and who said he has represented and sentenced dozens of protesters, said the plan also could backfire.

"Let's say I'm a protester. I get together with a bunch of protesters and we go out and get arrested. We get in front of a judge. The judge orders restitution. We say no. We don't pay it. We'll all just go to jail and spend more of the governor's money."

Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, also had constitutional concerns.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/3787447.html

Pawlenty wants antiwar protesters to pay arrest costs
Patricia Lopez and Sarah T. Williams, Star Tribune

Published March 28, 2003
PAWL28

With protests against the war continuing and arrests of demonstrators mounting, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he wants those arrested to pay the law-enforcement costs they incur or face prosecution.

Press secretary Leslie Kupchella said that "effective immediately," Pawlenty wants judges to begin ordering restitution for the costs of arrest. While he does not have the authority to require judges to do so, he is considering proposing legislation that would require such restitution.

Kupchella said Pawlenty recognizes that charges against protesters typically are dismissed. "He would like that dismissal contingent on restitution," she said. "And he would like to see it happen effective immediately."

Kupchella said the administration has not determined the extent to which protesters should be charged -- whether, for instance, fees would cover the officer's time and the cost of booking and possible prosecution. However, she said, Pawlenty would like to keep the costs "nominal," perhaps $200.

"He thinks that is perfectly reasonable," Kupchella said. "The governor recognizes the rights of people to protest lawfully and have their own opinions. But when they go beyond that and break the law, they should pay the cost."

Kupchella said Pawlenty has found the diversion of law enforcers to protests "very frustrating."

Some members of the legal community expressed skepticism about the proposal's constitutionality, and one recent protester called it an infringement on free speech.

Karen Redleaf, a St. Paul war protester who was arrested twice this week at antiwar demonstrations, called Pawlenty's proposal "really shocking and distressing."

Redleaf, 39, a former stock analyst, said such a move would limit constitutionally protected free speech to those who could afford the price of arrest and prosecution.

"We do this to get news coverage for our views," she said. "They're not charging rapists for the costs of arresting and prosecuting them. We're not hurting anyone. We're just trying to make statements that need to be made."

Retired Hennepin County District Judge J. Bruce Hartigan was dubious about the idea.

"Lots of luck," he said. "It's never going to stand the test of appeal. . . . You're talking about the delicate balance between the First Amendment and governmental power. Chances are [such a fine] would be looked at as an improper infringement on the right to free speech and the right to assemble."

Hartigan, who retired last year after 14 years on the bench and who said he has represented and sentenced dozens of protesters, said the plan also could backfire.

"Let's say I'm a protester. I get together with a bunch of protesters and we go out and get arrested. We get in front of a judge. The judge orders restitution. We say no. We don't pay it. We'll all just go to jail and spend more of the governor's money."

Charles Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union, also had constitutional concerns.

"The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that law enforcement in regard to First Amendment activities must be content neutral," he said. "If he [Pawlenty] wants to arrest protesters and charge them, he must also be prepared to be equally aggressive with people marching in support of the government's actions -- whatever the cause."

Pawlenty Communications Director Dan Wolter said Pawlenty "absolutely" would want restitution applied to any protester, no matter what the cause.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has sparked worldwide protests that occasionally have turned violent. Local protests have remained peaceful, although arrests are on the rise.

Twenty-eight protesters were arrested Monday for refusing to leave U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's St. Paul office.

On Tuesday, 68 were arrested for blocking entrances to the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. About a third of those demonstrators resorted to standard civil disobedience tactics, going limp when approached by police. Police then had to drag the protesters from the courthouse entrances. The protesters were handcuffed, taken to the Hennepin County jail and charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor.

Redleaf was arrested both times and said she already faces fines of as much as several hundred dollars.

Other states also are turning up the heat. In Washington, Republican Sen. Bill Finkbeiner has proposed legislation that would boost fines from $1,000 to $5,000 for intentional "disruption of traffic by pedestrians." And in California, a district attorney announced that he would prosecute as many as possible of the nearly 2,300 protesters arrested in San Francisco in the past week.

Oligarchy:

1. Government by a few, especially by a small faction of persons or families.
2. Those making up such a government.
2. A state governed by a few persons.

