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We went a long ways on some threads a couple of weeks ago towards identifying a network of direct-mail solicitation firms that scam seniors and also turn out to be tied in with almost all the right-wing dirty tricksters, from Karl Rove and his fellow-alumni of the College Republican National Committee to the people responsible for the Willie Horton ad, the anti-Clinton smears, and probably Stolen Honor.
We'd like to continue along these lines, and although we're still feeling our way into it, I can see several progressively far-reaching directions in which it might go.
The most modest is to focus on the specific right-wing organizations which run these fund-raising scams, as well as the astroturf groups which are really fronts for corporations, like those currently trying to convince seniors that the Medicare prescription coverage shuck is really a good thing and should be protected. This would primarily involve digging out information and getting it to seniors or others who are being targeted by these groups.
A second possibility has to do with the fact that spokesmen for extreme right-wing groups, regularly identified as "non-partisan," show up over and over on tv and in the papers presenting their side of crucial issues. I suspect that the media accept them at face value more out of laziness and a need to fill air time than from a deliberate right-wing agenda. Our aim would be to identify these individuals and groups, to insist that they be identified as partisan spokesmen whenever they appear, and also to generate our own spokespeople, issues analyses, and explanations of current issues to offer the media as a counterbalance.
A third area involves continuing our research into all the interconnections among these shadowy right-wing groups. This would be more for our own purposes than for public release -- to better understand recent US history, to avoid being blindsided by Republican dirty tricks, and to learn more about the ideological underpinnings of the extreme right and how we can counter their fascist intentions.
And the fourth involves research into the larger forces that are arrayed against us -- such as the military-industrial complex (which now includes homeland security and prisons) and companies like Halliburton and the Carlyle Group that are increasingly taking foreign policy into their own hands -- and into the obscure maneuverings that are currently going on in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia for power, wealth, and territorial advantage.
I don't know how all this will shake out. These topics have in common the fact that they have all been areas of research on DU. But it is quite possible that the first two, which involve practical action and communicating with the public and the media, will prove to be best handled by a different group of people than the heavy research (although there would have to be some intercommunication.)
I don't have an email list to send you at this point. And Bozos said he'd been talking to someone about a website -- I don't know if that was you or another DU'er. Either way, although we definitely need to let a thousand flowers bloom and not put all our eggs in one basket (let's hear it for mixed metaphors!), it's also important to have some coordination of efforts. So by all means let's stay in touch.
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