Speeches

REGARDING YESTERDAY'S FCC DECISION
House of Representatives - June 03, 2003

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today to make a public service announcement. Yesterday was an extremely important day in this country's history.

The FCC voted to allow increased consolidation of the media. They are tightening the noose on the neck of the First Amendment.

The NRA is opposed to what happened yesterday, and so is Jim McDermott, so you know how damning what happened yesterday really is. If you can get people as far apart as the NRA and me on the same issue, you have got a real problem in this country.

Now, my public service announcement is this: Stop watching the U.S. press. Stop watching the television. It is the opiate of the masses. They are using it to put you to sleep. You should cancel your subscription and buy a subscription to a foreign newspaper, maybe the Financial Times of London, or the Guardian, or the Scotsman from Edinburgh or the Sunday Herald from Sidney, Australia.

Why do I say this? Because you have to read the foreign press to find out what is going on in this country. The Financial Times of London was the one that reported that the President hid, or, excuse me, I should not mention the President, it was the administration that hid the report that says we are going to be $44 trillion in debt because of these tax cuts. To put that in perspective, that means every single American, every man, woman and child, everything they earn for 4 years, that is what $44 trillion is. And the President and his folks did not want us to know about it, so they left it out. But the London Times found it.

Reuters came up with a story about the chaos in Iraq. You think the Iraq war is all over and there is no more problem. According to our press, the only thing that matters is this guy that blew up a bomb in Atlanta about 6 years ago. They have suddenly forgotten Iraq.

But if you listen to what happened, Reuters says they interviewed one of the chiefs in Baghdad who said the entire Iraqi people is a time bomb that will blow up in the Americans' face if they do not end this occupation. ``The Iraqi people did not fight the Americans during the war. Only Saddam's people did. But if the people decide to fight them now, they are in big trouble.''

One man said, ``All of us will become suicide bombers. I will turn my six daughters into bombs to kill the Americans.''

That is what we have created over there, and we are glossing over it now. But if you read Reuters, you will find that out. If you do not read Reuters, you will never get it out of our paper.

Then we come to the next issue. You have got to read the Scotland paper, the Edinburgh Scotsman. What do they say? They say regime change in Iran is starting a countdown. That is the editorial headline. Regime change has not been in any of the speaking so far, but you start to see that the phrase has found its way into a bunch of briefings. And now, it is not a done deal, there is a big fight between the war department and the State Department. The war department is the one that took us into Afghanistan, they took us into Iraq, and they are over there ready to go again. It sounds sort of familiar. It is the same way the drumbeat started in this country in September when I said that the President would lie to take us to war. People were outraged. How could you say such a thing?
Well, where are the weapons of mass destruction? Please tell me. I am looking. Mr. Blair is going to have an investigation of him.

Mr. Blair is going to be under investigation in the British House of Commons. One member said it is worse than Watergate, what has gone on in Great Britain.

But in this country, do we expect the Republican Party to come out and investigate the President of the United States, misleading us, or the administration misleading us, excuse me? The administration misled us, these nameless, faceless people they put out there, sent out there to tell what they wanted said.

That is what you have to get. You will get this if you read the Scotsman. If you do not read the Scotsman, you will not know where we are going next.

You know, last night another American soldier died, another American soldier died in Iraq, shot in an ambush. Now, every one of those soldiers is important. When I was a psychiatrist during the Vietnam War and I dealt with these kids coming back, they were all important, and that kid that was killed last night was important. But you will not hear anything about it in our media, because you are not reading the right stuff.

Get rid of the paper. It is the opiate of the masses.