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Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes. News: Mega
Mediasaurus Happening Person: Kathleen Wilson KUCINICH PLANS STOPS IN CORVALLIS, EUGENE An opportunity to get up close and personal with Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to hear what he has to say about the Democratic Party platform and various issues will happen Sunday, March 28. He arrives in Eugene Sunday morning and from noon to 1 pm he will be on Claude Offenbacher's KLCC program. Beginning at 1:30 pm, Kucinich and others will speak in LCC Building 19, Rooms 102-104. A question and answer period will follow. Before his Eugene appearance, he will be in Corvallis at 9:30 pm Saturday, March 27 at the Old World Center on 2nd Street and at 8:30 am Sunday at Burton's restaurant, 3rd St. After his Eugene appearance, Kucinich will speak at 7 pm at the Douglas County Library Ford Room in Roseburg. Kucinich has visited Eugene several times and spoke here in May 2002 before he was a declared candidate for president. Although he's no longer touting himself as a presidential candidate, he writes in a March 21 notice that his goal remains "to bring the focus of the Democratic Party to the principles we have consistently stood for — peace and social and economic justice — both in America and abroad." For a detailed compilation of his speeches, see www.kucinich.us or www.kucinich-oregon.us— AS
MORRISON CRITICIZED FOR CASINO COMMENTS A Florence resident and former member of the city's Task Force on Casino Impacts has asked that County Commissioner Anna Morrison be removed as the commission's representative in dealing with casino issues. Arnold E. Buchman, in a letter to the commissioners March 13, said that Morrison told him and others that her involvement in the casino issues was a "waste of time" and that opposition to the casino was "an embarrassment" to her, and neighboring property owners opposed to the development "get what they deserve." Buchman wrote, "referring to Florence city officials and residents, she [Morrison] stated she hoped that 'the tribes clean your clock.'" "Ms. Morrison's professed 'embarrassment' at the lawful, constitutionally protected casino opposition from her constituency makes clear her disqualifying prejudice," says Buchman. Morrison did not respond to an EW request for response. — TJT
NEIGHBORHOOD GROUP APPEALS SCHOOL PLAN Far West Neighbors has filed an appeal of School District 4J's plans to sell the Westmoreland Elementary School property. The issue goes before the Eugene Planning Commission at 6 pm Monday, March 29 in the Atrium's Sloat Room across from the bus station. The property on West 18th and City View is 9.14 acres and plans are for about six acres to be sold to a developer and the remaining acreage would be sold to the city for low-income housing, according to Amy Murschall, chair of the Far West Neighbors. "This property has been used as an open space by surrounding residents for decades, and was utilized in the Jefferson/Far West Refinement Plan as a location of open space for the neighborhood," says Murschall. She says the process surrounding decision-making "did not provide an adequate opportunity for the neighbors or the neighborhood association to take part."
HOPSICKER, MILLEGAN TALK ABOUT COVER-UP Was there a massive FBI-led cover-up in Florida to conceal the true story of how terrorist Mohamed Atta and others learned to fly airliners? Was the CIA not "asleep at the switch," but actually running the operation? Daniel Hopsicker, author of Welcome to Terrorland, his new book about Mohamed Atta, will be giving a free lecture and signing books from 5 to 8 pm Wednesday, March 31 at Tsunami Books. The Florida journalist will also be speaking and showing unpublished video footage from 6 to 8:30 pm Friday, April 2 at Cozmic Pizza, 199 W. 8th at Charnelton. The second event has a suggested donation of $5. Joining him at both events will be Kris Millegan, editor of Fleshing Out Skull & Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society. Hopsicker and Millegan will be speaking at the "International Inquiry into 9-11, Phase One" gathering that runs March 26-28 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. The conference features the work of top independent researchers, activists and 9/11 widows. Other Eugeneans, including Mark Robinowitz, will be participating in the gathering. Hopsicker's new book is the result of a two-year investigation including interviews with Mohamed Atta's girlfriend, and following connections to Germany. "For at least four of Atta's seven years living in Hamburg," writes Hopsicker, "he was part of a 'joint venture' between the U.S. and German Governments, an elite international 'exchange' program run by a little-known private organization which has close ties to powerful American political figures like David Rockefeller and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger." The book has also been translated into German. Hopsicker also wrote Barry and the Boys: the CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History, and has produced numerous videos on drug smuggling, organized crime and "out of control" U.S. government agencies. The books by Hopsicker and Millegan are published in the Eugene area by MadCow Press, which has printed about 11,000 books to date. Millegan's company Trine Day has printed about 29,000 books. Millegan says Fleshing Out Skull & Bones is "selling very well" and is "already completely selling out its first printing in less than three months, rising up to 238 at Amazon and 554 at Barnes & Noble." He says the second printing is almost sold out in one month. with 2,000 and 3,000 runs. Millegan says he's financing the publishing business with borrowed money and uses book sales to print more books. "We have some very interesting books coming out: Ambushed by Toby Rogers breaks major stories about the Bush family corruption. To Kill a Country about the JFK assassination, a very explosive books about political corruption in California, and three other titles," he says. For more information, contact ramillegan@aol.com or visit www.madcowprod.com or http://barry.madcowprod.com— TJT
