Politicians should be making decisions based on common sense and democratic principles. Instead, today we don't have either common sense or a sense of progressive democracy. With the escalation of the Free Market, we have put the value of money before our lives. As consequence, the groupthinking[2] mentality of our free marketeers has caused the emergence of an elitist Free Market dominated by the Bushes and the Halliburtons[3] of the free world, an elitist Free Market where the heroic oligopolistic actions of the free marketeers are pompously cheered by the concentrated media. We don’t have justice anymore in this world, the copyrights of the corporations have replaced the freedom of speech of people, the right of the Bushes to wage wishful wars have replaced the common sense of the people to live in peace.

Wednesday I read an outstanding write-up by Professor Lawrence Lessig where he intelligently describes a copyright case[4] which highlights the present groupthinking right to evade the truth by both President Bush and the NBC’s network. Director Robert Greenwald is working on an updated version of his film Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War[5], and has requested the right to include in this film a clip of President George W. Bush's February interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, NBC's Sunday morning talk show. In this interview, Russert alludes to the possibility that Bush went to war against Iraq on false pretenses[6]. NBC has negated Greenwald with the right to include the above mentioned clip in his film, however Greenwald has added this clip into his film and will eventually face an expensive copyright challenge from NBC. Lessig explains that it is ridiculous for NBC to claim copyright on its clip included in Greenwald’s transformative and artistic film. Also, it is ridiculous for President Bush to claim copyright on a speech delivered to a public audience. So we have the groupthinking that the concentrated media has the copyright to cover the truth rather than the role to defend the public interest, and we have the groupthinking that President Bush has the right to claim copyrights on his speech rather than the role to express his regular work to the people.

It is my understanding that an elitist Free Market over a fair market and that corporations’ copyrights over fair expression are unfolding phenomena of a regressive democracy where common people become doublethinkers and eventually accept Bush’s contradictory thoughts that War is Peace, Pigs are Horses and Girls are Boys[7].

References

Pertinent articles published in Ensign

1. ReasonOnline John Perry Barlow Interviewed by Brian Doherty August/September 2004 http://reason.com/0408/fe.bd.john.shtml

2. deSantis, Mario Groupthink: a tool to hide the big lies of sold out Politicians & Co. August 11, 2004 Ensign

3. Halliburtonwatch http://www.halliburtonwatch.org

4. Lessig, Lawrence Copyrighting the President. Does Big Media have a vested interest in protecting Bush? You betcha. August 2004 Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/view.html?pg=5?tw=wn_tophead_5

5. Greenwald, Robert UNCOVERED: THE WAR ON IRAQ August 2004 http://www.truthuncovered.com/thefilm.html

6. NBC News "MEET THE PRESS WITH TIM RUSSERT" INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH February 7, 2004 http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/

7. Roy, Arundhati War Is Peace. The world doesn't have to choose between the Taliban and the US government. All the beauty of the world–literature, music, art–lies between these two fundamentalist poles. October 2001 Outlook, http://www.zmag.org/roywarpeace.htm