In recent years, the Supreme Court has upheld the Personhood of Corporations. No, I do not mean the responsibilities that we, as citizens owe to our fellow citizens. Like the duty not to poison them or steal from them. Corporations in the U.S. never get sent to jail for doing things like that. The Gang of Five has endowed Big Business with certain inalienable rights, including the right to buy politicians (they call it “Free Speech”).
As corporations receive expanded civil liberties, individuals find their rights restricted. This thread is about the first of those rights, our right to free speech, and the way that Big Business silences us.
I. Civil Suits Between 1990 and 2005, Americans witnessed a most bizarre spectacle. The United States based McDonald’s corporation took advantage of Great Britain’s libel laws to sue critics of the Big Mac. Two of the defendants in the case, Helen Steel and David Morris refused to settle with Ronald McDonald, and they were eventually ordered to pay the company 60,000 pounds for claiming that their product 1. was unhealthy 2. was designed to target children 3. was responsible for the death of animals 4. contributed to world hunger (by using up grains and other resources to raise animals for slaughter) among other things. It took the pair 10 years to win back their rights to free speech, courtesy of the European Courts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Restaurants_v_Morris_%26_SteelOh, how silly those British are, to allow corporations to trample people’s rights to free speech. We would never allow something like that to happen here in the United States…
Before we pat ourselves on the back, we should remember another case of Burger Libel, one which occurred right here in the good old U.S. of A, the country whose Constitution contains these words:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
While Congress could not do it, apparently the State of Texas could. When cattlemen were caught feeding their animals other animals (in defiance of nature and common sense), Oprah Winfrey hosted a show about Mad Cow Disease. She declared that she would never eat another hamburger. The beef industry sued.
Whatever was said about mad cow disease on the Oprah show, the most terrifying moment for the industry came when Oprah said that she had been "stopped cold from eating another burger." This surfaced clearly during the trial when Bill O'Brien, head of the Texas Cattle Producers, explained on the witness stand why Oprah's follow-up show with Weber and Grieg was "too little, too late" to atone for the first show.
"I don't think it repaired the damage," O'Brien said. "She didn't go on the program and eat a hamburger before the world."
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1998Q1/oprah.htmlOprah was vilified in Texas.
A common theme in discussions of the Oprah program was the notion that Oprah's popularity gave her some kind of improper influence over the mindless female multitudes that constitute her audience. As evidence of her hypnotic powers, commentators noted that an endorsement by Oprah's book club can frequently propel an author to the top of the bestseller list.
One caller to KGNC, an Amarillo radio talk show, described Oprah's audience as "the uneducated portion of our population" and hoped the cattle feeders would "get Oprah for every penny. . . . They are not looking for money, but they can build war chests to get after other people that pull this stuff."
Winfrey "should have her mouth taped," opined one commentatator, because "she's on national television speaking to all those who have nothing more to do than listen to her and accepting her words as the gospel."
II. The Interests of Big Business are the Interests of America Oh my! How silly we were back in the 20th century. Almost as silly as those crazy British. But things are different now. No business interest would ever try to stifle Constitutionally protected free speech…
In 2006, a lecturer was scheduled to give a talk in New York about "The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy". Sounds like a weighty and timely topic. However, the speech was cancelled at the last minute, because of interference by…
Oops. Better not write their name. They might not like it.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19550But I will let someone else write about them.
In the 1970's, the group was caught distributing lists of persons deemed as enemies, according to SF Weekly in its February issue. Among those who were defamed for being "pro-Arab propagandists" was the highly renowned professor Noam Chomskey. In 1993, according to the same source, the ____ was caught illegally spying on nearly 10,000 people "including members of socialist, labor and anti-apartheid groups."
But why would an organization whose "ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike, and to put an end forever to injustice and unfair discrimination against, and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens" carry out such suspicious tasks?
"The number one goal of the ____ is the protection of ______," a former Republican congressman from San Mateo Pete McCloskey told SF Weekly in a recent interview.
