Progressive Ponderings: Evolution, Creationism, and the Supremes

Are these corporations?

"Person" defined
Sec. 22. (a) "Person" means a human being, corporation, limited liability company, partnership, unincorporated association, or governmental entity.

— from IC 35-41-1-22, the Office of Code Revision Indiana Legislative Services Agency

by Joe Mayer

As an older Christian, I long ago settled my inner struggle between evolution and creationism. But now the Supremes — Supreme Court — have thrown a new wrinkle into the debate. The Supremes have birthed a new corpus, a full grown and full blown body. They endowed it with speech, with money behind the speech. This money-speech became power, power to rule.

Now I’m confused. Is it “profits” or prophets? I guess it was bound to happen. The “Profit”able millionaire TV and radio preachers have confused “profits” with prophets. I must have been mistaken all these years in believing that prophets defended the poor, the suffering, the wretches of society. The new Gospel of wealth — that God favors the wealthy as evidenced by the material blessings bestowed on them — will take some mental gymnastics of the mind to understand.

I’m wondering how this corporate persona will be baptized by the new “Profits”; might they use the new profits they’re swimming in?

Last rites present no problem. The creating Supremes have blessed these new corpora with everlasting life.

Our marriage laws will need to be rewritten. What if two corporate media marry — merge? That seems homologous. What about multiple partners; a combination of numerous corporate persona? Will we have to rescind all of our polygamy laws?

My old Christianity spoke of love, empathy, morality, ethics and conscience. How will the “Profits” of the “for profit only” corporate persona fit a conscience into this new corpus?

This new birthing power of the Supremes really bothers me. Giving everlasting life to a corporate persona stretches my image of prophets. But, the Supremes have spoken. Who are we mere mortals of limited duration to question the new and powerful gods? Will they keep birthing eternally? Are they already doing that?

Evolution? Creationism? Did we really give our Supremes the power to birth our equivalent out of whole cloth? It doesn’t seem to fit evolution. I recall no mention of Supreme power in the scriptures. Will the new persona allow us mortals to continue?

Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut

By ADAM LIPTAK and BRAD STONE
New York Times

In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information.

The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. It has posted documents concerning the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual concerning the operation of prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.

The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank claimed that “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign” provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. According to Wikileaks, “the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”

On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot of San Mateo, Calif., the site’s domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. The order had the effect of locking the front door to the Wikileaks.org site — a largely ineffectual action that kept back doors to the site, and several copies of it, available to sophisticated Web users who knew where to look.

(Continued here. Wikileaks.org postings can still be found here. More from the Threat Level blog at Wired.com is here.)

Progressive Ponderings: The Fourth Estate

by Joe Mayer

Fourth Estate (noun) – the public press

Estate (noun) – social standing or rank, esp. of high order; a social or political class

The definition of "Fourth Estate" is inadequate. Why?

Put simply, it doesn't emphasize the high rank it has been given in democratic history. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." In other words, our forefathers treasured the importance of the press enough to enshrine those rights in the First Amendment.

Polls taken in the United States throughout 2005, two years after the invasion of Iraq, indicated that the majority of U.S. citizens continued to believe that (1) ten Iraqis were involved in 9/11, and (2) Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. This could not have happened without the cooperation of the press. Even though these two fabrications were proven false, many Americans still believe them to be factual. Administrative personnel, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, continue to infer and even declare them to be true, and the press continues to report Cheney's statements without comment.

On Wednesday evening, April 25, public television aired a documentary produced by Bill Moyers entitled "Selling the War." Moyers meticulously walked through the media's lockstep condescension to the administration leading up to and selling the imperative to go to war.

Nearly every major news organization in the United States except Knight-Ridder bought and subsequently sold the administration's fictitious "facts."

Under a dictatorship citizens know that "news" is nothing but the party line. But in a democracy citizens want to believe that the media is not abusing its freedoms and that the press is believable. Thus, when news is manipulated by a press more interested in its bottom line than in respecting its duty to accurately inform the citizenry, the press is just as accountable as its counterparts in a tyrannical dictatorship.

The name "Fourth Estate" indicates an independence and influence apart from any other power, and a responsibility and accountability to the nation and its citizens. When its power is purchased in the market just as any other commodity, it sacrifices truth for profit.

That's where we are today in the U.S.

It took the majority of our citizens three to four years (2001-02 to 2004-05) to extract the truth regarding the Iraq invasion and occupation. The citizens have moved beyond official explanations, but the press continues to regurgitate administrative spin as truth — or "news".

The Fourth Estate, the majority of which is owned by corporate conglomerates, answers to its power clients. These include advertisers whose first responsibility is to the bottom line, stockholders whose agenda is short-term profits, and government officials whose modus to paving the way to more power through deregulation and allowing monopolistic practices.

The result is that instead of fostering an informed, educated citizenry, we have a citizenry indoctrinated by corporate agendas, and one that is among the most depoliticized of any democracy in the current world.

What is the evidence? A low voting rate; the absence of reaction to the government's erosion of human, civil and constitutional rights; and the general lack of rebellion and protest (even a contempt for protest) as a citizen's right and duty.

The current trend in the corporate media is more consolidation, cutting investigative staff, the use of pooled resources, and an increased reliance on corporate-sponsored think tank "experts" (read: paid political shills) to provide analysis of the news. As the Moyers documentary points out, the same people who maneuvered us into Iraq are still featured prominently by the propaganda arm of the Fourth Estate.

The First Amendment was written to protect the press from the government. The question now is: How do we protect the press (and the media) from itself?