Abstract

Editorials

This article presents information on several socio-political issues of several nations. The influence on politics of corporate money isn't confined to donations to candidates and parties. Big Business also influences the most important event in a presidential campaign: the debates. The major-party producers of this quadrennial infomercial and their corporate underwriters have cooperated to insure no alternative or dissident voices are heard. The most recent challenge to this state of affairs is a lawsuit filed by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in late June charging that the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, the private entity that decides who participates in the debates, is illegally supported by millions of dollars in corporate donations. One of the most alarming currents this election year is a national security panic serving several overlapping interests. It began more than a year ago with grossly inflated claims of Chinese spying contained in a Congressional committee report, that was pumped up by conservative Republicans allied with the Taiwan lobby and aided by the indictment of Los Alamos physicist Wen Ho Lee for downloading classified data onto an unclassified computer. In June, the campaign took another tack with the report of the National Commission on Terrorism, chartered by the U.S. Congress.