The organization however, who claims to fight for other issues beside its vibrant defense of _____, has done very little in recent months to demonstrate those claims. The outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against the ____ occupation had caused the ____ to gear up for one fight, and one fight only, supporting ____ and censoring those who criticize the ____ for using excessive violence, for violating international law and for committing genocide in areas which are supposed to be protected under human rights laws.
http://www.mediamonitors.net/ramzy8.htmlBefore you launch your formal protests, remember I did not write it. I just reposted it. And if the First Amendment gives us a right to speak freely, then it also gives us a right to quote freely. But I have censored out the organization’s name. Just in case. Because I like a chance to have my say as much as the next American. And you, dear reader, have a right to either read or not read it, your choice.
There. That should keep everyone happy. Not.
Now, why have I included ____among the list of
corporations that would like to stifle our free speech? Because there is a whole lot of money involved in the U.S. trade in arms to______. Which means that when ____attempts to restrict our free speech, they are servicing Raytheon, Boeing and other U.S. manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction. That is why they get especially antsy over anyone that talks about military matters.
In these days of economic crisis, budget overruns, earmarks, and multi-billion dollar bailouts, when Americans are being forced to tighten their own belts, one of the most automatic earmarks—a bailout by any measure—goes to a foreign government but is little understood by most Americans. U.S. military aid to _____ is doled out in annual increments of billions of dollars but remains virtually unchallenged while other fiscal outlays are drastically cut.
Snip
_____ is by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Since 1949, the United States has provided _____ with $101 billion in total aid, of which $53 billion has been military aid. For the last 20-plus years, _____ has received an average of $3 billion annually in grant aid;, until now the grant has been a mix of economic and military aid.
____ receives its aid under vastly more favorable terms than any other recipient. Egypt, for instance, receives $2 billion a year in economic aid, but this is a loan and must be repaid. Saudi Arabia also has U.S. military equipment in its arsenal, but it buys and pays for this equipment and is not given it, as _____ is.
Aid to ____ can be said to benefit the United States because it is spent to purchase equipment manufactured here.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison03052009.html There are several interests behind the massive U.S. funding of an industrialized and well-off country like ____, which has a per capita income of $19,530. Indeed, the arms industry relationship between ____ and the U.S. is symbiotic
rather than strictly beneficial to ____. The first interest has to do with capital. ____ provides a lucrative market for the United States. The latter replaced France as the major arms supplier to ____, in terms of both equipment and technology, following the Six Day War. Many American arms manufacturers—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General
Electric and American Ordnance, for example—benefit greatly from this alliance. In 2001 alone, _____ bought from U.S. companies $2.95 billion in arms.
http://www.monitor.upeace.org/pdf/israel.pdfYou got that, you crypto-Nazi anti-Semites? The weapons we send to ____ are weapons dollars well spent, because they enrich the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. And as we all know, military spending is the second worst way to jump start the economy through federal government spending (tax cuts for the rich are the worst way). So, anyone who objects to arming ____ to the teeth at the expense of U.S. taxpayers is un-American
and an anti-Semite. Not to mention that the U.S., by keeping its finger in the ______-Palestinian pie gives itself an excuse to invade as many oil producing countries as it wants---all for the sake of our good buddy.
This business strategy---ally yourself with a political movement and declare anyone who opposes you an enemy of the state/humanity/God is not new. It is almost as old as the Republic. For example, the infamous unConstitutional Alien and Sedition Act was passed by Federalists who had financial ties with Great Britain.
President Andrew Jackson, slave owner and Native American genocide coordinator, demonstrated his willingness to violate the First Amendment to protect to U.S. cotton industry which relied upon slave labor. His administration effectively made it impossible to deliver abolitionist mail or to petition Congress about matters relating to slavery, clear First Amendment violations.
http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Washington-Johnson/Andrew-Jackson-Slavery.htmlFree speech has been abridged in almost every U.S. war. Nixon was not the first to discover the awesome powers of the Article II exception. The following could have been written about almost any war (it was written about WWI, a war near and dear to the heart of a lot of businessmen):
Pacifists in the United States had some stature, with roots going back into the 19th century in the abolitionist, woman's suffrage and labor movements. The socialist leader, Eugene Debs, came out of retirement and described the war as a squabble over profits for businessmen and munitions makers. Socialists accused big business of fomenting war in order to profit from arms sales, and they complained that the United States was going to war for the capitalist class at the expense of the working class. Anarchists, leftist labor leaders, pacifist Christian ministers, various editors and a few politicians held firm against the war.
