I came across a book by various lefty political cartoonists called The Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government, probably the only book of cartoons with accompanying footnotes and bibliography. As I am the type of person who likes to verify sources, I looked up the books referenced in bookstores and on Amazon. I noticed the “Editorial Reviews” of these books almost always dismissed these books as “paranoid conspiracy” rants, even when the authors were fairly well-known and respected authors, newsmen, and political figures. (when I went back recently, they had toned down many of the negative reviews)
The few holdovers were reviews published by Publisher’s Weekly. A sample:
Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean, former Nixon counsel:
“Though there is clearly much to condemn in the policies and tactics Dean deplores, assailing everyone from French political theorist Joseph de Maistre to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to the chairman of Yale University’s conservative association as ‘Double High’ social- dominance-oriented authoritarians undermines his journalistic credibility. Dean’s lurid accusations may be entertaining, but they add little to the reasoned debate that Washington so sorely lacks today.”
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill
“While emphasizing the possibility of an “adventurous President” employing Blackwater’s mercenaries covertly, Scahill underestimates the effect of publicity on the deniability he sees as central to such scenarios. Arguably, he also dismisses too lightly Blackwater’s growing self-image as the respectable heir to a long and honorable tradition of contract soldiering. Ultimately, Blackwater and its less familiar counterparts thrive not because of a neoconservative conspiracy against democracy, as Scahill claims, but because they provide relatively low-cost alternatives in high-budget environments and flexibility at a time when war is increasingly protean.”
When I first started researching titles like this (in 2006) just about every book critical of the administration was stuck with reviews such as this. (they’ve toned this down since)
So, why is this important? Because independent bookstores are increasingly being run out of business by… well, read some of the epitaphs for one of my all-time favorite bookstores, Cody’s Books in Berkeley:
from the New York Times, June 13, 2006
In recent years, independent bookstores nationwide have struggled in the wake of superstores like Barnes & Noble and Web outlets like Amazon.com, and Mr. Ross said that type of competition played a large part in the decline of Cody’s.
I remember in the mid-1990s, Cody’s was actually expanding its store, just as sites like Amazon.com were starting to come online. And more…
Marc Weinstein, co-owner of Amoeba Music, a store across the street from Cody’s, said the attitudes of the university and its students had also changed.
“We have a completely different kind of student body than used to go to Berkeley,” he said. “What used to be a much more kind of social and politically orientated and active group is now much more business-orientated. There really isn’t a passion for art and music the way there used to be.”
And, not just Cody’s…
from the San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 2006:
The Cody’s announcement came a week after another large independent bookstore — A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco — went up for sale.
and from the Chronicle, July 10, 2006 (the day Cody’s closed– a day which will live in infamy):
[Andy] Ross [owner of Cody’s] computerized the business and saw it boom in the 1980s. But even as online sales of books became a major revenue source for bookstores, Ross resisted the trend.
It ran counter to Cody’s founding philosophy — books were meant to be browsed in person and knowledge discovered, he said Sunday.
“Students today, they use the Internet. They read their textbooks,” Ross said. “In the ’70s, they had wide-ranging intellect.”
The problem, as I see it, is that books are the intellectual lifeblood of a free and democratic society. As the sources of ideas are winnowed down to a small handful of outlets, the chance of new and potentially transformative avenues of thought reaching a significant audience decreases, and the possibility that this flow of information can be shut down entirely becomes increasingly likely.
The internet will save us, you say?
From Technology News:
Evildoers disrupt communications by cutting undersea cables that crisscross the waters of the Earth. Suddenly, the 21st century wired world goes silent. Millions of people have no Internet connection; telephones go dead. Sounds like Hollywood, doesn’t it?
Well, four undersea cables recently were cut in the space of a week. Egypt lost more than half of its Internet capacity. Qatar had just 60 percent of its telephone capacity. India — back office to the world — experienced slowdowns. U.S. troops in the Middle East had a hard time calling home.
Sabotage? It’s much more likely that these communication cables were cut by fishing nets or ship anchors. Stephan Beckert, director of research for Washington-based TeleGeography, a research and consulting firm, says fishing nets cause 65 percent of cable disruptions. Anchors are responsible for 18 percent. The rest are due to earthquakes and other geological events. Who knew?
Fishing Nets??! If something like this can happen by accident, what would happen if a well-funded government/corporate agency felt it necessary to block all access to information?
Companies like AT&T are already lobbying to control access to the World Wide Web, and it’s entirely likely that they will be able to realize at least part of their agenda.
Furthermore, although the web is very good when it comes to verifying sources of information, it will always be books– the product of (collectively) millions of man-hours of unpaid and painstaking investigation and research– that give us the background and context with which we are able to make sense of this overwhelming torrent of information.
OK, I’m trying to cram way too many thoughts into this one posting. As I once heard some scholar explain somewhere: “Sorry about the length of this letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”
It’s way past my bedtime. I’ll revisit this at a later time.
Media Vulture 
Disinformation Campaign Proves Effective as Anti-SOPA Strike-Breaker
January 19, 2012 Leave a comment
Two or three days ago, announcements were broadcast on various Media Outlets stating that two bills in the Congress and the Senate, SOPA and PROTECT-IP were effectively “Dead-in-the-Water,” resulting in the cancellation (or extreme reduction) of what would have been an extremely disruptive– and therefore highly dramatic– strike/protest by Major Internet Companies against the proposed legislation.
The fact that no sources were actually named, as well as the coordinated nature of this spurious disinformation campaign, indicates that this legislation, involving a precipitous curtailment of the Civil Liberties in the United States, indicates a scope of political interests far beyond those of the Entertainment Industry.
History shows us that a curtailment of Civil Liberties is never instituted without an eye to a further attack on those same liberties at a later date.
This debate is not over. Expect to hear opponents to these bills caricatured as disgruntled pirates of popular entertainment, 20-somethings living in their mothers’ basements, who want to continue downloading music and movies without having to pay for the privilege.
Expect to read further, and ever more disturbing, developments in the coming months.
View A Legal Analysis of S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act [PDF] from the Congressional Research Service
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