Inside the Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Impacts on Movement for Social Justice

Inside the Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Impacts on Movement for Social Justice
Sunday 27 December 2009

by: Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

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This article has been previously published at Media Freedom Intl.

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.”[ii]

The ORB report came on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Dr. Les Roberts and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal. The first study done from January 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003 confirmed civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. The second study published in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion and confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths. Over half the deaths were directly attributable to US forces. The now estimated 1.2 million dead six years into the war/occupation, included children, parents, grandparents, cab drivers, clerics and schoolteachers. All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretences of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional four to five million Iraqi refugees have fled their homes. The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II.[iii] Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished.

The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?[iv]

Truth Emergency and Media Reform

In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal Truth Emergency in which the most important information affecting people is concealed from view. Many Americans, relying on the mainstream corporate media, have serious difficulty accessing the truth while still believing that the information they receive is the reality. A Truth Emergency reflects cumulative failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press. This truth emergency is seen in inadequate coverage of fraudulent elections, pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, doctored intelligence, and domestic surveillance. Reliable information on these issues is systematically missing in corporate media outlets, where the vast majority of the American people continue to turn for news and information.

Consider these items of noteworthy conditions. US workers have been faced with a thirty-five year decline in real wages while the top few percent enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens. US schools, particularly in the west, are more segregated now than half a century ago. The US has the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, is falling behind in scientific research and education, leads the world as a debtor nation, and is seriously lacking in healthcare quality and coverage, which results in the deaths of 18,000 people a year. America has entered another Gilded Age. Someone should the media.[v]

The Free Press or Media Reform Movement is a national effort to address mainstream media failures and the government policies that sanction them. During the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Project Censored interns and faculty conducted a survey, completed by 376 randomly selected NCMR attendees out of the 3,500 people registered for the conference. This survey was designed to gauge participants’ views on the state of the corporate news media and the effectiveness of the media reform movement. The survey also sought to determine the level of belief in a truth emergency, a systematic hiding of critical information in the US. Not surprisingly, for a sample of independent media reform activists, majorities in the 90% plus range agreed on most criticisms of mainstream media, that corporate media failed to keep the American people informed on important issues facing the nation and that a truth emergency does indeed exist in the US. Regarding the reasons, 87% of the participants believed that a military-industrial-media complex exists in the US for the promotion of the US military domination of the world and most agreed with research conclusions by Project Censored, and others, that a continuing powerful global dominance group inside the US government, the US media, and the national policy structure is responsible. What was clear from our survey is that media democracy activists strongly support not only aggressive reform efforts and policy changes but also the continuing development of independent, grassroots media as part of an overall media democracy movement.

While most progressive media activists do not believe in some omnipotent conspiracy, an overwhelming portion of NCMR participants do believe the leadership class in the US is dominated by a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share a goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group (GDM) continues under both Republican and Democratic rule. In cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and conservative foundations, the GDM has become a powerful long-term force in military unilateralism and US political processes.

The Global Dominance Group and Information Control

A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book The Power Elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through “higher circles” of contact and agreement.[vi] This power has grown through the Cold War and, after 9/11, the Global War on Terror.

At present, the global dominance agenda includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. Only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors including:

William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group

Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel

John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing

Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton

Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.

Given an interlocked media network of connections with defense and other economic sectors, big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. Media critic and historian Norman Solomon described the close financial and social links between the boards of large media-related corporations and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment: “One way or another, a military-industrial complex now extends to much of corporate media.”[vii] The Homeland Security Act Title II Section 201(d)(5) provides an example of the interlocked military-industrial-media complex. This Act specifically asks the directorate to “develop a comprehensive plan for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States including information technology and telecommunications systems (including satellites) emergency preparedness communications systems.”

The media elite, a key component of the Higher Circle Policy Elite in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources. Their goal is to create symbiotic global news distribution in a deliberate attempt to control the news and information available to society. The two most prominent methods used to accomplish this task are censorship and propaganda.

Sometimes the sensationalist and narrow media coverage of news is blamed upon the need to meet a low level of public taste and thereby capture the eyes of a sufficient market to lure advertisers and to make a profit. But another goal of cornering the marketplace on what news and views will be aired is also prominent. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times. The losses in supporting conservative media are part of a strategy of ideological control. They also buy bulk quantities of ultra-conservative books bringing them to the top of the NY Times bestseller list and then give away copies to “subscribers” to their websites and publications. They fund conservative “think tanks” like Heritage and Cato with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. All this buys them respectability and a megaphone. Even though William Kristol’s publication, the Standard, is a money-loser, his association with it has often gotten him on TV talk shows and a column with The New York Times. Sponsorships of groups like Grover Norquist’s anti-tax “Americans for Tax Reform” regularly get people like him front-and-center in any debate on taxation in the United States. This has contributed to extensive tax cuts for the wealthy and the most unfair tax laws of any industrialized country – all found acceptable by a public relying upon sound-bites about the dangers of ‘big government.’ Hence media corporation officials and others in the health care, energy and weapons industries remain wealthier than ordinary people can imagine. Their expenditures for molding opinion are better understood as investments in a conservative public ideology[viii]

Modern Media Censorship and Propaganda

A broader definition of contemporary censorship needs to include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow of vital news information to the public. Modern censorship can be seen as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions). or threats to reduce future access to governmental and corporate sources of news. Following are a few examples of censorship and propaganda.

1. Omitted or Undercovered Stories- The failure of the corporate media to cover human consequences, like one million , mostly civilian deaths of Iraqis, reduces public response to the wars being conducted by the US. Even when activists do mobilize, the media coverage of anti-war demonstrations has been negligible and denigrating from the start. When journalists of the so-called free press ignore the anti-war movement, they serve the interests of their masters in the military media industrial complex.[ix]

Further, the corporate mainstream press continues to ignore the human cost of the US war in Iraq with America’s own veterans. Veteran care, wounded rates, mental disabilities, VA claims, first hand accounts of soldier experiences, and pictures of dead or limbless soldiers are rare. One of the most important stories missed by the corporate press concerned the Winter Soldier Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. The hearings, with eyewitness testimony of US soldiers relating their experiences on the battlefield and beyond, were only covered by a scant number of major media, and then only in passing. In contrast to the virtual corporate media blackout concerning American soldiers’ views of the war, the independent, listener sponsored, community Pacifica Radio network covered the hearings at length.[x]

A common theme among the most censored stories over the past few years has been the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at large. The corporate media has ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in The New York Times October 19, 2006, have offered false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims, the Act is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted.[xi]

Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), federally coordinated mass arrests have been occurring since April 2005 and netted over 54,000 arrests, a majority of whom were not violent criminals as was initially suggested. This unprecedented move of arresting tens of thousands of “fugitives” is the largest dragnet style operation in the nation’s history. The raids, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) and mark the first time in US history that all domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government.[xii]

All these events are significant in a democratic society that claims to cherish individual rights and due process of law. To have them occur is a tragedy. To have a “free” press not report them or pretend these issues do not matter to the populace is the foundation of censorship today.

2. Repetition of Slogans and Sound Bites- The corporate media in the US present themselves as unbiased and accurate. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to print” is a clear example, as is CNN’s authoritative “most trusted name in news” and Fox’s mantra of “fair and balanced.” The slogans are examples of what linguist George Lakoff has referred to as framing. Through constant repetition, the metaphors and symbols that pervade our media turn into unquestioned beliefs. Terms like “liberal media,” “welfare cheaters,” “war on terror,” illegal aliens,” “tax burden,” “support our troops,” are all distorted images serving to conceal a transfer of wealth from people needing a safety net to corporations seeking profitable markets and military expansion.

3. Embedded Journalism- The media are increasingly dependent on governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon, and public relations companies representing both government and private corporations.

By the time of the Gulf War in 1991, retired colonels, generals and admirals had become mainstays in network TV studios during wartime. Language such as “collateral damage” and “smart bombs” flowed effortlessly between journalists and military men, who shared perspectives on the occasionally mentioned but more rarely seen civilians killed by U.S. firepower. This clearly foreshadowed the structure of “embedded” reporting in the second Iraq War, where mainstream corporate journalists literally lived with the troops and had to submit all reports for military review.[xiii] A related militarization of news studies by Diane Farsetta at the Center for Media Democracy documented a related introduction of bias. These investigations showed Pentagon propaganda penetration on mainstream corporate news in the guise of retired Generals as “experts” or pundits who turned out to be nothing more than paid shills for government war policy.[xiv]

The problem then becomes more complex. What happens to a society that begins to believe such lies as truth? The run up to the 2003 war in Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is a case in point. It illustrates the power of propaganda in creating not only public support for an ill-begotten war, but also reduces the possibility of a peace movement, even when fueled by the truth, to stop a war based on falsehoods. The current war in Iraq was the most globally protested war in recorded history. This did nothing to stop it and has done little to end it even under a Democratic president who promised such on the campaign trail. The candidate of “hope and change,” with peace groups in tow, has proven to be dependent upon the same interests in foreign policy that got the US into war in the first place.[xv]

The Progressive Press

Where the left progressive press may have covered some of the Winter Soldier issues, most did not cover the major story of Iraqi deaths. InManufacturing Consent, Wharton School of Business Professor of Political Economy Edward Herman and MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky claim that because media are firmly embedded in the market system, they reflect the class values and concerns of their owners and advertisers. The corporate media maintain a class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market economy. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events.[xvi]

The danger of these filters is that they make subtle and indirect censorship more difficult to combat. Owners and managers share class identity with the powerful and are motivated economically to please advertisers and viewers. Social backgrounds influence their conceptions of what is “newsworthy,” and their views and values seem only “common sense.” Journalists and editors are not immune to the influence of owners and managers. Reporters want to see their stories approved for print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of their freedom to diverge from the “common sense” worldview of owners and managers. The self-discipline that this structure induces in journalists and editors comes to seem only “common sense” to them as well. Self-discipline becomes self-censorship—independence is restricted, the filtering process hidden, denied, or rationalized away.

Project Censored’s analysis on the top ten progressive left publications and websites coverage of key post-9/11 issues found considerable limitations on reporting of specific stories. The evidence supports the Chomsky and Herman understanding that the media barrage may in fact contribute to the news story selection process inside the left liberal media as well.[xvii] Even the left progressive media showed limited coverage of the human costs of the 9/11 wars.

The figure reported in summer, 2007 documenting a million dead did appear in progressive websites and radio including After Downing Street, Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Alternet, Democracy Now! and the Nation, but several took months to get to it. This lack of timely reporting on such a critical story on the humanitarian crisis of the US occupation by the alternative press in America does not bode well for a strong, public, peace movement. The US is in dire need of a media democracy movement to address truth emergency concerns.

In response, the Truth Emergency Movement, held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum, this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and defend their world. We learn from grassroots actions in the US but also from experiences of other countries. This requires us to transcend the stereotypes of other countries hammered by the corporate media. It is not by chance that two Latin American nations, both targets of US efforts to remove their popular leaders by force, have been vilified by mainstream media. Both Cuba and Venezuela, however, have been experiments in local democratic participation in which voices of communities weigh heavily upon social policy.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Venezuela

Democracy from the bottom is evolving as a ten-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) gained over 1½ million voters in the November, 2008 elections. “It was a wonderful victory,” said Professor Carmen Carrero with the communications studies department of the Bolivarian University in Caracas. “We won 81 percent of the city mayor positions and seventeen of twenty-three of the state governors,” Carrero reported.

The Bolivarian University is housed in the former oil ministry building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. The University (Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela) is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country. Before the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, college attendance was primarily for the rich in Venezuela. Today over one million, eight hundred thousand students attend college, three times the rate ten years ago. “Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,” reported Principal (president) Marlene Yadira Cordova in an interview November 10, 2008, “We are a university where we have a vision of life that the oppressed people have a place on this planet.” The enthusiasm for learning and serious-thoughtful questions asked by students was certainly representative of a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The University offers a fully staffed free healthcare clinic, zero tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared by the people.

Bottom up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. “We establish the priority needs of our area,” reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. Aponte works with Patare Community TV and radio station and is one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. Community radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they describe the viewers/listeners as the “users” of media instead of the passive audiences.[xviii]

Democratic socialism has meant healthcare, jobs, food, and security, in neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but poverty existed ten years ago. With unemployment down to a US level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increase in the price of food last year, local Mercals offer government subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, and powdered milk at 30-50 percent off market price. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a $1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal emergencies.

“We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,” proclaimed Ecuador’s minister of Culture, Gallo Mora Witt at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in Caracas, November, 2007. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture, Hector Soto added, “We try not to leave anyone out. . . before the revolution the elites published only 60-80 books a year, we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan authors this year…the book will never stop being the important tool for cultural feelings.” In fact, some twenty-five million books—classics by Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush—were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils nationwide. The theme of the International Book Fair was books as cultural support to the construction of the Bolivarian revolution and building socialism for the 21st century.

In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks, and nine of ten of the major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez and the socialist revolution. But despite the corporate media and $20 million annual support to the anti-Chavez opposition institutions from USAID and National Endowment for Democracy, two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support President Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The democracies of South America are realizing that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are not working and that new forms of resource allocation are necessary for human betterment. It is a learning process for all involved and certainly a democratic effort from the bottom up.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Cuba

“You cannot kill truth by murdering journalists,” said Tubal Páez, president of the Journalist Union of Cuba. In May of 2008, One hundred and fifty Cuban and South American journalists, ambassadors, politicians, and foreign guests gathered at the Jose Marti International Journalist Institute to honor the 50th anniversary of the death of Carlos Bastidas Arguello —the last journalist killed in Cuba. Carlos Bastidas was 23 years old when he was assassinated by Fulgencia Batista’s secret police after having visited Fidel Castro’s forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Edmundo Bastidas, Carlos’ brother, told about how a river of change flowed from the Maestra (teacher) mountains, symbolized by his brother’s efforts to help secure a new future for Cuba.

The celebration in Havana was held in honor of World Press Freedom Day, which is observed every year in May. The UN first declared this day in 1993 to honor journalists who lost their lives reporting the news and to defend media freedom worldwide.

Cuban journalists share a common sense of a continuing counter-revolutionary threat by US financed Cuban-Americans living in Miami. This is not an entirely unwarranted feeling in that many hundreds of terrorist actions against Cuba have occurred with US backing over the past fifty years. In addition to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, these attacks include the blowing up of a Cuban airlines plane in 1976 killing seventy-three people, the starting in 1981 of an epidemic of dengue fever that killed 158 people, and several hotel bombings in the 1990s, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist.

In the context of this external threat, Cuban journalists quietly acknowledge that some self-censorship will undoubtedly occur regarding news stories that could be used by the “enemy” against the Cuban people. Nonetheless, Cuban journalists strongly value freedom of the press and there was no evidence of overt government control. Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly Cuba allows CNN, AP and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, noted that the US refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.[xix]

Cuban journalists complain that the US corporate media is biased and refuses to cover the positive aspects of socialism in Cuba. Unknown to most Americans are the facts that Cuba is the number one country in percentage of organic foods produced in the world, has an impressive health care system with a lower infant mortality rate than the US, trains doctor from all over the world, and has enjoyed a 43% increase in GDP between 2005 and 2008.

Neither Cuba nor Venezuela are utopian societies. Developing countries subject to continuing pressure by the US may be cautious and suspicious of provocateurs that would incite violence or provoke US military intervention. But in these countries, the ability of local media expressing voices of local communities is something from which media reformers can learn.

Grassroots Antidotes to Corporate Media Propaganda

Tens of thousands of Americans engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 Truth, election fraud, impeachment in the Bush era, war propaganda, civil liberties abridgements, torture, the Wall Street meltdown, and corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine Truth Emergency in the country as a whole.

Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying “enough!” and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control by a military and corporate elite. Recent efforts at national media reform through micro-power community radio– similar to the 400 people’s radio stations in Venezuela– and campaign finance changes, that would mandate access for all candidates on national media, have been strongly resisted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). NAB, considered one of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in Washington, works hard to protect over $200 billion dollars of annual advertising and the several hundred million dollars political candidates spend in each election cycle.

The Truth Emergency movement now recognizes that corporate media’s political power and failure to meet its First Amendment obligation to keep the public informed leaves a huge task. Citizens must mobilize resources to redevelop news and information systems from the bottom up. Citizen journalists can expand distribution of news via small independent newspapers, local magazines, independent radio, and cable access TV. Using the internet, the public can interconnect with like-minded grassroots news organizations to share important stories. These changes are already in progress.

Becoming the Media: Media Freedom International and Project Censored

In response to Truth Emergency conference, the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored launched an effort to both become a repository of independent news and information as well as a producer of content in what are called Validated Independent News stories vetted by college and university professors and students around the world. As corporate media continue their entertainment agenda and the PR industry—working for governments and corporations—increasingly dominates news content, there exists a socio-cultural opening to transform how the public receives and actually participates in the validation and creation of their own news.

Corporate media are increasingly irrelevant to working people and to democracy. People need to tell their own news stories from real experiences and perspectives, as an alternative to the hierarchically imposed and “official” top-down narrative. What better project in support of media democracy than for universities and colleges worldwide to support truth telling and validate news stories and independent news sources.

Only 5% of college students under 30 read a daily newspaper. Most get their news from corporate television and increasingly on the internet. One of the biggest problems with independent media sources on the internet is a perception of inconsistent reliability. The public is often suspicious of the truthfulness and accuracy of news postings from non-corporate media sources. Over the past ten years, in hundreds of presentations all over the US, Project Censored staff has frequently been asked, “what are the best sources for news and whom can we trust?”

The goal of this effort is to encourage young people to use independent media as their primary sources of news and information and to learn about trustworthy news sources through the Media Freedom International News Research Affiliate Program. By the end of 2008, there were over thirty affiliate colleges and universities with plans to expand that participation several fold this next year. Through these institutions, validated independent news stories can be researched by students and scholars, then written, produced and disseminated via the web. In addition, on any given day at the Media Freedom Foundation website, one can view enough independent news stories from RSS feeds to fill nearly fifty written pages, more than even the largest US newspapers. An informed electorate cannot remain passive consumers of corporate news. As aforementioned activist David Mathison suggested in his how-to manual, Be the Media, where he argues and instructs not only about how to build community media but how to build community through media.[xx]

Part of building community is in developing awareness about the type of world we want to participate in creating, and developing strategies for achieving change. New forms of media that promote widespread responsibility for both creating and disseminating information do not remove the need for people to protest, to demonstrate, to march, to boycott and to demand entry into corporate board rooms. Rather it assures that voices can be heard and, as shown in Howard Rheingold’s Smartmobbing Democracy,[xxi] the power of new Internet communication technologies can be harnessed to mobilize more effectively. Contrasted with previous more limited technologies, Rheingold points out that now, “[m]obile and deskbound media such as blogs, listserves and social networking sites allow for many-to-many communication.” Technology has helped level the playing field by creating a virtual sphere where people can exchange ideas and instigate activism. Grassroots, bottom-up, peer-to-peer efforts have increased in influence and effectiveness due to the speed and breadth of new communication technologies. We are currently experiencing a potential for collective activism on a scale never before seen.

The continued expansion of independent internet news sources allows for the mass political awareness of key issues and truth emergencies in the world. The involvement of university and college professors and their students in validating news stories will be an important component of reliability verification of these sources. As we learn who we can trust in the independent news world, we will be in a stronger position for the continued development and expansion of democratic social movement/anti-war efforts in the future.

It is up to the people to unite and oppose the common oppressors manifested in a militarist and unresponsive government along with their corporate media courtiers and PR propagandists. Only then, when the public forms and controls its own information resources, will it be armed with the power that knowledge gives to move beyond the media induced mindsets that limit change to modest reform. Grassroots media providing voice to those who would challenge elite domination are our best hope to create a truly vibrant democratic society that promises as well as delivers liberty, peace, and economic justice to all.

Media Freedom website include:

Daily News at: http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news- sources

Validated News & Research at: http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/

Daily Censored Blog at: http://dailycensored.com/

Project Censored: http://www.projectcensored.org/

[i] US General Tommy Franks, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2002, onlinehttp://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/ 020323-attack01.htm.

[ii] Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories, Press, 2008), 19-25. This story is the number one censored story of the year at Project Censored for this year, archived online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occ upation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.ht m.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Various theories exist on the problem of the subject, from historian Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We to historian and cultural critic Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, but few examine its affects on the peace community. For more on the issue of American historical amnesia, see Gore Vidal on Democracy Now! at http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/21/gore_vidal_o n_the_united_states , also, In These Times online at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3099/the_unite d_states_of_amnesia/ and for a broader academic look at the issue of how Americans have become arguably the least informed, most entertained people in the modern world, see the now classic work from the late New York University media scholar Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (New York: Viking Adult, 1985). This article hopes to shine more light on the impact of all of the aforementioned on the peace movement in general and what can be done about it. For another view of this written earlier, at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, see Felix Kolb and Alicia Swords, “Do Peace Movements Matter?” Commondreams.org, May 12, 2003, online at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0512-08.htm.

[v] Diane Farsetta, Center for Media Democracy, studies on Pentagon propaganda online at http://www.prwatch.org/pentagonpundits and http://www.prwatch.org/node/8180.

[vi] C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, reissue). Also, continuing with this theme in terms of democratic communications theory/policy and the ideas of an open society, see the work of Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society, published in1962, and The Theory of Communicative Action, from 1981, as well as Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, first published in 1945.

[vii] Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex

Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), on the FAIR website at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627.

[viii] Cenk Uygur, “Conservative Media vs Progressive Media” Posted on The Daily Kos blog, July 1, 2009. )

[ix] Linda Milazzo, “Corporate Media Turned Out for Jena, but Not for Anti-War. Here’s Why.” Atlantic Free Press, September 23, 2007, online at http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2473-corpo rate-media-turned-out-for-jena-but-not-for-anti-wa r-heres-why.html.

[x] For more on the Winter Soldiers, see Censored 2009, chapter 1, story 9, pp. 58-62 and online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/9-iraq-and-afghanistan-vets-testify/ and chapter 12, pp.297-319. See the KPFA radio and Corp Watch website for the coverage athttp://www.warcomeshome.org/wintersoldier2008.

[xi] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 35-44. Online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/.

[xii] See Censored 2008, chapter 1, story 6, 55-59. Also online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/6-operation-falcon-raids/.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex:

Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), on the FAIR website at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627.

[xv] For several excellent studies of US Iraq War propaganda, see PR Watch’s John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, (New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2003), and their follow up Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, (New York: Penguin, 2006), and the exhaustive work by Anthony R. DiMaggio, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror,” (UK: Lexington Books, 2008). Additionally, forthcoming in fall 2009, just reviewed by the authors, is Robert P. Abele, The Anatomy of a Deception: A Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, (Baltimore: University Press of America, 2009).

For reports on the continuation of war policy under President Barack Obama, see Center for Media Democracy’s John Stauber, “How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement” online http://www.prwatch.org/node/8297, and Peter Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Dominance” online http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/http -wwwprojectcensoredorg-articles-story-barack-obama -administration-c/.

[xvi] Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988, 2002). For an introduction of the Propaganda Model, see chapter 1, or see a retrospective by Edward Herman online http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm.

[xvii] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, see chapter 7, “Left Progressive Media Inside the Propaganda Model,” 233-251. Online at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/left -progressive-media-inside-the-propaganda-model/.

[xviii] Co-author Peter Phillips interviewed Carmon Aponte while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station in a trip to Venezuela for a book fair in 2008. The station was one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela.

[xix] Co-author Peter Phillips attended the major journalism conference in Cuba in 2008. About his experiences there, Phillips remarked, “During my five days in Havana, I met with dozens of journalists, communication studies faculty and students, union representatives and politicians. The underlying theme of my visit was to determine the state of media freedom in Cuba and to build a better understanding between media democracy activists in the US and those in Cuba.”

Phillips continued, “I toured the two main radio stations in Havana, Radio Rebelde and Radio Havana. Both have Internet access to multiple global news sources including CNN, Reuters, Associated Press and BBC with several newscasters pulling stories for public broadcast. Over 90 municipalities in Cuba have their own locally run radio stations, and journalists report local news from every province.”

“During the course of several hours in each station I (Phillips) was interviewed on the air about media consolidation and censorship in the US and was able to ask journalists about censorship in Cuba as well. Of the dozens I interviewed all said that they have complete freedom to write or broadcast any stories they choose. This was a far cry from the Stalinist media system so often depicted by US interests.”

[xx] For more details see the Project Censored website at http://projectcensored.org/, for independent media feeds see Media Freedom Foundation at http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news- sources, and for more on the Project Censored International Affiliates Program, see http://projectcensored.org/project-censored-intern ational-affilates-program and http://mediafreedominternational.org. For more on how to become the media, see David Mathison’s work online http://bethemedia.com. For more on Smart Mobs, see Howard Rheingold’s work onlinehttp://www.smartmobs.com/book/.

[xxi] Howard Rheingold, “Smartmobbing Democracy,” in Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age,” ed. Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy. Retrieved from The Personal Democracy Press Website:http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/nod e/5484.

*The co-authors would like to express sincere appreciation for editing assistance provided by Rebecca Norlander and Ellen Gaddy.



Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/21/2009 6:08 PM by James_Jaeger
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The survival of the U.S. Republic would be greatly enhanced if all or part of the following, not necessarily in this order, were effectuated:

o All members of the U.S. Congress, with the exception of Ron Paul, should be voted out of office and new members continuously voted out each election UNTIL the corporate/K-Street lobby influence and the revolving door stops and Congress is back under the guidance and control of the We THE PEOPLE.

o The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, as well as the major banks that own the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and San Francisco, should be audited. Such audit should include all natural persons and corporate entities (commercial banks, investment banks, trusts, brokerage houses and insurance companies) holding more than 5% of any issue.

o Any person or corporate entity suspected of suppressing a vital energy technology (such as COLD FUSION) should be investigated in a court of law, such investigation broadcast on C-SPAN as it proceeds.

o Major portions of the Glass Owen Act should be cancelled and the Gold Standard reestablished. Fractional reserve banking should be declared the fraud it is and outlawed. All taxes should be removed from the sale and transfer of gold and silver. Hoarding gold or silver should be criminalized on the level of tampering with the mail or counterfeiting.

o Corporate entities should not be permitted to include the phrase "and any other lawful business" in their Articles of Incorporation as this business practice opens the door to conflicts of interest and excessive consolidation.

o The Sherman anti-Trust laws on the books should be enforced and government should be forbidden to grant ANY subsidy or special privilege to any natural person, partnership, (corporate) entity, trust or foundation.

o The production of all fossil fuels (especially oil and natural gas) for the purpose of BURNING should be phased out by 2015.

o Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution needs to be advertised in public service announcements until the public is aware of its significance. The significance of Article II, Section 2 is that Congress has the power to tell the Supreme Court that it does not have jurisdiction in certain circumstances. If WE THE PEOPLE more widely knew that our Congress had this power, perhaps we might be more concerned about who has influence OVER that Congress. It's time the People start demanding the Congress and the Supreme Court play their distinct parts and stop rubbing each others backs, and stop creating one-size-fits-all laws. The Constitution stipulates a FEDERALIST system, meaning different laws for different people in different states are sometimes preferable and more pragmatic.

o The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution must be reinstated to the intent of the Founders. It is high-time citizens refuse to permit the federal government to use the Commerce Clause, as re-written by a rogue Supreme Court, to stick its nose into every aspect of private business. When the government uses the Commerce Clause to remove citizens right to keep and bear arms -- as it is already doing -- this needs to be the last straw. The bastardized Commerce Clause must be killed and replaced with the Commerce Clause as written by the Founders. Anyone who opposes this can be identified as an apologist for totalitarian government.

o All drugs and prostitution need to be de-criminalized on the grounds that the Federal government has no business invading the personal affairs of its citizens. Drugs and prostitution should be left up to the citizens of each state.

o The National Security Agency (the NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should be dissolved. The NSA and the DHS are unnecessary because they duplicate and confuse the functionality of the FBI and the CIA. The FBI was established to investigate and prevent crimes within the U.S. and the CIA was established to investigate and prevent possible conflicts that originate outside the US. To have additional agencies is confusing, wasteful and dangerous to US citizens. It is dangerous because such citizens, and even their elected representatives, are not able to maintain proper oversight. This opens the door to conflicts of interest from outside elites and agendas.

o If the reasons for so-called terrorism are removed, terrorism will cease. The Patriot Act was passed without the proper review of the U.S. Citizens and has thus opened the door to spying on U.S. citizens and all the civil rights abuses that go along with same. The Patriot Act should therefore be rescinded.

o The U.S. should bow out of NATO and cut the military budget by 50% over a 5-year period. The U.S. should cease and desist in all military adventures, including Afghanistan and Iraq, and withdraw all military forces from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has no reason and no business defending the world and stationing over 700 bases in over 140 countries around the world. This activity is antagonistic and expensive and is the CAUSE of 9/11. Potential future terrorism, if any, should be investigated by the FBI if internal and the CIA is external, and handled strictly as a criminal matter. The Patriot Act did more damage to the United States than the terrorists that damaged only a handful of buildings.

o All para-military outfits like BLACKWATER should be declared illegal under Constitution law and disbanded. The US government has no business hiring private military services that are not under the direct control of WE THE PEPLE. This goes for the US military as well. The Constitution authorizes and demands that each of the 50 states maintains a separate and distinct citizen militia whereby all able-bodied men and women between certain ages are trained and participate in defending their areas and country, if called upon by the President. The Militia of the Several States should be immediately revitalized per the Second Amendment and any and all standing armies defunded and disbanded.

o The Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid system should be abolished and phased out by 2020. The U.S. government has no business in the health care business or providing support to citizens that can't "make it." Citizens "can't make it" on their own because the government competes for the very money and resources they need TO "make it." In other words, social security and government-provided benefits are self-fulfilling prophesies. They ultimately reduce the GENERAL WELFARE of the nation and grow the government into a totalitarian state collective.

o Taxpayer investments in science, technology and space exploration should be increased such that such allocations are never less than 10% of the national budget. The national budget needs to be DEFINED, not ALLOCATED. There are two ways to budget money. Method I and Method II. Under Method I you start with a LUMP SUM of money and allocate it in accordance with certain re-established PERCENTAGES, percentages established upon MONETARY ALLOCATION PHILSOPHY. Under Method II you simply see what everyone wants and then ADD UP what everything comes to. Any shortfall is then borrowed. Financers and taxpayers like Method I. Government contractors, bankers and special interest groups like Method II. Method I should be used and Method II phased out. Method II is poor financial management and leads to debt and insolvency. See the BOOK OF BUDGETS at http://www.mecfilms.com/moviepubs/bk0001.htm

o Citizens, by direct referendum if necessary, should instruct the U.S. Treasury to default on all portions of the national debt that were funded by the Federal Reserve System monetizing Treasury bonds.

o The U.S. should immediately impose (VAT) taxes on any nation that imposes them on the U.S. This simple act would remedy the balance of trade deficit.

o The U.S. corporate income tax should be reduced to 10% - 20% and there should be no taxes on capital gains or inheritance. Why should the U.S. have some of the highest taxes in the world and an insane system of deductions that opens the door to endless tax-accounting expenses, legal expenses, fraud, special favors and threats from IRS agents?

o Commercial banks should not be allowed to sell or handle equities. Trust banks should not be allowed to practice commercial banking or insurance. Insurance companies should not be permitted to practice commercial banking or brokerage services. Brokerage houses should not be permitted to practice commercial banking. All of these mixed practices do nothing but serve greed and create massive conflicts of interest in the business world. So long as fiat money is in use, government should probably establish general ground rules, NOT regulate business.