ACTIVIST ALERTS
Local peace activist Peg Morton, 73, will begin serving her sentence in federal prison on April 6. She was sentenced to 90 days in prison for crossing the line at Ft. Benning Army Base in Georgia during a protest against the U.S. Army's School of the Americas, which trains dictators and military leaders in other countries. Morton was expecting a six-month sentence, but only received three months because of medical conditions. She was not fined, but her Social Security pension will be withheld while she's in prison. A benefit for Peg Morton's prison expenses, SOA Watch, and CISCAP will be from 6-9 pm, Sunday, March 28, at Cozmic Pizza. Music, open mic poetry, a silent auction and seed give-away are part of the events. Donations for the silent auctions, which can include good condition CDs, books, artwork, household items, service gifts and more, can be dropped off at the CISCAP office, 458 Blair. Call ahead at 485-8633, or bring items to the event. WAND's Minutewomen will launch a campaign at the event that includes having people write a total of 90 postcards to be mailed one at a time to Morton each day she's in prison.
An April Fool's, Ghouls and Jewel's Masquerade Ball is a gala benefit for the Eugene Peaceworks/CALC Committee to Counter Military Recruiting, which does educational outreach to high school students targeted by the military. A masquerade ball, with prizes for costumes, most foolish fool, most ghoulish ghoul and most jewelish jewel, will be held from 5:30 to 11 pm upstairs at Grower's Market, while a vegan lasagna dinner will be held concurrently at Morning Glory Café, 450 Willamette. The ball will also include items for sale from the Bust Bush Boutique and music by Peter Wilde. The ball is free with a food donation and mask or costume, otherwise the charge is $5. Dinner at Morning Glory is $5-$8. Students and labor activists in Corvallis are uniting for what's being billed as the first ever Farmworkers' Rights March and Rally in the city. The event is from 4 to 6 pm Friday, March 26 and begins at the intersection of Monroe and 11th streets. The two-mile march is being organized by PCUN, Oregon's farmworker union, and MEChA, the national Chicano student organization. Its purpose is to support the farmworker movement and farmworkers' right to unionize. In the wake of "unbalanced, pro-business farmworker collective bargaining proposals" in the Oregon Legislature last year, PCUN is promoting what it calls "a fair, balanced collective bargaining bill that will guarantee farmworkers the right to unionize and will not inordinately protect employers or limit workers' rights." For more information, call PCUN at(503) 982-0243.
TRASH SNATCHERS COMB OREGON'S COASTLINE The 19th annual Great Oregon Spring Beach Cleanup takes place from 10 am to 1 pm Saturday, March 27. The cleanup is organized by statewide non-profit organization SOLV (Stop Oregon Litter and Vandalism) in conjunction with Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. The cleanup is an opportunity to work with thousands of volunteers, spend time at the ocean and participate in restoring a more healthy environment for coastal wildlife and visitors. The 4,000 Beach Cleanup volunteers of 2003 covered the entire 362 miles of Oregon coastline. According to Bev Ardueser, SOLV program coordinator, they removed 38 tons of trash. Not bad for a rainy, cold day. SOLV was founded in 1969 by Gov. Tom McCall. At that time SOLV focused on litter pickup and illegal dumpsite pickup. In 35 years SOLV programs have "expanded many-fold," Ardueser said. The organization's work now encompasses watershed restoration, cleanup and enhancement as well as working on small town restoration projects. On Saturday the coast will be organized into 42 check-in sites, each with a "beach captain." Volunteers arrive at 10 am, register and receive a trash bag. They are encouraged to wear gloves and boots and dress for the weather. Volunteers can find access to a coastal map and further information at the organization's website, www.SOLV.org — Kate Storm
GENESIS STILL AFLOAT The Genesis Juice sign behind the counter at the Bijou theater says "RIP," but the embattled organic co-op reports it's having some success staying afloat with direct sales to customers. Contrary to rumors, "subscriptions are not the only choice," says Benjamin Cutler, co-owner and president of the company. "People may come in and prepay for juice a week at a time and then pick it up when it is ready." Cutler says Genesis will have "an online ordering system linked to our website within a couple of weeks so that people can order and pay for their juice before coming in." And he adds, "We're also looking for businesses and stores who are willing to offer a drop point for people to pick up their juice." The website is www.efn.org/~genesis — TJT
Mega
Mediasaurus To grasp bigness, sometimes you have to take out the
magnifying glass. The story had a special media hook: When emergency officials contacted the town's radio stations to get warnings aired, they reportedly found five of six stations were running on taped feeds and couldn't take the call. The five stations were properties of mammoth Clear Channel Communications, which now owns 1,200-plus radio stations nationwide (and much else). Later, Clear Channel said Minot staffers did respond "beyond their professional responsibilities." The company put the blame on "local authorities' failure to install their Emergency Alert System equipment." Either way, the assumption is that if Minot had more locally owned stations, the public would have been better warned. And beneath this assumption is a rock-bottom belief that federal policy has grown too friendly to media empires. And that belief explains why we're seeing moves everywhere — across the whole political spectrum — to put the reins on media ownership.
