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Bush as Hitler? Let's be fair

Beyond the shared enthusiasm of the Fuehrer and all U.S. presidents for mass murder as an appropriate expression of national policy, I've never seen any particularly close affinity between Adolf Hitler and the current White House incumbent, but the Republican National Committee (RNC) seems peculiarly sensitive on the matter.

At the end of the first week in January, the RNC lashed out furiously at Democratic Web site Moveon.org for including in its featured entrants for robust campaign ads for 2004 a couple that offered Bush/Hitler comparisons.

One features Hitler making a speech, crosscut with footage of the Nazi blitzkrieg, while a voice-over says, "A nation warped by lies ... lies fuel fear ... fear fuels aggression ... invasion ... occupation." As the scene fades from Hitler giving a raised arm salute to Bush with his hand raised at his inauguration, the voice-over says, "What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003."

The second ad shows Hitler, speaking in German, with a voice-over translating the lines as "We have taken new

Freep Heroes

Freep Hero -- Bill Moss, Watchdog for the Children

Let’s see, it took the collusion of the Democratic and Republican parties -- both who refused to fill out a full slate of four Columbus School Board candidates and instead picked two each to create their notorious “Gang of Four” -- along with the Chamber of Commerce, the Dispatch, the Democratic Mayor Michael Coleman and $357,000 to defeat Bill Moss in the last election. Despite the fact that many white liberals who distrust everything that the Dispatch says tend to believe the paper when it comes to Moss, he remained the only School Board member unbought, unbossed and unbowed by Columbus’ power elite. Moss’ courageous last electoral battle against the pay-to-play forces of corruption will be remembered, while the unprincipled policies of Mayor Coleman will have passed into history.

Free Press Salutes -- Tom Siemer, Protester for Peace

Seeing beyond the ‘vision thing’

I am so tired of vision-speak.

Anymore, you’re not worth your sight in business, culture, politics or the breakfast table unless you talk up the vision thing.

Act like you know where the boot hill we’re going; pretend you’re sure where we should be; concoct some bullseye story to explain how we get there then - bam - you too are a certified visionary.

Command of vision-speak, (plus boatloads of money for amplification), can get you elected governor, president, heck, even mayor with little or no experience because, after all, experience is just another word for hindsight and who needs hindsight when you’ve got crystal balls?.

Whether there are any worthwhile futurescapes in your dome - or their chances of actually seeing daylight - is irrelevant.

Because it ain’t how you see it anyway, it’s how you say it.

Spout righteously, and the wish-list of everything you and your cronies ever want out of life becomes a blueprint for the good of man.

To politicians and other unholy sees, vision-speak serves vital purposes.

A family conversation

I recently spent the past holiday with my family, and used the opportunity to talk with as many of my nieces and nephews as possible. This conversation was with my nephew Raymond who is graduating high school in a years time and saw me identify myself as “Black” on a survey someone handed to me. Raymond wanted to know “why?”, since everyone is calling themselves “African American”. Our conversation turned into a oral history lesson that lasted about an hour between myself and my two brothers. What I said to Raymond went like this.

Factory farming cattle for profit speeds the evolution of disease

This issue’s column is kindly submitted by Free Press Board member Sarah Clark. Thanks, Sarah!

Recently, the U.S. government officially acknowledged the presence of a lame cow slaughtered in Washington State that had the degenerative disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). This disease is caused by the prion, a recently understood biological concept, and represents a new threat to public health. The beef industry is guilty of distributing and actually speeding the evolution of this disease due to their grossly inhumane feeding and slaughtering practices. The majority of people are complicit in this crime because they pay to run the factory farms, slaughterhouses and rendering plants that dominate cattle farming today regardless of their inhumane nature.

Our Media update

Local:

Public Access TV: On December 18th, Rich James, Chair of the Neighborhood Network, spoke at City budget hearings. To read his prepared remarks visit www.theneighborhoodnetwork.org. In 2003 the City completed a vetting of potential contractors and the Columbus Cable Commission recommended that The Neighborhood Network receive a management contract. This happened in May 2003 but the City has not taken action on a contract. There is a larger issue at stake than the immediate service the channel can provide. The next round of cable franchise negotiations for Columbus will commence in about two years. Additionally, there are legal and regulatory challenges facing local franchise authorities that threaten the right of municipalities to collect franchise fees and secure rightful public interest requirements from cable providers for using public rights of way.

Expert analyzes proposed tire pyrolysis plant

The Ohio Sierra Club hired expert analyst Alex Sagady of E. Lansing, MI, to review the permit and plant specifications of Universal Purifying Technology (UPT)’s proposed tire pyrolysis plant. The Club has concerns about emissions from the proposed plant, as well as its proposed location at the old trash-burning power plant site in south Columbus. The site itself is highly contaminated by emissions from the former plant. Also, the permit would allow more air pollution in an area that already has the worst air quality in the city. On Nov. 28 Sagady submitted comments to Ohio EPA on behalf of the Central Ohio Sierra Club. Below is a synopsis of Sagady’s major points.

Fitrakis rings the bell on corruption and incompetence in A Schoolhouse Divided

Newcomers to the city often wonder how exactly did the Columbus Public Schools get so profoundly screwed up? If the Chamber of Commerce wanted to really give people moving into Columbus the truth of why the school system is so bad, they would include copies of A Schoolhouse Divided (Columbus Alive Publishing/Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism, $15.00) in their informational packets.

Why are the Columbus Public Schools a sinkhole of waste, fraud, sweetheart deals, corruption, and greed? The same reason bank robbers rob banks. Sitting on an annual budget of over $600 million, the school system is a piggy bank attracting opportunists whose motivation is to line their pockets instead of educating children.

In this compilation of essays from Columbus Alive, Urban Edition and The Free Press, Fitrakis turns his investigative journalist skills on the school system. From 1993 to 2003, Fitrakis takes the reader on a decade long bad trip through the morass that is education in Ohio.

Ohio awaits introduction of medical marijuana bill

Columbus, OH – Switchboards at Ohio legislator’s offices have been lighting up as activists and medical marijuana patients seek to garner support for a pending medical marijuana bill.

The Ohio Medical Marijuana Act, initiated by the Ohio Patient Network and sponsored by Rep. Kenneth Carano (D), would protect medical pot patients from prosecution if passed.

The bill awaits introduction to the Ohio House of Representatives because Rep. Carano has indicated that he intends to gain the support of four Republican cosponsors before the bill debuts in the House. In the meantime, activists and patients are busying themselves distributing educational materials and making phone calls to urge their representatives to support the Ohio Medical Marijuana Act.

Book review: How to dethrone King George

If you want to get your political juices flowing early this crucial election year, reading George W. Bush vs. The Superpower of Peace by Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis should do the trick.

  The book’s subtitle, How a failed Texas oilman hijacked American democracy and terrorized the world, effectively summarizes this compilation of Columbus Free Press columns by Wasserman and Fitrakis.

  The paperback begins with a cogent compilation of evidence that Bush would have lost both the popular and electoral vote in the 2000 presidential election if it hadn’t been for the pre- and post-election dirty work done by his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, which stopped the recount of votes in the Sunshine state.

  Wasserman and Fitrakis draw on numerous credible sources to document that Bush wasn’t elected president so much as he was coronated king. The product of a royal family whose roots of power were nurtured by the profits of a banking company that allegedly laundered money for Nazi Germany, Bush quickly changed the nation’s course as if by divine right.

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