Or perhaps the quid pro quo is more narrowly focused. Experienced Bushologists let out a collective "Aha!" when Clear Channel was revealed to be behind the pro-war rallies, because the company's top management has a history with George W. Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel's chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university's endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but a good guess is that we're now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration "government and business have melded into one big `us.' " On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: "Scores of midlevel appointees . . . now oversee industries for which they once worked." We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn't we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians — by, for example, organizing "grass roots" rallies on their behalf?

Here is the entire text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/25/opinion/25KRUG.html

The New York Times The New York Times Opinion March 25, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Channels of Influence
By PAUL KRUGMAN

By and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. One of the most striking took place after Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, criticized President Bush: a crowd gathered in Louisiana to watch a 33,000-pound tractor smash a collection of Dixie Chicks CD's, tapes and other paraphernalia. To those familiar with 20th-century European history it seemed eerily reminiscent of. . . . But as Sinclair Lewis said, it can't happen here.

Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry — with close links to the Bush administration.

The CD-smashing rally was organized by KRMD, part of Cumulus Media, a radio chain that has banned the Dixie Chicks from its playlists. Most of the pro-war demonstrations around the country have, however, been organized by stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, a behemoth based in San Antonio that controls more than 1,200 stations and increasingly dominates the airwaves.

The company claims that the demonstrations, which go under the name Rally for America, reflect the initiative of individual stations. But this is unlikely: according to Eric Boehlert, who has written revelatory articles about Clear Channel in Salon, the company is notorious — and widely hated — for its iron-fisted centralized control.

Until now, complaints about Clear Channel have focused on its business practices. Critics say it uses its power to squeeze recording companies and artists and contributes to the growing blandness of broadcast music. But now the company appears to be using its clout to help one side in a political dispute that deeply divides the nation.

Why would a media company insert itself into politics this way? It could, of course, simply be a matter of personal conviction on the part of management. But there are also good reasons for Clear Channel — which became a giant only in the last few years, after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed many restrictions on media ownership — to curry favor with the ruling party. On one side, Clear Channel is feeling some heat: it is being sued over allegations that it threatens to curtail the airplay of artists who don't tour with its concert division, and there are even some politicians who want to roll back the deregulation that made the company's growth possible. On the other side, the Federal Communications Commission is considering further deregulation that would allow Clear Channel to expand even further, particularly into television.

Or perhaps the quid pro quo is more narrowly focused. Experienced Bushologists let out a collective "Aha!" when Clear Channel was revealed to be behind the pro-war rallies, because the company's top management has a history with George W. Bush. The vice chairman of Clear Channel is Tom Hicks, whose name may be familiar to readers of this column. When Mr. Bush was governor of Texas, Mr. Hicks was chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company, called Utimco, and Clear Channel's chairman, Lowry Mays, was on its board. Under Mr. Hicks, Utimco placed much of the university's endowment under the management of companies with strong Republican Party or Bush family ties. In 1998 Mr. Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers in a deal that made Mr. Bush a multimillionaire.

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but a good guess is that we're now seeing the next stage in the evolution of a new American oligarchy. As Jonathan Chait has written in The New Republic, in the Bush administration "government and business have melded into one big `us.' " On almost every aspect of domestic policy, business interests rule: "Scores of midlevel appointees . . . now oversee industries for which they once worked." We should have realized that this is a two-way street: if politicians are busy doing favors for businesses that support them, why shouldn't we expect businesses to reciprocate by doing favors for those politicians — by, for example, organizing "grass roots" rallies on their behalf?

What makes it all possible, of course, is the absence of effective watchdogs. In the Clinton years the merest hint of impropriety quickly blew up into a huge scandal; these days, the scandalmongers are more likely to go after journalists who raise questions. Anyway, don't you know there's a war on?

Is this for real? Is South Carolina trying to force the Dixie Chicks to show up for a free concert so they can be booed and hissed by their former military fans.

I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked. Surely this is unconstitutional.

Don't do it girls! Start your tour from somewhere else, if need be. Sounds like they're crazy in South Carolina anyway.

You could probably sell out here in San Francisco for a week straight.

We'll stand behind you and your constitutional right to speak your mind!

(And you're pretty good at playing them instruments too.)