o IF business insists on comprehensive lassez-faire (government keeps hands off business), THEN businesses that fail MUST be permitted to go bankrupt without any possibility of government bailout, directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly. Accordingly, all of the money that was given to bail out the Wall Street banks and AIG should be immediately given back to the taxpayers with interest, and all of the banks and AIG should be permitted to fail, even if it crashes the entire world financial system. A crash of the entire world financial system would not be a "bad" thing. It would only be a "bad" thing for the plutocracy, rogue politicians and corporate fascists that have hijacked the productivity of the world's citizens in the trap known as "Globalism." With the advent of PEAK OIL, probably here now, it is inevitable that Globalization will end. This is good news for the middle class of the U.S. and the average world citizen.

o States have no business participating in, or regulating the gambling business, nor do they have any business participating in the revenue stream generated by cigarettes, alcohol or any mind-altering, recreational drug or substance.

o The Drug Enforcement Agency (the DEA) -- founded by the same criminal who encouraged trade with a Communist country, axed the Lunar Space Program, removed the US from the International Gold Standard System, defaulted on foreign debt obligations and broke into the Watergate Hotel in order to spy on his competitors -- Richard Nixon -- should be abolished. This agency has never won any war against drugs and has done nothing but help stock the world's largest penitentiary system with relatively innocent citizens, much of the system a for-profit partnership between corporate fascists and government.

o Anti-trust laws should be applied to the 6 major studios and the consolidated corporate media in order to break them up. It is unacceptable that almost all the news comes from 6 global corporations. This is no news at all. It is unacceptable that the cultural Marxist be permitted to indoctrinate entire populations with social, cultural and political spew. Violence that passes for "entertainment" in the movie and game industries is destroying an entire generation of children. The CEOS, boards and major stockholders that permit and profit of this war against traditional culture need to be run out of town and/or jailed.

o Insurance companies should not be permitted to reimburse for any sickness caused by over-eating obesity or drugs, whether legal or illegal, or reckless behavior, such as behavior in connection with committing crimes or extreme sports, such as sky-diving or bungee jumping.

o The LEGAL profession, CLERGY, BANKING profession and MEDICAL professions should all be non-profit industries. There is something wrong with people who enter these industries in order to profit from the confusion, fear, ambitions and sickness, RESPECTIVELY, of their fellow citizens.

o All Congresses, at the federal and state levels, should be required to have 50% male and female representation. Why should women, who comprise about 50% of the population, be excused from participating in a self-governing, representative democracy?

o Torture and the death penalty should be banned on the grounds that such is immoral, ineffective as a deterrent and cruel and unusual punishment. The entire "punishment" system should be phased out and replaced by a system that accentuates education, counseling, training, preventive health and medication in extreme cases. The current draconian system of fines, jail, torture and punishment is no longer acceptable in the 21st Century and does nothing but compound an environment of hate and destruction.

o The no-bid and cost-plus contracting system used by the U.S. government should be abolished. Any and all contracts offered by any government agency, whether federal, state or local, should be broadcast as a continuous public auction interactive with the Internet and the name, office, term and contact information of any and all public officials that have been involved in the proposals of such expenditures be made available in real-time. Citizens should be able to see WHERE their governments spends WHAT tax dollars and WHO budgeted their allocation in real-time, in writing, over the Internet.

o At least 50% of all the laws on the books (federal, state and local) MUST be consolidated OR struck. Any law physically WRITTEN by any person or entity who is NOT the specific elected Congressman or Congresswoman should be struck. Citizens cannot be expected to understand let alone obey overwhelming laws or laws that were not even written by their elected representatives. Put bluntly, any congressman that does not have the time or the ability to PHYSICALLY DRAFT his own legislation personally, is not qualified to be a legislator and has no business defrauding the public with credentials that s/he does not posses.

o The U.S. prison system needs to be downsized and readied for members of the Federal Reserve banking system, their cohorts/cronies in Congress (federal and state levels), top executives, board members and major stockholders of corporations (and other entities) who are convicted of participating in, or abetting, unjust enrichment at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and citizens.


BY THE ABOVE, I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT I HAVE PUT TOGETHER ALL THE BEST SOLUTIONS TO OUR PROBLEMS OR A LIST THAT EVERYONE, EVEN ANY MAJORITY, WILL AGREE WITH. NEVERTHELESS I DO FEEL THAT THESE SUGGESTIONS WOULD MOVE US ALL TO A COUNTRY AND WORLD THAT WOULD BE MORE PROSPEROUS, PROVIDE GREATER DIVERSITY OF LIFE STYLE, RESPECT THE RULE OF LAW, EMPHASIZE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, PROVIDE A MORE APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF SECURITY, AND ALLOW PEOPLE TO MORE HAPPILY MAKE THEIR WAYS THROUGH LIFE.

James Jaeger

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/21/2009 9:06 PM by selfreppingnano
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ok a limited restructuring that tries to improve the contry with a return to the origonal enlightened philosophy of the past.
To what degree will this work in actuality?
There are lots of problems to overcome but some degree of these ideas might help to decentralize power enough to allow us the time create enough self sufficent societies to create real oppertunity.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 12:51 AM by gawell
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"All members of the U.S. Congress, with the exception of Ron Paul, should be voted out of office." jj

How about eliminating the voting process all together? And instead introduce and sports style draft or recruitment program, and they all get to compete to 'advance' through the ranks from state to interstate offices (major leagues). The geeks and statisticians can work out an evaluation scheme. Colleges provide the fodder and open tryouts for independents and free-style self-educators. From mediocrities to meritocracies. Of course some sports never really become national or international, let alone solar systemically popular, hurling for example.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 11:10 AM by REDquist
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That's what we have. It's the two party system. The voters choose the national champion.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 10:10 PM by gawell
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surprise the party/league states went from 13 to 50.
and there are no voters
there are score keepers
and there winners and runners up.
steroids and rage is banned
adrenaline junkies hospitalized and given remedial
education in preventive health care, they can be assigned den mothers and senor mentors. they can practice standing in the corner and see how far that gets them in their attempts to move a real runner along or maybe lay down a sacrifice bunt.
they are told to seriously grow up and be a team player or sit on the sidelines to cheer and boo when team-spirit moves them or not.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 10:39 PM by REDquist
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I rage against the night. Against the benighted.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 10:49 PM by gawell
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rage against night is euphemistically ambiguous.
more specific is rage for those who are outraged upon.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 10:58 PM by REDquist
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Don't be a wimp.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 2:54 AM by gawell
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To be both poor and sick -- is there anything worse?
Or put another way -- is there anything better than rich and healthy? Is happiness any less over-rated than rage?
Why do you have a brain?
Adaptive and complex movement.
2. WIMP is acronym for 'Weakly Interacting Massive Particle'. WIMPs are conjectured to make up most of the dark matter in the universe.
2. One leading candidate for the WIMPs are the sparticles predicted by string theory.

I am Sparticle.

also described as a mild insult.
mild rage is what again?

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 12:18 PM by James_Jaeger
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>To be both poor and sick -- is there anything worse?

Very little. There is no need for anyone to be poor or sick. These conditions occur because of inappropriate greed, waste and a confused and power-hungry planetary management system.

It's time scientists and technologists stop accomodating insane and ignorant politicians.

James


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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 3:28 PM by James_Jaeger
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>To what degree will this work in actuality?

When a train goes off the tracks, the investigators start at the wreck and walk back down the tracks in the direction from whence the train came. As soon as they see the place where the tracks are bent, or too wide, or too narrow, one of the investigators, stops and says:

"By Job, I think this is the place were the train went off the tracks. Let's fix THIS place right here and the trains should be back on track."

Same with the U.S. The Constitution is the track and WE THE PEOPLE are the train. All we have to do is go back through the Constitution and FIX all the places where the stupid fucked up greedy, power-hungry morons changed the TEXT and interpretation of the original intent without due process of Ammendment.

Then we're back on track.

It's very simple. You're not going "back" in time (as some idiots counter). Ny doing this, you're getting back INTO time. We are now a country that is OUT OF TIME.

James




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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 10:03 AM by billmerit
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"I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT I HAVE PUT TOGETHER ALL THE BEST SOLUTIONS TO OUR PROBLEMS"

REALLY????????

ROTFL

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 12:19 PM by James_Jaeger
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>REALLY????????
>ROTFL

So maybe you should post your list then.

James

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 11:40 AM by REDquist
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. . . go back and look at your list and ask yourself “could this get Doojie arrested?”. I spotted two, the prohibition on ‘hoarding’ gold and the outlawing of ‘para-military outfits’. The problem with policy tools is that they can be used by both good people and bad people.

Also, your collection of items lacks a coherent strategy reflecting an overarching philosophy. You might give us your statement on that.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/22/2009 1:26 PM by doojie
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Most laws would get doojie arrested, because doojie has little use for law.

2nd amendment and paramilitary groups is of interest. The issue seems to be built around the "preamble clause" to the 2nd amendment:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state..."

Once the term "well regulated militia" is introduced, we have only to turn to Article 1, Section 8 regarding the enumerated powers of congress:
1.organizing arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be emoployed in the service of the United States..."

Notice that the federl government is responsible for "arming" the militia. Therefore the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" would be subject to use for militia purposes as established by the federal government.

But what about "shall not be infringed"? To the degree that a well regulated militia is necessary(which is no longer the case) there is no infringement whatever on the people's right to keep and bear arms for militia purposes.

For militia purposes, the federal government has every right to stop arming the people, or allowing them to keep and bear arms, since there are no more militias by the rule of congress.

HOWEVER, there is not the first jot or tittle that says I can;t own a firearm for personal reasons to go hunting or protect myself from intruders.

SO, scanning the 10th amendment, and seeing that those powers not delegated to the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are within the powers of the states respectively, or the people, there is NO POWER GIVEN TO REGULATE FIREARMS FOR PERSONAL REASONS.

But how would this 10th amendment prohibition now apply to the states?

14th amendment: "no state shall make or enforce any law which abridges the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States".

That is, once the states could regulate it, now they cannot. It is NOT left tio the states respectively OR to the "people" but is now included as a privilege or immunity of a citizen of the United States.

It CANNOT, by law, be made a crime simply to own a firearm for personal use. There is nothing whatever in the Constitution dealing with that issue.

If I can lawfully buy a suitcase nuclear weapon, there is nothing that can prohibit me constitutionally from doing so.

The main reason for the 2nd amendment was to discouirage independent ORGANIZATIONS from establishing themselves outside state or federal authgority. If anytone can do so, then you have a law by sheer force of arms.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms for the power of any independent organization is unconstitutional, but the power of any individual to keep and bear any kind of firearm for personal protection, including knowledge of law for personal protection, that would not include "bearing arms", but simply the use of varous personal defenses of life, liberty, or property.

The 2nd amendment, by its plain language, was made to protect the state itself and give the stae authority for a militia within the bounds of federal regulation.

The only reason i can see for this language is that the state professed a need for other states to come to its aid should there develop a private milita to challenge the power of the state.

This seems congruent with the rest of the Constitution in its attempts to create a federal government to suppress individuals.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 12:30 PM by James_Jaeger
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>Notice that the federl government is responsible for "arming" the militia. Therefore the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" would be subject to use for militia purposes as established by the federal government.

I don't believe this is what is supposed to happen. The militia are formed in and by the CITIZENS in the various 50 STATES. The Federal gov, via the U.S. President, may call up (borrow) the militia from various states if he deems it necessary defend the nation from foreign invasion. An ARMY may be rasied by the Federal government, but it cannot STAND and may only be funded by Congress for two years at a time. The idea is: if you have standing militaries all over the place, someone is going to find "excuses" to USE them. Witness: VIETNAM, IRAQ.

The idea, for the not-quite-bright, is this: WE THE PEOPLE ARE SUPPOSED TO HOLD THE POWER OF THE GUN AND KEEP IT ON A SHORT LEASH: NOT THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT, PROFESSIONAL MERCENARIES OR AN ELITE. See http://www.mecfilms.com/mid/movies/oi/clip5.wmv if you are still foggy on this.

James

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 12:57 PM by doojie
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You know this and I know this and the "Federalist" tells us this, but yes, we have no militia, we have no militia today. (Yes, we have no bananas).

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 2:07 PM by James_Jaeger
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>... we have no militia, we have no militia today.

Depends on your definition of "no."


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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 3:54 PM by doojie
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Congress has taken Article 1, Section 8 quite literally, arming, supplying, organizing, training, disciplining, and in effect rendering the 2nd amendment obsolete.

"A well regulated militia" is totally cared for by the feds, and the state is only the plavce where they happen to be until needed for further use.

That's why the freedom to simply own weapons for personal use is the only freedom not regulated by congress. Any weapon you can legally purchase and use for personal reasons is not limited by any Constitutional law.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 4:05 PM by doojie
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BTW, based on what I've learned in the study of law, since due process deals with personal freedoms, and "the people" refers to the people of each respective state, I'm thinking that individuals are largely ignored in personal affairs as long as they harm no other, which would THEN make them subject to judgement by the more ancient laws of due process that pre-dated the Constitution.

The fact that this is stated in the 5th and then repeated yet again in the 14th protectiing all persons regardless of citizenship, tends to support the idea that "due process" was never considered a process strictly limited to US Constitutional law, and in fact, the 9th amendment would suggest otherwise.

Statutory law would always be subject to common law. This would mean that all due process would allow the individual to question the lawfulness, not the legality, but the lawfulness of any statute applied to them personally.

It could be arguend that the assumption is consistent with ancient christianity: the individual is always above the power of the law as long as s/he harms no other, which then would require due process by laws not under the power of either state or Constitutional government:
1.Two witnesses
2.presumption of innocence
3.Right to face your accuser
4.protection of double jeopardy
5.habeas corpus
6.Right against self incrimination

Al the above can be traced to the bible, which would make it necessary for any tribunal to respect those rights.



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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 5:14 PM by Pandemonium1323
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Al the above can be traced to the bible

And where does that leave us?

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 6:21 PM by Pandemonium1323
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And where does that leave us?

Oh, I think I get it now. You're pointing out *why* our legal system is so screwed up. Because it's based in scripture!

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 4:21 PM by James_Jaeger
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>That's why the freedom to simply own weapons for personal use is the only freedom not regulated by congress. Any weapon you can legally purchase and use for personal reasons is not limited by any Constitutional law.

True, but they use the Commerce Clause, as re-written by the Supreme Court, to "justify" banning guns in "gun-free zones," such zones illegal under Consitutional Law.

See what Edwin Vieira, J.D. and Pat Buchanan have to say about this in ORIGINAL INTENT at
http://www.OriginalIntent.us

James

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 4:29 PM by doojie
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Yes, but even the commerce clause cannot override due process, which came long before any constitutional law. Even should an individual be accused of violation, the person is protected by due process, which can challenge any statutory principle.
The problem is, lawyers don't tell us that, priobably because they don't even know it.

A study of law from ancient process, however, shows it to be plainly true.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 4:33 PM by doojie
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To carry the above argument further, the 2nd amendment dealt with groups, as in legal militias, but not with individuals, because the founders recognized that by ancient law, individuals had the "inalienable right' to due process, which would invalidate control of any individual not part of some revolutionary group.

Due process always overrides statutory law. The reason is stated in the 14th amendment, which includes several sections of the original constitution, stating clearly in the "privilege and immunities" clause that no state, like the federal government, shall make or enforce any law abridging the rights of citizens, and allowing due process to all persons, showing clearly that due process is not part of statutory law.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 4:44 PM by James_Jaeger
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>Yes, but even the commerce clause cannot override due process, which came long before any constitutional law. Even should an individual be accused of violation, the person is protected by due process, which can challenge any statutory principle.