A New Dinosaur The best indication of this trend came a year after Minot, when organizations and ordinary people across the country took a hard look at Washington, D.C. Specifically, they put their magnifying glass to some business before the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. What they found was something like a new species of dinosaur. By way of background, the five-member FCC is bipartisan by definition — no more than three members can be from the same political party. But as you'd expect, the commission has its own internal dynamics. The most-often heard voice is that of Michael Powell, a conservative who was appointed by Bill Clinton and made FCC chair by George Bush. Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Kevin Martin gravitate to Powell's side. Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein are often a minority of two. Normally a quiet presence, the FCC made headlines last June. Following provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the commission had been debating whether to relax federal limits on media ownership. On the other hand, pressure was building to keep the old rules in place. But on June 2, the commissioners voted 3-2 to adopt new rules that partially deregulated big chunks of the media industry. Here are the most important changes, as summarized by the Poynter Institute: The decision OK'd "cross-ownership" of broadcast and print media in markets with more than three TV stations. Cross-ownership was previously banned. It said the four national TV networks could buy enough stations to reach 45 percent of the U.S. audience. The old cutoff was 35 percent. (The big companies failed to get a total repeal of the limit.) It boosted the number of TV stations a single broadcaster can own in a single market. (The number varies with the size of the market.) Even before the full impact of this was felt, an outraged public turned up the volume. The FCC received around 2.5 million responses, 99 percent of them opposing the changes. Public outrage at media policy is still high-pitched. But as the months go by, this outrage is being channeled into a national debate about "indecency," "values," and moral policing. You don't need more details here on l'affaire Janet Jackson, or l'affront Howard Stern. Suffice it to say, we're now watching the FCC, which so recently gave away the store, going after big media corporations on a morals charge. The talk revolves around penalties: a 10-fold increase in the fine for each on-air indecency, for example. (One proposal in the House of Representatives would increase it 20-fold.) What will this amount to? "It's still a drop in a bucket," says Russell Newman, research director with the Media Reform/Free Press Network, a not-for-profit based in Northampton, Mass. "Whether it's $27,500 or $275,000, it's just another business expense" for the big companies, he says. Newman adds the obvious: Large fines will burden small independents disproportionately — and thus tilt the playing field even more to mega-corporate advantage.
Democracy at Risk? A more well-founded fear is stalking the land, though. The fear that monster media will put democracy itself at risk. "A core value in a free society is that control over media should be widespread and diverse," says a statement from the Media Reform/Free Press Network. "In a capitalist society, this value is constantly challenged by the strong desire of businesses to dominate their markets as much as possible." We the people must understand our controlling interest, so to speak. "Nearly all media markets are based on government-granted and -enforced monopoly privileges and subsidies," says Media Reform, citing "copyright, postal subsidies, monopoly radio and TV licenses, cable TV and satellite TV franchises." "One can say the media is big business, but one can say truly that media is the biggest business," Newman says. "Ownership of the media has become incredibly consolidated. We're entering an age when a media giant owns not just channels but controls the distribution of those channels." He points to Comcast's recent $50 billion-plus bid to take over the Walt Disney Company — a move he believes has "dire implications." Even if that bid goes nowhere, the top corporate players will be thunder lizards indeed. According to a Media Reform chart, based on information from the Columbia Journalism Review, these are some of the dominant corporations: Disney, with $25 billion in revenues in 2002; Viacom, with $25 billion that year; Time-Warner, with $41 billion; and Vivendi Universal, with more than $57 billion. Champ of the revenuers: General Electric, with $132 billion in 2002. GE has immense holdings in energy, transportation, weapons production and much more besides media. But look at the holdings of even a company like Comcast, which folds a mere sports team or two into its corporate pie. According to Media Reform, Comcast, "the nation's largest cable television company" with "a presence in 22 of the 25 largest markets," also owns the Golf Channel, the Style Network, E! Entertainment Television, and more. The scale of things hasn't paralyzed Newman and his group. For one thing, they sponsored a National Conference on Media Reform last November in Madison, Wisc. The conference drew unexpectedly large numbers of activists — and some members of Congress, as well.