(S.C. State) House Resolution H 3818

A HOUSE RESOLUTION

TO REQUEST THAT THE DIXIE CHICKS APOLOGIZE TO THE MILITARY FAMILIES IN THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE UNITED STATES FOR THE UNPATRIOTIC AND UNNECESSARY COMMENTS MADE BY THEIR LEAD SINGER BEFORE THEY BEGIN THEIR UNITED STATES TOUR ON MAY 1, 2003, IN GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND TO REQUEST THAT THEY PERFORM A FREE CONCERT FOR TROOPS AND MILITARY FAMILIES IN SOUTH CAROLINA AS AN EXPRESSION OF THEIR SINCERITY.

Whereas, the Dixie Chicks are a popular and influential country music group from Texas; and

Whereas, before a recent London concert, Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, said that she was ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas; and

Whereas, members of the United States Armed Forces are outraged at the anti-American sentiment expressed by the Dixie Chicks; and

Whereas, there is a large military presence in the State of South Carolina, whom the Dixie Chicks have offended by their comments; and

Whereas, before the Dixie Chicks kick off their United States tour in Greenville on May 1, 2003, the House of Representatives and the people of South Carolina request that Natalie Maines apologize and that the group perform a free concert for the South Carolina servicemen and women and their families.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.lpitr.state.sc.us/sess115_2003-2004/bills/3818.htm

South Carolina General Assembly
115th Session, 2003-2004

Download This Bill in Microsoft Word97 format

Indicates Matter Stricken
Indicates New Matter

H. 3818

STATUS INFORMATION

House Resolution
Sponsors: Rep. Ceips
Document Path: l:\council\bills\bbm\9577sl03.doc

Introduced in the House on March 19, 2003
Adopted by the House on March 19, 2003

Summary: Not yet available

HISTORY OF LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS

Date Body Action Description with journal page number
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3/19/2003 House Introduced and adopted HJ-15

View the latest legislative information at the LPITS web site

VERSIONS OF THIS BILL

3/19/2003

(Text matches printed bills. Document has been reformatted to meet World Wide Web specifications.)

A HOUSE RESOLUTION

TO REQUEST THAT THE DIXIE CHICKS APOLOGIZE TO THE MILITARY FAMILIES IN THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE UNITED STATES FOR THE UNPATRIOTIC AND UNNECESSARY COMMENTS MADE BY THEIR LEAD SINGER BEFORE THEY BEGIN THEIR UNITED STATES TOUR ON MAY 1, 2003, IN GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND TO REQUEST THAT THEY PERFORM A FREE CONCERT FOR TROOPS AND MILITARY FAMILIES IN SOUTH CAROLINA AS AN EXPRESSION OF THEIR SINCERITY.

Whereas, the Dixie Chicks are a popular and influential country music group from Texas; and

Whereas, before a recent London concert, Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, said that she was ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas; and

Whereas, members of the United States Armed Forces are outraged at the anti-American sentiment expressed by the Dixie Chicks; and

Whereas, there is a large military presence in the State of South Carolina, whom the Dixie Chicks have offended by their comments; and

Whereas, before the Dixie Chicks kick off their United States tour in Greenville on May 1, 2003, the House of Representatives and the people of South Carolina request that Natalie Maines apologize and that the group perform a free concert for the South Carolina servicemen and women and their families. Now, therefore,

Be it resolved by the House of Representatives:

That the members of the House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, by this resolution, request that the Dixie Chicks apologize to the military families in the State of South Carolina and the United States for the unpatriotic and unnecessary comments made by their lead singer before they begin their United States tour on May 1, 2003, in Greenville, South Carolina, and request that they perform a free concert for troops and military families in South Carolina as an expression of their sincerity.

Be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Dixie Chicks.

----XX----

This web page was last updated on March 20, 2003 at 9:33 AM

Here's NY Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D) sticking up for protesters' rights to express themselves -- while being overpowered -- literally, a la microphone levels and camera angles -- against one of the many nameless ranting talking heads on the FOX network.

(If anyone can identify this guy from Fox, I'll be happy to cite him accordingly. It's just that he didn't seem to care about telling us who he was, and Fox didn't seem to care about giving us his name during over 10 minutes of programming from the guy, so I figured, "why should I care? He's just making it up as he goes along, without any regard to accuracy or the thoughts and feelings of anyone else." Not much of a "news" man. Not sure what else I expected from Fox...)

