Money Driven Medicine

I want to point you to this important film. It's called Money Driven Medicine, and it highlights some of the inherent and deep problems that are systemic in the health care industry.

Money Driven Medicine | Bill Moyers Journal PBS

Mike Davis and Bill Moyers Discuss Socialism

Video, Moyers and Davis Discuss Economic Crisis

Bill Moyers sits down with socialist historian Mike Davis for his critique of the government's response to the economic crisis and how he thinks it compares to Roosevelt's New Deal. Mike Davis is a writer and historian, who currently teaches creative writing at University of California, Riverside.

I came across the above video interview while reading tomdispatch.com: a second 911

Letter to President George W. Bush

I have been thinking about writing a letter to George W. Bush. I got the idea yesterday while meditating and sign-holding at a weekly peace vigil. I am furious with President Bush for driving the USA into an unnecessary war, costing trillions of dollars, the lives of so many people, and causing immense environmental and social degradation.

So I want to write him and tell him how I feel, and some of my observations about his behavior.

I want to vent. So I think I'll do that here, rather than in a personal letter to the President, because a lot of the things that I want to say aren't necessarily constructive or nonviolent. I feel better already.

I wonder if the President George W. Bush has a conscience. Does he feel any genuine sorrow or remorse about (allegedly) intentionally using deceit to drive the nation into an unnecessary war?

Does he care about the lives of others? Perhaps the Bohemian Grove "Cremation of Care" ceremonies have been too effective for the President. Perhaps he was born without a conscience.

Anyway, this man must be held accountable. So I am somewhat hopeful and optimistic, with all sorts of new information coming out, and new efforts being made toward the goal of investigating official misconduct, and holding those responsible for grievous breaches of the public trust, to account for their actions.

Check out the new Bill Moyers Journal program with Andrew J. Bacevich: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/profile.html

Also please see information about Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine

Short Film on Shock Doctrine:


and

Ron Suskind's The Way of the World

It IS about Oil

www.truthout.org/article/it-was-oil-all-along

Also see the Bill Moyers Journal excerpt: www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/watch3.html

Bill Moyers Address to National Conference for Media Reform

Quote from the video: "Sadly, in many respects, the fourth estate has become the fifth column of democracy, colluding with the powers that be in a culture of deception that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom – and that is the truth." – Bill Moyers

Also see here: http://www.freepress.net/node/41318

From Truthout.org [link in title above]:

Media Conference: The Freedom That Makes Freedom Possible

Saturday 07 June 2008

by: Bennett Gordon, Utne Reader

Bill Moyers addresses the need for responsible public media.

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008. Presented by FreePress.net.

"As journalism goes, so goes democracy," renowned PBS host Bill Moyers told the crowd at the National Conference for Media Reform. And right now, journalism is in trouble.

In his serious and eloquent style, Moyers warned the crowd of the "mighty armada of power and influence" that threatens the media and democracy today-propagating junk news that dominates the national discussion and forces out more legitimate and competing storylines.

There is one central tenet that runs through the media reform movement, according to Moyers: Everyone here sees media consolidation as a "corrosive force." As the wall between journalism and advertising is broken down by businesses pushing profit over public good, honest information and accountability in this country literally disappears. He called out the "myths of the marketplace," including the idea that private systems will provide for the public good, and the business mantra that public interest is what the public is interested in.

Moyers effortlessly drew connections from the complicity of the media in the war in Iraq to the near-constant attacks on the environment, from the "political marionettes" in Washington, D.C., to the soaring credit card debt and inequality in America today. The way to combat these problems is with media reform, and the only way reform the media is with a healthy and popular movement.

"In numbers is strength, and in strength is success," Moyers told the crowd of journalists and activists, urging them to support a diversity of voices from all communities. He called on journalists and activists to "be vigilant" and "show courage," because their job is literally to protect "the freedom that makes all other freedom possible."

Video is also, alternately, available at YouTube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE

Reverend Wright Speaks the Truth

"...Those who call me unpatriotic have used their positions of privilege to avoid military service."

Reverend Wright was interviewed by Bill Moyers on The Journal. I recommend watching the interview. www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/profile.html

The Washington Times Organ of Propaganda

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
December 27, 2006

The American Right achieved its political dominance in Washington over the past quarter century with the help of more than $3 billion spent by Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon on a daily propaganda organ, the Washington Times, according to a 21-year veteran of the newspaper.

George Archibald, who describes himself “as the first reporter hired at the Washington Times outside the founding group” and author of a commemorative book on the Times’ first two decades, has now joined a long line of disillusioned conservative writers who departed and warned the public about extremism within the newspaper.

In an Internet essay on recent turmoil inside the Times, Archibald also confirmed claims by some former Moon insiders that the cult leader has continued to pour in $100 million a year or more to keep the newspaper afloat. Archibald put the price tag for the newspaper’s first 24 years at “more than $3 billion of cash.”

At the newspaper’s tenth anniversary, Moon announced that he had spent $1 billion on the Times – or $100 million a year – but newspaper officials and some Moon followers have since tried to low-ball Moon’s subsidies in public comments by claiming they had declined to about $35 million a year.

The figure from Archibald and other defectors from Moon’s operation is about three times higher than the $35 million annual figure.
...
Washington Times articles are routinely cited by C-SPAN, for instance, without explanations to viewers that the newspaper is financed by an ultra-right religious cult leader, a convicted tax fraud and a publicly identified money-launderer. Most American listeners just think they’re getting straightforward news.
...
Arguably one of the measures of the Washington Times’ success was how the major U.S. news organizations increasingly seemed to march to the same drummer, even when not under direct pressure to do so.

Over the past half dozen years, it has often been hard to distinguish between the fawning coverage of George W. Bush from the Washington Times and from the Washington Post. Both major Washington dailies bought into Bush’s false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with almost no skepticism.
...

link to original

This muckraking reveals an important betrayal of the journalistic medium. Journalism relies on principles of ethics to function properly. Here we have an example, S. M. Moon and the Washington Times, of a fundamental breakdown in the system of journalism.

Bill Moyers recently asked how America could so readily and rapidly fall into the senseless abyss of the extreme right wing agenda. Here, Robert Parry has prepared an essay to (at the least partially) answer that question.