I'm not following your thinking here.

James

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WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 7:17 PM by James_Jaeger
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"A well regulated militia" is totally cared for by the feds, and the state is only the plavce where they happen to be until needed for further use. That's why the freedom to simply own weapons for personal use is the only freedom not regulated by congress. Any weapon you can legally purchase and use for personal reasons is not limited by any Constitutional law.

Here's what the Second Amendment actually says:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Let's explicate this:

>A well regulated Militia,

Means the militia should be well regulated by the elected officials in the STATE, not in the Federal government, because the next phrase names the state.

>being necessary

means a Militia is NECESSARY. This is the ONLY place the Constitution says something is NECESSARY. The Constitution doesn't say the Congress is necessary, or the President is necessary or a standing ARMY is necessary or the Supreme Court is necessary ... it says a MILITIA IS NECESSARY, to what?

>to the security of a free State,

So a MILITIA is NECESSARY in order for a STATE to be FREE. Note, it doesn't say a MILITIA is necessary in order for the FEDERAL government or the CENTRAL government to be free. It says in order for the STATE, i.e. Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, California, etc., to remain free. Free of what? Free of everything; especially the FEDERAL government, some CENTRAL government or some elite attempting to own and/or control an army and/or military. The STATES only LENT their authority to the Federal government.

>the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Thus, WE THE PEOPLE who comprise and authorize the FREE STATES to exist have the RIGHT to keep and bear arms as part of our duty to be well organized as a Militia BY those states. NOTE: nowhere does the Constitution say that People have the right to keep and bear arms for deer hunting or to protect themselves from intruders in their homes. The People have the right to keep and bear arms as PART of the STATE MILITIA on order to maintain a check and balance of power against the CENTRAL GOVERNMENT and in order to guarantee their FREEDOM as a FREE STATE or People. This is why it is NECESSARY, because POLITICAL POWER GROWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN.

o If the Central gov has the gun, then THEY have the political power.

o If some elite has the gun, then THEY have the political power.

o If the People, organized in state militia, have the gun, then THEY have the political power.

Can it be any simpler?

James

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 7:37 PM by Pandemonium1323
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Although I can't disagree with any particular point you bring up James, I have to ask if you don't see this as just 'centralizing' power within the State.
In other words, the State militia is it's own 'centralized' power within the borders of it's own State.
So, should we also have a county militia in every county to keep the 'central' State militia from getting out of control, and then a City militia in every city within the county to keep it's militia in check?

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 9:32 PM by James_Jaeger
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>Although I can't disagree with any particular point you bring up James, I have to ask if you don't see this as just 'centralizing' power within the State.

Yes, lesser of the evils.

>In other words, the State militia is it's own 'centralized' power within the borders of it's own State.

Yes.

>So, should we also have a county militia in every county to keep the 'central' State militia from getting out of control, and then a City militia in every city within the county to keep it's militia in check?

I will agree that the Second Amendment could have been a lot clearer. It would seem that no mater how you organize it, they didn't want a lot of citizens running around willy nilly with guns so they stipulated that they should be trained and organized. I don't know if this just makes it look better or what, but the idea is that citizens have the guns, not some over-arching group under some foreign or distant power.

Given the fact that we HAVE governments, what do you want to do, disarm everyone?

The problem with the anarchy movement is they don't give the (exact) program of relinquishing the power and duties of government into an orderly new arrangement. In other words it sounds good on paper, but that's as far as it goes ... so far.

James

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 9:47 PM by Pandemonium1323
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The problem with the anarchy movement is they don't give the (exact) program of relinquishing the power and duties of government into an orderly new arrangement. In other words it sounds good on paper, but that's as far as it goes ... so far.

Right, I gotcha. Just realizing it's a scalar problem.
Arm the State militias, and you have State centralized power, but at least it keeps the Feds in check, which would be a better State than the one we have. No argument there.

I like to hope that a real (working) egalitarianism would arise much in the same way cellular automata do...through simple recursive rules......such as the interwebz, and twitter, etc. It's a self-organizing system, built by the cellular interactions at the ground level.
I see it as an emergent system, not as one that even could in principle be organized externally or from 'on high', since that would be contrary to it's very nature.
I don't see people organizing any such movement per se, I just see it emerging through new modes of communication....and I think that's the key right there....widespread ubiquitous communication.
It probably helps some to disillusion people to any form of organized State along the way, if only to quicken the process.

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 10:06 PM by Pandemonium1323
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And what stops those Militias from becoming State sized armies?
Aside from whether they abuse the citizens in their own State, let's say California wanted to take over the entire West Coast, and Oregon and Washington couldn't really stand up to us.
What then?

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 10:16 PM by Pandemonium1323
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I guess what I'm actually asking is how do you envision preventing civil war between the States?

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/23/2009 10:21 PM by Pandemonium1323
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I suppose another way of putting it, is that it doesn't appear you've actually changed the nature of the hierarchy, just shortened it down to the State level. But it has the same structure.
We could just as easily imagine the entire earth as a nation, with what we call "nations" currently as member States (the State of Canada, the State of Mexico, etc.) and then say that each of those States should have their own militia, but no army for the Federal United Earth.
Same system, different scale.

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Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/26/2009 6:56 PM by James_Jaeger
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>Same system, different scale.

Okay agreed Pan. All this is a BIG fucking problem.

Let's hit it from another angle.

What are the THINGS or REASONS people fight, conflict and war? Let's itemize them and then prioritize the list. You start.

James


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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/26/2009 7:17 PM by Pandemonium1323
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What are the THINGS or REASONS people fight, conflict and war? Let's itemize them and then prioritize the list. You start.

Damn, you gotta toss me a difficult question!?!? :)

Ok, well, it can be approached from many angles. We could break down competition/cooperation of life itself. We could talk about scarcity (or the perception of).

But, I'll start simply. In a nutshell, people have a hard time perceiving others as peers.
Also, I think there is a tendency towards "atomistic" thinking (a visual analogy: the thought of atoms as tiny solid 'billiard balls', is similarly erroneous to the rubber sheet visualization). It's what subTillion would call the 'transcendent bias', and probably stems from the fact that the 'objective' or 'physical' or 'emergent' or 'material' world emerges from an 'immanent' substrate. In other words, transcendence, or emergence (the active principle: yang) is how this world got here (physically), so obviously, all physical things are slanted in that direction.
But, he also points out that there are two ways to transcend: transcend and exclude, or transcend and include.
Transcension through exclusion seems to fail, as it literally excludes the ground under it's feet (this would be like the branches of a tree trying to dislodge itself from the trunk and roots to float towards the sun - an actual tree grows taller, and closer to the sun by simultaneously digging deeper into it's substrate via the root system).
Like the tree, transcension through inclusion means enfolding immanence into the next higher order.
"All things stand with their back to the female"
- Lao Tzu

In practical terms, this means that, as a society, we need to become more inclusive, and empowering women would probably help a lot. In fact, numerous studies have shown that the empowerment of poor women has vast benefits to any society she lives in.

We need to swing more towards the K-selection end of the spectrum, while not completely abandoning the R-selection paradigm (preserving those societal niches where it's actually effective), but rather limiting it's scope to non-destructive arenas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

Overview

In r/K selection theory, selective pressures are hypothesised to drive evolution in one of two generalized directions: r- or K-selection.[1] These terms, r and K, are derived from standard ecological algebra, as illustrated in the simple Verhulst equation of population dynamics:[3]

where r is the growth rate of the population (N), and K is the carrying capacity of its local environmental setting. Typically, r-selected species exploit less-crowded ecological niches, and produce many offspring, each of which has a relatively low probability of surviving to adulthood. In contrast, K-selected species are strong competitors in crowded niches, and invest more heavily in fewer offspring, each of which has a relatively high probability of surviving to adulthood. In the scientific literature, r-selected species are occasionally referred to as "opportunistic", while K-selected species are described as "equilibrium".[4]
[edit]Unstable environments
In unstable or unpredictable environments, r-selection predominates as the ability to reproduce quickly is crucial. There is little advantage in adaptations that permit successful competition with other organisms, because the environment is likely to change again. Traits that are thought to be characteristic of r-selection include: high fecundity, small body size, early maturity onset, short generation time, and the ability to disperse offspring widely. Organisms whose life history is subject to r-selection are often referred to as r-strategists or r-selected. Organisms with r-selected traits range from bacteria and diatoms, through insects and weeds, to various semelparous cephalopods and mammals, especially small rodents.
[edit]Stable environments
In stable or predictable environments, K-selection predominates as the ability to compete successfully for limited resources is crucial and populations of K-selected organisms typically are very constant and close to the maximum that the environment can bear (unlike r-selected populations, where population sizes can change much more rapidly). Traits that are thought to be characteristic of K-selection include: large body size, long life expectancy, and the production of fewer offspring that require extensive parental care until they mature. Organisms whose life history is subject to K-selection are often referred to as K-strategists or K-selected. Organisms with K-selected traits include large organisms such as elephants, trees, humans and whales, but also smaller, long-lived organisms such as Arctic Terns. The climate that demonstrate predictably variable characteristics of a stable climate is the oceanic climate. The most stable climate in this sense would be found in Northwest Europe. The warm Gulf Stream and the cool temperature of the northern latitude form a natural front in which predictably variable characteristics are found to the greatest extent. The very location would be southern Lofoten which is also known for the greatest positive temperature anomaly in the world.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/26/2009 7:41 PM by Pandemonium1323
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On a more concrete level, I think there are 3 mechanisms which will enrich society and aid the dissolution of government:

1) Empowerment, particularly of the middle class and poor. Getting people "off the grid" (I'm using the analogy to energy-independent people who no longer get power from the power companies, but this can be extended to ALL forms of power - get people off any form of power grid, i.e., help them become truly 'independent' or 'autonomous'. Of course, it's great to do this for oneself, but it also helps a lot to help as many others as possible achieve this: the more 'autonomous' people there are, the faster it propagates, and the more resilient it becomes, so by helping others to enhance their own autonomy, you are helping secure your own be creating the environment in which it thrives.

2) Non-participation. To the furthest extent you are reasonably able to (without endangering yourself), STOP participating in government (or any authoritarian structure). And encourage/support others doing this as well. This is similar to 'getting off the grid' but specifically applied to the mechanisms of government. Just stop playing with them. This could mean not voting (since voting implicitly validates the system of governance through one's participation in it), stop paying taxes (but see my disclaimer about putting yourself in danger), not calling/relying on police except in the utmost of emergencies (don't call them over trivial disputes), stop using the legal system as much as possible (this means don't sue people), etc. So, in every way you find it reasonable, simply disconnect from all forms of governance, and encourage/help others to do the same.

3) Technology. Especially technology that facilitates 1 & 2. We've already discussed what these technologies are (the usual supspects: social media, robotic farming, molecular nanotechnology, free energy, etc.) Use them, encourage others to use them, invest in them (if you can), invent them (if you can), and just keep supporting them in every imaginable way.
The technology will obsolete government, because it empowers people to do things and provide for themselves in ways that will make the government irrelevant.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 12:04 AM by James_Jaeger
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Oh for christs sakes Pan ... I'll start.


What are the THINGS or REASONS people fight, conflict and war? Let's itemize them and then prioritize the list.


FOOD (non-durables)
SHELTER (caves and houses)
FIRE (energy)
THINGS (durable and non-durable)
WOMEN (sex)
LAND (space)
AUTHORITY (to offset insecurities)
RESPECT (to offset ignorance)

The above is what men and women basically fight for.

James Jaeger


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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 12:38 AM by Pandemonium1323
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Right, but that can all be summed up in a single word:

Scarcity.

So the obvious solution would be abundance.

Open source.

Molecular manufacturing.

Fusion.

Robotic farming.

Ummm...sex...robots? Telepresence?

Edutainment.

Scarcity is a lie James, has been since the adoption of agriculture at least. Need to wean people off the lie.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 12:47 AM by James_Jaeger
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>Right, but that can all be summed up in a single word: Scarcity.

>So the obvious solution would be abundance.
Scarcity is a lie James, has been since the adoption of agriculture at least. Need to wean people off the lie.

So why is scarcity a lie in 25 words or less?

James



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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 1:13 AM by Pandemonium1323
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What is scarce is time.
Let's look at farming.
It takes less than 1% of the worlds population to produce more food than the world consumes.
There is no shortage of actual food.
So, in principle, we could feed everyone.
There's enough gold in the world that every person on the planet could have at least one gold necklace, and there's still enough for all our electronics.
So, no shortage of gold either.
There's enough water (for now) in the world for everyone to drink, no shortage of water.
But, it takes time and effort to get all these things, and to get them to people.
Scarcity is a division of time, and thus a division of labor.

When the Amish build a new house, the entire community pitch in to do it, and it's built very quickly, and with very little effort on the part of each individual. Many hands makes for light work.

However, because of the division of labor, some people feel that they are 'above' any kind of work whatsoever, and they become bankers and politicians and lawyers.
Middle men and authoritarians. Kings. They relegate and delegate the work of others, and convince the majority, either through their intelligence (if they can produce ideas that increase efficiency/production) or through some long held belief (such as hereditary inheritance of position) that they deserve a larger portion of what is produced.
In other words, people who have good ideas that benefit society are often absolved of the "lesser" tasks that others have to do, or they con everyone into thinking they are absolved of these tasks due to their position of birth.
And then they organize.
This, to a degree, makes sense for the past few thousand years, when work was really hard, technology was primitive, and life was short.
Today though, the technology exists to make work (for pretty much everyone) really easy.
Like I mentioned, farming is pretty much completely automated already, and only requires a few 'hands'. Soon, construction will be completely automated, but it's already well on it's way.
Why do you think the majority of people in the US work in the service industry? Because what else is there to do other than serve each other the things our machines make? We just need to close the loop and make all menial jobs automated. But, we also need to make all this technology available to the rest of the world.
I think what's happened is that over thousands of years, we've just grown so used to Authority, that it's difficult to imagine life without it.

Here's a few more examples:

Food in America is not hard to come by. I spent 2 years travelling the country on foot. I never once had to worry about getting something to eat, as there are numerous missions and churches serving food everywhere you go. There's no scarcity of food itself, but there is to an extent a scarcity of people willing to serve it.
Establishments serving food or drink are required by law to make it available to anyone who asks.

I just don't think people get that we've completely exceeded all basic material needs already. There's MORE stuff than we know what to do with, so we endlessly go through this cycle of creating ever novel and useless 'consumer' goods. Nothing wrong with that, but you'd think that by now, we would have at least moved the basic necessities of life to a level where they're available to all.
I'm not against competition. But we've come far enough, that there is NO REASON why people would ever need to compete over the BASIC NECESSITIES that sustain the human body.
By this, I'm talking about food, shelter, water, clothing.
These things are DIRT CHEAP, and most of it can be produced by machines.

We have socialized police force. We have socialized fire departments. We have socialized highway systems. We have socialized parks. We have socialized libraries. Why not food/clothing/shelter to provide what every human needs just to go on day after day, so they can focus on the things that people really want: new ideas, new innovations, etc.
The only reason I can see that we haven't done this, is because those in power know that keeping people on the edge of survival creates a certain kind of fear/tension that makes them easier to control. As in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People who can do nothing but wonder every day where their next meal is going to come from have a harder time rising up against them. They are reduced to the level of animals, and can be herded around as such.

In general, I'm opposed to authority in any form, because as far as I can see, authority has never accomplished anything good, but opposing it has.

The sad thing I've realized, is that their is no logical way to IMPOSEW non-authority, so my only means towards this end is to practice it, tell others, and wait patiently.

A star trek like egalitarianism is possible, it's not that we don't have the technology or physical resources to do it, it's that the masses are still under the illusion that it's not possible yet, and those in power want to maintain that illusion.
So, break the illusion, if you're able. There's nothing else you can do.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 1:15 AM by Pandemonium1323
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Establishments serving food or drink are required by law to make it available to anyone who asks.