Meeks also brings up that the protesters are largely rising up against a policy of pre-emption, and uses the situation in Northern Iraq with the Kurds and the Turks as an example of why this policy is not one we want other countries to start following. The talking head calls this scenario "fantasy-land" and accuses Meeks of going off of the subject.

Notice how Meeks is quickly replaced with Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) as soon as touchy material like what a "democracy" means enters the conversation.

Audio - Gregory Meeks Sticking Up For Democracy On Fox (MP3 - 6 MB)

Gregory Meeks Sticking Up For Democracy On Fox (Small - 11 MB)

How sad.

McCarthyism lives!. It worked then and it works now.

Statement from Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks
March 14, 2003

"As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect. We are currently in Europe and witnessing a huge anti-American sentiment as a result of the perceived rush to war. While war may remain a viable option, as a mother, I just want to see every possible alternative exhausted before children and American soldiers' lives are lost. I love my country. I am a proud American."

An Apology From Natalie Maines

But now, thanks to the thousands of angry people who want radio stations to boycott our music because criticizing the President is unpatriotic, I realize it's wrong to have a liberal opinion if you're a country music artist. I guess I should have thought about that before deciding to play music that attracts hypocritical red necks...

And most important of all, I realize that it's wrong for a celebrity to voice a political opinion, unless they're Charlie Daniels, Clint Black, Merle Haggard, Barbara Mandrell, Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr, Amy Grant, Larry Gatlin, Crystal Gayle, Reba McEntire, Lee Greenwood, Lorrie Morgan, Anita Bryant, Mike Oldfield, Ted Nugent, Wayne Newton, Dick Clark, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Dixie Carter, Victoria Jackson, Charleton Heston, Fred Thompson, Ben Stein, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bo Derek, Rick Schroeder, George Will, Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly, Joe Rogan, Delta Burke, Robert Conrad or Jesse Ventura.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.thespeciousreport.com/2003_dixiechicks.html

Apology from Natalie Maines

As a concerned American citizen, I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I now realize that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.

I hope everyone understands, I'm just a young girl who grew up in Texas. As far back as I can remember, I heard people say they were ashamed of President Clinton. I saw bumper stickers calling him everything from a pothead to a murderer. I heard people on the radio and tv like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott bad mouthing the President and ridiculing his wife and daughter at every opportunity.

I heard LOTS of people disrespecting the President. So I guess I just assumed it was acceptable behavior.

But now, thanks to the thousands of angry people who want radio stations to boycott our music because criticizing the President is unpatriotic, I realize it's wrong to have a liberal opinion if you're a country music artist. I guess I should have thought about that before deciding to play music that attracts hypocritical red necks.

I also realize now that I'm supposed to just sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or getting in drunken bar fights or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting highway signs and small animals.

And most important of all, I realize that it's wrong for a celebrity to voice a political opinion, unless they're Charlie Daniels, Clint Black, Merle Haggard, Barbara Mandrell, Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr, Amy Grant, Larry Gatlin, Crystal Gayle, Reba McEntire, Lee Greenwood, Lorrie Morgan, Anita Bryant, Mike Oldfield, Ted Nugent, Wayne Newton, Dick Clark, Jay Leno, Drew Carey, Dixie Carter, Victoria Jackson, Charleton Heston, Fred Thompson, Ben Stein, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bo Derek, Rick Schroeder, George Will, Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly, Joe Rogan, Delta Burke, Robert Conrad or Jesse Ventura.

God Bless America,
Natalie

Arrest Me By William Rivers Pitt for truthout.

Crazy, right?

Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of Santa Fe, New Mexico if it sounds crazy. Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested in a public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five hours on February 13th.

His crime?

He said "Bush is out of control" on an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the President.

Ask Bernadette Devlin McAliskey of Ireland if it sounds crazy. She was recently passing through Chicago from Dublin, where she passed security, when she heard her name called over a loudspeaker. When she went up to the ticket counter, three men and one woman surrounded her and grabbed her passport. McAliskey was informed that she had been reported to be a "potential or real threat to the United States."

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey has spent the better part of her life struggling for the Irish nationalist cause. She did not lob Molotov cocktails at police. Instead, she became a member of British Parliament at age 21, the youngest person ever elected to that post. In 1981 she and her husband were shot by a loyalist death squad in their home. She has traveled to America on a regular basis for the last thirty years, and has been given the keys to the cities of San Francisco and New York.

