contemporary historical cycles of "scam/cover-up/scandal"

In a world increasingly dominated by ever-shortening cycles of elites seeking self-aggrandizement through the propagation of Big Media Lies designed to secure popular acceptance and participation in dangerous scheme/scams that inevitably backfire into mass suffering, cover-up, and a series of public scandals that reinforce a celebrity-centric world view at the expense of a real understanding of the condition and behavior dynamics that perpetuate the basis and continue to generate fresh instances of this cycle, Etopia Media News Networks continues its efforts help its audience break out of this endless morass by bringing to its attention new facts, new ways of looking at those facts, and the perspective of some of the less-egregiously-compromised participants in the on-going action of our times.

Obvious examples of this doleful cyclical process include:

the Bush Administration's War in Iraq

The Bush Administration, committed to a petroleum-centric energy future designed to perpetuate the wealth and power of its global cronocracy, fabricates "intelligence" saying that Saddam Hussein is about to nuke Los Angeles; sells the War in Iraq on that basis; ends up proliferating terrorist motivation and training opportunities; lies to cover-up its original lies, and now has to face the music (maybe, sort of) while families of dead American soldiers, taxpayers (present and future), and vacationing tourists are left holding the bag.

Merck and Co., Inc.'s VIOXX

Merck and Co., Inc., develops a COX-2-inhibiting, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug,; calls it VIOXX; spends millions convincing pain sufferers it's the answer to their prayers; covers up evidence that it increases heart attack and stroke risk; makes billions; is outed; faces the music (sort of) while personal injury and class action lawyers swarm around, over, and on top of its corporate carcass seeking redress for their aggrieved clients (formerly patients convinced by misleading ads to demand a prescription from their [often] free-vacation-compromised physicians).

Robert Klein, et al.,'s Proposition 71

Lawyers, bio-tech executives and researchers, and venture capitalists clustered in and around Stanford University, in the name of suffering humanity, hatch a plan to have the taxpayers of California give them $3 billion dollars (which will cost them $6 billion to raise) to ostensibly "spur live-saving (stem cell) research" but, in reality, serve as a colossal bio-medical boondoggle designed to keep them and their associates in grants, patents, and cash long into the foreseeable future.

"Yes on 78/No on 79" (in process)

Big drug companies, faced with a consumer-driven ballot initiative in California (Proposition 79 on the November 8, 2005, California Statewide Special Election ballot) that could potentially cut into their oversized profit margins, create an entire ecosystem of front organizations ("Yes on Proposition 78/No on Proposition 79") to spend $150 million dollars derived from those profits to convince California voters that allowing them to offer "voluntary" drug discounts is far better than forcing them to submit to marginal "bureaucratic" constraints on their insatiable greed.

Etopia Media News Networks' coverage of these cycles

Etopia Media News Networks (EMNN) has not extensively covered the debacle of the War in Iraq, but it has provided plenty of coverage of these other instances of corporate deception and manipulation. And its limited references to the War of Iraq have eerily pre-figured the commentary in this article, as follows:

From "Platelets of Mass Destruction" (September 23, 2003):

"After all, didn't the United States go to war against Iraq on the basis of a military threat that may have been somewhat exaggerated, even if not by a factor of 30,000? In war and peace, as in drug sales, advertising matters. A careful citizen/consumer needs to know that he or she is getting the truth from purveyors of products, whether that product is "liberation and democracy" or 'platelet.de-cloggers.'

"Of course, all they had to do was add 'platelets and artery not drawn to scale' or even just 'not drawn to scale,' to their television and web advertisements to avoid the taint of dishonesty. But then maybe fewer people would think they're in trouble that can only be avoided by getting a prescription from their doctor for Plavix."

From "During final presidential debate, President Bush gets almost every fact wrong while discussing the current flu vaccine shortage, while forgetting that his Administration had previously blocked the importation of Canadian drugs on account of safety concerns" (October 13, 2004):

"Finally, on the subject of severe threats that never materialized: The errors in fact and the implicit hypocrisy in what President Bush said tonight should be considered in the context of the totality of his approach to facts.

"The President led the U.S. and its "coalition partners" into war in Iraq on the basis that he was defending the lives of its people from the imminent threat of the nuclear incineration then being plotted against them by Saddam Hussein and al-Quedah. Just as with his errors regarding Fluvirin, none of what he said was true. Saddam and al-Quedah were NOT working together, hadn't worked together. Saddam DID NOT have nuclear weapons nor the ability to make any.

"President Bush now justifies the invasion of Iraq, which has practically and psychologically done as much damage to American interests as any enemy terrorist could possible hope for, on the tenuous grounds that Saddam had the "intent" of acquiring nuclear weapons and, presumably, giving them to terrorists groups he hated and feared in the certain knowledge that if he did so he could expect to find himself at ground zero under an American-made mushroom cloud that would dwarf the explosion that collapsed the Twin Towers.

"The whole concept is so preposterous, so dishonest, and so obviously ridiculous that one wonders why George W. Bush hasn't been laughed off the stage of world history before he does any more damage.

"So when the President mangles the facts about flu vaccine, and takes credit for things he shouldn't, and tries to put the blame where it doesn't belong, these behaviors should be seen as part of a continuum and as a reflection of a fundamentally ignorant, arrogant, careless, condescending, and, ultimately, transparent attempt to fool as many of the people as much of the time as he possibly can."

And, finally, this excerpt from "News Commentary: There's more than one way to skin an embryonic stem cell, and Proposition 71 is not the best one" (September 23, 2004):