Should read:

Establishments serving food or drink are required by law to make water available to anyone who asks.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 1:28 AM by Pandemonium1323
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So this is why I bring up the differences between R-strategists and K-strategists.

In times of scarcity, R-strategists (virus', rats, pond scums, fleas) will go into an explosive growth phase (this is what happened during the major plagues). They breed profusely and spread as far as they can to increase the odds that some of them will survive. They have major boom and bust cycles.

K-strategists (great cats, wolves, elephants, whales) INVEST heavily in each of their young, to EMPOWER the individual animal. There are fewer of them, but they have greater equilibrium with their environment and rarely compete with their own kind.

If we viewed all people in this manner, then we would want to invest in the potential of EVERY human. We wouldn't think of other humans, no matter what their status or accomplishments, as 'disposable'. Every one would get the NURTURING they need until they succeed.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 1:55 AM by Pandemonium1323
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I guess my point is that I see all these social ills as directly traceable to the fact that people continue to believe that they need authority over them.

I need the police because without them YOU might sneak into my house to steal something (wait, why would you steal something from me if you already had everything you need????)
I need courts, and judges, and lawyers and prisons to deter all future generations from doing the same thing (wait: it doesn't seem like the crime rates actually go down with all these institutions, so I'm not really any safer).

It's been noted by a few people that the level of crime (the reason why we need all these 'protections' and 'securities') is proportional to the size and extent of the government.
Or, in other words, deterrence in the form of law enforcement doesn't actually work.
If you walk into the wrong neighborhood, you're still in danger, no matter how many police there are (who are all hanging out in the rich neighborhoods and business district anyway).
If someone, at random, decides they want to walk up behind you and shoot you, the cop 4 blocks away won't be able to get to you in time to stop him.
The fact that enforcement exists doesn't seem to actually deter any of these criminals, and poverty seems to increase it.
So what's the solution? Duh! Eliminate poverty. The savings in taxes alone makes it cost-efficient! Less prisons, less courts, less judges, less lawyers, less property damage! That should equate into less taxes.

For example.

New York and Honolulu have both done studies that show it costs the State LESS to permanently house the homeless than it does to leave them where they are.
Why?
Because they use the ER less.
Because they use the psych wards less (btw, I've probably spent 1/4 million dollars in your tax dollars in psych wards - over $1000/day per person - and far less than that could have been spent putting me in an apartment and getting me a good therpist, which would have kept me out of the psych ward - just saying I know from first hand experience the excess and waste we tolerate just to hang on to our 'cold shoulder' mentality that could be better spent actually PREVENTING the problem from arising in the first place).
Because they end up in jails less.
Because they don't get sick as often.

Taking care of poverty is, it turns out, is actually more COST EFFECTIVE to the tax payer than not.

It's math. The studies have been done, and it should be common sense. So you can see why I get disgusted with authority.
If you get rid of government and taxes, communites naturally do this on their own. THey self-organize this kind of stuff.
Being taxed to death makes it HARDER for communities to do this, which perpetuates poverty, which increases crime, which JUSTIFIES the need for more POLICE!!!!!

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 2:46 PM by James_Jaeger
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25 words Pan?

Okay, I guess I'm going to have to boil what you say down ... most of which I agree with BTW.

>What is scarce is time.

Yes, time is truly a scarce factor I didn't really think of. BUT, in a world where people like Dr. Michael West advance REGENERATIVE MEDICINE and STEM CELL CLONING, people will live longer and longer, thus time will be knocked out as a scarcity factor.

>Let's look at farming.
It takes less than 1% of the worlds population to produce more food than the world consumes. There is no shortage of actual food.

The multiplier effect of technology.

>So, in principle, we could feed everyone.

The world's population stands at 6.83 billion today and will grow to 9.15 billion by 2050 and then level off. Global economic output is expected to be 2 - 3 percent per year, meaning, if you do the math, global income will increase more quickly than population over the next 40 years.

>There's enough ...

Forget the planet, there's enough UNIVERSE to go around.

If technology is used to conquer this UNIVERSE, then there's enough TIME to go around too.

>However, because of the division of labor, some people feel that they are 'above' any kind of work whatsoever, and they become bankers and politicians and lawyers. Middle men and authoritarians. Kings.

Okay, here's where the rub comes in, the stratification of society. This rub prompts this question:

IS IT DESIRABLE TO DE-STRATIFY SOCIETY?

Stratification is cause NOT by just one (1) activity or event. People can work hard and serve their fellows and thus become kings or CEOs. Is that wrong? A person sitting at the top of the crane can often better see what has to be picked up than those on the ground. Is that wrong?

>In other words, people who have good ideas that benefit society are often absolved of the "lesser" tasks that others have to do,

It's called "facility differential" in Scientology. An executive that provides supervision and GETS THINGS DONE (the definition of an EXECUTIVE), deserves more facilities than the person that DOESN'T GET THINGS DONE. Since I now edit faster than I did 5 years ago (get more done), I deserve three or four editing suits, each with at least one assistant editor, don't I? I also need to have the AUTHORITY to tell the assistants what to do because they do not have the experience YET, to know what to do. In consideration (EXCHANGE) for them taking my orders, I give them something: money, training, screen credits, prestige, satisfaction of producing a quality product. What's wrong with that? My authority is only abusive if there is NO exchange.

When a BANKER creates money out of thin air and then spends this money in society, he is ABUSING society because he is demanding AUTHORITY over others but not giving them a REAL EXCHANGE.

Thus, your beef with AUTHORITY should not be against authorities that keep their EXCHANGE in, but with AUTHORITIES that do not.

o We pay taxes to the AUTHORITIES, but we never see real results or we have no accountability = ABUSE.

o We use the Federal Reserve's "money" but all we see is increased debt where certain AUTHORITIES are getting paid first and paid ALWAYS = abuse.

o We see infinite space out there yet we are still stuck on a planet fighting each other because some gov AUTHORITY tells us to go to war = abuse.

Your beef is with MAL-authority, not GOOD-authority.

Your beef is with BAD-control, not GOOD-control Pan.

I guarantee if you ever worked for me, you would never even feel any authority over you, only good positive guidance that you COULD call control. In fact, many years ago, I was so concerned about this very issue of abusive control and authority and the attendant insanity that surrounds it, I wrote a bunch of manuals and books on the subject of management as such pertains to the film industry (as that's the only field I know anything about). Ck out one of my books called MOVIE JOB DESCRIPTIONS at http://www.moviepubs.net It's the 4th book down under BOOKS.

I acknowledge your other good points below, too numerous to comment upon, but allow me to say this: I recently did almost exactly what you suggested and put in 40 hours over at HABITAT FOR HUMANITY. There I got to work with fellow citizens that were not as fortunate as I have been due to the luck of birth. As I was loading and unloading trucks all day, I couldn't help admiring what a wonderful attitude most of these people had and it made me really want to get back to the editing room and cut the best film I possibly could to help improve conditions in this country and around the world. Was I wrong to want to be sitting in a posh editing studio controlling equipment and assistances, rather than being down there on the loading dock moving used couches and washing machines?

James

P.S. Pan, I know that with money and power and authority it's easy to become abusive, and many do. By comparison, it's almost easy to be ethical when one is poor. But I have known people with great financial resources that HAVE wielded reasonably great authority with a very gentle and understanding way, so I KNOW it CAN be done. But, like anything else, it takes training. Often people are given power and authority at birth and they were not properly trained by their parents on how top handle it. I thus respect Warren Buffet for giving much of his estate back to society rather than his kids. If he trains his kids well, there is no reason they won't be able to earn just as much as their old man.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 3:46 PM by Pandemonium1323
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25 words Pan?

Sorry :)

Yes, time is truly a scarce factor I didn't really think of. BUT, in a world where people like Dr. Michael West advance REGENERATIVE MEDICINE and STEM CELL CLONING, people will live longer and longer, thus time will be knocked out as a scarcity factor.

Yeah, it's not just lifespan that makes time scarce. It's how much you get per unit of time invested.
I find the saying 'There is no such thing as a free lunch' humorous. In fact, all life attempts to get the freest lunch possible. Plants work their entire lives to store energy so that other animals can eat those plants. The animals that eat those plants, to some degree are getting a 'free' lunch (they're not the ones doing all the work storing solar energy/nutrients), and then other animals eat those animals that store the free energy provided by the plants...and so on and so on. Life is a process of finding the freest lunch you can find. The freer your lunch, the more time you have to do other things. Leisure time in society produces art and innovation. Innovation makes lunch more free, so we can continue to innovate more free lunches. And create more art.

The world's population stands at 6.83 billion today and will grow to 9.15 billion by 2050 and then level off. Global economic output is expected to be 2 - 3 percent per year, meaning, if you do the math, global income will increase more quickly than population over the next 40 years.

Right, guess that depends on your views of the Singularity, but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead :)

Forget the planet, there's enough UNIVERSE to go around.

Yup. No lack of material. The division of wealth is really a division of labor which is really a division of time.

If technology is used to conquer this UNIVERSE, then there's enough TIME to go around too.

Although I cringe at your use of the word 'conquer', and disagree with the outcome (I believe we will soon become hyperdimensional, and/or connect to the interstellar/intergalactic hypernet???), in all other respects I agree with you: as long as we live in a 3D 'verse we would need to continue to expand indefinitely.

Okay, here's where the rub comes in, the stratification of society. This rub prompts this question:

IS IT DESIRABLE TO DE-STRATIFY SOCIETY?

I view leadership as a 'Do as I do, not as I say' paradigm. Successful leaders...well...LEAD. Meaning, if you view them as successful, and you like where they're going, then you follow.
Those who attempt to lead by 'Do as I say, not as I do' are doing exactly the opposite.
So I think your concept of 'good authority' or 'good control' corresponds with my concept of 'Lead by example, not by Authority'. By Authority, I specifically mean threats of coercion and force and fraud. A true leader doesn't need these things, because the value of her 'direction' is apparent and self-evident. 'Bad' leaders must use glibness, lying, and violence to back up their claims.

Stratification is cause NOT by just one (1) activity or event. People can work hard and serve their fellows and thus become kings or CEOs. Is that wrong? A person sitting at the top of the crane can often better see what has to be picked up than those on the ground. Is that wrong?

See above. I follow those whom I respect, and I do not respect those who use externalized force or coercion to achieve their ends.
For historians, the matter of how we developed this system of Kings is interesting. For me, as a practical matter, I see all Law as 'suggestions'. In other words, all law should be reformulated as 'It's not the Law, it's just a Good Idea!' Leaders should be able to demonstrate their leadership through practice and logical reasoning, not by their charisma or 'glibness'.

It's called "facility differential" in Scientology. An executive that provides supervision and GETS THINGS DONE (the definition of an EXECUTIVE), deserves more facilities than the person that DOESN'T GET THINGS DONE. Since I now edit faster than I did 5 years ago (get more done), I deserve three or four editing suits, each with at least one assistant editor, don't I? I also need to have the AUTHORITY to tell the assistants what to do because they do not have the experience YET, to know what to do. In consideration (EXCHANGE) for them taking my orders, I give them something: money, training, screen credits, prestige, satisfaction of producing a quality product. What's wrong with that? My authority is only abusive if there is NO exchange.

Yes. I'm not suggesting a leveling or equalization that would destroy the idea of a meritocracy. I'm merely trying to point out that those who are at the top right now do very little of value, but have somehow convinced the majority that they do do something of value. They are parasites in the extreme.
Ideally, everyone should be free to value their work as they choose, and others likewise can agree or disagree with that valuation. Free exchange, unmediated by outside authority. Or in other words, truly free markets.
But again, see what I mean by real leadership above. If you're good at what you do, and I need to take instruction from you, that's the natural order of things.
The kind of authority I mean (and the operating definition I use whenever I use the word 'authority') is when you threaten or coerce me in any way to adopt or follow your practices. Authority is an action that robs someone of Autonomy.

When a BANKER creates money out of thin air and then spends this money in society, he is ABUSING society because he is demanding AUTHORITY over others but not giving them a REAL EXCHANGE.

never particularly liked banking, but especially fractional reserve and centralized banks.

Thus, your beef with AUTHORITY should not be against authorities that keep their EXCHANGE in, but with AUTHORITIES that do not.

See above :)

o We pay taxes to the AUTHORITIES, but we never see real results or we have no accountability = ABUSE.

Taxes are an entirely unholy affair. They should be suggested donations, kept accounted of in real time, and thoroughly audited every month. There are too many shell games going on. Most tax money doesn't actually get spent on public projects. I suggest 'voluntary taxation' (if we're to have any form whatsoever) that is 100% transparent, and every cent is tracked and made publicly available in real time via the web.

o We use the Federal Reserve's "money" but all we see is increased debt where certain AUTHORITIES are getting paid first and paid ALWAYS = abuse.

The Federal Reserve is the Fourth Reich.

o We see infinite space out there yet we are still stuck on a planet fighting each other because some gov AUTHORITY tells us to go to war = abuse.

They want to keep us stuck on the planet of the Apes.
And yes, in the eventuality that we don't actually go 'hyperspatial' at Singularity time, then I agree it would be cool to swing by Iapetus, and possibly further on my way out of this solar system.

Your beef is with MAL-authority, not GOOD-authority.

See above definition of Authority.

I guarantee if you ever worked for me, you would never even feel any authority over you, only good positive guidance that you COULD call control.

Are you offering me a job?
My current plans are to go to Honolulu in March, where I will not freeze to death, and begin to build things up until I get to the point where I can involved in virtualization (a booming industry - already up to a billion/year already). But I'm flexible and free form.
When it comes to work, I'm actually a workaholic, and tend to burn myself out quickly. I throw every cell of my being into what I do, but tend to overextend myself and 'crash'. Not good at self-regulation. My only stipulations are that I need residency, and if you don't fire me, I won't quit.

In fact, many years ago, I was so concerned about this very issue of abusive control and authority and the attendant insanity that surrounds it, I wrote a bunch of manuals and books on the subject of management as such pertains to the film industry (as that's the only field I know anything about). Ck out one of my books called MOVIE JOB DESCRIPTIONS at http://www.moviepubs.net It's the 4th book down under BOOKS.

I'll check that out today.
My suggestion about taking in a poor person and filming it, was the idea of tying together your love of documentaries (which are crucial for exposing the public) and actually causing real change at the same time.
Like the series '30 Days', but applied to providing homeless people with housing, skill training, etc.

I acknowledge your other good points below, too numerous to comment upon, but allow me to say this: I recently did almost exactly what you suggested and put in 40 hours over at HABITAT FOR HUMANITY.

That's awesome. They are great. Three huzzahs, and keep it up!

There I got to work with fellow citizens that were not as fortunate as I have been due to the luck of birth. As I was loading and unloading trucks all day, I couldn't help admiring what a wonderful attitude most of these people had and it made me really want to get back to the editing room and cut the best film I possibly could to help improve conditions in this country and around the world. Was I wrong to want to be sitting in a posh editing studio controlling equipment and assistances, rather than being down there on the loading dock moving used couches and washing machines?

Not at all, lol. That's why I suggested you do the thing with the homeless person and make a DOCUMENTRARY about it. That is your talent, so I thought of fusing the two together. You get the practice and experience of working directly with someone, you get to make your documentary, and if it does well (and I think it REALLY would do well) you would make money, and inspire change all over the country.
That's why I think of it as a 'positive sum' venture.

James

P.S. Pan, I know that with money and power and authority it's easy to become abusive, and many do. By comparison, it's almost easy to be ethical when one is poor. But I have known people with great financial resources that HAVE wielded reasonably great authority with a very gentle and understanding way, so I KNOW it CAN be done. But, like anything else, it takes training. Often people are given power and authority at birth and they were not properly trained by their parents on how top handle it. I thus respect Warren Buffet for giving much of his estate back to society rather than his kids. If he trains his kids well, there is no reason they won't be able to earn just as much as their old man.