Upon her detention in Chicago last month, McAliskey was fingerprinted and photographed. One of the men holding her told her that he was going to throw her in prison. When she snapped back that she had rights, she was told not to make the boss angry, because he shoots people. "After 9/11," said one officer, "nobody has any rights."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://truthout.org/docs_03/030503A.shtml

Arrest Me
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 4 March 2003

George W. Bush is out of control.

I'll say it again.

George W. Bush is out of control.

I'm waiting for the black government cars to come squealing up in front of my house, for the thump of leather on my stairs, for the sound of knuckles on my door, for the feel of steel braceleting my wrists, for the smell of urine in some dank Federal holding cell as I listen to questions from men who no longer feel the constricting boundaries of constitutional law abutting their duties.

Sounds paranoid, doesn't it? Straight out of the Turner Diaries, maybe. Sounds like I'm waiting for the ominous whop-whop-whop of the blades on a black helicopter churning the air over my home. Sounds like I'm waiting to find a laser dot on my chest above my heart before the glass breaks and the bullet pushes my guts out past my spine.

Crazy, right?

Ask Andrew J. O'Conner of Santa Fe, New Mexico if it sounds crazy. Mr. O'Conner, a former public defender from Santa Fe, was arrested in a public library and interrogated by Secret Service agents for five hours on February 13th.

His crime?

He said "Bush is out of control" on an internet chat room, and was arrested for threatening the President.

Ask Bernadette Devlin McAliskey of Ireland if it sounds crazy. She was recently passing through Chicago from Dublin, where she passed security, when she heard her name called over a loudspeaker. When she went up to the ticket counter, three men and one woman surrounded her and grabbed her passport. McAliskey was informed that she had been reported to be a "potential or real threat to the United States."

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey has spent the better part of her life struggling for the Irish nationalist cause. She did not lob Molotov cocktails at police. Instead, she became a member of British Parliament at age 21, the youngest person ever elected to that post. In 1981 she and her husband were shot by a loyalist death squad in their home. She has traveled to America on a regular basis for the last thirty years, and has been given the keys to the cities of San Francisco and New York.

Upon her detention in Chicago last month, McAliskey was fingerprinted and photographed. One of the men holding her told her that he was going to throw her in prison. When she snapped back that she had rights, she was told not to make the boss angry, because he shoots people. "After 9/11," said one officer, "nobody has any rights."

"You've evaded us before," said the officer before McAliskey was deported back to Ireland, "but you're not going to do it now." She never found out for sure how she was a threat to the United States, and is currently filing a formal complaint with the U.S. consulate in Dublin.

There are those who will brush these incidents off. Andrew O'Conner has been an activist for years, and has not hidden his disdain for this looming war in Iraq. Bernadette McAliskey is a world-famous fighter for her people. Some will say the opinions and freedoms of people like this do not matter in the grand scheme. Others will wave these incidents away as random examples of thoughtless action by petty dictators who were foolishly given badges and authority.

I don't.

It is ironic, in a grisly sort of way. Hard-right conservatives spent the entirety of the Clinton administration baying to anyone fearful enough to listen that the President was coming for their freedoms, that it was only a matter of time before the Bill of Rights was destroyed. The myth of the black helicopters, the apocalyptic views of the Turner Diaries, and a smoking crater in Oklahoma City all testified to the brittle paranoia these people promulgated in those years.

Now, those same people have representatives with parallel views on virtually every domestic and foreign policy idea in control of the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, the intelligence services and the United States military. These are the people who brought us the Patriot Act, versions 1.0 and 2.0, the people who are responsible for the most incredible constitutional redactions in our history.

Ask Mr. O'Conner and Ms. McAliskey about it. They can tell you what happens to undesirables these days.

When you murder peaceful dissent in America, you murder America itself. When you harass innocent people for their past and present views, you spread fear within an already terrified nation. This is not about some fool of a Secret Service agent jumping the gun on an innocuous online comment, or an airline security officer with a penchant for bullyragging 55 year old women. This is a failure from the top down, an empowerment - by the man charged with defending our constitution - of lesser jackasses with large badges who do not understand nor care for the importance of their positions. This is about failed leadership, and the despoiling of everything that makes this place precious and unique and sacred.

In other words, Bush is out of control.

Bush is out of control.

Bush is out of control.

