The Darfur Hoax

You miss the point. By examining our foreign and economic policies, we can avoid Darfurs. But as long as we let ourselves to be pulled along by the corporate media and bipartisan unicorporate views, things like this will keep happening. No, its not that media "got it wrong", but that its a systematic problem. The media presentation of foreign policy and international matters is a hoax. Suddenly the media becomes empassioned about Kurd victims gassed by weapons given by us to Saddam? Uh huh. Just another Darfur hoax. Read between the lines. Investigate beyond the corporate media box. And things start making sense.

Citizen Press Revolution

Exactly. How would it help big business? Now, when a government wants to bridge the gap of poverty and take back control of their natural resources for their citizens, we have a problem with that. Most of the time, it is almost always a corporate interest weighed in. Either a threat to corporate power, or, in other case, environments that corporations want to exploit, but the present government resists.

And please, stop being a joke and calling everything Marxist.

McCarthyism is so passe.

I'm not a Marxist.

You are a hypocrite.

Do you see what you just did? You intellectually committed dishonesty by labeling anything that questions Corporate Power as Marxist when you know full well that intellectually that isn't so.

You can question Corporate Power and be on any point of a political spectrum.

Nice try, hypocrite.

You are more stuck in a box of thinking and likely too proud and too afraid to be able to acknowledge it.

Hey, how much money do you have? Not hundreds of thousands or millions or access to those who will give you that and more?

Oh, sorry, the chances of you holding political offense.. err... office on a higher level in next to almost none.

Hey, you want politicians to become responsive to your needs and address your grievances and concerns, how much money do you have? Because that is directly connected to how likely you are going to be heard and considered.

The mass majority of the American population who do not have thousands to slap around Washington D.C.'s political buttocks are never going to get their issues to become center stage or even on the stage. A disproportionate amount of legislation passed and put unto the floor is initiated by corporate interests and wealthy special interests. Not in the public interest or by public consent or public voice.

American politics domestically and internationally revolves more on money than on the consent of the governed -- what the the Constitution says governance is supposed to be about. But political reality shows that its not the consent of the governed that matters but those that financially empower those who become the governors of power whose consent matters.

Economics and politics in the American system are not two different entities. We live in a political system that received nearly 4 billion from big business and the 1% wealthy. You think this money is given out of charity? No, politics is not charity. Something is expected back in return.

We don't live a democracy or a democratic republic.

We live in a government that rules much more with the consent of corporations and concerns for their interest than the public. We live in a government of a few private interests instead of a government of the public.

The political system is privatized, not a system open to the public, but closed to big money and big interests.

This isn't democracy or even democratic.

This a mockery of what we are raised and taught that the American government and political system is about.

Any more intellectually dishonest scare and libelous name-calling you have in your pockets?

I don't care.

I care about one thing:

Democracy.

This has to do with democracy.

We don't have it.

And we want it.

Citizen Press Revolution

It's not that the media coverage on Darfur is bad in itself, its how its being used that is bad. Its a PR not just for Hollywood but for the ever growing cynical American population.

It is helpful to raise awareness, but how things such as this is done by the media makes its more of a distraction than raising understanding, in my opinion.

And that is why, for instance, it is important for independent voices to show the nakedness of our foreign and international policy when it comes to things such as Darfur. And also to investigate the intricateness of why Darfur is happening and dig beyond the surface reasons.

In the same way that the media has still avoided responsibility in examining the reasons which Osama bin Laden himself gave regarding our foreign policy that gave motive for his attacks. Instead, the media just regurgitates that "they hate us for our freedoms and American way of life".

Baloney.

How the media uses Darfar though is like using Tums instead of actually addressing the causes of this disaster of (lack of) humanity. Instead of Darfur becoming a catalyst to re-examine ourselves and our actions, the media makes it a smokescreen to prevent enlightenment and deep education of foreign policy and international affairs and dynamics.

Citizen Press Revolution

Throwing Marxist or Communist (for that matter) around for anything that criticizes Corporate Power is intellectually dishonest. I don't care if you were calling me it or the idea that overgrown Corporate Power is bad -- it is still intellectually dishonest.

