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

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Why North Korea Needs Nukes - And How To End That

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

I am posting this article for three reasons: 1) as a prime example of vital information which media agents of our capitalist masters refuse to disclose; 2) it illustrates what could be reported much more widely if we had a people's media organization that served the needs of ordinary people for accurate information; and 3) it is an example of information that would undermine the ruling capitalist class's vital control of information that sustains this class in power, is terrorizing much of the world causing mayhem and considerable suffering, and is threatening a nuclear holocaust and environmental degradation both of which threaten the continuance of the human species. 

Another such example of reporting from an independent source that would never be published by a media corporation in the US Empire is a piece posted by the GEOPOLMonitor entitled "ISIS launches chemical attacks in Mosul, say Iraqi military". It would serve to undermine the Empire's fictional justification for their recent attack on a Syrian airbase.

The control of information is an indispensable weapon to sustain the rule of this tiny, self-serving class that has managed to own (and ownership's correlate, control) everything of importance to the functioning of our nation and most of the world. Quoting and referring to an 1989 article in the Marine Corps Gazette, Douglas Valentine writes in his recent book, The CIA as Organized Crime (p. 354), the following insightful commentary:
The new type of warfare will be widely dispersed and largely undefined. The distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. There will be no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between civilian and military will disappear. ...." [from the 1989 Marine Gazette]
The kicker in the article was when they said that, "This new type of warfare will depend on psychological operations manifested in the form of media information intervention."
All of this became standard operating procedure, at home and abroad, in terms of the military and CIA intervening in media information.
The article said, "One must be adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic and world opinion. On this new psychological battlefield, television news may become a more powerful operational weapon [than] armored divisions."
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that media corporations today are performing this role.
 
I am arguing the creation of an internationally based, people's media organization not as something that would be nice to have, but something that is vital to the survival of humans. And it must incorporate in its organizational structure the seeds of a new method of control of the organization from the grassroots up. Therefore the typical organization chart would be turned upside-down to indicate grassroots control of the organization. The development of such an organization could serve three functions: 1) as a source of much more accurate information; 2) as a catalyst for a revolutionary movement to topple the control of humanity by, and for the benefit of, capitalists; and as a model for a people-controlled organization of societies worldwide to prevent any other ruling class from being established.