The Real Left and the True Right

Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Ways to measure the political spectrum

What does the term "Conservative" mean ?

Virginia: Fake Conservatives Stall pro-family Legislation

Agape Press - Feb 18/05 - A Virginia pro-family advocate says she wants people to know that lawmakers in that state are stonewalling on important issues. Victoria Cobb is the legislative director of the Richmond-based Family Foundation of Virginia. She points out that two important bills in the state's Senate have been delayed or defeated recently, not by recorded vote but by procedural maneuvering. Cobb says these bills, one having to do with homosexual adoption and the other dealing with religious liberties, were purposely stalled by the lawmakers. And it is becoming routine, she adds, for members of the State Legislature to try to hide their records with this kind of procedural sleight-of-hand. "Virginians are growing very weary of senators who are playing politics with their values," the pro-family leader says. "We have had situations where bills are getting re-referred to committees simply to make sure that it is harder to get them passed. This is something that is unacceptable to the people of Virginia, and we're going to make sure they know where these senators stand." Cobb hopes exposing the lawmakers' records will help put an end to their tactics of delaying or killing good bills through delay tactics, rather than by having the courage to vote against them.

Desecration as a Political Weapon

Back in 1999 artist Chris Ofili smeared elephant feces and pasted pornographic photographs on an image of the Virgin Mary and hung it in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It caused a firestorm of protest. Olifi's detractors were outraged at the sacrilege. His defenders retorted with the predicable arguments citing freedom of expression and artistic autonomy but avoided any serious engagement with the real meaning of the piece.

Ofili's desecration is nothing new. In recent years we have seen "Piss Christ" where a crucifix was submerged in a jar of urine, Neonazis painting swastikas on synagogues, even Madonna simulating sex acts in a set designed as a church.

Shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin ordered soldiers into Russian villages that resisted the imposition of the Communist yoke. Lenin discovered that religious faith informed much of the resistance. Especially troublesome was the teaching that the statutes governing human affairs were
subject to the higher judgment of God. It repudiated the Marxist denial of the ideal and everything it implied including the establishment of the state as the final arbiter of all human affairs.

Religious faith was a grave threat to Marxism and Lenin knew it. The soldiers struck at the heart of this faith by striking at the symbols that defined it.

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The True Conservative: David Horowitz's Right Turn

David Horowitz, now one of America's most important conservative writers but once a New Left guru, recalls walking on the ocean beach at Hampton Bays in eastern Long Island. He wasn't enjoying a beautiful day or fishing or searching for seashells as other boys might be doing.

No, the 10-year-old Horowitz was "preoccupied with a speech I was preparing in my head" as sandpipers ran "up from the foam" and then followed it back down. The speech he was preparing was to none other than Harry S. Truman. It was "a long speech, and I went over it again and again in order to memorize it," Horowitz recalls.

What did this precocious boy want to tell the president of the United States at a time when the Cold War had become white hot and the communist empire was roaring at full throttle into Eastern Europe and China?

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The War on the Cross

If the American Civil Liberties Union committed itself to advancing the rights of Christians and Jews as tirelessly as it does to rooting out Christian and Jewish images in the public square, perhaps its civil liberties credo would not seem so duplicitous.

Sadly, the evolution of "civil liberties" has yielded a corresponding erosion of respect for those pesky "traditional values"—and the religions with which they are associated—that threaten the new pioneers of social engineering.

If religious tradition is to be recognized, say the pioneers, it is only the religious tradition of a distant culture that deserves our respect. Thus fealty toward heathenism, the religion of a conquered people, and to the conquered people themselves, is fitting, as is abjuring the Judeo-Christian heritage that formed, dominates and buttresses American society. Evidence of this truism is no more apparent than in Los Angeles, where three recent lawsuits highlight a preference for ancient religions and hostility toward the largest faith practiced in America. 

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Death On Demand

David van Gend

The recent suicide of a Brisbane woman raises many important questions. Nancy Crick was not dying. She was not terminally ill, she did not have any trace of cancer, she was almost twice the body weight stated on her web site and gaining. And Nancy Crick did not die. She suicided, which avoids dying, avoids reading the final chapter of the human story for fear of what it might hold.

That fear is the key to understanding the "right to die" movement; it is the "afraid to die" movement. It is the "life has no meaning" movement. In "Search for Meaning", Carolyn Jones accompanies a friend through her process of dying. "The disfigurement of her illness was pitiful; it would have shocked no one if she had asked for death. But patiently she lived through her last days, until one evening, calmly, she took her last breath... It was a moment of heightened significance, almost excitement, certainly sacred. The sense was of a rite of passage safely traversed."

What a pitiful contrast to Mrs Crick's suicide. Family who could not bear to be present to witness the self-killing. Utterly alone even in company, since no one can look suicide in the eye. A moment of debased insignificance, except in the minds of Euthanasia Society activists triumphing ghoulishly over their media coup.

Yet Nancy Crick has not died in vain. She has exposed her doctor

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January/February 1997 | Contents
The Storm over "Dark Alliance" 

Anatomy of a Story: Crack, the Contras, and the CIA

by Peter Kornbluh

CJR - Jan/Feb/97 - Kornbluh is senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a public-interest documentation center in Washington, and co-author of "The Iran-Contra Scandal: A Declassified History."

After Gary Webb spent more than a year of intense investigative reporting and weeks of drafting, his editors at the San Jose Mercury News decided to run his three-part series late last August, when the nation's focus was divided between politics and vacation. The series, dark alliance: the story behind the crack explosion, initially "sank between the Republican and Democratic Conventions," Webb recalls. "I was very surprised at how little attention it generated."