Snip
Opponents of militarism were vocal enough that those supporting the war believed something had to be done to suppress their dissent. Many favoring support of the war effort believed in freedom of speech and assembly but not in the special case of doing damage to the nation in time of war. They saw agreement with the enemy as treason. Already, Senator La Follette of Wisconsin -- one of the six in the Senate who voted against the war -- had been shown in a cartoon with Emperor William giving him the Iron Cross as a reward "for services rendered."
President Wilson created a Committee on Public Information to combat opinion opposed to the war, which became known as the Creel Committee after General George Creel, who was put in charge of it. At the same time, Congress was working on a bill that was passed into law on June 15 and called the Espionage Act. This act outlawed "false reports or false statements" made with the intent "to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces." It outlawed attempts to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States." The bill made it illegal "to willfully obstruct military recruiting or enlistment," or to "urge, incite or advocate any curtailment of production in this country of any thing or things, product or products, necessary or essential to the prosecution of the war." Those convicted of violating the Espionage Act were to receive a $10,000 fine and twenty years in jail
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch07-US2.htmOh, my bruised and battered democracy!
Later, red baiting was used to protect the interests of U.S. industry. Labor unions were denounced as Russian fronts. Labor activist Gus Hall could not be tried for being anti-Big Business, so he was convicted of being a commie.
Truman’s “loyalty program,” the Attorney General’s list, the arrest of the Communist Party national leadership, the state-condoned racist mob attack on Paul Robeson in Peekskill, New York, and the purges and blacklists, all were crude violations of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights – whether carried out by labor leaders like Walter Reuther, Democratic President Harry Truman, or tolerated by the American Civil Liberties Union, which refused to defend Communists. Many of these abuses were justified by the claim that Communists had to be purged to save the unions or save the social gains that Communists had played a central role in bringing about. To use Adlai Stevenson’s famous description of Richard Nixon in 1952, there were many “white-collar McCarthys,” respectable McCarthys instituting and attempting to institutionalize the repression.
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/9197/1/378/Note that when the Scottsboro Seven were railroaded, only the American Communist Party would come to their defense. Maybe because they knew what it was like to be denied justice in the land of the free (to keep their mouths shut).
Those who tried to obtain equal status for African-Americans, like Dr. King were also a danger to Big Business, which relied upon low wage laborers to keep operating expenses down. So, Dr. King was wiretapped by JFK and his brother, Attorney General RFK, supposedly for the good of democracy but actually for the good of the bottom line. The corporate media (The New York Times) printed lies about him. He was killed when his mission became overtly economic, when he decided to lead striking sanitation workers.
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_5578.shtmlWe have come a long way since then. But not far enough, I am afraid. If Big Oil wants your crude, then your country will go straight to the Axis of Evil List. The Corporate Media will beat the drums of war. And any American who attempts to question Big Oil’s right to seize someone else’s oil will be labeled a terrorist sympathizer. Just look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks and Bill Maher.
III. The Criminal Injustice System We all watched in horror as a nurse, who upheld Texas law by reporting a physician for unprofessional conduct, faced criminal charges in a Texas court. Luckily, she was cleared.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/us/07nurses.htmlThose crazy Texans! Whistleblowers threatened with jail for damaging the pocketbook of a VIP with friends in public office! Such a thing could never happen in the Federal Courts…
If you believe that, then you have not been following the news. Take the case of Bradley Birkenfeld former USB employee who came forward voluntarily to spill the beans on that company’s crimes. Who is the only one at USB going to jail? You got it. And he can not expect much from Obama, since Holder used to be a USB lawyer. The man should have kept his big fat whistleblowing mouth shut. How dare he defy his corporate masters in the Corporate Fascist State of America?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/01/06/2010-01-06_unveils_bank_fraud_gets_jail.htmlHere is a recent video about the whistleblower who is
still going to jail, despite a change of administration. Watch this Democracy Now video and weep for our democracy.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/7/why_is_the_whistleblower_who_exposedWe all know that Bush was in like
this with the banking industry, but why would Holder and Obama send this man to jail after he blew the lid off the USB scandal? From the New York Daily News link above.