Come and get me.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA.

This situation just goes to show that it was the Music Programming layer of the system, not the listener layer, that pulled the Dixie Chicks from station playlists over Natalie's statements.

That's the issue here: programmers took it upon themselves to censor the Chicks before listeners had a chance to say anything. That's where the McCarthyism parallel kicks in. The Chicks got blacklisted by a few key people within a Monopolized Media: not by infuriated listeners.

Many thanks to Dale Carter, programming director at KFKF/Kansas City for rethinking the situation and speaking out on this important issue!

Country Radio Still Weighing Chicks Controversy

One major market programmer removed the Chicks from his station's playlist but changed his mind after considering why Americans have fought previous wars. In a letter to listeners posted on the KFKF/Kansas City Web site, program director Dale Carter wrote, "Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are over there fighting for our rights -- and one of those is our Constitutional right to express an unpopular opinion. The longer this has gone on, the more I had visions of censorship and McCarthyism. Two wrongs don't make a right. I agree with the 80 percent of you who abhor what Natalie said in London. On the other hand, I believe in the Constitution."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.cmt.com/news/feat/dchicks.031403.jhtml

Dixie Chicks
Country Radio Still Weighing Chicks Controversy

Calvin Gilbert
03/14/2003

With heated debate continuing over Natalie Maines' comment about President George W. Bush, country radio listeners may be determining the Dixie Chicks' future -- at least for the short term.

Just like postings on Internet message boards, phone calls to radio stations have been hot and heavy in the aftermath of the Texas-based trio's Monday night (March 10) concert in London. During the concert, Maines told the crowd, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." The band later posted an explanation on their official Web site outlining their views of a possible war with Iraq.

Some radio stations immediately dropped the Dixie Chicks from their playlist after news surfaced of Maines' remark. Rumors were circulating Friday afternoon (March 14) that one sizable chain of stations would be initiating a boycott of Chicks titles during the weekend. Most, however, appear to be taking a "wait and see" attitude as they seek input from their listeners. Several stations are running polls and asking for additional comments via their Web sites.

The Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier," is No. 1 on Billboard's latest country singles chart, but weekend boycotts at major market stations could easily prevent the track from remaining at the top when the next chart is compiled Monday (March 17).

"They're about where they were at this point last week, as far as spins," Billboard country charts editor Wade Jessen told CMT.com. "But with three more days left to go, depending on what happens, they could either stay at one or they'll get knocked out. At this point in the week, they're maintaining their airplay on 'Travelin' Soldier,' but we won't know until Monday morning what it looks like."

Noting that Americans were more unified in the early '90s during Operation Desert Storm, Jessen adds, "I think this is new territory, and it's very, very sensitive and very emotional. It's particularly sensitive in the country format because we're really where patriotism lives. Country is the format with the audience that expects patriotism. But at this time in the nation's history, there's a lot of confusion over just what patriotism is and what constitutes it."

In Bush's hometown of Midland, Texas, radio station KNFM's Web site offers a direct link to The Guardian, the London newspaper that first reported Maines' remark. The station has also stopped playing Dixie Chicks music as part of an on-air promotion billed as "Chicks Free -- Texas Pride Weekend." KNFM operations manager John Moesch said, "Natalie Maines certainly has the right to say whatever she wants, but it doesn't mean that the KNFM listener family here in George W. Bush's hometown have to listen."

Elsewhere in Texas, online polls are being conducted by KILT and KKBQ in Houston and at KSCS in Dallas. The KSCS poll has a bit of a disclaimer: "At 96.3 KSCS we disagree with her [Maines]. We're not only proud to be from Texas, but we're proud of President George W. Bush and the fact that he is from Texas."

One major market programmer removed the Chicks from his station's playlist but changed his mind after considering why Americans have fought previous wars. In a letter to listeners posted on the KFKF/Kansas City Web site, program director Dale Carter wrote, "Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are over there fighting for our rights -- and one of those is our Constitutional right to express an unpopular opinion. The longer this has gone on, the more I had visions of censorship and McCarthyism. Two wrongs don't make a right. I agree with the 80 percent of you who abhor what Natalie said in London. On the other hand, I believe in the Constitution."

Carter concluded, "In light of what our men and women are about to do, this whole controversy is very small. Let me close with the most important sentiments any of us can express: God bless our troops, pray for the people of Iraq and may God continue to bless the United States of America."

