Life in the United States is bursting and
pulsating with a mind-numbing myriad of media. We are bombarded with
a constant overt noise that is as unavoidable as it is
harmful. This noise provides to a large extent the substance that forms our
world-view. It includes: lying,
non-lying deception, misstatements, disinformation,
fraud and perjury.
Mark Twain said, "Advertising is
legalized lying". Our multi-venue, multi-channel media leave no-one untouched. We are exposed to
perpetual media noise through broadcast TV, cable TV, satellite TV, music,
internet, internet TV, AM and FM radio, short-wave radio, internet radio,
satellite radio, video games, billboards, marquees, , books, book covers,
bumper stickers, magazines, flyers, newspapers, press conferences,
speeches, debates, lectures, sermons, teachers, professors, politicians, agents
provocateur, experts, press secretaries and talking heads.
In the year 2004, $22 billion was spent
on network TV advertisements alone. A typical hour-long television broadcast
contains fifteen minutes of advertising. This does not include the
embedded advertising known as product placement. By the age of
twenty-one, the average U.S. TV viewer would see 1,000,000
commercials. Children under the age of six are heavy television
viewers. They are unable to understand the purpose of commercials
and advertising and are highly likely to accept the claims being made, that
is, they accept the legalized lying Mark Twain spoke of. The young human psyche is
incessantly bombarded by distorted, albeit hip calls, to buying
something. For
children ages 6 - 17, watching television is the number one after-school
activity. Lying to children is an acceptable American activity
that leads to them accepting lies as adults. How else to explain that over half of the U.S. adult
population still believes that Iraq had something to do with September 11,
2001, even after the 9-11 Commission and George W. Bush both concluded
that there was no connection between the two? Repeat the lie often
enough and it becomes accepted as the truth. Inculcate the
acceptance of lies at an early age and fewer repetitions are required to
promulgate the acceptance of the lie.
Consequences
Being lied to daily through the media has become a rite of
passage in the USA. What are the consequences of all the noise and
lies?
Young people think that
they are savvy. They think that they question what is presented,
and, they do, but still within a context that securely proscribes the
question forms and that gives them little in the way of options to
protest the manipulation. Their most likely reaction is to consume
(stuff, fashion, gossip, drugs), not to create. So even if the
kids "rebel" by consuming a different "brand" than
the ones so heavily promoted, well the capitalists, as a class, as a
concept and certainly as the context -- the capitalists still win.
(JeanneE Hand-Boniakowski)
Consider the commercials
for erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction is, in all but a few
cases, an invented disease, just as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is
an invented danger, chimerical crises that nonetheless create extreme fear
responses. The marketing enterprise delivers the lies and we
internalize them. We are flaccid, and, we are fearful.
The heavy price we pay for
broadcast legal lying is a society that can no longer recognize the
lie. The critical thinking skills necessary to challenge a claim are
no longer readily available. Nor, are they desirable.
Meanwhile, the noise and the lies continue to increase dominating our
lives in a never ending stream of balderdash. Like a sponge we soak
up what is called "news", but in reality is the orchestrated
propaganda of capitalism and the so-called corporate "free market
system" that has taken over the government of the United
States.
Consider the case of the
radio commentator Armstrong Williams who was in cahoots with the United
States Department of Education. Williams accepted $240,000 to talk positively
about president Bush's No Child Left Behind program. Mr. Williams
self-described "poor judgment" allowed the Education Department
to use taxpayers dollars in the pursuit of secretly altering the public's
perception of a flawed education policy. This is a new ethical low
for journalists. It provides more evidence that the voices in
the news are on the take. Such payment for establishment blather is
nothing new. As Armstrong Williams put it, ""This happens
all the time. There are others."
Journalists have become
cheerleaders for the establishment. News pundits have become
regurgitators of the corporate/Pentagon line. The
"experts" trotted out in their spiffy desert camouflage uniforms
are the paid partisans of Pentagon management. Nary is an opposing
view or voice of contradiction heard. The media have sucked
in, and sucked up to, the "if you are not with us you are
against us" fascist mindset. The media have, like the Borg,
been assimilated into the collective. They are part of the mantra
matrix chanting the same administration line and lies. Facts no
longer matter. Investigative journalism has succumbed to the Tucker
Carlson and James Carville style of babble. The bow-tied and
bald-headed bastards put knots in our brains. The truth is as
author, Steve Allen many years ago in his book, "Dumbth: The Lost Art
of Thinking With 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind",
warned us, is that we have severely increased the tendency to
ineptitude. As a quick example, "disclaimer
stickers" were placed on the biology textbooks in Atlanta's Cobb
County school system. The stickers said that the theory of evolution
is just that, a theory. Wonderful. Yet, a recent study
concluded that over half the United States' population does not know that
tomatoes have genes. The lies of the anti-evolution sticker and the
noise of the crowd that spawned it supercedes the rational thinking of
science. Hoorah for ignorance. One more cheer for death to intellectualism.
