Found this here information in one o those radical uncontroled freepress things: hope you find it interesting
Over the phone, Michael Toms sounds a lot different than he does when hosting his nationally syndicated radio show, "New Dimensions." As host, he tends to speak in soft-edged, gentle tones, offering a kind of sonic beanbag for both guests and listeners.
Outside the studio, however, Toms bristles with a fiery passion when discussing his latest book, titled "A Time for Choices: Deep Dialogues for a Deep Democracy."
What began, he says, as a search for new perspectives in the wake of Sept. 11, is now being published as a collection of interviews. Along with presenting a range of voices, Toms offers his own call for a renewal of American democracy.
Instead of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people," described by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address, Toms says what we have now is a "corpocracy:" a government stolen from its citizens and sold to the highest bidder; a system where power is increasingly consolidated in the hands of the executive branch, with decisions based on the will of corporate campaign donors rather than common citizens.
In the days following the attack on the World Trade Center, Toms says he found himself "compelled to start talking to people. I started calling people I know and people I didn't know and asked them how they responded to the changed landscape after 9/11.
"I didn't start out to write a book," he adds. "I just (wanted) to find out what people were thinking because I was struggling to get my mind around what happened, and I'm still working on it."
That struggle has led Toms to a number of conclusions, the first of which is that the American public is being spoon-fed a highly restricted view of the world.
"What I have come to realize beyond any shadow of a doubt," he argues, "is that there are myriad of choices we have, and these choices are not being presented in the mainstream major media."
Seeking alternatives
For instance, he argues, now that Osama bin Laden has mysteriously "morphed" into the figure of Saddam Hussein in the eyes of the media and the White House, "essentially, what we are hearing is a one-dimensional view of what we have to do. We have to take out Hussein this building momentum toward a war with Iraq.
"What is not being said," Toms continues, is that in taking out Saddam Hussein, "who clearly is a dictator and not a good guy," the U.S. will also be "killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians."
"Nine percent of the media in this country is owned by major corporations: Disney, AOL/Time Warner. Clear Channel alone has 1,400 radio stations in the United States," Toms added.
With the Bush administration working to remove restrictions on how many media outlets one company can own in a single area, Toms says, freedom of the press is increasingly under threat.
"I go back to Thomas Jefferson, who said when people have the information they will make intelligent decisions. That is what he meant about the free press."
His book, says Toms, is all about offering "alternative choices" to those provided by the government and corporate media, both in terms of going to war, and in terms of our daily lives in a consumer-driven society that stresses what we own above who we are. The two are intertwined, he argues, particularly when it comes to America's unquenchable thirst for oil.
"We have to become aware that as Americans we are consuming upwards of 40 percent of the world's natural resources," he points out, adding that it is no coincidence the second largest supply of oil in the world is in Iraq.
Optimism, not pessimism
While some of the insights offered by those interviewed are of dubious value such as the man who compares the scene of the World Trade Center attack both to a "spear ramming through Christ's chest" and to "a woman breaking waters to give birth" others offer an unusually sharp-edged and uncompromising view of the gap between what our leaders say and what they often do.
In one interview, MIT linguistics professor and policy analyst Noam Chomsky notes that while the U.S. justifies a potential invasion by arguing Iraq has supported terrorism and defied the will of the international community, it is guilty of the same thing.
As one example, he cites the Reagan administration's covert war against the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, a war that violated both U.S. and international law and included attacks on non-military targets and the mining of Nicaraguan harbors.
Despite what some may see as a dire state of American democracy, Toms argues this is a time for optimism and reaffirmation, not pessimism.
"Deep Democracy," he says, noting his book's subtitle, "is going back to the universal core values which launched this nation."
The more information citizens have, he argues, the more they'll be able to change things for the better. And while the history of our government is far from pure, he said, the ideals on which it was founded remain eternal and ever evolving.
"At its core," Toms says of the Declaration of Independence, "it is a spiritual document...
"The Declaration and the Constitution are part of an unfolding process; they are not complete. People fought for those things just like we have to fight as citizens today for civil liberties and our democratic rights.
"We are the sovereign voice of government in the United States...And we need to speak up and to engage in our rights as citizens. Questioning authority is inherent in the formation of our government. The American Revolution was about dialogue and dissent. Dissent is not unpatriotic. Dissent," he insists, "is as patriotic as you can get."