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

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Why U.S. and Saudi Arabia back Rohingya in Myanmar

Click here to access article by Sara Flounders from Workers World

Flounders with this article accomplishes an excellent example of investigative reporting.

She argues that the US and Saudi agents are supporting terrorist groups that have infiltrated the Rohingya. (Later she lists the sources that support her argument. The latter reports, of course, find very little coverage in corporate media.) While US officials have been hypocritically "beating the drums" (def.) on behalf of the Rohingya and corporate media is doing likewise, the result is...
Demonstrations, protests and online petitions have appeared worldwide to defend the struggle of the Rohingya people who have been driven from Myanmar into exile.
The obvious conclusion, which she reaches, is that these carefully engineered events and corporate media reports are crafted by the US-led Empire's directors in order to contain China's influence in the region.

I would like to suggest a larger hypothesis that shapes nearly all widespread coverage by media corporations: Media corporations overwhelmingly exist to promote the profit and power interests of their owners who are major capitalists. Therefore it follows that if you are going to following Western corporate media reports, you will be exposed to what they want you to believe about world events that affect their interests. In other words, you will be treated as a dupe.

The US-led Empire and its ruling capitalist classes are in a desperate struggle right now to wrest control away from other nations so that they can cover their increasing debts (around the massive figure of $20 trillion dollars for the US alone) with their increasing control over the world's labor and consumer markets and access to cheap resources by their corporations. If they fail at world domination, they fail their investors who constitute the ruling class of the Empire and will likely end their opportunities to cover government debts that are owed to themselves. The obvious problem is that they are hell-bent on stirring up conflicts like the one in Myanmar (Burma) and never-ending wars all over the world with devastating results for people like you and me.

Unless you are one of these investors, you have almost no reason to listen, read, or follow the news reports issued by their media corporations. It is now more urgent than ever to seek out reliable alternative media for this information; and better yet, to help create an independent news service to serve the interests of working people like ourselves.