You can be on any point of any part of the political spectrum and criticize Corporate Power.

It's that simple.

We don't have a democracy. It's not opinion. It's a fact. In a democracy, the government is by the consent of the people. And yet, a majority or great portion of legislation and actions are done completely contrary to what the people consent to. The vast majority of political power is reserved with those with big money or who have big connections and take corporate and wealthy special interest money (the "exceptions" you mentioned aren't exceptions to that).

There is nothing in democracy that states that the wealthy must rule over the few. Indeed, a democracy is suppose to be fair and equalized.

What Aristotle would refer as an oligarchy -- or Mussolini described fascism as the perfect union of the state and corporations mixed with exuberant nationalistic pride over others. Or what contemporaries sometimes refer to as corporatism. Take your pick. The truth is that the political system bends and serves mostly corporate and wealthy interests and the media system replicates the interests of the few. Those without money to throw around are invisible.

This is not democracy.

The political system is rigged. The major parties equally accept enormous amounts from the wealthy few powers. Both major parties are disconnected from the people.

The media is tightly controlled by a literal handful of corporations who own almost all forms of media in the U.S. They are not apolitical entities. They have interests in legislation. They are interlocked with other big corporations such as Halliburton, Chevron, or Lockheed Martin. Their integrity to address the news and investigate is further compromised by the dependence of not crossing the interests of their big advertisers. And these advertisers with revenue sometimes outmatching those of sovereign nations have national, local, domestic, and international interests.

However, the media system is the only system where the dynamics are in flux -- media technology and mass communication, while not equal by any means to corporate interests, are becoming more accessible and easier produced by independent voices.

Challenging corporate media's integrity and validity as a watchdog for the public interest while simultaneously developing independent and citizen media -- on a large, collective scale -- is already making the corporate press, for example, have to respond to voices and criticisms that they never before had to respond to. Making media reform and media policy a central issue in public and political events is also a beginning.

Democracy fails and is prevented when the public is misinformed and ignorant. If you inform the public and empower the public to inform themselves, that is a step towards democracy.

Citizen Press Revolution

Excuse me, someone other than me who commented here called it a fashion trend. Not me. That is how someone else interpreted it. Not me.

How it is portrayed and used by the corporate media is more superficial than blood and guts. Darfur could be a prime opportunity by corporate media to compare and criticize our traditional foreign and economic policy decisions -- decisions which China is also doing with the exact same motives as we have done in similar situations.

More proof: everybody knows that Darfur is a disaster, but just how many people, outside of activist circles, understands why Darfur is happening and the many elements involved in it? How often do you see a in-depth coverage besides generalizations in the corporate media? And for the record, while the corporate media marks 2003 as the beginning of the insanity, it had been going on significantly before that, for example.

And you have completely missed the boat, if not also read my entire blog entry, the point is how Darfur is used by the corporate media. That's the hoax. It isn't to inform us, it is simply to be a Tums to pop into our stomachs and make a cynical American public feel good about themselves.

We aren't re-examining our human right violations abroad or domestically, re-examining our foreign and economic policy, and we aren't asking for example the cruel, self-exposing question:

"How come we don't care about Africa?"

Except when self-serving economic trades are concerned.

And Sudan's "support" by China is criticized by us, but the corporate media isn't going to say: "well, we've done similar support like China for human right devastations. We've supported dictators, bloodbaths, hell, we have a School of Americas that train future dictators/puppets of the U.S. in terrorism tactics. We supported them and a few of us made tons of money because of it." We supported Saddam Hussein and counted him as an ally until after he invaded Kuwait. We gave him WMDs which he promptly used against the Kurds.

And we didn't condemn him or punish him when he did it -- not until it became useful as an argument to go to war more than a decade later.

No, we have a phony one-sided, self-serving representation of world events. The corporate media relay Darfur in a way that vindicates the U.S. while denying our involvement and "non-involvement" or similar policies such as China is doing in supporting the Sudanese government. It makes us feel good instead of informed. It's a hoax.