Yup, again review my definition of authority and leadership above.
Good leaders are self-evident because they do NOT demand, they do NOT threaten, they do NOT coerce, lie, or cheat.
Ron Paul may be the only politician I know of that comes close to fitting that description, I respect the man a lot, although I wouldn't vote for him ONLY because I'm principally opposed to the process of voting itself. If I had the opportunity, I would probably support him in other ways, such as donating time. He's a very, very intelligent person, and crazy as hell to be setting himself against the Fed :)

kallisti
Pan

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 5:06 PM by James_Jaeger
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>I'm merely trying to point out that those who are at the top right now do very little of value, but have somehow convinced the majority that they do do something of value. They are parasites in the extreme.

Well they're looking for THEIR free lunch.

That said, I no longer have any problem with your views on authority. Except in instances like bringing up children, amongst free adults, leadership authority IS best served by do as I do, not as I say. Leadership by example, I agree is the best, and it's unfortunate that so many in government and business are there because they're looking for a "free lunch" on the backs of everyone else. These are despicable and the system that breeds them must be altered.

As far as my next movie, I don't think I want to do any more with politics unless by some fluk ORIGINAL INTENT does well (and I seriously doubt it will do as well as FIAT EMPIRE). I may do a doc with Dr. West based on his book, THE IMMORTAL CELL.

Jame

P.S. I put the first half of ORIGINAL INTENT up on the net for free. If you have interest, you can see the various chapters by going to YOUTUBE and typing in ORIGINAL INTENT from "OriginalIntentDoc"


James




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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 5:25 PM by Pandemonium1323
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That said, I no longer have any problem with your views on authority. Except in instances like bringing up children

It's interesting that you should bring that up, because I think I have found an answer.

Parents (ideally - don't want to get into the good/bad parent thing) purposefully seek to create independence in their children. This is the entire process of 'raising' a child. They only exercise authority through the developmental stages of a child's life as it's necessary to instill that same sense of order in the child so that the child will ultimately become independent of the parent's authority. They never seek to prolong it past it's necessity.

Government is like the parent that never lets go. Which brings us full circle to what we were talking about concerning the duration of government.
If, like a parent, governments were designed with the principle in them that their function was to make society independent over some period of time (and this would need to be explicitly stated in the "Constitution" that this was the PRIMARY goal), then we could have a meaningful dialog about what level and type and so on of government was necessary to effectuate this goal.
Our current forms of government do not make it clear to people that they need to be WORKING towards this end. The common wisdom is that we'll always need government, because we'll always fear our neighbors, so we'll always be dependent on government for *something*.
Were it possible to instantiate such a government, I could probably get behind it. We would need a philosopher king (? somewhat jokingly ?)

So, a good government, like a good parent, seeks to NURTURE independence from itself.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 6:31 PM by James_Jaeger
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Parents (ideally - don't want to get into the good/bad parent thing) purposefully seek to create independence in their children. This is the entire process of 'raising' a child. They only exercise authority through the developmental stages of a child's life as it's necessary to instill that same sense of order in the child so that the child will ultimately become independent of the parent's authority. They never seek to prolong it past it's necessity.

Government is like the parent that never lets go. Which brings us full circle to what we were talking about concerning the duration of government.
If, like a parent, governments were designed with the principle in them that their function was to make society independent over some period of time (and this would need to be explicitly stated in the "Constitution" that this was the PRIMARY goal), then we could have a meaningful dialog about what level and type and so on of government was necessary to effectuate this goal.

Our current forms of government do not make it clear to people that they need to be WORKING towards this end. The common wisdom is that we'll always need government, because we'll always fear our neighbors, so we'll always be dependent on government for *something*.
Were it possible to instantiate such a government, I could probably get behind it. We would need a philosopher king (? somewhat jokingly ?)

So, a good government, like a good parent, seeks to NURTURE independence from itself.

Pan I think you have nailed this perfectly. You ARE a genius (and would probably be an excellent Dad, if ever there could be a woman born that could "handle" you).

James

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 8:05 AM by doojie
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I miss the old corner barbershops, where men used to gather and talk politics and business.

The idea of scarcity came up, and one old farmer dispensed old wisdom. He said "If you want to make money on anything, convince people it's scarce".

I was about 13 at the time, but that stuck in my mind as my first economics lesson.

Our present fiat system of money creates scarcity by making money scarce. Because mony is "borrowed" into existence at a rate of interest, and the interest itself is never created to help repay the loan, no matter how much money floats around, no matter how prices are driven into inflationary frenzy by excessive money creation, there is never quite enough.

If you think about it, simply raising interest rates to drive prices down, slow inflation, and preserve a strong economy, in those times when businesses are operating on bare profits at the present rate of interest, a rise in interest rates will drive those businesses right out of operation, along with employees who need the jobs, in an economy marked by the scarcity of money even in an inflationary economy!

It is not scarcity of goods, or high taxes, or scarcity of productivity. It is a deliberate scarcity of money created to force people into dependency on the government, on its laws, on its redistribution.

When we see a president, such as GW Bush, spending easy printing press money for "guns and butter" at the same time, you know there will follow a period where the people will seek more government regulation, more controls, more tax funded care to "protect" the people from what big business/big government caused in the first place!

LBJ did it, and it took years to recover. Did we learn? Obviously not, since republicans stood behind "W" while he outspent even LBJ and became the new poster boy for government excess.

When the government spends a lot of money it doesn;t have and never had in order to be "compassionate", always remember, that compassion is merely lubricant for the grand sex they'll have with you later.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 11:53 AM by Pandemonium1323
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Exaptly.

@James:
If you really want to change the world for the better, start at the bottom. Go help someone find a better way to live. That's how it's always done.

You like making documentaries. I think doc's and films are really good, but I also know that their's an element of self-interest involved. You want to make a name for yourself, and possibly make some money too (I bring this up because I have an idea for you later). Michael Moore. Alex Jones. Merchandise. Films. Waitaminute.....why not actually go out and change someone's life?
Everyone's got their pet idea on how to "fix" the government (hell, the government is FULL of people who have an idea on how to "fix" government - and look where that's got us). Problem is, they always want to fix things at the top and not at the bottom. Start at the bottom.
Befriend a homeless person.
Visit a lonely senior.
Etc.....


Here's my idea: make a documentary based on how you invite one homeless person into your home, clean them up, take them under your wing, mentor them, get them help.....whatever.....be that old chinese master who whips someone into a killing machine, then sets them loose on the world. And film it.
It would be an instant hit (better than Supersize Me/30 Days), you'd probably become a sensation, make lots of money off it.....and best of all.... you'd have helped one person AND inspired people everywhere to do the same.....how much you wanna bet you'd see people imitating your actions all over the country......utilize media to convince people it's "hip" to do things like this......and BAM!!!

See, everyone wins.

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 1:35 PM by doojie
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Ah yes, "My Fair Lady"!

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Re: Why Do People Fight?
posted on 12/27/2009 2:49 PM by James_Jaeger
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Our present fiat system of money creates scarcity by making money scarce. Because mony is "borrowed" into existence at a rate of interest, and the interest itself is never created to help repay the loan, no matter how much money floats around, no matter how prices are driven into inflationary frenzy by excessive money creation, there is never quite enough.

This is exactly right. The current monetary system is such joke it's amazing people haven't revolted. But be patient ... they will. See http://www.mecfilms.com/mid/movies/oi/federal.wmv

Also, I put many clips of ORIGINAL INTENT up on the net for free last night. Just go to YOUTUBE and search for "ORIGINAL INTENT."

James


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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/24/2009 10:27 AM by doojie
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Pan, your questions and issues were all debated in "The Federalist". Actually not debated, but simply put out as an excuse for federal power.

The argument by Hamilton, I believe, was that there is no way a state militia can be overcome by any federal army, since there is no federal army allowed for more than two years, and all such armies are to be drawen from the milita under Article 1,Section 8.

Madison further argued that there was no way a civil war could occur in such an arrangement because the structure of the Constitution would prevent it... ROFLMAO!

The Supreme Court has no "incorporated" the 2nd amendment under the 14th, because of the wording of the 2nd amendment.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state...."

The 14th deals with individual privileges and immunities which has, from Magna Carta, been considered the province of "persons" apart from any type of collective government.

To incorporate the 2nd, it would necessarily mean:

"A well regulated individual being necessary for the security of a free individual, the right of every individual to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

IOW, the 2nd amendment would be "incorporated" against both state and federal government, meaning the elimination of police power by the force of arms.

But then, who would "well regulate" an individual, since he now has the right to keep and bear arms for defense against both state and federal governments?

You could legally shoot any law officer! (Which doesn't really bother me a lot).

A "well regulated militia' is as much an aspect of police power as of defense against encroachment. That is most likely why Art.1, Sect.8 of the Constitution left final discipline to the federal government, just in case militas formed in opposition to the state.

When you get right down to it, the Constitution has so many holes that have failed to prevent increasing power that we should simply ignore the whole damn thing.

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/24/2009 12:24 PM by Pandemonium1323
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When you get right down to it, the Constitution has so many holes that have failed to prevent increasing power that we should simply ignore the whole damn thing.

Cheers!
Of course, I'm once again trying to show how *any* hierarchical organization structure leads to corruption and potential for abuse.
But ya'll already know my stance on that, so I'm trying to point out flaws in people's solutions towards organized government.
In this case, it seems to be just a matter of shuffling from one scale of organization to another, but the inherent problem of authority over others remains.
You can secrete nacre around that irritant for all eternity, and end up with some pretty looking pearls....but in the end it's still built around an irritant.

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Re: WHO Has Political Power
posted on 12/24/2009 12:28 PM by doojie
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The best reason for this is shown by Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer". he points out that it is the power to organize in itself that leads to corruption, because in order to organize for any reason, you must be "estranged from you self".

If my life means less to me in exchange for the "greater good", your life means squat. Resistance is futile. Mobocracy.

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Limit vs. Eliminate?
posted on 12/26/2009 7:09 PM by James_Jaeger
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>When you get right down to it, the Constitution has so many holes that have failed to prevent increasing power that we should simply ignore the whole damn thing.

Well as I said to Edwin the other day, maybe the problem with the Constitution is that it seeks to LIMIT the government, when it should have sought to E-LIMIT (eliminate) the government over time.

As desirable as a planned-obsolescence re-write would/may have been, I don't think it would have flown in 1776 society. So here we are in 2009 society and somehow the old-boys' nation HAS somehow held together, against the odds of 10,000 years of impinging oligarchies. Maybe we should all recognize this unbelievable accomplishment and, before totalitarianism closes the doors forever, maybe we should DO SOMETHING to AMEND the Constitution so all these "imperfections" are handled.

YOU KNOW, THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION DOES ALLOW FOR AMENDMENTS WHEN THERE ARE FUCKING COMPLAINERS OUT THERE. WHY DON'T THE FUCKING COMPLAINERS AMEND IT INSTEAD OF TRYING TO THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER???

James

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Gov vs. OT
posted on 12/24/2009 3:47 PM by James_Jaeger
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>would arise much in the same way cellular automata ...

Yes, agreed on this. Problem may be what one could term, the "contagion of aberration" or the "contagion of insanity" that humans experience. Just like physical diseases, all humans are aberrated (crazy) to a greater or lesser degree and this aberration is contagious. I guess these are what we call memes. So if you try to evolve a civilization from the ground up -- one that will need no external government -- as a cellular automata, you will be starting with aberrated cells and these will generate just another insane civilization, like the one we live in. The only way I can see a non-insane civilization emerging would be if such automata were set up in quarantine from the rest of "civilization." But in order to avoid the "lord of the flies" syndrome you would somehow have to have "parent" the kids. Thus the problem would become how to "parent" the kids without introducing the normal aberrations all adults have (such as "government is good and needed," "people are born sinful", "only thing you can count on are death and taxes."

Such parents would have to be there and only GUIDE the children but not interact with them in such a way as to pass on their aberrations.

If a crop of in infestment-free kids could be raised, free of violence and insanity and perversion, etc. of "modern" society, then this first crop could be programmed with an INTERNAL system of ethics, OR it might automatically have such. If this new human culture was able to grow and establish itself, it might, just might be able to evolve WITHOUT external ethics, i.e. government. Such a society could be the human nexus and not AI.

Probably the reason Earth is in heavy quarantine (Fermi paradox) is because the beings that are farming us are running this same, or a similar, experiment. The Earth experiment is probably an experiment that has gone wrong, and they may have discarded us.

I have never come across an experiment such as the one I propose. Govs, religions and society would probably ban such an experiment, because it could succeed. Nothing worse than having something out there verify that you're insane. Same reason no one talks about (possible) IQ variances amongst races. Made very taboo by Hitler and all his eugenics boys.
Scientology has been running an interesting experiment of planetary de-aberration since about 1955. They call their state of de-aberration, "clear". Clears still operate in standard society, although at a minimum, as they are encouraged to operate with other Scientologists over "wogs." I have experienced this and it is true, you DO get a lot more work done, much faster, working with non-aberrated crews over wogs. But as to whether they will accomplish their mission of "clearing this planet" I have no idea. They may, even in spite of all the memes about them to the contrary. I even agree with many of these memes. But from their POV, wogs are just insane and tortured beings ranting out of ignorance and overts. I can't say they're totally wrong, but how wrong? Either way they have an uphill battle as its almost impossible to breed new beings-planet wide when the contagion of aberration-factor is so prevalent. They DO try to practice disconnection policies, but many times that meets with fury and law suits by the uninformed/informed public. When Paul left the COS and wrote his membership renouncement letter, he cited one of his reasons, disconnection. COS says they don't practice disconnection (any more) but Paul says his wife had to disconnect from her parents just last year. Who knows if they are running the correct experiment. Certainly the scientific community, the APA and the WFMH are clueless, as none of them have even BEGUN to think about any of this stuff. Should they?

Perhaps the easiest way to set up a new civilization, where government wasn't needed, would be to create AI parents, parents that could raise kids without instilling the typical human aberrations into them.

What all of this cones down to is the age-old question: what is the nature of Man? Is Man good or evil? Is he both? Are all people different? If so, why? These questions MUST be answered otherwise there will never be any hope of engineering a stateless civilization.

I have of course, like all Scientologists and ex-Scientologists, been consumed over the question of external ethics (Government) vs. internal ethics (Operating Thetan) since at least 1974.

James

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Re: Gov vs. OT
posted on 12/25/2009 9:20 AM by doojie
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External ethics or external religion or external government is merely the mechanical application to a moral idea, a necessary finite limitation by which individuals are judged, developng a homogenized concept of government. Like the idea "One nation under God', or "In God We Trust", or "God bless America", which actually tells us nothing at all, except the notion that we somehow are collectively represented by God in a process that none of us ever underastands, but are conditioned to die for.

It's the old "estrangement from self" that Hoffer writes about in "True Believer".

Upload into a machine? Mechanical estrangement from self. Cloning? Estrangement from self. Collective religion? Estrangement from self.

Government? Estrangement from self.

Remember the old Star trek movie where Spock;s brother was able to touch people and absolve them of all past guilts, making them serve him because he gave them happiness?

Kirk refused because he said that all his experiences and guilts, all the pain he experienced made him who he was, and he accepted that.

All of us are "sinners" to the extent that we screw up. Can't be avoided. Accept it, get on with it, deal with it.

I am not rules or laws or governments or religions. I cannot be defined because I will never be reduced to such ideas, and I'm damn happy with that.

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Even God Gets to Sin
posted on 12/26/2009 6:53 PM by James_Jaeger
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>All of us are "sinners" to the extent that we screw up. Can't be avoided. Accept it, get on with it, deal with it.