Who can forget that priceless photo of the President playing golf on Aug. 24 during his Martha's Vineyard summer vacation with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Americas?
Wolf and his employees donated $540,000 to Obama's presidential run. That made UBS the 12th largest source of his campaign funds.
IV. All the News That’s Profitable to Print Everyone has a theory about how the 2000 election was stolen. Some blame Nader. Others blame Brother Jeb. The truth is that Al Gore doomed his own chances. The corporate media in America was not about to select a man who would later say
"Democracy is under attack," Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. "Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.
"Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized
http://mydd.com/users/jamess/posts/media-consolidation-a-historical-perspectiveInstead, they selected the man who promised to give them this:
"Chairman Martin's lofty rhetoric talks about saving American newspapers and ensuring a diversity of voices. But the devil is in the details. His new rules appear to be corporate welfare for the (media giants) in the biggest cities (and) most worrying....the proposed rules appear to contain a giant loophole that could open the back door to runaway media consolidation in nearly every market (in) another massive giveaway to Big Media
http://www.rense.com/general79/fcc.htmThey selected Bush with their carefully orchestrated “Gore is a liar” campaign and with their conspiracy of silence regarding the phony felon’s list in Florida. Later, they selected Bush again, by giving serious coverage to the Swift Boaters and by crucifying Dan Rather for having the temerity to do a story about Bush’s AWOL. And no, Sumner Redstone at CBS/Viacom was not the only one who hammered in those nails. A whole bunch of corporate media types (who would probably prefer to remain nameless) cheered as the act was done.
We were warned.
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. It is not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice-presidents, and at the same time-- frequently on the same long day--to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.
Sometimes there is a clash between the public interest and the corporate interest. A telephone call or a letter from the proper quarter in Washington is treated rather more seriously than a communication from an irate but not politically potent viewer. It is tempting enough to give away a little air time for frequently irresponsible and unwarranted utterances in an effort to temper the wind of criticism.
Snip
But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.
Snip
I am frightened by the imbalance, the constant striving to reach the largest possible audience for everything; by the absence of a sustained study of the state of the nation. Heywood Broun once said, "No body politic is healthy until it begins to itch." I would like television to produce some itching pills rather than this endless outpouring of tranquilizers.
Edward R. Murrow
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.htmlJust as the printing press ushered in an age of increased freedom of expression, so the Internet has made it easier for people to voice ideas that do not toe the Corporate Media Line. But just give the Corporate Media time and they will come up with a way to censor us.
Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/us/27verizon.html?_r=1China is already pioneering Internet Censorship. Once the technology is perfected, all Big Business in the U.S. needs is another 9/11 followed by another Article II extravaganza and they will have the Internet locked down tight.
V.The Publicity of Your Own Home Well, maybe the corporate media (and even the so called independent media that depends upon advertising revenue or federal funding) will censor us, if we threaten their profits. Maybe big business has the power to have us thrown in jail if we cause them trouble or drag us through civil court. And maybe war mongers and merchants of death determine what is politically correct speech in this country. But at least no one is going to stop us from saying what we think to our friends, via telephone and email. At least we can read what we like in the privacy of our own homes, even if the Feds believe that they have a right to know what books we buy or read in the library. Some forms of freedom of expression are sacred...
Do you really think that your speech is your own, in the Corporate Fascist State of America? Hell, no! It belongs to AT&T and the corporate lackey du jour in the White House.
The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
In a filing in San Francisco federal court, President Barack Obama adopted the same position as his predecessor. With just hours left in office, President George W. Bush late Monday asked U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to stay enforcement of an important Jan. 5 ruling admitting key evidence into the case.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/obama-sides-wit/There is nothing like the hairy eyeball of Big Brother watching over your shoulder to stifle free speech.
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