Please Read This

Please go to www.dailykos.com and read the diary entry entitled "Emily Perez Is Dead." I really can't say anything that isn't said right there. After reading it, I defy anyone to write an essay explaining why Hugo Chavez was wrong.

Naderites In The Twilight Zone

I was watching a really good rerun of The Twilight Zone a couple of nights ago. It starts out peacefully enough with a shot of an innocent-looking young woman dressed in white riding a white horse on a trail at the bottom of a hillside. Suddenly, an ominous figure appears at the top of the hill -- a woman dressed in black riding a black horse. The demonic-looking woman in black comes charging down the hill, wildly chasing the young woman and screaming her name. The young woman rides away in terror.

As it turns out, the crazed woman in black is actually the young woman herself, twenty or so years in the future. She has come back in time to warn her younger self not to go through with a decidedly wrong marriage, which will ultimately ruin her life. Since the young woman rode away, she could never hear the warning.

After watching the show, I couldn't help but wondering if those who voted for Nader back in 2000 feel like the woman in this episode of The Twilight Zone. Do you suppose they ever look back regretfully at their younger selves spouting the claim that there was "no difference" between Bush and Gore? Do you think they'd like to go back in time like the woman on the black horse, and warn themselves that if Bush were elected, six years later the principal issues before Congress would be Bush's claim that he has the right to engage in torture, and to establish secret tribunals that have the power to convict and even execute suspected "terrorists" on the basis of undisclosed and incontestable "evidence"?

Of course, time as we know it runs only in one direction. As Rod Serling sagely pointed out at the end of the episode, warnings from the future can never be heeded because they can never be received. That is why we should all be a little more careful what we do with our votes in the here and now.

Talk To The Mouse

Daily Kos, the DNC, and various other engines of the progressive blogosphere have been doing yeoman's work to organize protests to ABC and its parent company Disney against the planned "miniseries" about the "Path To 9/11". I have joined in those protests, and I urge all readers to do so. It seems as though there really is a chance of convincing ABC to pull this bit of propaganda. Scholastic Magazine has already been persuaded to withdraw its plan to distribute the program to high schools as a supposed "history lesson" about 9/11. Apparently, somebody at Scholastic actually understood that history lessons are supposed to have some vague relationship to events that in fact happened.

What is really scary are some of the facts that are now coming to light about the production of this "miniseries", and the connections it has to right-wing organizations. This appears to be a very deliberate piece of political propaganda, carefully timed to influence the upcoming election. It has previously been reported that the screenwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, has been lauded by Rush Limbaugh as a "good friend." Nowrasteh has also been affiliated with right-wing guru David Horowitz, avowed scourge of supposed left-wing bias in Hollywood and academia. However, it gets worse. It also appears that the director of the "miniseries", David L. Cunningham, is the son of Christian fundamentalist preacher Loren Cunningham. Cunningham is the founder of an organization called "Youth With A Mission" (YWAM), a highly-organized Christian fundamentalist operation that some observers have criticized as having cult-like tendencies. The publishing arm of YWAM publishes books by, among other right-wing fundamentalists, James Dobson, the head of "Focus on the Family," the far-right organization that is closely affiliated with Republican politicians (including Bush), and that has been in forefront of the drive to outlaw gay marriage and to push the Supreme Court to the far right. YWAM also operates something called the "University of the Nations" (UofN), a training ground for fundamentalist preachers. Director Cunningham is himself a graduate of UofN. UofN, in turn, operates something called "The Film Institute" (TFI), which has the stated purpose of training Christian filmmakers who will be able to infiltrate Hollywood in order to influence the predominant ideological viewpoint of American-made films.

According to a post that appeared some time ago on a website of two members of TFI, Mike and Krista Harris, TFI was involved in the financing of what was described as a "doozy" of a project, a film about the lead-up to 9/11. The post describes the film as the "Untitled History Project." According to IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base), the working title for ABC's 9/11 "miniseries" was "Untitled History Project" (UHP), and ABC itself has identified the producer of the "miniseries" as "UHP Productions, Ltd." Notably, the posting on the Harris website concerning the connection between UHP and TFI disappeared at around the time that the controversy over the ABC "miniseries" first arose. However, the post can still be read on Google.

To read more about all of this, check out Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and Democratic Underground. David Cunningham's connections to YWAM and UofN can be found in his biography appearing in Wikipedia.

There are many other things about this "miniseries" that are highly disturbing. Apparently, certain scenes were shot on location at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. I have never heard of film crews being allowed anywhere near Langley. In addition, it has been widely reported that ABC distributed advance copies of the miniseries to right-wing bloggers and right-wing media outlets, but withheld them from progressive bloggers and from people who might just have something to say about the accuracy of the program, such as President Clinton, Secretary Albright, Richard Clarke, Sandy Berger, etc. The "consultant" to the "miniseries" is former N.J. Governor Kean, whose son is currently locked in a hotly-contested Senate race. Since the devastation of 9/11 resonates with particular power in New Jersey, Governor Kean's little boy could certainly be expected to reap significant political benefits from a TV "miniseries" that essentially says that 9/11 was the fault of the Democratic Party. When Governor Kean was recently asked if he felt that President Clinton was entitled to an apology because of the undisputed inaccuracies in the "miniseries", Governor Kean responded that he saw no need to apologize to President Clinton because, after all, President Clinton had campaigned against his son.

What is taking shape here is pretty ugly. We have a Christian fundamentalist director who has been trained to "infiltrate" Hollywood working with a screenwriter who is a "good friend" of Rush Limbaugh and protege of David Horowitz, apparently being funded by a production company with ties to a Christian fundamentalist organization (thus far concealed), making a "miniseries" that deliberately misrepresents the facts in order to place Democratic President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright in a light bordering on treason, being given "legitimacy" by the stamp of approval of a Republican politician whose son is running for the Senate, possibly getting assistance from the Government itself (the CIA filming), and getting promotion by means of selective distribution through right-wing blogs and media outlets. All of this is being timed to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11, which the Republicans have repeatedly used as little more than a convenient campaign prop, as they will undoubtedly do again this year.

I can't imagine why Bush would have any interest in fighting to promote democracy in Iraq because he sure doesn't seem interested in having much of it over here.

Talk to the mouse - tell Disney and ABC that this is intolerable. If they let this propaganda air, they will pay through the nose.