The question:

1. Are we all sinners?

and the question:

2. Is Man basically good or bad?

... are two (2) entirely DIFFERENT questions, two questions endlessly confused.

Just because we have all "sinned" (screwed up) does not make us BASICALLY bad. And who is it that has the gall to determine that ANYTHING is a "screw up" in the first place? Even the (accidental) extermination of an entire planet is only a "screw up" in some being, or group of beings, minds as they "judge" the situation, FROM THEIR PERSPECTIVE(S).

So the idea that we are sinners is completely relative to the judging party, authority, religion, government or asshole.

That said, even though Man "screws up" (sins) according to the JUDGMENT of others (such self-appointed to judge at the most), does NOT mean that Man is NOT basically good, as:

IT MAY BE GOOD THAT MAN SCREWS UP OR SINS.

Maybe the Universe and/or God WANTS planets DESTROYED from time to time. Maybe GOD or the UNIVERSE or WHAT THE FUCK EVER wants Man to screw up and totally sin the shit out of everyone and everything.

MAYBE GOD HAS BAD MOODS AND HE ENJOYS SINNING HIMSELF, VIA HIS HUMAN AGENTS -- MANKIND.

THUS, Man is basically GOOD, for whatever he does, there is absolutely NO proof that he's bad or sinning or screwing up because IF he exists, THEN he MUST be good, otherwise he would not exist.

Thus the question: IS EXISTENCE GOOD OR BAD is the exact same question as IS THE EXISTENCE OF MAN GOOD OR BAD.

If you think EXISTENCE is good, then you are REQUIRED to think that MAN IS GOOD, or you're just another brain-washed idiot who thinks God or ther Universe cannot be you.

James Jaeger

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Re: Even God Gets to Sin
posted on 12/28/2009 5:53 PM by doojie
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Man is neither good nor bad. Man is. To the extent that man has a mind, he also has limitations on that mind in the form of Godel's theorem, which makes him subject to undecidable propositions from now on, which seems to be good, since no one can claim authority.

If competition and struggle are the forces that bring ous "higher'(which they are not), then we have very little to look forward to.

The fact is, God does not compute. If God di compute, then we could reduce God to a framework of algorithms and eliminate human life altogether. It would not be necessary.

God lies outside the rules because man;s mind cannot be limited to the rules.

Simple stuff.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/28/2009 7:03 PM by gawell
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no (militia) defined as a miss communication in a vacuum"

know, known, unknown, hidden, steaming, percolating, coming to a boil,unknownable until revealed.
in some cases some parents suspect (pay attention when concerned) and aren't listened to either.















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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 2:13 AM by knowledge
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well spoken Mr. Jeager

As an American I am one of and part of the common people, with a basic relationship to a nation of diversity governed for and by the people ourselves, that allows, holds, and supports the premise that individualism and the individual expression of our very lives is of paramount importance to evolution.

In so saying this it can be argued that we the people calling ourselves a free people have created a nation of outrageous diversity where the extremes of right and left stretch into forever. This leads me to consider the possibility that the founding principles of our nation were created to form a stable structure in which we the people can experience our ultimate individual expression of life.

It is interesting to note that the ‘Bill of Rights’ was not originally in our Constitution as framed by the founding members of our society. But when the Constitution was given to the states and the people of those states to ratify- the people themselves argued for stronger protection of individualism within the framework of the constitution itself, thus producing within the structure of the constitution, the protection and diversity of individual expression.

Individualism is not nor should it ever be construed as an act of separation, but a rejoicing of the spirit that allows for each of us to make known unknown potentials in our life, to dream, to create, to experience life in all of its glory. It is this act of the individual that is the prize and the goal of our constitution. That maybe we as a people need to be reminded of this truth.

It seems today that extremism is frowned upon by many people as an act of unconscionable terrorism as they look to their government to provide security as a child would look to a parent. Yet it seems to me that strong willed children never look for security, but look for the adventure in life and push the mind to new limits of imagination by daring in innocence to dream and then experience those dreams as each day unfolds, thus a world of diversity is not a static world but alive and full.



When my youngest son was entering his early teen years I gave him a small book, and in the cover of this book I inscribed the words- “Read this it is your road map to freedom†. Than one day I took that small book and read it myself, that book was a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America!

Today I have watched our country rebuke diversity of thought and beg for security at the expense of individual freedoms.

I have watched as fear has frozen our minds and allowed the unthinkable to happen, a country divided on political party lines, where political parties take our people to court to suppress the rights of the individual to choose. (No parties mentioned in my son’s little book, wherever did they come from?)

I have watched in bewilderment a great nation turn inward and ignorant.

I have watched the suppression of the press to the point that today there really is no news only opinion.

This I believe, that we the common people must come together as a collective and remind ourselves of just what our country is about, without the constraints of secularism in a non-partisan environment.

This I believe, that our constitution is meant to recreate itself in the Image of stewardship, for and by the people it governs.

Lets take another look at George-
Could it be possible that George B was a part of a greater plan to wake up the American people and the world to what can happen when we as individuals do not stand up for basic human rights, when we do not educate ourselves and seek knowledge?

It saddens me to say that I am finding Obama and the Democrats spineless in making decisions that truly serve the people. Will another revolution be necessary?








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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/23/2009 12:13 PM by James_Jaeger
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Thanks Knowledge. Good points.

James

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/26/2009 7:14 PM by James_Jaeger
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My overarching philosophy on the items of SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS is basically:

HOW CAN WE BUILD A SOCIETY WITHOUT SCARCITY, INSANITY, WASTE OR THE CONFLICT OF WAR, WHERE ALL INDIVIDUALS ARE FREE TO CONTRIBUTE THEIR UNIQUE ABILITIES AND PROSPER, WHERE ALL BEINGS ARE FREE AND ABLE TO EXPLORE AND EXPERIENCE LIFE TO THE FULLEST, AND WHERE THE EMERGENT PROPERTY OF HUMAN ACTIVITY RESULTS IN A CLASS III CIVILIZATION THAT CONTRIBUTES TO THE SURVIVAL AND GLORY OF THE UNIVERSE IN SOME LARGE OR SMALL WAY?

James Jaeger

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/28/2009 3:59 PM by mekanikalmekka
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Info for you James and Pan:

You should find this quite interesting.


Inside the Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Impacts on Movement for Social Justice

Sunday 27 December 2009

by: Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

**************
This article has been previously published at Media Freedom Intl.

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.”[ii]

The ORB report came on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Dr. Les Roberts and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal. The first study done from January 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003 confirmed civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. The second study published in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion and confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths. Over half the deaths were directly attributable to US forces. The now estimated 1.2 million dead six years into the war/occupation, included children, parents, grandparents, cab drivers, clerics and schoolteachers. All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretences of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional four to five million Iraqi refugees have fled their homes. The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II.[iii] Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished.

The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?[iv]

Truth Emergency and Media Reform

In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal Truth Emergency in which the most important information affecting people is concealed from view. Many Americans, relying on the mainstream corporate media, have serious difficulty accessing the truth while still believing that the information they receive is the reality. A Truth Emergency reflects cumulative failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press. This truth emergency is seen in inadequate coverage of fraudulent elections, pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, doctored intelligence, and domestic surveillance. Reliable information on these issues is systematically missing in corporate media outlets, where the vast majority of the American people continue to turn for news and information.

Consider these items of noteworthy conditions. US workers have been faced with a thirty-five year decline in real wages while the top few percent enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens. US schools, particularly in the west, are more segregated now than half a century ago. The US has the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, is falling behind in scientific research and education, leads the world as a debtor nation, and is seriously lacking in healthcare quality and coverage, which results in the deaths of 18,000 people a year. America has entered another Gilded Age. Someone should the media.[v]

The Free Press or Media Reform Movement is a national effort to address mainstream media failures and the government policies that sanction them. During the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Project Censored interns and faculty conducted a survey, completed by 376 randomly selected NCMR attendees out of the 3,500 people registered for the conference. This survey was designed to gauge participants’ views on the state of the corporate news media and the effectiveness of the media reform movement. The survey also sought to determine the level of belief in a truth emergency, a systematic hiding of critical information in the US. Not surprisingly, for a sample of independent media reform activists, majorities in the 90% plus range agreed on most criticisms of mainstream media, that corporate media failed to keep the American people informed on important issues facing the nation and that a truth emergency does indeed exist in the US. Regarding the reasons, 87% of the participants believed that a military-industrial-media complex exists in the US for the promotion of the US military domination of the world and most agreed with research conclusions by Project Censored, and others, that a continuing powerful global dominance group inside the US government, the US media, and the national policy structure is responsible. What was clear from our survey is that media democracy activists strongly support not only aggressive reform efforts and policy changes but also the continuing development of independent, grassroots media as part of an overall media democracy movement.

While most progressive media activists do not believe in some omnipotent conspiracy, an overwhelming portion of NCMR participants do believe the leadership class in the US is dominated by a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share a goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group (GDM) continues under both Republican and Democratic rule. In cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and conservative foundations, the GDM has become a powerful long-term force in military unilateralism and US political processes.

The Global Dominance Group and Information Control

A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book The Power Elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through “higher circles” of contact and agreement.[vi] This power has grown through the Cold War and, after 9/11, the Global War on Terror.

At present, the global dominance agenda includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. Only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors including:

William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group

Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel

John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing

Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton

Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.

Given an interlocked media network of connections with defense and other economic sectors, big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. Media critic and historian Norman Solomon described the close financial and social links between the boards of large media-related corporations and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment: “One way or another, a military-industrial complex now extends to much of corporate media.”[vii] The Homeland Security Act Title II Section 201(d)(5) provides an example of the interlocked military-industrial-media complex. This Act specifically asks the directorate to “develop a comprehensive plan for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States including information technology and telecommunications systems (including satellites) emergency preparedness communications systems.”

The media elite, a key component of the Higher Circle Policy Elite in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources. Their goal is to create symbiotic global news distribution in a deliberate attempt to control the news and information available to society. The two most prominent methods used to accomplish this task are censorship and propaganda.

Sometimes the sensationalist and narrow media coverage of news is blamed upon the need to meet a low level of public taste and thereby capture the eyes of a sufficient market to lure advertisers and to make a profit. But another goal of cornering the marketplace on what news and views will be aired is also prominent. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times. The losses in supporting conservative media are part of a strategy of ideological control. They also buy bulk quantities of ultra-conservative books bringing them to the top of the NY Times bestseller list and then give away copies to “subscribers” to their websites and publications. They fund conservative “think tanks” like Heritage and Cato with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. All this buys them respectability and a megaphone. Even though William Kristol’s publication, the Standard, is a money-loser, his association with it has often gotten him on TV talk shows and a column with The New York Times. Sponsorships of groups like Grover Norquist’s anti-tax “Americans for Tax Reform” regularly get people like him front-and-center in any debate on taxation in the United States. This has contributed to extensive tax cuts for the wealthy and the most unfair tax laws of any industrialized country – all found acceptable by a public relying upon sound-bites about the dangers of ‘big government.’ Hence media corporation officials and others in the health care, energy and weapons industries remain wealthier than ordinary people can imagine. Their expenditures for molding opinion are better understood as investments in a conservative public ideology[viii]

Modern Media Censorship and Propaganda

A broader definition of contemporary censorship needs to include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow of vital news information to the public. Modern censorship can be seen as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions). or threats to reduce future access to governmental and corporate sources of news. Following are a few examples of censorship and propaganda.

1. Omitted or Undercovered Stories- The failure of the corporate media to cover human consequences, like one million , mostly civilian deaths of Iraqis, reduces public response to the wars being conducted by the US. Even when activists do mobilize, the media coverage of anti-war demonstrations has been negligible and denigrating from the start. When journalists of the so-called free press ignore the anti-war movement, they serve the interests of their masters in the military media industrial complex.[ix]

Further, the corporate mainstream press continues to ignore the human cost of the US war in Iraq with America’s own veterans. Veteran care, wounded rates, mental disabilities, VA claims, first hand accounts of soldier experiences, and pictures of dead or limbless soldiers are rare. One of the most important stories missed by the corporate press concerned the Winter Soldier Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. The hearings, with eyewitness testimony of US soldiers relating their experiences on the battlefield and beyond, were only covered by a scant number of major media, and then only in passing. In contrast to the virtual corporate media blackout concerning American soldiers’ views of the war, the independent, listener sponsored, community Pacifica Radio network covered the hearings at length.[x]

A common theme among the most censored stories over the past few years has been the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at large. The corporate media has ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in The New York Times October 19, 2006, have offered false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims, the Act is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted.[xi]

Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), federally coordinated mass arrests have been occurring since April 2005 and netted over 54,000 arrests, a majority of whom were not violent criminals as was initially suggested. This unprecedented move of arresting tens of thousands of “fugitives” is the largest dragnet style operation in the nation’s history. The raids, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) and mark the first time in US history that all domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government.[xii]

All these events are significant in a democratic society that claims to cherish individual rights and due process of law. To have them occur is a tragedy. To have a “free” press not report them or pretend these issues do not matter to the populace is the foundation of censorship today.

2. Repetition of Slogans and Sound Bites- The corporate media in the US present themselves as unbiased and accurate. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to print” is a clear example, as is CNN’s authoritative “most trusted name in news” and Fox’s mantra of “fair and balanced.” The slogans are examples of what linguist George Lakoff has referred to as framing. Through constant repetition, the metaphors and symbols that pervade our media turn into unquestioned beliefs. Terms like “liberal media,” “welfare cheaters,” “war on terror,” illegal aliens,” “tax burden,” “support our troops,” are all distorted images serving to conceal a transfer of wealth from people needing a safety net to corporations seeking profitable markets and military expansion.

3. Embedded Journalism- The media are increasingly dependent on governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon, and public relations companies representing both government and private corporations.

By the time of the Gulf War in 1991, retired colonels, generals and admirals had become mainstays in network TV studios during wartime. Language such as “collateral damage” and “smart bombs” flowed effortlessly between journalists and military men, who shared perspectives on the occasionally mentioned but more rarely seen civilians killed by U.S. firepower. This clearly foreshadowed the structure of “embedded” reporting in the second Iraq War, where mainstream corporate journalists literally lived with the troops and had to submit all reports for military review.[xiii] A related militarization of news studies by Diane Farsetta at the Center for Media Democracy documented a related introduction of bias. These investigations showed Pentagon propaganda penetration on mainstream corporate news in the guise of retired Generals as “experts” or pundits who turned out to be nothing more than paid shills for government war policy.[xiv]

The problem then becomes more complex. What happens to a society that begins to believe such lies as truth? The run up to the 2003 war in Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is a case in point. It illustrates the power of propaganda in creating not only public support for an ill-begotten war, but also reduces the possibility of a peace movement, even when fueled by the truth, to stop a war based on falsehoods. The current war in Iraq was the most globally protested war in recorded history. This did nothing to stop it and has done little to end it even under a Democratic president who promised such on the campaign trail. The candidate of “hope and change,” with peace groups in tow, has proven to be dependent upon the same interests in foreign policy that got the US into war in the first place.[xv]

The Progressive Press

Where the left progressive press may have covered some of the Winter Soldier issues, most did not cover the major story of Iraqi deaths. InManufacturing Consent, Wharton School of Business Professor of Political Economy Edward Herman and MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky claim that because media are firmly embedded in the market system, they reflect the class values and concerns of their owners and advertisers. The corporate media maintain a class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market economy. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events.[xvi]

The danger of these filters is that they make subtle and indirect censorship more difficult to combat. Owners and managers share class identity with the powerful and are motivated economically to please advertisers and viewers. Social backgrounds influence their conceptions of what is “newsworthy,” and their views and values seem only “common sense.” Journalists and editors are not immune to the influence of owners and managers. Reporters want to see their stories approved for print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of their freedom to diverge from the “common sense” worldview of owners and managers. The self-discipline that this structure induces in journalists and editors comes to seem only “common sense” to them as well. Self-discipline becomes self-censorship—independence is restricted, the filtering process hidden, denied, or rationalized away.

