Ronald Regan once said "I believe that in both spirit and substance , our tax system has come to be unAmerican"

All the way back in November of 2007, I wrote an article at Union Review that, aw hell here's the entire thing.

Mad As Hell #2 : Australian people dump corporate Gov. In favor of Labor and what's important here - 11/25/07
Note: I'm As Mad As Hell #1 - "The Part That Big Media Left Out !!!" is at the bottom of every page here at Joe's Union review

In a carbon-copy of the USA's wholesale sell off of the American worker in favor of corporate rulership , the people of Australia , who have faced their own War Against The Workers, have said "enough is enough".

The Liberals*, also known as the coalition, used Fear as the biggest tactic against Labor, fear of unions , fear of terrorism, immigrants, etc. . Even the distribution of fake handouts which stated that ""Labor*" supports terrorism" didn't discourage the masses to flock to the polls to oust the now-former conservative regime. Heres what the conservatives did against unions in 2005

FROM: MR Zine

"...2005 legislation that dramatically undermined workers' rights to organize and forced them onto individual contracts. The new law banned 'pattern bargaining' (industry-wide campaigns) and deciding on industrial action at mass meetings. It restricted union officials' access to members at work and abolished the prohibition of unfair dismissals."

Sounds like todays NLRB to me.

Only time will tell if Australia will be better off , here in the states where we decide the lesser of two evils, where whoever is elected it seems "we the people", the working class people , get screwed. To what degree is something we could debate forever (Who signed NAFTA? Under what presidency did deregulation of industry start? Who fired the Air-Traffic controllers? Who's NLRB are we under today?) . We head into our elections hoping a democratic presidency will change that, I only hope that it will be true.

We need a party for the working people not just the lesser of two evils, a party that views the Constitution as law , a party that will not give away the final "gasp" of American industry, one that will support "fair" trade not "free" trade, one that will view the American people as people, not just consumers and pawns in todays global economy. We need to become "We the people", not just "We the consumer"

Unfortunately, we have been bushwhacked (no pun intended) to believe, by the elections in Florida, that all of our voting standards are flawed , but that just isn't the case, or at least not a good enough reason to go to electronic voting (using a computerized polls to vote in an election) . If you are on a computer now, you know how easy it is to be hacked, get a virus or any other security risk at hand .

What makes the powers that be think that 'we the people" want any form of electronic voting? Why would we want any form of voting whereby there cannot be a hard copy recount , where rigging could be as simple as a math problem on a calculator? Just take a looksie at YouTube and the Voting Machine Hacks (seems YouTube is down at the moment, maybe they got Hacked) , most interesting of which is this testimony. Who decides who gets the contract to use the software on these machines? An interesting note is that We The People - a Foundation who's mission is to protect and defend individual Rights as guaranteed by the Constitutions of the United States - has filed suit against electronic voting claiming in part "computerized voting machines, are unconstitutional because they are ripe for fraud and error and effectively hide the physical vote counting process from the public, effectively denying citizens their legally protected Right to cast an effective vote.".

The fight is now, to make sure we do have a choice in the future, communicate information to others, end the war on the working people in the USA. Make sure those who wish to be in office are informed that we are mad, informed and that we are united. The world should be a place where life should be easier for the masses through innovations and inventions. Where things should be made better , not just throw away junk . Where we shouldn't be sicker and should live longer. What has happened? We are sicker, we pay the same for shoddy products, we buy poison food and toys from places we jettisoned our industrial jobs to, we work harder for less, we have less options for work , we have rampant illegal immigration (slave labor), we have a nation divided through fear, language and religion , we are closer to catastrophic loss of everything we own in a dire emergency then during the depression, we are a nation addicted to drugs for heart burn, erections and sleep disorders who ask our doctors what they think of medicines with commercials we pay for, we can be withheld by authorities and everything we 'own' can be taken for no reason at all, we are a nation of sheep blindly being led to slavery through creditors , mortgages and loans , a nation where our labor is taxed seemingly without representation (Ronald Regan once said "I believe that in both spirit and substance , our tax system has come to be unamerican") .

