Humboldt Revolution

While we have been accustomed to a diversity of media outlets in the U.S. many people do not understand the degree to which those corporate elitists of the far right have been hacking away at the diversity that is the cornerstone of any democracy. With attacks on the anti-trust legislation that was designed to prevent monopoly in American business including the media and merger upon merger now consolidating all of the giant media corporations into the hands of a very few people it is little wonder that the “news” resembles a “right wing echo chamber” as it is now often called. More people are becoming aware of the extremely propagandistic nature of our media and the treason being committed by those who control it as well as the Federal Communications Commission. Below is the video of Bill Moyers recent address in Memphis Tenn. before the National Conference for Media Reform in two parts.

We can see the icy cold hand of totalitarian control of what we must think in our local market with the establishment of the Eureka Reporter using the FOX “news” formula of bait and switch programing. The extreme slant and the Bill O’Reilly arrogance with which it is deployed are a threat to us all. The problem is not so much on the opinion pages, where you can often find more factual content than the rest of the paper, but in that which is presented as “news”, hand picked and rapidly spun, it offers a bully pulpit to the anti-democratic elitists who want to get even richer and more powerful at the expense of the rest of us, the environment or whatever else their greed dictates.

With people like Bill Moyers and a few others in the main stream speaking out it seems like a very good time for a, ah, surge of activity in order to bring a democratic media to America upon which a genuine democracy. It is not free speech when a hand full of people  dominate the media for their own sake and it is therefor no infringement upon their right of free speech when we demand an end to the monopolistic practices and the corrupt manipulation of our government agencies such as the FCC which have no purpose other than to stifle dissent and allow only the propaganda of the Fascist right to be heard. Fascism, after al, simply means a government controlled by big business.

PART ONE of BILL MOYERS ADDRESS TO THE NCMR

PART TWO

As the movement to end the war fires up, our Congressman Thompson
dutifully re-iterated his stand to get out of Iraq sometime. The last date
he picked was Sept. 31, 2006, which symbolically or not, does not exist in
the calendar. Now is the time for him to join his party’s Progressives who
have demanded a 6 month timeline. (Obscenely, this means another 500 dead
American soldiers and another couple hundred thousand Iraqis.) As for
impeachment, the constituents at a Ferndale town meeting early last year
reportedly heard Thompson admit that he would vote for it.
Thompson  has shown a hesitance to really get out front in a
leadership role on the crucial issues of War and Impeachment. This has
caused a Congressional district-wide oversight committee to come into being
with the Jan. 4 demos at his local offices. A crucial demand is that
Thompson spend time during the Feb. recess by scheduling a string of town
meetings in the district, including places like Fort Bragg, Arcata-Eureka,
and Garberville. A few hours spent in a variety of towns fielding questions
and comments from his constituents would set in motion, I believe, a radical
make-over worthy of cable TV.  Thompson might emerge looking a lot more like
Barbara Lee of Berkeley than one of those Blue Dog Dixiecrats he hangs out
with in Congress now.
But perhaps the fundamental need here is a Community Backbone
movement. First we demonstrate our backbone as a community, then we send
some backbone to Congress. We can’t expect more from Congress than we
ourselves are willing to deliver. Jan 27 and Jan.29 would be good days to
show our community backbone, shaking it well in demands for immediate
withdrawal from Iraq and for the Cheney-Bush impeachment.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein makes the impeachment of George Bush a
moral imperative..  Impeachment continues to put fire in the eyes of those
of us who want the current regime brought to justice. If we don’t impeach
Bush or force him to resign, it may take a World Court decades to nail him.
By then he should have passed Clinton in the number of Iraqi deaths he has
caused (Clinton bagged a million, 600,000 of them children.) There will be a
plenitude of other deaths for G-Dub’s docket, too, all on our consciences.
G-Dub’s standing as a war criminal is certainly on a par with that of
Milosevic or Saddam. The litany is lengthy:  aggressive war, falsified
evidence, violations of the law of the land and international law, torture,
arbitrary detention, invasion of privacy, signing statements, Military
courts,  etc. etc.. His buddy Cheney will I think fall faster than Agnew
once a look is taken into the economics of the war. (It would be best to
take the two - Cheney-Bush  -  together as a package so as to insure the
irony of a Congress member - Pelosi - as our next President. But the
important thing is to demand accountability here and now  for real Class A
felonies.)
Such impeachment action might simultaneously preserve and improve the
Constitution. Preserve, because the Presidency needs to be reigned in more
than it did when the radical Republican Reconstructionists shook the throne
of Andrew Johnson. Improve, because impeaching Bush would put a radical
limit on the Imperial Presidency such that it would offer a parliamentary
check on its ability to continue doing evil, much as Jefferson’s impeachment
attempts to clear out the nest of Federalists in the federal judiciary would
have accomplished had it been successful.
Nonetheless, this is not a political crisis, it’s not a moral crisis,
or a constitutional crisis. It’s a fork in the road. The high road is
impeachment/resignation, the low road is accommodation.  We don’t want a
repeat of IranContra where the aging Emperor is let off the hook as he
mumbles that he can’t remember (Gerald Ford set the standard when he claimed
he couldn’t remember instigating the genocide of the E.Timorese.)
In Bush’s case there’s no excuse because the mental problems of this
president have more to do with an enlarged reptile brain than with senility.
G-Dub is still dangerous, very dangerous because the Congress has for so
long given tacit, wink/wink approval to the Imperial Presidency to the point
that Congress members no longer think they can exert the power they have.
The murders of luminaries like the Kennedys and MLK, Wellstone and lesser
lights, makes every House or Senate member think they could be such a
target.  But the Emperor can’t kill the entire Senate can he, like in the
days of Rome? But if it is that serious, perhaps the Congress will at least
act in self-defense   -  if we offer them the protection of a vital street
movement.
Paul Encimer

