Working the night shift as a truck driver affords one an ample amount of time to listen to the best electronic media.

Radio. AM specifically, as the FM stations fade in and out on the open road.

My favorite show used to be Coast To Coast AM, before they became little more than an apologist for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Seemingly in existence only to disseminate disinformation and cover up the abuses of the ruling elite. There's a reason that Jim Marrs, the man who wrote "Rule By Secrecy", hasn't been invited back on the show since 9-11. Once frequent guests who wrote of the New World Order are not welcome.

Ian Punnett, who hosted weekends for about a year, is moving on to Minnesota to host his own show. On Sunday, his final show with Coast, he had on as a guest Devon Jackson.

Jackson's book, Conspiranoia, is loaded with almost every conspiracy theory, real or imagined. Verifiable or not, rumor and innuendo, with no editorial direction.

Here's an excerpt of a review of the book at Amazon.

His choice of a guidebook format (each chapter proposing an evanescent overall conspiracy, in which all relevant paragraphs are cross-referenced by pictogram to the other conspiracy chapters) makes the material easier to grasp than a narrative like Gravitys Rainbow, but strangely numbs the unease that much of it provokes. Jacksons buzz-friendly nature demonstrates how such conspiracy culture ( at once personal, therefore unsettling) has been vitiated by the public mode of entertainment, in which myth becomes inseparable from malfeasance, the vital nature of malign conspiracy arguably reduced to simulacra. Whats missing is any effort to perform a larger, graver task: to figure out which of these malicious netherworlds of corruption might still be brought to account by an increasingly fractious, distracted citizenry.

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The other unholy things the administration has been up to
by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN -- When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, many political observers had a theory that whenever he started holding photo ops with adorable little children, it was time to grab your wallet because it meant some unconscionable giveaway to the corporations was in the wind.

I did not fully subscribe to the theory, but having noticed a number of adorable-child ops in the past few weeks, I decided to check for what might be flying under the radar, with the following results:

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by Roberto J. Gonzalez

AN aggressive attack on freedom has been launched upon America's college campuses. Its perpetrators seek the elimination of ideas and activities that place Sept. 11 in historical context, or critique the so-called war on terrorism.

The offensive, spearheaded by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based group, threatens free speech, democratic debate and the integrity of higher education. In an incendiary report, ``Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America,'' the American Council claims that ``colleges and university faculty have been the weak link in America's response'' to Sept. 11. It also asserts that ``when a nation's intellectuals are unwilling to defend its civilization, they give comfort to its adversaries.''

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by Ruth Conniff

Since September 11, I've been asked a couple of times about my patriotism and that of my fellow lefties and journalists. At a recent TV-produced town meeting I wrestled with my answer. Despite the sign at the end of my block urging me and my neighbors to fly our flags, I knew my family wouldn't put out the stars and stripes. It's not something I'd had to explain to myself. But thinking about explaining it to a larger audience took me aback.

Some lefties I know--especially Democratic politicians--instantly know their answer to the patriotism question. It is, after all, a question about loyalty, and you can't be a successful politician if you can't pass the loyalty test. So they say yes, absolutely. And then they go on to define patriotism in their own way--defending the Bill of Rights, democracy, and the American tradition of dissent. It's a sensible public stance. But I think a lot of us, if we admit the truth, are put off by the word "patriotism." It brings to mind the people in my hometown who pulled up lawn chairs to watch the military parade at the end of the Gulf War, applauding and eating hot dogs as helicopters zoomed overhead. Patriotism has got to be, as my dad says, more than hanging out a flag and then sitting on your ass watching jets bomb Afghanistan.

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by Ramsey Eric Ramsey

With flags flying everywhere it sometimes is difficult to see. Is there not a chance, then, that there are things wehave missed because of this constant waving? With so many flags all we seeare stars, as if we're some unfortunate cartoon character who has been hit over the head. It seems time, like those cartoon characters, to shake our heads vigorously from side-to-side and clear our thoughts and vision so that we might see what is going on.