If one were to look at the current state of affairs , to look beyond the lies , half-truths and misinformation, one would think that we live in the world Ray Bradbury saw in Fahrenheit 451 , the futuristic world where Guy Montag the lead characters wife sits in her living room interacting with her 3 walls of television without a care in the world, while Montag who is a futuristic fireman in a world where everything is non-flammable, books are restricted, individuals are anti-social and hedonistic, and critical thought is suppressed. Montag's job is to burn books. Are we really that far off ?

Anyone who has showed up here at UnionReview a few times already knows that Net Neutrality can and will be used for information suppression . Just the basic fact that the ilk such as Rick Berman, the creator of the anti-union "center for union facts" , has been signed on in support of the corporate agenda is tell tale that there is a huge lobbying effort to suppress our freedom of internet information. The same companies that run TV, Radio and Cable want to control everything even on the internet. Check out and get active on www.SaveTheInternet.com, do it if only for the sake that you can still view this site, for the fact that we can still have a free voice over our concerns of the working class, that yes free speech is alive and well.

Well like all stories I write, this one, unfortunately, has come to an end.

*Please note that the 2 main parties in AUS. are "Liberal" which is the conservative party and sympathies with corporations and "Labor" which is somewhat to the left, has quite a few candidates who are Union and is more for the working class.

Original story:
Australia UNIONS warn "Australia is becoming more and more like the United States"

Australia's conservative party Fear campaign

Save The Internet

We The people Lawsuit Against Electronic Voting

Electronic voting machine whistle blower

Drug ad parodies

Every time I see a union person with the NY Post under their arm I wish they had a fucking clue.

In December, the FCC, against 99% of the American publics wishes, overturned a longstanding rule of media, which stopped over-consolidation of media in any one area. That means, there was a rule which made sure that there was a reasonable chance that you might get more than one view on any given story.

Since then Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox Five, News corporation, MySpace (who banned the largest atheist group from its site), etc., the union-busting media tycoon has been on a buying spree, first came the Wall Street Journal and now NY Newsday is on the wish list. If you ever read the way the NY Post, another Murdoch holding, berates union workers you would understand why his ever increasing movement towards monopoly is a dangerous situation. Thats not the only thing, when he chaired News International, a UK organization which encompassed massive amounts of UK tabloids, he pitted unions against one another and forever changed the UK Labour Movement. From Wikipedia, on the 1986 Wapping dispute:

News internationals strategy in Wapping had strong government support, and enjoyed almost full production and distribution capabilities and a complement of leading journalists. The company was therefore content to allow the dispute to run its course. With thousands of workers having gone for over a year without jobs or pay, the strike eventually collapsed on 5 February 1987.

Heres my post in regard to the 12/18/07 FCC allowance of more media consolidation, Originally published on FreePress Action Network (12/19/07):

Now Big Media can hurt workers better

Submitted by Joe638NYC on December 19, 2007 - 11:41pm.

Hello, my name is Joe, I am a rank and file union member and on staff at the independent labor movement website UnionReview.

While we are primarily a labor news site, we also monitors news items that tie directly to the communication of the modern labor movement, such as Network Neutrality, the squelching of free speech and the spin doctoring of main stream media.

This ruling is a tremendous blow to the American working citizen. Information is power, the gathering of ideas based on different points of view is critical. When so very little can brainwash so many, what hope do we have.

Stand up people. Stand up for places such as Workers Independent News and Brain Labor Report, who continuously report on the airwaves about the struggles of the common working man and social injustices that never make it to the main stream.

Labor hardly got any attention in the main stream media before this was passed, and any if broadcast or published almost always portrays union workers as lazy, greedy and enemies of the public. A good case in point is an article I entitled NY Post spin-doctoring and the IATSE Stagehands, in which I retort the Rupert Murdoch News Corp.owned NY Post's so-called editorial about those greedy stagehands that closed down Broadway Thanksgiving week.

