We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, October 2, 2015

How Britain’s Propaganda Machine Controls What You Think

Click here to access article by Graham Vanbergen from TruePublica (Britain).

The author describes the concentration of the media by the powerful rich who furnish information that serves the rich but strongly shapes how ordinary people think. 
In terms of Britain’s media, the reality is that there are 5 billionaires who run our media, and they have huge power in our democracy forcing our political parties to prioritize their wishes over the wishes of the British public. These 5 people not only own 80% of the newspapers we read every day, they also own TV stations, press agencies, book companies, cinemas, so everything we think or speak about in Britain is nearly controlled entirely by these 5 men.
The essential features of the concentration of media ownership/control in Britain are the same here in the US, but the details are a little different. The only criticism I have is that he, like many others, keeps maintaining the fiction that we have or had "democracy" under capitalist rule. It was only a fake version which is often referred to in left-wing literature as "bourgeois democracy". His view is another illustration of a middle class perspective that sees, along with the growing extreme inequality, a threat to middle class privileges and opportunities.