Citizen Press Revolution

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

SO, instead of calling me a Marxist, and now labeling me as a Socialist, you are dropping the innuendo that I am a conspiracy believer and fabricate some example out of thin air that implies factless conspiracy? Huh?

Your intellectual dishonestly reaches new lows.

The truth is common sense:

The interests of someone who owns a $50 billion dollar corporation that spans the globe and interlinks with the politics and economies of many other nations is going to be much different than someone who makes middle or low income (a.k.a. the vast majority of the public). And one can expect that the interests and agenda of a small group of people who control 80% of the world's wealth is going to very different than the rest of the population. And that what huge corporations consider to be news fit to print and news not fit to print is also going to be vastly different than the news that the public has a right to know that is fit to print, but isn't or is buried deeply.

It's a systematic bias and slanting that is reinforced in lazy journalism supported by the corporation consolidation of the media itself: every single time a corporate media mogul gobbles up another media, lay offs are pretty common. The number of journalists decreases and the same sources are used again and again. Meanwhile, foreign coverage is severely cut to meet insane profit goals set by the corporation. The reliance on regurgitating the comments of authorities in government and in corporations allows the context, spin, and content to be seeded into the media. And it generally goes unchallenged and any challenges are always from another power figure in government or with enormous wealth.

Investigative journalism and muckracking journalism is almost extinct in corporate media if not abandoned altogether -- when you can go to a press conference and write up it as "news", its cheaper, its less work, and litigation risk is close to none. When you can turn celebrity, entertainment, and sensational events like school shooting into "news", its cheap, its low-risk, and its quick and easy to do.

If you remember when the US first invaded Iraq, the U.S. media was in love with war, new technologies to murder, shock and awes, allowed themselves be embedded and their perspectives controlled. The near non-stop coverage 24-7 with a barrage of "breaking news" basically glued a population to a TV screen -- and you can be sure that advertisers were paying prime and top money to advertise during the invasion. Neither was their a significant interest in the corporate media before the Iraq invasion to challenge the need for war: Powell's weak "proof", the obvious forgeries of the Niger documents, a serious simple complete lack of evidence and scrutiny on the non-existence ties between Saddam and 9/11 and Iraq and Al-qaeda.

Likewise, the Downing Street memo, the NSA scandal stories... there's a pattern here. Often these scandals could have been exposed, discussed, and investigation pushed further, but the stories themselves were literally sat on (NSA scandal) until after they could not do serious damage or raise a serious challenge.

It is the culture, priorities, and systematic bias of corporate media that has led to numerous failures to serve the people's right to know. And they are certainly not interested in the people's right to be heard either.

The corporate media is systematically slanted towards supporting or allowing the debate and awareness on issues to be controlled by government and corporate interests. And the matter of the fact is that many corporations in the US, once it looked like Bush was heading into possible war, actually began strategizing how they could make the most money of this "opportunity". If it leads to growth and money, that is the way the corporate media almost always goes into, regardless of the violations of human rights, allowing the public to debate the issues on equal grounds, or democracy itself.

Likewise, if you are linked with Halliburton financially, you have compromised your ability to objectively cover Halliburton. Since Halliburton is interlinked with politicians, such as Dick Cheney, our Vice President, there is a serious problem. Halliburton is awarded a no-bid contract with loose rules on how it bills the government, if you are interlocked with Halliburton, do you really think you can cover Halliburton honestly? If you want to keep your job, no.

35% of reporters admit that they themselves self-censor stories that they know conflict or could hurt the financial interests which support their media's owners, advertisers, and their financial interests. And this is just self-censorship.

This isn't a few bad apples -- all these things I have referred is evidence that the system itself, not the fruit but the tree itself, is what is making not just a few bad apples, but lots and lots of bad apples.

Oh, you know that quote that I did at the top, scroll back to it, guess who said that? A Socialist? A Marxist? A Communist? Is that what you would call President Abraham Lincoln?

