In Plain Sight

I trust you all are paying attention, 'cause the wholesale thievery by the Shrub administration continues unabated.

Iraq has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Friends Of Shrub Inc., and the FCC, run by Colin Powell's corporate clone son Michael, has relaxed the remaining restrictions on concentrated media ownership even further. The "public" airwaves, which have not been public in decades, have truly been given away, and your tax dollars paid the salaries of those who did it. This is the second time in under a decade that a wholesale giveaway has been granted to the giant media companies, who benefitted wildly from the Telecommunications Act passed by Congress and signed by that alleged liberal Bill Clinton into law. The following morning, waves of enormous media mergers were announced in a multi-billion dollar feeding frenzy on a scale unlike anything in the history of USA, inc.

And so in the coming months, while less spectacular, expect a number of similar mergers to take place, as media companies move to consolidate right to the limits of ownership, flimsy as they are now, while pushing for the destruction of the last, tissue thin regulations preventing a single company from literally owning all of the media in a given market, or all of the TV stations in the United States.

The argment is made that in the new century, new rules must come into play, that new media allows a wide variety of voices to be heard. The untruth in this argument is both obivous and simple to understand - media companies are larger than ever, and more diverse than ever in their holdings. ISP's and TV/movie compannies are now one, and own cable systems, newspapers, television and radio stations within their corporate umbrellas. The Internet, while wondrous in so many ways, is also more of a top-dog environment, as the entire concept of search engines and the way they function serve to promote the popular over the accurate or comprehensive. In raw terms, fewer companies already own more media than ever before in our history, and yesterday's FCC ruling, so clearly not in the public interest (which that organization allegedly exists to serve), paves the way toward an even narrower pyramid of ownership.

Oil is proving to be the driving factor in the Shrub annexation of Iraq. Yeah yeah yeah, it's great that Saddam Hussein is gone, but that was never the aim, rationale, or true consideration in the manufacture of a motive to make a bold oil grab in the Middle East - not at all. As the Pentagon looks foolish trying to deny that the Saving Of Private Lynch was as staged as the opening scene of the Tom Hanks film, the US has strong-armed the UN into dropping the sanctions against Iraq, unlocking the oil deposits. It is said the wealth generated by that oil is destined for the pockets of "the people of Iraq," but in the same news reports that carry such administration statements can be found a brief explanation of the true destiny for all of that black gold - American corporate pockets. See, the oil is tro be sold at market price, and the proceeds used to pay all of those American companies, er, make that the few American companies able to penetrate the private bidding process, that are "rebuilding" Iraq. So, the taxpayers of the US (and following another mammoth tax break giveaway to the rich, this means the middle to lower class) and the people of Iraq are joined together as benefactors of wealthy American corporations.

It is raw thievery, and were it committed by individuals and not countries, Interpol would be making mass arrests of the perpetrators.