Here's what I just sent to a few hundred re- the media & DU:

[snot]

Dear Friends:

I’m sorry for this longish e-mail, but I’m hoping to persuade some of you to help make it easier for me to NOT feel compelled to send so many e-mails. Also, some of this may not be news to some of you; but this message is designed so that you can forward it even to others who may be less aware of the info below.

Clayton Williams, a Republican candidate for Texas governor not so long ago, probably lost the race to Ann Richards partly because he advised rape victims to “lie back and enjoy it."

As most of us know, an alliance between neocons and religious extremists has managed to create huge problems for our country in what seems like a very short time. (In fact, they’d been preparing for decades, and had all the machinery in place. )

We do NOT have to lie back and enjoy it. We CAN stop them.

Most Americans are reasonable, well-intentioned people; and we vastly outnumber the right-wing extremists. They cannot continue their binge—unless we let them.

There is an urgent need for action on many fronts. The GREAT news is, there are many things YOU can easily do that will help.

The first step is to become informed and help others become informed.

This is not so simple, since the vast majority of the media, including most of the so-called “mainstream” media, is owned by conservatives. (There are many sources of info on this topic; here are just a few : http://www.commondreams.org ; http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp ; http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml ; http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html ; http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/chart.htm ; http://www.corporations.org/media/ ; http://www.fair.org/views.html ; http://www.makethemaccountable.com/myth/LiberalMedia.htm . Please note that most of these and other items you find on the topic are already out of date, since conservatives have pushed additional legal changes through and further increased their ownership during the last couple of years.)

It has become obvious that the corporate media ignore or do not accurately report much of the most important news. And when the majority of the media is either ignoring or ridiculing a story, over the constant, drumbeat conservative complaint of the media’s “liberal bias”, it takes extra chutzpah even for independent outlets to stand up and report fully and fairly. I recently realized, for example, that not only did The New York Times fail to report in any adequate way on the run-up to the Iraq war, the 2004 election irregularities, or the Downing Street Memo, but they were also seriously behind the curve on Viet Nam, Watergate, East Timor, and other important stories.

(I’ve stopped calling the major outlets the “mainstream media” or the “MSM”, because I don’t believe these media reflect the real concerns or beliefs of mainstream America.)

NPR still reports some, but not all, of the important news; the BBC is better. Surprise! both are currently under violent top-down attack from the Bush- and Blair-led governments, respectively. (Please phone and e-mail everyone you can think of to object to the proposed cuts. Pls go here to contact your Texas representatives to express your objection to the cuts: http://www.kera.org/about/congress/?tr=y&auid=945155 ; or if you’re not in Texas, you can go here to contact your U.S. senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm .)

Things have changed drastically since the days of Watergate--the media, no longer the "watchdog of democracy", now behave like a lapdog at best and at merely dispense propaganda.

Almost solely through the power of the Internet, we the people have nonetheless managed to make many of our fellow Americans more aware of Bush administration transgressions or mistakes. But conservatives are already acting to try to get control of he Internet, too. “he ‘otal number of companies that control 60 percent of all minutes spent online in the US dwindled 87 percent, from 110 in March 1999 to 14 in March 2001’” ( http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/Corporations/Owners.asp ; see also http://fec.cdt.org/summary.html ; and http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/stories.php?story=03/11/26/5488520 ; and you can sign on to a set of principals to protect free speech on the Internet here: http://fec.cdt.org/signup.php ). There are reports that AOL has refused to place “liberal” ads, while continuing to accept conservative ads.

So it’s very important that we act NOW, and that we persevere.

Back to the first step: how to become more informed. Many of us have limited time to spend gathering news--especially if we have more-than-full-time jobs (which is how the most big corporations like it), let alone kids.

So my own recommendation is, skip the major news outlets, esp. t.v. network news. They’re more invested in distracting us from the real news than in disclosing it. If you need to listen while doing something else, listen to NPR and the BBC.

For national news, skip t.v. and the newspapers, and go to the Internet.

The corporate media have begun to belittle and ridicule Internet news sources. Well, just like in other media, there are some unreliable sources on the ‘net; but lately, there are some that have proved much MORE reliable and informative than much of the corporate media.

Try http://www.commondreams.org ; http://www.rawstory.org/ ; http://www.truthout.org/ ; http://www.buzzflash.org/ ; http://www.alternet.org .

Another great way to catch up on the inside scoop is to cruise the following page on a regular basis: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=greatest_threads . Just click on the first five or ten headings that interest you, and you’ll see more real news than you’ll get from a month’s-worth of t.v. And you’ll be directed to petitions you can easily sign, stickers and posters your can download, and other opportunities for action.

The stories change by the minute, but the big ones tend to stay on the list. Here are ten of the top stories as of right now (. . . seen any of them in the news lately?):

Reid speaks out on DSM ~ This is VERY important
Because Reid was on the Senate Intel Committee that supposedly cleared Bush of hyping intel via the 911 report. Republicans are claiming the DSM is a non-issue; but the Committee did not have access to the info in the DSM and other recently-leaked docs.

Contact Reps in a Few Keystrokes & a Click!
Easy way for you to call for investigation into the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (at http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/39 )

Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?
A respected journalist’s intro to his new book compiling documentation of the election fraud.

The Bush Administration & Impeachment & the False Statement Statute
Legal aspects of possible impeachment based on Downing St. Memo, etc.

Putting Some Context to the DSM: Cheney's March 2001 Iraq Oil Maps
Pics of Cheney’s 2001 maps detailing oil fields and facilities, and related info.

ABC Bosses Tell ABC News Kill Interviews with Robert Kennedy Jr. . . .
Relating to Kennedy’s efforts to bring attention to risks posed by use of mercury in childhood vaccines.

(Independent) US Lied to Britain Over Use of Napalm in Iraq war
Apparently, we told them we didn’t. Apparently, we lied.

Palast TESTIMONY . . . Sent to Conyers for Today's Hearing. Please READ!
Greg Palast is a reporter for the BBC and has done a great deal of terrific investigative reporting on the 2004 election irregularities as well as other horrors. Always worthwhile.

Coingate Could Prove 2004 was Stolen - this and DSM Should Be our Focus!
In case you hadn’t heard, Ohio officials invested huge sums of public monies in COINS, which have disappeared, among other risky or odd investments. It now appears that such sums may have helped finance some of the election fraud that took place in Ohio in 2004.

And last but not least,

I Used to Think DU Was an Inconsequential Chat Room
but I was wrong, and discovered that this place actually makes things happen. Witness last week's hearings on the truth, Mr. Conyers amazing efforts paid off. The truth tsunami is real . . . DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND IS ACTUALLY HAVING AN EFFECT ON OUR GOVERNMENT . . . ! . . . The internet is OUR weapon of mass destruction.

Friends, if you can’t do it all at once, please don’t give up altogether. Just do what you can, be it a little or a lot, day by day.

Please BELIEVE: YOU CAN BE PART OF THE SOLUTION!
Get informed! Speak out! Inform others! Take action!

[dave502d]

1. snot, thank you, This is one of the best post i have read.

I will save this.

[LiberalUprising]

2. Thank you

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