Dixie Chick Explains Bush Bash

"I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the US and alienating the rest of the world.

"My comments were made in frustration and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://kvet.com/script/headline_newsmanager.php?id=128626&pagecontent=musicnewscountry

Dixie Chick Explains Bush Bash

A member of country group The Dixie Chicks is clarifying slating remarks she made about President George W. Bush.

Singer Natalie Maines reportedly told the crowd at a London concert "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

Her comments - which reportedly had the audience cheering - were reproduced in a review by British newspaper 'The Guardian.'

On the "There's Your Trouble" Texan band's website, Maines says, "We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our government's position. The anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding."

"I feel the President is ignoring the opinions of many in the US and alienating the rest of the world.

"My comments were made in frustration and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."

But Maines is much more supportive of the United States troops.

She adds, "While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost."

The Dixie Chicks have been blacklisted out of major radio rotation for expressing their views about the Shrub.

So when you're calling the radio stations to request the new Beastie Boys and John Cougar Mellencamp Anti-war songs, you can also let them know that you'd appreciate hearing some Dixie Chicks!

Dixie Chicks pulled from air after bashing Bush

Country stations across the United States have pulled the Chicks from playlists following reports that lead singer Natalie Maines said in a concert in London earlier this week that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Station managers said their decisions were prompted by calls from irate listeners who thought criticism of the president was unpatriotic...

One station in Kansas City, Missouri held a Dixie "chicken toss" party Friday morning, where Chick critics were encouraged to dump the group's tapes, CDs and concert tickets into trash cans.

Houston country station KILT pulled the band's records from its playlist -- at least temporarily -- after 77 percent of people polled on its Web site said they supported the move.

"We've got them off the air for right now," said Jeff Garrison, program director at KILT, which is owned by Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting Corp.

"People are shocked. They cannot believe Texas' own have attacked the state and the president," Garrison said.

Lead singer Maines said in a statement she felt the president was ignoring the opinions of many in the United States and alienating the rest of the world by pushing for war with Iraq.

"We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our government's position. The anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding," Maines said...

The Chicks have the number one country album in the United States on the Billboard charts called "Home" and the No. 1 single with "Travelin' Soldier", which is about a U.S. soldier who fought in Vietnam.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/03/14/dixie.chicks.reut/

Dixie Chicks pulled from air after bashing Bush

Friday, March 14, 2003 Posted: 7:45 PM EST (0045 GMT)
The Dixie Chicks: Emily Robison, left, Natalie Maines, center, and Martie Maguire
The Dixie Chicks: Emily Robison, left, Natalie Maines, center, and Martie Maguire
Story Tools
Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most popular articles on our site

DALLAS, Texas (Reuters) -- There are a lot worse things in country music than your wife leaving you or your dog dying. There's stations not playing your music because you done gone and said some things against the president.

Music superstars the Dixie Chicks are finding out that criticizing President Bush's plans for war in Iraq can cost you air play, big time.

Country stations across the United States have pulled the Chicks from playlists following reports that lead singer Natalie Maines said in a concert in London earlier this week that she was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Station managers said their decisions were prompted by calls from irate listeners who thought criticism of the president was unpatriotic.

The group, which got its start in Texas, was one of the darlings of this year's Grammy Awards. The three-woman band that blends blue grass and pop hooks has spawned legions of fans who embrace the ideals of strong women celebrated in some of the trio's songs.

One station in Kansas City, Missouri held a Dixie "chicken toss" party Friday morning, where Chick critics were encouraged to dump the group's tapes, CDs and concert tickets into trash cans.

Houston country station KILT pulled the band's records from its playlist -- at least temporarily -- after 77 percent of people polled on its Web site said they supported the move.

"We've got them off the air for right now," said Jeff Garrison, program director at KILT, which is owned by Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting Corp.

"People are shocked. They cannot believe Texas' own have attacked the state and the president," Garrison said.

Lead singer Maines said in a statement she felt the president was ignoring the opinions of many in the United States and alienating the rest of the world by pushing for war with Iraq.

"We've been overseas for several weeks and have been reading and following the news accounts of our government's position. The anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding," Maines said.