He wrote that in Nov. 21, 1864 in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins. Look it up in the Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY) if you don't believe me.

Are you then supportive of a Republic that is pseudo-elected in *democratic* elections of individuals who are, support, and will continue to aid big money power overtaking the liberties, freedoms, justice, and the will and consent and lack of consent of the people?

You forget that the Constution says that governence is by the consent of the people.

And we certainly don't have that.

Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Democracy also means: political or social equality; democratic spirit.

Republic: a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.

We don't even have a republic when a small minority of the population is the one who directly choose the representatives by big money (making them legit instead of a "long shot") that the body of citizens are then "entitled" to vote for, now do we?

American politics is not charity nor is it democratic in spirit. When the corporations collectively donate nearly 4 billions dollars, they expect something back and, if they never got anything back from it, you can be sure that they would stop doing it. Likewise, the candidates they picked are propelled by corporate media who themselves are interlocked with other corporations. Before even a single debate is heard, the corporate media had chosen who the next candidates were, designed polls that excluded anyone but their picks, and focused all the media attention (and thus votes) to the handful: Hillary, Obama, Romney, Guiliani (and McCain and Edwards to a much lesser extent). But there are many candidates, even in the Republican and Democrat parties, whose platforms actually challenged the status quo, because they do so, the collective interests of the status quo marginalizes them from the debate and from receiving equal and fair media coverage. Ergo, whoever becomes president won't be a major threat to their own interests.

We are raised that the American Dream is democracy, that America wants to spread democracy, that America is a beacon of democracy.

But political and social equality is non-existent in America.

The few wealthy and powerful are the real decision makers and it is their vote by campaign and lobby money that controls our elections and legislation.

This is the rule of the few rich over the interests and voices of the many.

Is this what is what you call good? And that questioning it makes one a Marxist?

Social and political inequality (the antithesis of democracy)? Rigged "democratic" elections? Even further alienation of the body of the citizens to their supposed representatives? This is what makes America the greatest nation on earth? This is what people are willing to die for?

They are willing to die for the American Myth: that we are a democratic society, that we are a democracy, that our vote matters and that we decide who are our representatives will be, that our freedom of speech is meaningful, that our press is serving the public's interest, that we are a socially just society.

But it's all a lie.

And those who realize it want to change the myth to become reality.

And would you call this unpatriotic? Desiring an authentically democratic society with authentically elected representatives who authentically serve the interests of the their constitutients instead of who gave the money, and wanting a press that is authentically free and independent and desires to serve and fulfill the public's right to know the truth, regardless of whose financial interests might be hurt?

Well, would you? Or are you going to label me as something else again?

Citizen Press Revolution

I don't believe Marxism or Socialism is inherently evil, but I am not a Marxist or a Socialist.

Conspiracy is a whole different implication. I don't know where you walloped that out.

What I am speaking about is systematic, perhaps even partly or completely unintentional, and I seriously doubt that a group of people get together and decide in unison about this or that.

The problem, rather, is the system's structuring itself that has lead to this. The nature of the machine results in this.

Also, I reply to your arguments with intelligent rebuttal. And you make a swipe with "I understand how you think. You're sure that your opinion is the only right one. Have fun getting your democracy back."?

So, what is it exactly that you disagree with and why? Simply because I do not bow down and agree with you on everything is not the reason why you should walk away.

Citizen Press Revolution

Did I ever say that this is not a serious issue? No. Never. But as serious as it certainly is, it is a more serious issue to examine the media's omission and spin, because, like the saying goes, if you don't learn from the past (and the present), you are doomed to repeat it again. And as it stands, we aren't learning a damn thing from the media that can prevent this. And preventing genocide is better than stopping one.

PS: My follow up entry on Darfur, especially regarding the hoax and myopic timebomb that is the Save Darfur Coalition: http://progressiveu.org/141855-the-save-darfur-coalition-are-they-a-hoax...

Citizen Press Revolution

What exactly other things do you have to worry about??

Citizen Press Revolution