Campaigns galore are shaping up to keep the new Democratic Congress in
contact with the grassroots regarding the War and Impeachment. A National
Mobilization - including more than a dozen Humboldters representing Mike
Thompson’s district - will be descending on Washington DC on the weekend of
Jan.27-29. On Saturday Jan. 27 San Francisco will also be kicking things
off with a march set for noon at Powell and Market. People will be
carpooling from the Redway P.O. at 7 am. ( Call 986-7218 or 923-4488 for
more info.) Simultaneously, in Eureka, protesters will gather at the County
Courthouse at 11 am for a county-wide day of demonstrating and marching.
(Carpools will leave from Redway at 9:30 am.)
When the DC protesters descend on the Halls of Congress on Monday
Jan.29, regional protesters will return to Thompson’s offices on 3rd St in
Eureka at 10 am and N. Main in Fort Bragg. We are calling on Thompson to
leave his Blue Dog Dixiecrat cronies behind, becoming #76 in the Out of Iraq
NOW Caucus and act as well to put Impeachment of Cheney-Bush back on the
table. Carpools from Southern Humboldt will be leaving for Eureka at 8:30
am from the Redway P.O. for the Monday event. (Info on Ft. Bragg events,
including a Jan 27 march: 937-4352)
Paul Encimer

The first Democrat controlled congress in many years met at the beginning of January 2007 and this small group appeared in front of Mike Thompson’s local office Wednesday, January 3rd to urge them to do what they were elected to do rather than what their corporate benefactors mandate. While the vocal group at Thompson’s office was small they surely represent the stated feelings of a large majority of Americans as expressed in many venues including the November elections.
This action was part of a broader action that saw such demonstrations across the country and in anticipation of a march on Washington January 27th designed to remind the representatives that the election was not an empty exercise and that their jobs should depend on them doing their jobs.

With talk of increasing troop strength in Iraq rather than a rapid withdrawal and, so far, little talk of addressing the massive corruption in our government’s leadership, the two most often mentioned reasons voters said they voted democratic in the last election, these demonstrations hold some promise of an establishment of democracy in the USA though many doubt that anything will accomplish that.