Project Censored’s analysis on the top ten progressive left publications and websites coverage of key post-9/11 issues found considerable limitations on reporting of specific stories. The evidence supports the Chomsky and Herman understanding that the media barrage may in fact contribute to the news story selection process inside the left liberal media as well.[xvii] Even the left progressive media showed limited coverage of the human costs of the 9/11 wars.

The figure reported in summer, 2007 documenting a million dead did appear in progressive websites and radio including After Downing Street, Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Alternet, Democracy Now! and the Nation, but several took months to get to it. This lack of timely reporting on such a critical story on the humanitarian crisis of the US occupation by the alternative press in America does not bode well for a strong, public, peace movement. The US is in dire need of a media democracy movement to address truth emergency concerns.

In response, the Truth Emergency Movement, held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum, this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and defend their world. We learn from grassroots actions in the US but also from experiences of other countries. This requires us to transcend the stereotypes of other countries hammered by the corporate media. It is not by chance that two Latin American nations, both targets of US efforts to remove their popular leaders by force, have been vilified by mainstream media. Both Cuba and Venezuela, however, have been experiments in local democratic participation in which voices of communities weigh heavily upon social policy.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Venezuela

Democracy from the bottom is evolving as a ten-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) gained over 1½ million voters in the November, 2008 elections. “It was a wonderful victory,” said Professor Carmen Carrero with the communications studies department of the Bolivarian University in Caracas. “We won 81 percent of the city mayor positions and seventeen of twenty-three of the state governors,” Carrero reported.

The Bolivarian University is housed in the former oil ministry building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. The University (Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela) is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country. Before the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, college attendance was primarily for the rich in Venezuela. Today over one million, eight hundred thousand students attend college, three times the rate ten years ago. “Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,” reported Principal (president) Marlene Yadira Cordova in an interview November 10, 2008, “We are a university where we have a vision of life that the oppressed people have a place on this planet.” The enthusiasm for learning and serious-thoughtful questions asked by students was certainly representative of a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The University offers a fully staffed free healthcare clinic, zero tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared by the people.

Bottom up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. “We establish the priority needs of our area,” reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. Aponte works with Patare Community TV and radio station and is one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. Community radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they describe the viewers/listeners as the “users” of media instead of the passive audiences.[xviii]

Democratic socialism has meant healthcare, jobs, food, and security, in neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but poverty existed ten years ago. With unemployment down to a US level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increase in the price of food last year, local Mercals offer government subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, and powdered milk at 30-50 percent off market price. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a $1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal emergencies.

“We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,” proclaimed Ecuador’s minister of Culture, Gallo Mora Witt at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in Caracas, November, 2007. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture, Hector Soto added, “We try not to leave anyone out. . . before the revolution the elites published only 60-80 books a year, we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan authors this year…the book will never stop being the important tool for cultural feelings.” In fact, some twenty-five million books—classics by Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush—were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils nationwide. The theme of the International Book Fair was books as cultural support to the construction of the Bolivarian revolution and building socialism for the 21st century.

In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks, and nine of ten of the major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez and the socialist revolution. But despite the corporate media and $20 million annual support to the anti-Chavez opposition institutions from USAID and National Endowment for Democracy, two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support President Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The democracies of South America are realizing that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are not working and that new forms of resource allocation are necessary for human betterment. It is a learning process for all involved and certainly a democratic effort from the bottom up.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Cuba

“You cannot kill truth by murdering journalists,” said Tubal Páez, president of the Journalist Union of Cuba. In May of 2008, One hundred and fifty Cuban and South American journalists, ambassadors, politicians, and foreign guests gathered at the Jose Marti International Journalist Institute to honor the 50th anniversary of the death of Carlos Bastidas Arguello —the last journalist killed in Cuba. Carlos Bastidas was 23 years old when he was assassinated by Fulgencia Batista’s secret police after having visited Fidel Castro’s forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Edmundo Bastidas, Carlos’ brother, told about how a river of change flowed from the Maestra (teacher) mountains, symbolized by his brother’s efforts to help secure a new future for Cuba.

The celebration in Havana was held in honor of World Press Freedom Day, which is observed every year in May. The UN first declared this day in 1993 to honor journalists who lost their lives reporting the news and to defend media freedom worldwide.

Cuban journalists share a common sense of a continuing counter-revolutionary threat by US financed Cuban-Americans living in Miami. This is not an entirely unwarranted feeling in that many hundreds of terrorist actions against Cuba have occurred with US backing over the past fifty years. In addition to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, these attacks include the blowing up of a Cuban airlines plane in 1976 killing seventy-three people, the starting in 1981 of an epidemic of dengue fever that killed 158 people, and several hotel bombings in the 1990s, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist.

In the context of this external threat, Cuban journalists quietly acknowledge that some self-censorship will undoubtedly occur regarding news stories that could be used by the “enemy” against the Cuban people. Nonetheless, Cuban journalists strongly value freedom of the press and there was no evidence of overt government control. Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly Cuba allows CNN, AP and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, noted that the US refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.[xix]

Cuban journalists complain that the US corporate media is biased and refuses to cover the positive aspects of socialism in Cuba. Unknown to most Americans are the facts that Cuba is the number one country in percentage of organic foods produced in the world, has an impressive health care system with a lower infant mortality rate than the US, trains doctor from all over the world, and has enjoyed a 43% increase in GDP between 2005 and 2008.

Neither Cuba nor Venezuela are utopian societies. Developing countries subject to continuing pressure by the US may be cautious and suspicious of provocateurs that would incite violence or provoke US military intervention. But in these countries, the ability of local media expressing voices of local communities is something from which media reformers can learn.

Grassroots Antidotes to Corporate Media Propaganda

Tens of thousands of Americans engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 Truth, election fraud, impeachment in the Bush era, war propaganda, civil liberties abridgements, torture, the Wall Street meltdown, and corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine Truth Emergency in the country as a whole.

Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying “enough!” and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control by a military and corporate elite. Recent efforts at national media reform through micro-power community radio– similar to the 400 people’s radio stations in Venezuela– and campaign finance changes, that would mandate access for all candidates on national media, have been strongly resisted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). NAB, considered one of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in Washington, works hard to protect over $200 billion dollars of annual advertising and the several hundred million dollars political candidates spend in each election cycle.

The Truth Emergency movement now recognizes that corporate media’s political power and failure to meet its First Amendment obligation to keep the public informed leaves a huge task. Citizens must mobilize resources to redevelop news and information systems from the bottom up. Citizen journalists can expand distribution of news via small independent newspapers, local magazines, independent radio, and cable access TV. Using the internet, the public can interconnect with like-minded grassroots news organizations to share important stories. These changes are already in progress.

Becoming the Media: Media Freedom International and Project Censored

In response to Truth Emergency conference, the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored launched an effort to both become a repository of independent news and information as well as a producer of content in what are called Validated Independent News stories vetted by college and university professors and students around the world. As corporate media continue their entertainment agenda and the PR industry—working for governments and corporations—increasingly dominates news content, there exists a socio-cultural opening to transform how the public receives and actually participates in the validation and creation of their own news.

Corporate media are increasingly irrelevant to working people and to democracy. People need to tell their own news stories from real experiences and perspectives, as an alternative to the hierarchically imposed and “official” top-down narrative. What better project in support of media democracy than for universities and colleges worldwide to support truth telling and validate news stories and independent news sources.

Only 5% of college students under 30 read a daily newspaper. Most get their news from corporate television and increasingly on the internet. One of the biggest problems with independent media sources on the internet is a perception of inconsistent reliability. The public is often suspicious of the truthfulness and accuracy of news postings from non-corporate media sources. Over the past ten years, in hundreds of presentations all over the US, Project Censored staff has frequently been asked, “what are the best sources for news and whom can we trust?”

The goal of this effort is to encourage young people to use independent media as their primary sources of news and information and to learn about trustworthy news sources through the Media Freedom International News Research Affiliate Program. By the end of 2008, there were over thirty affiliate colleges and universities with plans to expand that participation several fold this next year. Through these institutions, validated independent news stories can be researched by students and scholars, then written, produced and disseminated via the web. In addition, on any given day at the Media Freedom Foundation website, one can view enough independent news stories from RSS feeds to fill nearly fifty written pages, more than even the largest US newspapers. An informed electorate cannot remain passive consumers of corporate news. As aforementioned activist David Mathison suggested in his how-to manual, Be the Media, where he argues and instructs not only about how to build community media but how to build community through media.[xx]

Part of building community is in developing awareness about the type of world we want to participate in creating, and developing strategies for achieving change. New forms of media that promote widespread responsibility for both creating and disseminating information do not remove the need for people to protest, to demonstrate, to march, to boycott and to demand entry into corporate board rooms. Rather it assures that voices can be heard and, as shown in Howard Rheingold’s Smartmobbing Democracy,[xxi] the power of new Internet communication technologies can be harnessed to mobilize more effectively. Contrasted with previous more limited technologies, Rheingold points out that now, “[m]obile and deskbound media such as blogs, listserves and social networking sites allow for many-to-many communication.” Technology has helped level the playing field by creating a virtual sphere where people can exchange ideas and instigate activism. Grassroots, bottom-up, peer-to-peer efforts have increased in influence and effectiveness due to the speed and breadth of new communication technologies. We are currently experiencing a potential for collective activism on a scale never before seen.

The continued expansion of independent internet news sources allows for the mass political awareness of key issues and truth emergencies in the world. The involvement of university and college professors and their students in validating news stories will be an important component of reliability verification of these sources. As we learn who we can trust in the independent news world, we will be in a stronger position for the continued development and expansion of democratic social movement/anti-war efforts in the future.

It is up to the people to unite and oppose the common oppressors manifested in a militarist and unresponsive government along with their corporate media courtiers and PR propagandists. Only then, when the public forms and controls its own information resources, will it be armed with the power that knowledge gives to move beyond the media induced mindsets that limit change to modest reform. Grassroots media providing voice to those who would challenge elite domination are our best hope to create a truly vibrant democratic society that promises as well as delivers liberty, peace, and economic justice to all.

Media Freedom website include:

Daily News at: http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news- sources

Validated News & Research at: http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/

Daily Censored Blog at: http://dailycensored.com/

Project Censored: http://www.projectcensored.org/

[i] US General Tommy Franks, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2002, onlinehttp://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/ 020323-attack01.htm.

[ii] Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories, Press, 2008), 19-25. This story is the number one censored story of the year at Project Censored for this year, archived online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occ upation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.ht m.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Various theories exist on the problem of the subject, from historian Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We to historian and cultural critic Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, but few examine its affects on the peace community. For more on the issue of American historical amnesia, see Gore Vidal on Democracy Now! at http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/21/gore_vidal_o n_the_united_states , also, In These Times online at http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3099/the_unite d_states_of_amnesia/ and for a broader academic look at the issue of how Americans have become arguably the least informed, most entertained people in the modern world, see the now classic work from the late New York University media scholar Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (New York: Viking Adult, 1985). This article hopes to shine more light on the impact of all of the aforementioned on the peace movement in general and what can be done about it. For another view of this written earlier, at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, see Felix Kolb and Alicia Swords, “Do Peace Movements Matter?” Commondreams.org, May 12, 2003, online at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0512-08.htm.

[v] Diane Farsetta, Center for Media Democracy, studies on Pentagon propaganda online at http://www.prwatch.org/pentagonpundits and http://www.prwatch.org/node/8180.

[vi] C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, reissue). Also, continuing with this theme in terms of democratic communications theory/policy and the ideas of an open society, see the work of Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society, published in1962, and The Theory of Communicative Action, from 1981, as well as Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, first published in 1945.

[vii] Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex

Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), on the FAIR website at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627.

[viii] Cenk Uygur, “Conservative Media vs Progressive Media” Posted on The Daily Kos blog, July 1, 2009. )

[ix] Linda Milazzo, “Corporate Media Turned Out for Jena, but Not for Anti-War. Here’s Why.” Atlantic Free Press, September 23, 2007, online at http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/2473-corpo rate-media-turned-out-for-jena-but-not-for-anti-wa r-heres-why.html.

[x] For more on the Winter Soldiers, see Censored 2009, chapter 1, story 9, pp. 58-62 and online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/9-iraq-and-afghanistan-vets-testify/ and chapter 12, pp.297-319. See the KPFA radio and Corp Watch website for the coverage athttp://www.warcomeshome.org/wintersoldier2008.

[xi] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 35-44. Online http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/.

[xii] See Censored 2008, chapter 1, story 6, 55-59. Also online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/article s/6-operation-falcon-raids/.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex:

Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), on the FAIR website at http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627.

[xv] For several excellent studies of US Iraq War propaganda, see PR Watch’s John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, (New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2003), and their follow up Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, (New York: Penguin, 2006), and the exhaustive work by Anthony R. DiMaggio, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror,” (UK: Lexington Books, 2008). Additionally, forthcoming in fall 2009, just reviewed by the authors, is Robert P. Abele, The Anatomy of a Deception: A Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, (Baltimore: University Press of America, 2009).

For reports on the continuation of war policy under President Barack Obama, see Center for Media Democracy’s John Stauber, “How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement” online http://www.prwatch.org/node/8297, and Peter Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Dominance” online http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/http -wwwprojectcensoredorg-articles-story-barack-obama -administration-c/.

[xvi] Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988, 2002). For an introduction of the Propaganda Model, see chapter 1, or see a retrospective by Edward Herman online http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm.

[xvii] Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, see chapter 7, “Left Progressive Media Inside the Propaganda Model,” 233-251. Online at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/left -progressive-media-inside-the-propaganda-model/.

[xviii] Co-author Peter Phillips interviewed Carmon Aponte while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station in a trip to Venezuela for a book fair in 2008. The station was one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela.

[xix] Co-author Peter Phillips attended the major journalism conference in Cuba in 2008. About his experiences there, Phillips remarked, “During my five days in Havana, I met with dozens of journalists, communication studies faculty and students, union representatives and politicians. The underlying theme of my visit was to determine the state of media freedom in Cuba and to build a better understanding between media democracy activists in the US and those in Cuba.”

Phillips continued, “I toured the two main radio stations in Havana, Radio Rebelde and Radio Havana. Both have Internet access to multiple global news sources including CNN, Reuters, Associated Press and BBC with several newscasters pulling stories for public broadcast. Over 90 municipalities in Cuba have their own locally run radio stations, and journalists report local news from every province.”

“During the course of several hours in each station I (Phillips) was interviewed on the air about media consolidation and censorship in the US and was able to ask journalists about censorship in Cuba as well. Of the dozens I interviewed all said that they have complete freedom to write or broadcast any stories they choose. This was a far cry from the Stalinist media system so often depicted by US interests.”

[xx] For more details see the Project Censored website at http://projectcensored.org/, for independent media feeds see Media Freedom Foundation at http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news- sources, and for more on the Project Censored International Affiliates Program, see http://projectcensored.org/project-censored-intern ational-affilates-program and http://mediafreedominternational.org. For more on how to become the media, see David Mathison’s work online http://bethemedia.com. For more on Smart Mobs, see Howard Rheingold’s work onlinehttp://www.smartmobs.com/book/.

[xxi] Howard Rheingold, “Smartmobbing Democracy,” in Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age,” ed. Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy. Retrieved from The Personal Democracy Press Website:http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/nod e/5484.

*The co-authors would like to express sincere appreciation for editing assistance provided by Rebecca Norlander and Ellen Gaddy.

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Re: Some Possible Solutions
posted on 12/28/2009 10:27 PM by James_Jaeger
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Wow! I suspected the death toll was high, but I was figuring it was in the hundreds of thousands, maybe 250,000 at most.

Well this is what happens when WE THE PEOPLE lose control of our government: it uses fiat money and tax money to murder and mame.

James

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