Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Welcome to Unknown News This is who we are, what we do, and why we do it: Corporations own every major newspaper, every TV and radio station, and every major media outlet in America. They offer "objective journalism," but not because feigning impartiality is somehow "ethical." It's simply the strategy that offends the fewest advertisers, draws the largest audience, and makes the most profit. There's nothing wrong with making an honest profit, but profit is not the motive here. No corporation owns Unknown News, and we're not doing this to turn a profit, so we don't pretend to be "impartial and objective journalists." We're Helen & Harry Highwater. We're real human beings, not a 'network' or newspaper. We care, so we have some opinions. We appreciate the Bill of Rights, and other great works of fiction. We have no patience for the status quo of bipartisan duplicity, hypocrisy, graft, and glad-handing. We are disgusted with the Democratic and Republican parties, whose policies and politicians are responsible for most of America's problems (and more and more of the world's). We do not believe these thoroughly corrupt parties, policies, and politicians offer any serious solutions to the problems they have created. What do we believe?We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated. We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite — oppression — leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery. We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people. We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other — and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults. Like America's right-wingers, we believe in individual responsibility, hard work to get ahead, and stern punishment for serious crimes. We believe big government should not be blindly trusted. But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it. Like America's left-wingers, we believe in equal treatment under law, war as a last (not first) resort, and sensible stewardship of natural resources. We believe big business should not be blindly trusted. But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it. Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves. But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction. We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all. These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out). Unknown News features news from mainstream professional journalistic sources, or (rarely) from independent sources whom we know and trust without reservation. We do not cover "news" about flying saucers, FreeMasons, or who shot JFK. We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours. We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads. —Harry & Helen Highwater
Unknown News | We hold these truths • Freedom is a good idea, and the fundamental human right. • Prohibiting activities that offend you or worry you is not "freedom." Having Congress or courts decide whether, why, and how consenting adults may have sex is not "freedom." Forcing other people to pay, obey, or even acknowledge your god is not freedom. • Freedom is deciding such things for yourself (everyone seems to understand this intuitively) and letting other people decide for themselves (a concept some people have a very hard time with). • A lot of people are opposed to freedom, but never their own — just everyone else's. • All people should be free, unless convicted of a crime. • People suspected of a crime deserve the presumption of innocence, unless proven guilty in a fair trial. • There's no crime if there's no victim. By any standard that respects freedom, it's not a "crime" to smoke a reefer or buy booze after 2AM. • People who aren't US citizens, whose skin isn't white, whose God isn't Jesus, whose language isn't English, who don't have much money, and who might not even like Americans are still entitled to human rights. "Liberty and justice for all, with no exceptions." • Trusting government to decide who lives and dies is a bad idea. • Trusting corporations to do the right thing is another bad idea. • Trusting governments or corporations at all is something best done in small doses. • No government that opposes freedom deserves anyone's pledge of allegiance. • No business that opposes freedom deserves any customers. • Mass media, owned by enormous corporations and regulated by the government, is not a ferocious "watchdog" protecting the public's best interests. • 'The system' doesn't work, except for those working the system. • All this is common sense, which should be much more common than it is. • Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. By any standards but godhood, the United States government has very nearly absolute power. • The chasm grows wider every day, between the lofty ideals America publicly professes and the actual behavior of its government and corporations. • The events of September 11, 2001 didn't change any of this. Freedom still matters, more than everything else. What was right remains right, and what was wrong remains wrong. • Now is the time to speak up. Tomorrow may be too late. • If you generally agree, Unknown News welcomes your comments and participation.
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