Fortunately, on January 14, 2005, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that
the stickers were unconstitutional and ordered them removed.
Crank it Up!
The noise level will be
turned up a notch beyond tolerable on Thursday, January 20, 2005, as George
W. Bush is coronated for his first term as President of the United
States. On that day, the media hype will be running on full throttle
as $40 - $50-million dollars are consumed by a celebratory machine
decidedly oblivious to the death and suffering that it has created around
the world. While the orchestrators of the electoral college victory gyrate
in black ties, minks, champagne and caviar at a myriad of inaugural balls,
thousands of mangled bodies both Iraqi and U.S. scream out in their
physical distortion hurtling invective at the callousness of the over-indulgence.
Just as the radiation of sun is often a precursor to cancer of the skin,
the consummate greed of power over-expressed via a fabricated electoral
mandate manifests a malignancy on the republic. The malignancy has
metastasized itself morphing into a broadcast sputum of unavoidable
proportions. As Billionaires for Bush put it, "All the excess,
twice the greed". While not a complete list there will be
the following balls to get off on:
- Black Tie and Boots
Inaugural Ball 1/19/2005
Sponsored by The Texas State Society - Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
- Illinois Presidential
Inaugural Gala 2005 1/19/2005
Sponsored by Motorola - Grand Hyatt Hotel
- South Carolina Inaugural
Ball 1/21/2005
Sponsored by the South Carolina State Society - Smithsonian National
Museum of American History
- GW University Inaugural
Ball 1/20/2005
Omni Shoreham Hotel
- Heritage Inaugural Ball
1/22/2005
Hosted by Heritage Festivals
- 2005 Lawyers Inaugural
Ball
- Indiana State Society
Inaugural Ball
- New Hampshire Inaugural
Reception
- North Carolina Inaugural
Ball
- Texas Wyoming Ball
- Constitution Ball
- Freedom Ball
- Independence Ball
- Democracy Ball
- Patriot Ball
- Stars and Stripes Ball
- Commander-in-Chief Ball
Perhaps, the biggest lie
that will permeate the nation will take place with the oath swearing in
the President. The noise exhibited at that moment is the
annunciation of the subversion of the Constitution and that which has been
the good contained within the nation. When George W. Bush says the
words below he radiates the admission to high crimes and misdemeanors for
which he should be impeached,
I do solemnly swear that
I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United
States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.
for the Constitution does
not allow lying to the people. Nor, does it allow the executive
branch to declare war on any nation based upon a lie -- not even based
upon the truth, for that matter, as only Congress can declare
war.
Falling Harder Than
Nixon
On January 15, 2003, former
attorney general of the United States, Ramsey Clark, put forth articles of
impeachment against president George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H, Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David
Ashcroft. While two of the cast of characters will be leaving the
scene the background radiation of their lies remains ever present.
In 1972, Richard Nixon of
California defeated George McGovern by 60.7% to 37.5% of the popular
vote. Nixon received 17,838,725 more votes than McGovern with an
electoral landslide of 520 votes to just 17 for McGovern. Less than
two years later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency in
disgrace, thus avoiding being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.
In the election of 2004, an election fraught with irregularities,
questions and fraud, George W. Bush ostensibly defeated John F. Kerry by a
mere 3,319,878 votes, with the electoral college margin of 286 to 252,
hardly a mandate by comparison. Richard Nixon's precipitous downfall
provides evidence that the people have a limit to how much noise and lying
they will put up with. The time will soon come when the people will
make their own noise demanding that the Constitution be once again
returned to them from corporate fascism that has taken over the United
States government.
