Conservatives run around singing the praises of Wal-Mart, proclaiming it an American success story. None other than Dick Cheney calls the Beast of Bentonville his favorite company. But what I love about Wal-Mart is the way the company highlights the phoniness of two centerpieces of the conservative movement’s sloganeering propaganda: the so- called “free market” and “local control.”

In the mythical world of the free market—for which Wal-Mart supposedly serves as a shining example—prices for goods and labor should rise and fall based on the magic of the “invisible hand” of market supply and demand. In the nirvana of the so-called free market, workers can sell themselves for whatever the market can bear.

So let me introduce you to a place called China. Wal-Mart—in its never-ending quest to promote its heartland, Arkansan family values—is a willing customer of the Chinese labor system, where people work 12- to 18-hour days, earn meager wages and have no days of rest—all for the honor of laboring inside factories full of chemical toxins and hazardous machines, leading to sickness and death at the highest rates

Telephone interview by Bernie Dwyer for www.cubadebate.cu with Professor Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 28th August 2003.

[Bernie Dwyer] A couple of new popular books have recently been published such as Weapons of Mass Deception and Stupid White Men. Do you see them as a viable alternative to the corporate media?

[Noam Chomsky] No, they are not trying to be an alternative to the corporate media. They are just books among the many books written about the way the corporate media function and there is by now, in the United States, more than any other western country that I know, a rather significant popular movement concerned with the corporate media, which is virtually all the media within the United States, and the way they function as a kind of propaganda system.

There is also a lot of popular protest against efforts to increase the concentration of the media in fewer and fewer hands so as to prevent even the limited diversity that exists. The books that you mention are just two of the many. The books themselves, the critical literature

The coming global economic collapse will turn America into third world "basket-case" economic status as a nation when it arrives. Even now, its economic infrastructure is being largely gutted and outsourced to other nations such as China.

Down will come the US Dollar, up shall come the European Euro, the new international currency. A shift in geo-political power to democratic/socialist Europe will, in turn, follow. Europe will become the new global superpower and eventual center for world government after the fallout of America's Crash into the dust-bin of history.

In 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the euro will become the world's premiere currency by 2012 at the latest. The US dollar has been plunging in value against the euro for years. The globalists now have America right where they want it, and are eagerly moving in for the kill.

The collapse of the US dollar will reduce America to a level of chaos, poverty and deprivation Americans are woefully unprepared for. It will be a period of tremendous hardship and economic deprivation. The trucks will no longer be

This past weekend, at the California State Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles, the largest gathering of state-party Democrats in the nation, activists with Progressive Democrats of America led by PDA Executive Director Tim Carpenter successfully lobbied 2,000 delegates to pass a resolution calling for the termination of the occupation of Iraq. The resolution included specific language demanding the withdrawal of American troops from that country. "The California Democratic Party," reads the resolution in part, "calls for the termination of the occupation…of American troops in Iraq."

This victory is a powerful statement not only to the national Democratic Party but to the Republican administration and the majority in Congress.

Fresh from their work on the electoral justice hearings and investigation, the Columbus League of Pissed Off Voters took a step back to evaluate their recent work, set new goals, self-educate, and move forward with strategic intention.

Some members met in March with community mentors and advisors to do a Power Analysis exercise; they mapped out local decision-makers, key policy issues, organized and unorganized constituencies. A representative of the group said they were proud and honored to have worked recently with local mentors like Bob Fitrakis, Charles Traylor, US Congressional candidate Mark Brown, and Chip Livisay.

The group also started a local book circle discussion group, whose first selections were No More Prisons; Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development, and Columbus Public Schools; and What’s the Matter with Kansas. The local focus of Getting Around Brown primed the group for their current project: Columbus School Board and City Council May 3 primary election endorsements.