The Liberal Media: a Thoroughly Green Magazine

If you want a view on reality that is complementary to what the “Big Media” are feeding you, Mother Jones is a great choice. I was unaware that this leftist publication has been circulating for 29 years. Based in San Francisco and published bimonthly, the magazine offers several in-depth features, complemented by a book/music review section, and classifieds. An amusing little satirical section is called “The Flightless Eagle Award”, awarded to the conservative congressman with the most shameful deed (or speech) of the last two months.

Ads in Mother Jones are almost all scrupulously politically correct, i.e. green. They actually offer the most stunning visuals in the whole magazine.
In the last issue of 2004, the first ad features, of course, a hybrid car. Several “organic” products are advertised next, then a College of Neuropathic Medicine, Amnesty International, Friends of Animals, “Green” Mutual Funds, natural sexual enhancers, environmental agencies, and and even an ad “against-Ford”, which makes the worst gas-guzzlers on the US market. The ad shows 9 cars wrapped with US flags in the shape of coffins, implying that the war in Iraq is being fought for gas, and that US soldiers are dying to defend our right to drive wasteful SUV. A powerful message indeed!

The style of the articles is rather mainstream, and the sources are only sometimes identified. This is not a scholarly review, where every statement is amply documented with references. In the spirit of post-modern age, however, many articles are endowed with web sites on which to further explore a topic of choice and presumably obtain more in-depth information.

The main feature for the issue is called “Breaking Ranks”, and deals with US soldiers who have failed to report for duty, or have escaped to Canada, or are simply looking for a way out in order to avoid fighting what they define, in growing numbers, an “unjust war”. A hotline that counsels these disillusioned GIs reportedly receives over 100 calls a day.
Increased information in the military is cited as the main reason for increased skepticism on their part regarding the motives of the Iraq war. Hardly a story that Fox would feature in the six o’clock news! If correct, regardless of whether you want to call these people traitors or pacifists, the trend spells disaster for a trigger happy administration, determined to rule the world with more and more troops. Could it be that this country is not ready to donate blood for the grand domination schemes the Bush administration is plotting? Read to find out the stories. A preview: a soldier, horrified after having had to kill 30 Iraqi civilians in two days, has decided to quit the Army.

A big story (Outfront) deals with government-sponsored “Pro-Democracy” organizations. Financed with taxpayer’s money, organizations like the International Republican Institute and others are simply fronts for terrorist activities abroad against countries that need, according to the White House, a new, pro-US regime. According to several interviews, IRI was responsible for the coup in Haiti earlier this year. These types of illegal subversive activities are nothing unusual. “Exporting insurgency” has been a US activity that goes back 60 years. It is good for us to read the other side of the coin, i.e. that some (or all) of our “pro-democracy” organizations are sponsoring anything but democracy.

An anti-pharma article explains why giant drug maker Pfizer is helping prosecutors try the case of a teenager who assassinated his grandparents, apparently after just going on Pfizer’s antidepressant Zoloft. Oh, oh, drug companies never learn! If half of the allegations in the article are correct, Pfizer may be in for a bloodbath. Bad times for big Pharma, which is trying aggressively to impose old drugs on everyone (including children), because it can’t come up with new ones. I am familiar with this problem, because I work in the industry. I predict a big out-of-court settlement next year with the Zoloft victims, and the drug being pulled or re-labeled.

Another story details how old mercenaries, guns for hire who fought in South Africa and Serbia, are providing much of the civilian security in Iraq, after Bush II privatized security operations. The problem is that these butchers are terrorizing the civilian population more than the terrorists they are supposed to fight against. Another sickening facet of a disastrous war.

In another feature, Hattie Carroll is remembered. Hattie is featured in a famous Bob Dylan song, which recounts how in 1963 young society swell William Zantzinger struck the black serving woman with a cane because he was in a bad mood. Hattie died in a hospital from the blows, and good old Bill spent 6 months in jail for the “minor incident”. A country should be periodically reminded of its shameful (not too distant) past, if we want to move toward more racial equality.

Another feature focuses on the “Great Media Breakdown”. Why haven’t the media been critical of the Iraqi war? What happened to good journalism? The article analyzes possible reasons why the media have become so subservient to the administration in recent years, and why the official version has been uncritically fed to the public in each case, from the phony proofs of WMD to the falsified documents proving Iraq’s attempted uranium purchases. Why are the media calling the Iraqi war “War on Terror?”. Isn’t this propaganda for the government, aiming at creating a link where there’s none? Why do the news even neglect to show pictures of the war, of civilian casualties, pictures that run every night in the TVs of the whole world? Why are they afraid to show US coffins? Shouldn’t the media report the facts, instead of hiding them?

The article, in an interesting table, contrasts the (huge) media time dedicated to such non-events as Linda Tripp’s secret phone-tapping of Monica Lewinsky vs. major events such as the current administration’s ongoing expansion of phone tapping and other spying activities against ordinary citizens. Big brother is here and nobody tells us!

The issue could not be complete without a feature on “green” energy and oil consumption. The usual liberal warnings of impending doom resonate in a rather calm and reasoning voice here. Studies from top scientists are quoted, and contrasted with the “bad science” financed by the administration and denounced by the international scientific establishment. We have all read that we should promote alternative energy sources, and every country is doing that except the US, although the US is the most dependent on foreign oil. The premises are well known, but the conclusion is ominous: “Supply and demand are today so tightly balanced that the smallest incident in an oil-producing country could send prices into the stratosphere, destroying economies and forcing big, oil-dependent nations…to opt for emergency fixes…The US will do what desperate states have always done when resources turn scarce: fight for them”. Well, we are already doing just that in Iraq. Burning oil like there’s no tomorrow is not only immoral, it is a recipe for future disaster. Here it is not a matter of our leaders being just dishonest, but also of being short-sighted. In spite of the Bush administration, but with plenty of European investments, Japan and California are developing solar power as a mainstream energy source. Read the details!

The issue could not be complete without an investigation into the dirty financial schemes of a Republican leader. This time it is the infamous Tom DeLay who takes the hit. The picture places him (or a cartoon) in a spider web, a reference to his complex financial schemes which are now under federal investigations. And the Flightless Eagle Award this time goes to congressman Vernon Robinson from NC who chastised black communities by saying that “black mothers need to stop having eight babies by seven different fathers” and that, if we allow gay marriage, then we will wind up with unions among “three men, then four or five, than two transvestites and a pedophile, a lesbian and a partridge in a pear tree”. Yes, this is our congress! I would have voted for Okie Tom Coburn, though. He favors the death penalty for all abortionists and “others who take lives”.
Well, we live in insane times, we have placed in power a cast of really “questionable” characters, and Mother Jones offers a breath of fresh air, with a “green” touch.