Bipartisan Concern Conservatives have been hopping on this train, too. Last year, for example, New York Times columnist William Safire decried the FCC rules changes. He amplified his worries this February, asking: "If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world?" Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association's top gun, said last year that the changes would harm "diversity of political opinion." NRA spokespeople didn't follow through on a promise to comment for this article, however. An energetic populism — under the buzzword "localism" — has hit the road, too. It blossomed, for example, at a March 8 public forum in Rochester, N.Y., convened by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, who'd attended the Madison conference. Rochester is the old hometown of the now Virginia-based Gannett Company (101 daily newspapers, 22 TV stations, etc.). On the Rochester stage was a panel including owners and directors of independent Rochester media. The main attraction, though, was FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who last June cast one of the two dissenting votes against relaxing the ownership rules. Outside the forum, Adelstein parses the issues. Last year's national response, he says, "was unprecedented in the 70-plus years of the agency." Moreover, he says, opponents of the new rules included "huge numbers of people from the right and left, the NRA, the Catholic Conference of Bishops. Everybody thought this was a bad idea." Adelstein says growing concentration will bring "ever less diversity at ever higher prices." He makes some quality judgments, too. "We're concerned about the homogenization of radio," he says. Individual stations "don't have their own news, their own reporters. Very little in-depth coverage. There used to be a lot more of that, but it's expensive." He turns to many small newspapers' prime domestic competitor, Gannett. "They've supported cross-ownership," he says. They got what they wanted, he says.
More Nods to Big Media Significant cases keep coming before the FCC. Adelstein mentions a recent decision: the commission's nod this January to the merger of News Corp and DirecTV. "I dissented," he says. "Certainly [the deal] is in the shareholders' interest, but we have a broad responsibility to serve the public interest." Yet the FCC today is construing the public interest more narrowly. It seems the commission is more concerned about Janet Jackson's breast exposure or Bono's f-wording than almost anything else. Part of this is the law. Adelstein explains that the commission's statutory authority over content extends only to what's considered indecent, profane, or obscene. "I think the FCC is getting serious about enforcing rules that are on the books, to be sure they don't step over the line," he says. But is this just a distraction, or even a move backward? "It's a good development," Adelstein says — a proper response to "increasing coarseness over the airwaves." Some observers take strong exception. For example, liberal commentator and cartoonist Ted Rall recently charged the decency crusade is merely "a new version of the Red Scare." He said "new McCarthyites" have resorted to "censoring their opponents." He also slammed The New York Times for dumping his editorial cartoons from its website. In regard to media monsters, the decency crusade may end up demonstrating the old Nietzschean principle dear to radio host G. Gordon Liddy: Whatever doesn't kill them makes them stronger. But dinosaurs of any sort co-exist with pesky critters in the underbrush — and eventually the more adaptable life forms have their day. Certainly the internet and web-based populist efforts like indymedia.org are carving out space for themselves. The FCC is looking at such a critter: low-power FM radio. In 2000, the commission gave the go-ahead to noncommercial stations of 100 watts or less. Then broadcasters complained LPFM would cause too much interference with their signals. "We were forced by Congress to ratchet back," Adelstein says. He adds the FCC studied the potential for interference and found there wasn't much. Of course, that's no comment on the political interference that could hamper LPFM for some time. But here again, a mobilized public, aware the airwaves legally belong to everyone, could make the difference. Jack Spula of City Newspaper, Rochester, N.Y., wrote this story for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
KATHLEEN WILSON
Connecticut native Kathleen Wilson first hit Eugene in the mid-'80s, when she took a marketing job at Williams-Wilson autos. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when she lost her eyesight overnight in 1988. "It took a year, but I recovered," says Wilson, who went on to open a small ad agency in San Francisco. She was pursuing photography in Greece when she began to notice numbness in her right hand and ankle. "I came back to the U.S. in a wheelchair in June of '95," she notes. "By the fall, I was able to walk, but I felt horrible." She bought a Mac in October to search the web for MS support groups. "I found nothing, but I knew in my heart that this would be the way to help people," says Wilson, who began to look into online chat rooms. "On July 10 of '96, I had 10 people in my own chat room." Eight years later, her initial chat room has grown into MSWorld, a website (www.msworld.org)with multiple chat rooms and message boards that attracts 10,000 visits daily. "We have 32 volunteers who run the site, all of them with MS," says Wilson, who moved back to Eugene four months ago. "Our motto is 'Patients Helping Patients.' People can find someone to talk to 24/7."
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