Does News Corp., Viacom, Disney, etc. have a stake in portraying unions as bad to the public? Absolutely, they have to negotiate with them at every step of their business, they are the employer, directly and indirectly of writers, screen writers, engineers, truckers, service employees, construction workers, screen actors, communication workers, stagehands, make-up artists and a host of other labor groups. It suits them well that there is a growing majority of ignorant people in this country that believe that unions are bad for them personally. They have the power to repeat in every media form their message and use the theory that if you continuously lie over and over the masses will believe it to be truth.

That suits Big Media and their corporations fine, by leveling the public against workers, by speaking generally without a fact basis, they perpetrate half-truths and outright lies that get embeded into the heart and mind of the public. By instilling hopelessness and fear they divide us into more and more fractions of smaller groups, pitting each against one another, dividing and conquering, making working people feel as if they are lucky to have a job, and that they must accept the final offer by employer.

This is not acceptable for my country, I thank the work of all those who contribute here, I regret that I have found this late, after seeing this at the AFL-CIO WebBlog, I couldn't help but get involved, firstly by writing a story on my new site Joe's Union Review the Anti-Union BlogSpot (theres reasons for the name), porting the story to UnionReview and MySpace, and by posting the links to our site and the AFL-CIO's story globally onto Labourstart, the global newfeed which reaches thousands of labor sites worldwide.

If we do not stop consolidation of the corporate main stream media and we give those same corporations complete control of the internet, our sources for free independent and diversified news and information will dry up.

Sites, such as freepress and UnionReview, that exercise our freedom of speech, that communicate important social matters and move people to take action may no longer be viewable or in the worst case scenario, have nothing to write about.

Thank you for putting this together, please contact me if anything I write at the site is erroneous, or if theres any other way I can help.

I leave you with this

"Such a small percentage try to make the world a better place, leaving the work to a scarce few. If those that did next to nothing did just a tiny bit, the world could be a better place for all." - me 7/7/07"

How dangerous can consolidation be, heres a snip from a report on Murdoch's adventures in China, which explains the European media holdings, From The Guardian.co.uk

But I am sure it is true that anticipatory compliance is Murdoch's most powerful weapon. I doubt he needed to tell all 247 of his editors to support the invasion of Iraq, but they did. He might not even have had to lean on Tony Blair to ensure - as Blair's former spin doctor Lance Price reveals - that no British minister said "anything positive about the euro". Power is sustained not by force but by fear, as everyone seeks to interpret the wishes of his master and to meet them even before he asks.

The Senate Commerce Committee has taken the first step in Vetoing the Dec.18th. FCC ruling. From the Freepress Action Network Blog post "Senate Commerce Committee Did the Right Thing" by jtorres (4/24/08)

The Senate Commerce Committee did the right thing today by unanimously voting out of committee a "resolution of disapproval" sponsored by Sen. Bryon Dorgan (D.N.D.) that would overturn the FCC’s Dec. 18 decision to relax the longstanding limits on how much media one company can own in your town.

It’s the first step toward an official Congressional “veto” of the FCC’s new rule, which permits one company to own both a major daily newspaper and a broadcast outlet in the same market.

Dorgan, as well as Democratic and Republican leaders, had warned FCC Chairman Kevin Martin last December not to lift the 30-year ban that forbids "newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership."

But the Murdoch empire still has NY Newsday (as well as Yahoo) on its to buy list, you can help fight the sale of Newsday by donating to FreePress, from the E-Mail:

