Duty to Warn

In a tough economy, with music lovers thinking twice before going to see their favorite acts, the 34-date BonTaj Roulet Tour by Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal is blazing new green ground in raising money for charities. So far it's collected over $100,000 for environmental and other causes. It could add that much again before the final show on September 25 at Rancho Mirage, California.

The tour features a unique pairing that cuts across rock and blues barriers...and a whole lot more. With strong reviews and healthy ticket sales on an otherwise rough summer for the music business, the tour is also laying the groundwork for a new mix in the magic art of using commercial concerts to raise funds for green and other causes.

According to Kathy Kane, Bonnie Raitt's manager, "the artists are giving, the concert goers are giving AND the ticketing agencies are giving, along with some key venues and promoters." Among the collaborators are Ticketmaster, Live Nation Ticketing, and Musictoday. "Not every venue and promoter is contributing," says Kane, "but many are trying, and every venue and promoter has worked with us to make this happen."

This month, a lot of media stories have compared President Johnson’s war in Vietnam and President Obama’s war in Afghanistan. The comparisons are often valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned -- the media’s insistent support for the war even after most of the public has turned against it.

This omission relies on the mythology that the U.S. news media functioned as tough critics of the Vietnam War in real time, a fairy tale so widespread that it routinely masquerades as truth. In fact, overall, the default position of the corporate media is to bond with war policymakers in Washington -- insisting for the longest time that the war must go on.

In early 1968, after several years of massive escalation of the Vietnam War, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of 39 major U.S. daily newspapers and found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. While millions of Americans were actively demanding an immediate pullout, such a concept was still viewed as extremely unrealistic by the editorial boards of big daily papers -- including the liberal New York Times and Washington Post.

"I first met Senator Kennedy on May 4, 1971, when he visited me at St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland. I was then a Cleveland City Councilman recovering from an injury and, somehow, he discovered I was in the hospital and paid a surprise visit to my room. He was visiting hospitals as part of his national effort to raise awareness of the need for reform of our health care system. I was elated to meet him. The visit began a friendship which has spanned four decades, during which time I had the privilege of serving with Senator Kennedy in the United States Congress.

His compassion and caring was always personal and always real. When my brother Perry died unexpectedly in December of 2007, Ted Kennedy was one of the first to call with condolences, sharing his sympathetic understanding of what it means to lose a sibling.

The protests against health insurance reform has laid bare the war between the oligarchy (Ruling Class) against the citizenry. Obama should have described the health insurance problem as class warfare in order to focus the debate. Now, the corporate powers have unleashed a barrage of attacks, most of which are simply false (death panels, abortion payments). The ruling class media eliminated the single payer debate at the outset, and has since limited the discussion from the necessary step of a public option. By the time you read this the public option will be a dead issue. Instead the propaganda machine (TV) is focusing on the false debate created by industry and the ruling class resulting in an apparent fight between right and left, when the fight should be against the ruling class.

Today,  Congressman Dennis Kucinich sent the following email. I have removed his request for contributions as I know you can find him if you wish to lend financial support. Kucinich explains what is happening to the health insurance reform debate concisely and accurately, so Free Press wanted to reprint it for our readers.

HEALTH CARE WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

The masquerade is over!  The "public option" is ... dead.

Health care  reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If  you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the  private insurance companies and you will still have to pay  premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

The Administration plan  requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is  delivering tens of millions of new "customers" to the  insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.

You will next hear  talk about "co-ops." The truth is that insurance  company campaign contributions have co-opted the public interest.