Amid this confusing constellation can it be that we have missed even the most obvious and egregious things that have happen in the wake of 11 September 2001? Have we missed the repeal of civil liberties-many dangerously close to, if not in fact, transgressing the Constitution; have we missed the war profiteering of those corporations whose campaign contributions raise suspicions about their waiting bounties from the coming tax cuts; have we missed the naive thinking that suggests in a world more complex than any of us can imagine either you stand with theBush Administration or with Usama bin Laden; could it be that we missed the American Council of Trustees and Alumni's report that persons who have not missed such things and who work on university campuses are accused of being the weak link in the national character?

Not surprisingly, my name was not on the list of those professors accused. I wonder if it is has anything to do with the fact I teach those books so revered by Ms. Cheney and Mr. Bennett (and not simply that I am nobody). I teach the so-called great books, the classics. But just as there are many choices between Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden, there are many more lessons to be learned from these books than one might be lead to believe by conservatives.

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by Jennifer L. Pozner

'JUST WHEN YOU think you've heard all the stories from 9-11, more emerge," Tom Brokaw announced on an NBC Nightly News segment saluting the heroines of Ground Zero, who have received next to zero media attention since the attacks.

On the Dec. 4 broadcast, firefighter Lieut. Brenda Bergman described racing into the flaming destruction everyone else was fleeing, risking her life to save others. So similar to hundreds of heartwrenching tales we've all heard from New York firefighters, Bergman's experience sounded unfamiliar when told in a woman's voice.

Perhaps that's because it took nearly three months for NBC to discover that women rescue workers have toiled 24-7 at Ground Zero every day since the attacks. "The fact that the faces of women haven't been in the news or ... in the media is not reflective of reality," Bergman told NBC.

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by William Pfaff

The response and long-term remedy for Islamic fundamentalism proposed by nearly every Western commentator and official is a big and cathartic dose of modernization: globalization, democratization, women's liberation, secular education, rural electrification, lots of computers and a market economy, and all that only for starters.

Yet the leading figures in the terrorist movement that brought down the New York Trade Towers and attacked the Pentagon, overturning the complacency by which Americans lived before Sept. 11, were for the most part from the most modernized strata of the two most modern countries in the Middle East.

The extended bin Laden family is one of the best educated, richest, most widely traveled and best connected families in Saudi Arabia. It is in business with the Bush family in Washington. Its members are investors in the Carlyle Group, which is politically the most powerful operation in Washington, nearly every one of its members a former Republican administration official. Osama bin Laden's Qaida lieutenants have included Egyptian professional men and Arab intellectuals. The men who carried out the attacks in the United States were Westernized midlevel technical people.

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(YellowTimes.ORG) - Robert Fisk, a respected journalist with Britain's newspaper The Independent, was attacked and injured by a mob of refugees in Afghanistan. Below is an open letter to Robert Fisk by George Lewandowski; Content Director of YellowTimes.ORG.

Dear Mr. Fisk,

Many of us are indebted to you for providing us with a vision of the real history that is unfolding behind our government's grand display of flags and bunting. If we lose you, in the line of duty, we will suffer a new bout of blindness.

For that reason, that purely selfish reason, I hope that you will be a little less cavalier about motoring unprotected through Purgatory.

Having gotten that off my chest, I now wish to take you to task for something you wrote while recounting your ordeal on the Afghan border. You wrote: "If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila Abdullah, I would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find. "

You do yourself a disservice with such a statement. Perhaps, more importantly, by your example you excuse the mob and the rest of mankind should it choose to sink into a perpetual state of barbarism.

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(YellowTimes.ORG) -- Rosie Boycott, former editor of the Daily Express recently said of Afghanistan: ‘"This is a war that will be fought through the media. It is a war where we know the first casualty will be the truth."

Muslims know this better than anyone. Our fate is tied closely with the people of Afghanistan - and not only because they are Muslims too. We should be aware that how we are perceived will determine our effectiveness to educate people about Islam and the contradictions of British foreign policy in places like the Middle East and Afghanistan.

British society will not hesitate to bomb a bunch of wife-beating zealots, never mind listen to them, if that is who they think Muslims are. It has certainly allowed the Americans to get away with the incarceration of thousands of people simply because they look like Arabs or Muslims. Many, many more in America and Britain will have been secretly monitored on the same basis. It is no surprise that the new “anti-terror” laws are specifically aimed at people like us.

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