We need a list of the major stockholders in American corporations who are raking in the billions from Shrub's economic policies. As long as the owners of big Pharma, the military-industrial-media complex ,etc can rake in their money secretly,they will. They need to be outed BIG TIME!!Names in big print,inter-connections also shown,etc. We need to put faces to the people willing to sell out America for bux
Posted by Palolo lolo at July 11, 2003 05:30 AMPaololo: This might not be quite what you're after, but it's one I can peg off the top of my head: Who Owns What: Columbia Journalism Review's guide to Media Ownership.
L
Posted by Louis Guerin at July 11, 2003 08:02 AMTC update time:
This is not to be taken or cited as anything like complete or authoritative; it's to give background on where I'm at and for others to give feedback. If I see this post quoted on other blogs, I'll be mighty pissed.
I'm making some progress on the Korea issues, but nothing worth publishing as yet. I've found that the Bush Administration has been pretty unified in its treatment of this topic: as far as they're concerned, it's a very simple one. Nothing could be farther from the truth, however, and it's going to be a case of bringing together academic and diplomatic perspectives.
The main areas of dissonance are those to do with the NPT and Agreed Framework; the Clinton Administration's legacy, if you like. Most of the current movers and shakers are on record well before they took office as being opposed to the Clinton/Perry/Carter policies of containment and gradual re-integration, and their conducct since taking office (and before, in many cases) is starting to make their predictions a self-fulfilling prophecy. Though, as I posted yesterday, there are signs that the DPRK is considering changing tack, and that brings me a small glimmer of hope.
The one issue I don't see the media try to dispute is the idea that the US is wrong to paint the DPRK as the only villain in this situation. The facts as I see them now include:
* The DPRK, by starting a uranium enrichment program, did not completely break the NPT (though I'm not sure about the AF, off the top of my head). The NPT reccognises the necessity of enriched uranium as a fuel for light-water nuclear reactors (the kind that the US and others were supposed to supply to the DPRK under the AF), and the processes are allowed as long as there is a suitable IAEA inspection regime in place. While the DPRK did not allow IAEA inspectors access to its enrichment, this is a situation which, if handled carefully by the US and the IAEA, could probably have been resolved while keeping the NPT and the AF intact. That it was not illustrates that the Bush Administration didn't value these agreements as much as their predecessors did.
* The US failed to keep the terms of the AF in a number of ways: late and erratic shipments of fuel oil, the fact that the LWRs as promised are nowhere near on time (the first was supposed to be operational by late this year; foundations were poured in August 2002, 2-3 years to build, at full steam). A lot of this delay was to do with reluctance in congress to granting funds, and with bureaucratic wrangling (including govts of the ROK and Japan) about the establishemnt of KEDO, the oranisation which would oversee the project. Most importantly, and this is the issue which has caused the current standoff, the US has made virtually no efforts to normalise diplomatic relations with the DPRK, by way of a non-aggression treaty, etc, as it agreed to do in the Framework. Instead, it has repeatedly criticised the DPRK's forward deployment of troops at the DMZ, and most recently has announced substantial redeployments (some discussion of this at Billmon, in the archives), with a view to strengthening the US position and increasing its deterrent power. Couple this with the pre-emptive regime-change tack used on Iraq, and you can see the situation the DPRK is in.
Right, enough from me. Anyone wants to give me a hand with this, or has any comments, drop me an email or reply.
Cheers,
L
One more thing: a very long and very good article about objectivity in journalism from the Columbia Journalism Review. Required reading.
http://www.cjr.org/year/03/4/cunningham.asp
L
Posted by Louis Guerin at July 11, 2003 08:48 AM