Webb needn't have worried. His story subsequently became the most talked-about piece of journalism in 1996 and arguably the most famous -- some would say infamous -- set of articles of the decade. Indeed, in the five months since its publication, "Dark Alliance" has been transformed into what New York Times reporter Tim Weiner calls a "metastory" -- a phenomenon of public outcry, conspiracy theory, and media reaction that has transcended the original series itself.

The series, and the response to it, have raised a number of fundamental journalistic questions. The original reporting -- on the links between a gang of Nicaraguan drug dealers, CIA-backed counterrevolutionaries, and the spread of crack in California -- has drawn unparalleled criticism from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Their editorial decision to assault, rather than advance, the Mercury News story has, in turn, sparked critical commentary on the priorities of those pillars of the mainstream press.

Yet in spite of the mainstream media, the allegations generated by the Mercury News continue to swirl, particularly through communities of color. Citizens and journalists alike are left to weigh the significant flaws of the piece against the value of putt ing a serious matter, one the press has failed to fully explore, back on the national agenda.

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Who was Mr. Greenpeace?
by Julia Rufo, Michelle Runch and Judi McLeod

April 9 - 30, 2001

Greenpeace powerhouse David McTaggart--whose organization made millions from anti-toxic campaigns--was manufacturing gourmet extra virgin olive oil containing dioxins, at the time of his death, Toronto Free Press has discovered.

Tests for dioxins conducted on the late McTaggart's Pax Jani olive oil, conducted by Phillips Environmental at the request of TFP, not only indicate the presence of dioxins (2.06 parts per trillion), bottles containing the oil come with plastic seals. 

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Canada's Top Military Priority: Closure
by Arthur Weinreb

August 12, 2002

"Closure" is one of those cutesy little words that becomes trendy every now and again. First gaining prominence in the 90s, its primary use is for victims of crime and other catastrophes, who, feeling aggrieved and victimized, are supposed to take comfort upon being told that at some point, usually soon, they will have closure, whatever that means.

Closure, it seems, has now become a high priority in the Canadian Armed Forces and reached new heights in the "friendly fire" incident last April when four Canadian troops died after being fired upon by the Americans. The United States and Canada held separate inquiries into the occurrence and both found that the fault lay with the trigger happy pilot who dropped the bomb. After these inquiries were concluded, information was leaked to the media that the pilots were given permission to fire upon those on the ground, albeit that the authorization came seconds after the bomb was unleashed. This leaked information, if true, confirmed what many people felt; that the American pilots were simply being used as scapegoats.

In Canada, we’ll never know if the new information is correct or not. Upon being questioned, Defense Minister John McCallum indicated that he would not re-open the inquiry. The reason — the families of the dead and wounded soldiers needed closure. How 90s; how trendy; how ridiculous.

Canada is, or was, allegedly at war in Afghanistan. It is hard for the government to remember this when they have much more important things to deal with, for example, whether or not increasing the Trans Canada Highway in Newfoundland to four lanes is a sufficient legacy for our slowly outgoing prime minister. If we are or were at war, it seems it would be a tad more important to fully investigate what happened in Afghanistan and try to prevent future occurrences. But no, political correctness is more important than trying to reduce future loss of life, especially when those lives are military.

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Slouching Toward Servitude

The Ten Greatest Threats to Freedom

(But don't believe # 8) - Story Here

 Side Effects of the Theory of Evolution

Australia News Section

AUSTRALIA:  VICTIMS  OF VICTORIA'S RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE LAW

The Illusion of Progress

Australian Prime Minister Meets with Muslim Leaders in Canberra 
By VOA News 
23 August 2005

John Howard 

VOA News - 23 Aug - Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Islamic community leaders have agreed to join forces to combat terrorism.

Following a meeting Tuesday in Canberra with 14 moderate Muslim leaders, Mr. Howard said there was a unanimous commitment by participants to cooperate in addressing any terrorist threat that may arise.

Among those attending the meeting was Ameer Ali, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils. He said the focus of the conference was to find ways to keep extremist views from harming the country.

Mr. Howard has been criticized for not including more radical Islamic leaders in the meeting. He said he did not want to give the extremists a platform.

htp://www.voanews.com/english/2005-08-23-voa12.cfm

God's Outcome
"The whole thing went off really well," Marsh said. "It shocked the opposition, the Labor Party, and [it] completely did an abouts face .... They supported the government, and said 'We want to stop gay marriage.'"

Although he was hoping for a positive outcome, Marsh was shocked by the response from the opposition and never expected such an immediate change to take place.

"Within eight days of that fourth of August, a legal bill was passed in the Senate which said that marriage is between a man and a woman for life, excluding others," Marsh explained with excitement. "Really, all I can say is that it was an act of God."

And God's hand was obviously in the battle from the beginning. "As it happened, I had booked a men's prayer summit six months before on the 12th and 13th of August," Marsh explained. "And the bill passed while we were there to pray for it.

"So all glory has to go to God because God is God!" he added.

In addition, Marsh pinpointed unity as a key factor in the success of the constitutional marriage amendment. "We didn't care who got the credit," he said. "We worked together."

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Australia: CDP tells clergy to get political

Aus- 2004 - Former educator Phil Lamb and newly appointed State Director of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP) has told NSW church leaders to ‘wake up’ and get involved in politics, claiming many pastors withhold information from their congregations about Christians who are standing for election in public office.

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Christian parties have a role: Jensen

Date: October 17 200