One of the country stations in Dallas that helped champion the Chicks when they were scraping by in that city playing gigs on street corners for tips, "99.5 The Wolf," said they are listening to the listener's views but do not think it is right to immediately jump on the bandwagon and stop playing the Chicks, said program director Paul Williams.

Williams said it is too early to tell how strong a backlash may develop against the Chicks. He said the comments touched a deep nerve in Texas because they came from one of the biggest country groups to come out of the state and were directed at a president who calls Texas home.

"The listener outlash is probably bigger here than anywhere else," William said.

The Chicks have the number one country album in the United States on the Billboard charts called "Home" and the No. 1 single with "Travelin' Soldier", which is about a U.S. soldier who fought in Vietnam.

Perhaps you heard about last week's story where a citizen was arrested for wearing a "Give Peace A Chance" T-Shirt in an upstate NY shopping mall.

If not -- here's the poop, Daily Show Style.

Daily Show On Peace T-shirt Mall Arrest Part 1 of 2 (Lo-res 9 MB)
Daily Show On Peace T-shirt Mall Arrest Part 2 of 2 (Lo-res 9 MB)
Daily Show On Peace T-shirt Mall Arrest - Parts 1 and 2 (Lo-res 17 MB)

Dick and his wife don't like a cartoon of the misses.

Trouble is, parody is supposed to be legal in our "free" country that supposedly comes complete with "free speech" (courtesty of the First Amendment).

White House insists satirist remove image lampooning Lynne Cheney from Web site
By Larry Neumeister for the AP.

An Internet lampoon of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife is no laughing matter at the White House, which has asked a satirist to remove pictures of her -- complete with red clown noses -- from his Web site.

But the New York Civil Liberties Union struck back Wednesday on behalf of John A. Wooden, 31, threatening a lawsuit to protect his First Amendment rights to parody the White House and Bush officials on his site, whitehouse.org.

The official White House site is whitehouse.gov.

Cheney counsel David S. Addington warned Wooden's Chickenhead Productions Inc. that Lynne V. Cheney's name and pictures -- altered to show her with a red clown's nose and a missing tooth -- could not be used to make money without her consent, and asked Wooden to delete the photos and "fictitious biographical statement about her."

Instead, Wooden cautioned Web site visitors that the vice president "wishes you to be aware ... that some/all of the biographic information contained on this PARODY page about Mrs. Cheney may not actually be true."

And, it added, the editors of the Web site were "confident that any rumors about Mrs. Cheney formerly being a crystal meth pusher are 100 percent likely to be absolutely untrue. Similarly, any stories about her penchant for licking brandy Alexanders off the hirsute belly of her spouse are all lies, lies, lies!"

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/03/06/national0711EST0502.DTL

White House insists satirist remove image lampooning Lynne Cheney from Web site

LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Thursday, March 6, 2003

(03-06) 04:11 PST NEW YORK (AP) --

An Internet lampoon of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife is no laughing matter at the White House, which has asked a satirist to remove pictures of her -- complete with red clown noses -- from his Web site.

But the New York Civil Liberties Union struck back Wednesday on behalf of John A. Wooden, 31, threatening a lawsuit to protect his First Amendment rights to parody the White House and Bush officials on his site, whitehouse.org.

The official White House site is whitehouse.gov.

Cheney counsel David S. Addington warned Wooden's Chickenhead Productions Inc. that Lynne V. Cheney's name and pictures -- altered to show her with a red clown's nose and a missing tooth -- could not be used to make money without her consent, and asked Wooden to delete the photos and "fictitious biographical statement about her."

Instead, Wooden cautioned Web site visitors that the vice president "wishes you to be aware ... that some/all of the biographic information contained on this PARODY page about Mrs. Cheney may not actually be true."

And, it added, the editors of the Web site were "confident that any rumors about Mrs. Cheney formerly being a crystal meth pusher are 100 percent likely to be absolutely untrue. Similarly, any stories about her penchant for licking brandy Alexanders off the hirsute belly of her spouse are all lies, lies, lies!"

NYCLU lawyer Chris Dunn wrote the office of the vice president that the material was "fully protected by the First Amendment."

"With everything happening in the world, you'd think the office of the vice president would have something more important to do than sending letters to political satirists," Wooden said.

A spokeswoman for Cheney's office, Jennifer Millerwise, confirmed the letter from Addington was authentic but said she otherwise had no comment.