Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, the fall of an empire doesn't occur in one fell swoop; it takes time for the pillars of a great society to erode to the point they will not sustain the weight of its continuity.

 

That is where we in what was once called 'Western Civilization' stand today.

 

In Britain, Canada, Australia, and at the heart of the Anglo-American Empire, the United States, the tenet of democracy, that thing that convinced us we epitomized the apex of achievement, that we were, as one premature pundit ejected, on the assumption to power of George W. Bush and his cadre of "Neo-Cons, at the "end of [political] history" is a corroded remnant, incapable of sustaining even the illusion of a free and fair society.

 

From Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram Airbase to the Homeland's shredded constitutional protections, Democracy's day is almost done.
Naomi Wolf is an American author, social critic, political acitivist and feminist. Her book 'The Beauty Myth' was a landmark moment for gender discourse in America, and was cited, when released in the early 1990's, by the New York Times as "one of the most important books of the 20th Century." Wolf's latest book may prove too to be of equal value to the 21st Century, if in the future books of its nature are to be allowed reviewed in the Times, or anywhere else. 'The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot' is an urgent rallying cry to arms to all that would save American, and world democracy. Naomi Wolf [podcast here] in the first segment.   

And; one of the essential elements needed to create a truly totalitarian state is: Surveillance. From the Nazi recruitment of children to spy on their parents, (and others) to the infamous system of citizens used to rat out their neighbours deployed in the so-called communist countries, the primary objective of the Totalitarian State is to instill fear in the populace, making them uncertain of who they can trust, and insecure in every facet of their lives. Today, technology has added some disturbing wrinkles to the surveillance society. Tim Shorrock is an American journalist whose work has appeared at the Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Harper's magazines, among other places, and his latest major piece is 'Domestic Spying, Inc.' a timely expose of the radical expansion of the surveillance of American society the Bush administration hopes to enact. Tim Shorrock and who's watching who [podcast here] in the second half.

And; Janine Bandcroft will be here to bring us up to speed with all that's good to do in and around Victoria in the coming week. But first, Naomi Wolf and counting down to democracy's end.

 

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Rhoda Berenson, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Murray Dobbin, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Glen Ford, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Wayne Madsen, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, David Orchard, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, David Robb, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., and many others.

Pacific Free Press is a new sister site to Atlantic Free Press (already a Google News Source). Like AFP, PFP is not a simple news aggregator. All of our writers have been contacted, have joined the site and said they will contribute their editorials that appear on their own blogs or are syndicated elsewhere - and - some have stated they will provide original work that will be initially exclusive to Pacific Free Press. The sheer amount of writers working with Atlantic Free Press has brought us to the point where we felt we need to divide some of the material by starting a new site.

Using our Open Source content management system (CMS), Joomla, our writers use a WYSIWYG editor to contribute their submissions and images and we publish upon review - it's cutting edge participatory journalism.

We have set up an Author's Guide which is used for training the writers on Joomla, podcasting (yes we podcast), and other emerging methods to communicate their media.

We don't comb the net, hunting down articles, that we would 'like' to appear in our publication and have been working for over a year to put together a core team of people to work with us.

The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press. We have over a dozen PHD's on our writer's list - from all parts of the globe.

Key writers who are onboard and will provide original work include:

Some of our other writers include Andrew Bard Schmookler, Anwaar Hussain, Chris Floyd, Craig Murray, Dave Lindorff, David Swanson, Doug Mitchell, Frank Pitz, Ingmar Lee, James Kunstler, James Petras, Jason Miller, Jennifer Matsui, Jeremy R. Hammond, Joel S. Hirschhorn, Joshua Frank, Katherine Hughes, Kevin Harris, Larry C. Johnson, Linda Milazzo, Manuel Valenzuela, Mark Crispin Miller, Mel Seesholtz, Michael Wills, Mickey Z, Mike Whitney, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Nicola Nasser, Norman Solomon, Paul J. Balles, Paul Lehto, Paul William Roberts, Phil Rockstroh, Ramzy Baroud, Richard Kastelein, Richard Marsden, Robert Jensen, Rod Amis, Rosemarie Jackowski, S. Artesian, Sam Welch, Seth Sandronsky, Shahid Alam, Shepherd Bliss, Stephen Lendman, Tom Chartier, Tom Engelhardt, Walter Brasch, Weldon Berger, Will Durst, William Bowles, William A. Cook, William Blum, Winter Patriot and many others found here.
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/component/option,com_comprofiler/task,usersList/Itemid,35/

Our strategy for Pacificfreepress.com is to provide pennings from dissident and alternative writers (Libertarian and Left) whose work does not appear in Google News due to the lack of solid, reputable sources for work of this kind. Google News is a rather fair and level playing field - with mathematical algorithms as it's objective editors rather then inherently subjective humans. Hence the importance of us being part of the roster at Google News.

We feel that creating another vehicle for the West Coast and East Asia Region (as opposed to Atlantic Free Press) will allow more direction towards producing works from a variety of Asian and Pacific West Coast voices which would be a great resource for Google News and an outlet for alternative and dissident journalists that don't normally get mainstream media coverage.

Best

Richard Kastelein
V.O.F. Expathos, The Netherlands
www.pacificfreepress.com
www.atlanticfreepress.com
www.chris-floyd.com