Some Bush lies
(from Democratic National Committee website: http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/top10_lies/
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we
cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the
form of a mushroom cloud." [Bush Remarks, Cincinnati OH, 10/7/02
"The British government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa." [Bush, State of the Union, 1/28/03
"In an interview with Polish
television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers [found in postwar Iraq]
as evidence that the United States had 'found the weapons of mass
destruction' it was looking for." [New York Times, 6/26/03]
"The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of
course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln saying that
their mission was accomplished." [Bush, News Conference, 10/28/03]
"Our budget will run a deficit that
will be small and short-term." [Bush, State of the Union, 2002]
"Tax relief is central to my plan to
encourage economic growth, and we can proceed with tax relief without fear
of budget deficits, even if the economy softens," Bush promised.
[Bush Remarks at Western Michigan University, 3/27/01]
"We must uncover every detail and lean
every lesson September the 11th." [Bush 11/27/03]
"Bush had pushed hard for the Medicare
drug benefit, but said he would not sign anything that exceeded $400
billion." [Boston Globe, 1/30/04]
"We will require all power plants to
meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of...carbon
dioxide." [Bush speech, "A Comprehensive National Energy
Policy," 9/29/00, Saginaw, MI]
"I'm a united, not a divider."
[Bush, Austin American-Statesman, 7/30/00]
Articles
of Impeachment
of
President George W. Bush
Vice President Richard B. Cheney
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
and
Attorney General John David Ashcroft
The President, Vice
President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed
from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or
other High Crimes and Misdemeanors. --Article II, Section 4 of The
Constitution of the United States of America
Acts which require the
impeachment of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Attorney General John David
Ashcroft include:
1) Ordering and directing a
proclaimed "pre-emptive", or "first strike" war of
aggression against Afghanistan causing thousands of deaths
indiscriminately, a major proportion non combatants, leaving millions
homeless and hungry and installing a government of their choice in Kabul.
2) Authorizing daily
intrusions into the airspace of Iraq by U.S. military aircraft in
violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and aerial attacks on facilities and
persons, on the soil of Iraq, killing hundreds of people indiscriminately,
initially falsely claiming self defense though over a period of eleven
years not a single U.S. aircraft has been struck or damaged by gunfire
from Iraq, but later admitting the targeting of defense installations in
Iraq, as war preparations they ordered progressed.
3) Authorizing, ordering
and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilians facilities and
locations where civilian casualties are unavoidable.
4) Threatening Iraq with
proclaimed "pre-emptive", or "first strike" attack and
a war of aggression by overwhelming force and military superiority
including specific threats to use nuclear weapons while engaged in a
massive military build-up in nations and waters surrounding Iraq.
5) Threatening the
independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently proclaiming an
intention to change its government by force while preparing to assault
Iraq in a war of aggression.
6) Authorizing, ordering
and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secret and
other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and
psychological coercion of prisoners to obtain false statements concerning
acts and intentions of governments and individuals and violating within
the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agents elsewhere,
the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.
7) Authorizing, directing
and condoning bribery and coercion of governments and individuals to cause
them to act in violation of their duty and the law, including to maintain
and tighten enforcement of economic sanctions against Iraq which continue
to increase the death rate of infants, children and elderly persons; to
attack and kill designated groups, or persons; to permit use of land,
facilities, territorial waters, or air space for U.S. attacks on Iraq; to
vote, abstain in a vote, or publicly proclaim support for a U.S. or U.N.
attack on Iraq; to defect from Iraq, or to falsely accuse it of weapons
concealment to break down opposition to a U.S. war of aggression; and to
reject ratification of the Treaty creating an International Criminal
Court, or reject its jurisdiction over the United States. 8) Making,
ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct
of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S. government
personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments with false
information; concealing information vital to public discussion and
informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts
to obtain weapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate
of fear and destroy opposition to U.S. wars of aggression and first strike
attacks by the U.S.
9) Violations and
subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an
attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war
crimes in "pre emptive" wars, first strike attacks and threats
of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and other nations by assuming
powers of an imperial executive who is not accountable to law and usurping
powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and the people of the United States
to prevent interferences with the unlawful executive exercise of military
power and economic coercion against the international community.
10) Violations and
subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law in
an attempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and
war crimes in wars and threats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and
others and usurping powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its
nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejecting,
violations and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroy
any means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect,
or adjudicate the exercise of U.S. military and economic power against the
international community.
Ramsey Clark
Former Attorney General of the United States of America
January 15, 2003
© 2005
Jozef
Hand-Boniakowski (excluding
articles of impeachment)
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