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Commentary: WHO
OWNS YOUR With the June 2 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to roll back restrictions on consolidation of media ownership, an information resource recently made available to the public becomes not only timely but invaluable. The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit government and media watchdog group, has created a searchable database where anyone can easily locate which companies own which radio and TV stations anywhere in the country. You simply type in the city and state, or zip code, and the database returns a list of all electronic media channels and their owners in that area. In the southern Willamette Valley, nine of the 40 radio stations, or 22 percent of the market, are owned by Texas-based Clear Channel, the largest radio station owner in the country. Six stations, or 15 percent of the market, are owned by Atlanta's Cumulus Media, second-largest in the nation. Currently the area's main network TV stations are owned by three different companies. KMTR belongs to Clear Channel, KVAL is run by Seattle-based Fisher Communi-cations, and KZEL is owned by Eugene-based Chambers Communications. Media and business analysts predict a rush of buyouts and mergers after the FCC decision, as the giant companies take advantage of the regulatory reductions. With little sign of self-criticism by media owners, the CPI web site may be the only reasonably accessible source for determining precisely who owns what information channels. For more on this widely controversial decision, and links to the media ownership database, go to www.publicintegrity.orgBookmark the page and check it again in six months. — Steve McQuiddy
GOAL
5 INVENTORY Public hearings are under way on the state-mandated Goal 5 Natural Resource Inventory for the Eugene/Springfield area and the proposed Metro Plan "Environmental Resources Element" amendments (see "Natural Resistance," Page 9). A Eugene City Council worksession was held May 28, a joint public hearing of city and county planning commissions happened June 3, and a Eugene City Council public hearing is planned for 7:30 pm Monday, June 9, at the Council Chambers, 777 Pearl Street. "There is absolutely no other local planning project that has experienced so much abuse at the hands of certain elected officials and certain special interest groups," says Lauri Segel, Lane County Planning Advocate for 1000 Friends of Oregon. "The 'on the ground' impact of the ongoing abuses against legal mechanisms to protect natural resources has resulted in a loss of possibly thousands of acres of rich and ecologically vital resources within the Metropolitan area." Segel says local jurisdictions have received "substantial funding from the state" to carry out the inventory over the past eight years and "only step one of a six-step process has ever seen the light of day." For more information, contact 1000 Friends at 431-7059 or lauri@friends.org
SWAT
MENTALITY Whiteaker neighbors are organizing a "Safety not SWAT" event including the film Urban Warrior: The Militarizing of American Law Enforcement. The free event will begin at 7 pm Saturday, June 7, at the 4J Education Center Auditorium, 200 N. Monroe. The documentary film screening will be followed by panel presentation with director/producer Matt Ehling, Lauren Regan (attorney for the lawsuit concerning the October SWAT raid in Whiteaker), Seattle researcher Paul Richmond, and organizers challenging the militarization of the Eugene Police Department (EPD).
During the 1980s and '90s, the Pentagon began supplying both military training and surplus military hardware to domestic law enforcement agencies. Paramilitary SWAT teams, utilizing urban combat tactics, sub-machine guns, and armored personnel carriers, now exist in 90 percent of American cities with a population of 50,000 or more, according to the film. In addition to providing weaponry and support, the military has also become involved in domestic law enforcement in an operational capacity — blurring the line between civilian and military authority, and fostering a "military mentality" in city police departments. "This event is an opportunity to educate ourselves about SWAT from a different perspective than that of EPD, which is also in the process of 'educating' the Police Commission and community about SWAT," says Majeska Seese-Green of the Whiteaker Community Council. Seese-Green says the first weeks of June are critical in demonstrating to the new city manager the "widespread concerns in Eugene about the excessive SWAT mentality in EPD, as he prepares to begin the recruitment process for a new police chief." In mid-June the EPD will announce the results of a May performance audit of their SWAT practices, conducted by the organization they are affiliated with, National Tactical Officers Association (www.ntoa.org).The Police Commission's new SWAT Policy Review Committee (which has been meeting late Tuesday mornings since March) will hold an evening meeting later in June to hear and go over the audit results, says Jeannine Parisi of the Police Commission staff. NTOA is a pro-SWAT professional organization, says Parisi, and the audit will focus on tactical, rather than ethical or community relations issues. "NTOA," according to its website, "was created in 1983 to promote the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) required to deal with ..." and "dedicated to the advancement of the SWAT profession throughout the world." Ehrling and Regan will be on KLCC's "Critical Mass" at noon Sunday, June 8. For more information on the Whiteaker events, call 684-8064 or e-mail thewhit@efn.org — Ted Taylor
LOCAL
NON-PROFIT SENDS Partners in Solidarity, a Eugene-based non-profit organization, is preparing a large container of computer, medical and school supplies to ship to an impoverished area of Guatamala in mid-June. "We have gathered many donations but have come up short on medical equipment/supplies," says Matthew Rutman, director of the organization. Rutman says he is still looking for rubber gloves, stethoscopes, alcohol, bandages and classroom supplies such as pencils, crayons, notebooks and paper. "We donate these items to a variety of rural schools, clinics, orphanages, and non-government organizations serving the indigenous populations of the northwest highlands," he says. For more information, call 681-7757 or visit www.partnersinsolidarity.com
MARCH
FOR MLK Supporters of renaming Centennial Boulevard for Martin Luther King Jr. are gathering at 6 pm Monday, June 9, at the Park Blocks downtown to march to City Hall for a City Council meeting. Marchers are encouraged to bring their children. "The idea for this march came after the disheartening City Council meeting last week, when the council was divided about the name change," says an e-mail from organizers. About 30 Eugene residents spoke in favor of the change
at the May 27 council meeting. Only one person spoke against the
We mentioned in a Slant item May 22 that 13 county residents testified in favor of the County Commission putting on its agenda a stand against the USA PATRIOT Act's attack on civil liberties at home and nationwide. What was not mentioned was that nearly 100 people showed up in support of the county agenda action, 89 people signed up to speak, and 4,000 signatures were delivered. "We filled the board room and they had to open up an overflow room for us," says Hope Marston of the Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee. A caption in last week's Calendar for Mike Leckie's art work titled, "The Offering," and a listing in the On the Road section, lists an incorrect location for Leckie's June 5-6 art opening. The event takes place at Elements Glass, 1315 NW Overton St., Portland.
The
Truth Will Emerge We believe this recent speech by Sen. Robert Byrd is so important that we offer it in full to our readers. Senior member of the U.S. Senate, Byrd is the 85-year-old Democrat from West Virginia who continues to speak with passion against the policies of the Bush administration. His remarks are rarely covered in the mainstream media. This speech was given on the Senate floor May 21, 2003.
"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually. But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it — more than I would ever have believed — right on this Senate Floor. Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of Sept. 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the president and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9/11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger. Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing. The administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden until they virtually became one. What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops. Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world? What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow-up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years. Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply. Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust? And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart. Democracy and freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the Western-style economies? As so many warned this administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crackdown in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that al Qaeda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way. The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions. Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this president. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this president to wage war at will. As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic health care, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the president's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly. But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood — when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie — not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory. And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.
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