Dear Joseph, Chip in to Stop Murdoch and Big Media Before Time Runs Out! This morning, the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously approved the "resolution of disapproval" we've been fighting for. It's the first step toward an official congressional "veto" of the Federal Communications Commission's new rules that gut media ownership limits. This vote couldn't have come at a more important moment. Just this week, Rupert Murdoch announced plans to buy his third New York newspaper — Newsday. (Murdoch already owns the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and two television stations in this one media market!) We can stop this runaway media consolidation by passing the resolution of disapproval in the full House and Senate. To do that, we need your help right now. Donate to Stop Rupert Murdoch and Big Media. Time is of the essence. Senate rules require a floor vote on the veto within the next few weeks. So your immediate contribution is critical. With your support today, the Free Press Action Fund will: Line up more senators to support the resolution. We’ve already secured 25 co-sponsors, and we need to exert serious pressure to get the rest. (Murdoch’s greedy grab for Newsday will help, but you can be sure he’ll be fighting us every step of the way.) Counteract Big Media’s misinformation campaign. Huge newspaper conglomerates like Murdoch’s News Corp. and Tribune Co. are spending heavily to convince Congress that the FCC rules don't go far enough. They want to swallow up even more local media. Setting the record straight. If we can raise enough funding today, part of your contribution will pay for ads to get the attention of Washington decision-makers. Reach out to our hundreds of thousands of media reform activists -- and allied groups throughout the country to make sure they flood the Senate with letters, phone calls and e-mails. Help get this job done -- donate now! Since the FCC plan was announced in December, more than 250,000 activists have called on Congress to block it. Today's vote is the result — proof that when we pull together behind a clear strategic goal, we get results, even though industry lobbyists outspend us in Washington more than 200-to-1. The time to stop Murdoch and Big Media is now. I urge you to make your contribution right away. Gratefully, Alexandra Russell Program Director Free Press Action Fund www.freepress.net P.S. The clock is ticking. We must win full Senate approval of the FCC veto within the next few weeks. That means we must start right now. Please chip in today to win this essential victory for media reform!

Big thanks to the fine people at laborcommunicators Google group for bringing a lot of this to my attention

The mass media has become one of the most important obstacles to social and economic progress in the 21st century.

From AlterNet 3-12-08 (excerpt see site for full story)

Appalling Spread of False Information Requires Stronger Media Accountability
By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet. Posted March 12, 2008.

"A free press is supposed to function as our democracy's immune system against . . . gross errors of fact and understanding," wrote Al Gore in his book, The Assault on Reason. But it doesn't - as Gore explains -- and that is what makes the mass media one of the most important obstacles to social and economic progress in the 21st century.

How the media treats repeated falsehoods is a key issue. For example, when the New York Times reports on the allegation -- spread by his enemies -- that presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, there is a sentence that follows immediately: "In fact, he is a Christian. . ."

The media didn't do this kind of "immune system" work when it reported on the run-up to the Iraq war. As a result, more than 70 percent of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was involved in the massacre of September 11. More than 4,000 Americans and over one million Iraqis have been killed in the violence that perhaps could have been averted with better journalism.

A 2008 study by the Center for Public Integrity, "The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War," documents 935 false statements by President Bush and seven top officials of his administration. The report notes that "much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."

Filmmaker Michael Moore told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We're in the 5th year of this war because you, and CNN… didn't do your jobs back then and now here we are in this mess."

The mass media fails us on many issues other than war and peace. Most Americans under 50 think they are never going to see their Social Security benefits. In fact, the probability that they won't get their Social Security benefits is about the same as the chance that there won't be a U.S. government when they retire - pretty close to zero. The media could correct this widespread false belief by merely inserting a few undisputed facts about Social Security when reporting false statements from politicians and interest groups. For example: "Social Security is more financially sound than it has been throughout most of its 71-year history"; or "Social Security's projected shortfall over the next 75 years is less (as a percent of national income) than what was fixed in each of the following decades: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s."
(Continued at: AlterNet)

What can you do to help keep the Big Media corporations held accountable? Learn what laws are being set into motion and voice your opinion by clicking one f the links below

Found this over at FreePress community blog:

Submitted by IraFP on February 27, 2008 - 3:00pm.

SavetheInternet.com caught cable giant stacking a FCC hearing with paid (and apparently sleepy) seat fillers.

The hearing was set up to investigate Comcast's recent blocking of the Internet. But the cable giant filled the room with paid sitters so that the public couldn't get in to voice their support for a free-flowing Internet.

Check out this video for more of the story:

Hear are some other great sources that you can check:

• Comcast Blocking: First the Internet -- now the Public? by jstearns
• FCC "Public" Hearing in Boston--Not So Public After All! by Willy T
• Grassroots Support? Or Astroturf at Portfolio.com

You can find out more about the misdeeds of the big internet corporations at SaveTheInternet.com, or just take action by clicking the links below:

Tell the FCC to Stop Comcast »

Support the Internet Freedom Preservation Act »