Tonight’s the night.
Barack Obama’s again the target of those who either don’t think he’s right-wing enough, or don’t think he’s left-wing enough – all the while the Republicans block and scupper his attempts at progressive policies, and the radicals remain obstinately ignorant to context and claim he has complete power to act in a radical way even with a CIA, military industrial complex, corporate lobbying, and lame Democrats surrounding him constantly.
This last group are, of course, the ones who claim to be “principled”; the self-righteous who tell other Americans not to vote for Obama and instead vote for independents, even if it costs him the election and psycho Mitt Romney and his Republicans seize power and make Obama Capitalism look like a socialist state by comparison. These are the ones prepared to quite comfortably and uncompromisingly see women, ethnic minorities, and the poor suffer even more – for their precious little “principles.” They’re the ones threatening to happily hand the election to money Romney.
Sorry, folks, but I’m rooting for Obama. It’s a choice between him and Romney, straight and simple, and with that choice, who with a clear conscience can wish worse on other people? I’ll be watching the results tonight with my partner, Jane Watkinson, and tweeting away as we do.
For those who haven’t yet bought my collection of blog posts, Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, or read the posts the first time around on my old website, fear not! Not only am I releasing a brand-new collection of entries, and more, in the coming weeks, but I’m offering a few postings here for today’s election in the United States. Enjoy…
“Does it Matter Who’s President?” (from MediaActivist.com; April 22nd, 2008)
So Pennsylvania today has a key deciding factor in the Democratic Party’s choice of a leader in the hopes of breaking the eight-year Republican hold on the White House.
There are two reasons this race is so important.
Firstly, in spite of millions of Democratic votes that will go uncounted in 2008 (just as they had in 2000, and on a larger scale in 2004), the Republicans, as I’ve said before, are doomed; they never had any realistic candidates, and now the fully face-lifted John McCain is not only seeing through his nostrils these days, he’s also already been discredited mere hours after becoming his party’s leader.
Secondly, whether we like to admit it or not, the fact is that the decisions made in the United States will affect the whole world in some way. They refer to themselves as the “world’s policeman,” but it’s much more than that. Britain’s economy has been affected by America’s even more than next-door neighbors, Canada. How messed up is that? But it’s something we have to accept. They’re the big shots.
Once again, the whole world is watching, but this time the Republican elephant is old and tired and ready to be put out of its misery, while the Democratic donkey never had a chance like this before, because when people joke about one-sided elections by saying “a donkey could run, and still win,” this time it’s true!Except neither candidate is a donkey; this is the best crop of candidates in decades. Though I realize that’s not saying much.
Morrissey once sang that in America, “the President is never black, female, or gay,” but two out of three ain’t bad, because with the election now the Democrats’ for the taking, they have guaranteed us that the brand-new President of the United States will, in fact, be either black or female (let’s hope Pee-Wee Herman runs next time!)
Barack Obama hasn’t quite taken my previous suggestions that he cut interviews like wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but he has, nonetheless, been impressive and charismatic. Sure, there are links to Antoin Rezko and the mob in Chicago. Sure, contrary to popular belief, his campaign has had an abundance of support from the corporations he’ll thus become indebted to. And sure, he’s still a capitalist. But just like the man himself says, this is about a different kind of politics, a kind of diplomatic politics, one that has no place for trigger-happy Texans or emphasis on religious faith.
Unfortunately, his opponent seems to have a short memory from her days inspiring the book and film Primary Colors, when the Clintons were agonizingly choosing to take the moral high ground against a mud-slinging Republican Party. She’s been pretty low throughout the campaign, using tactics you’d expect more from John McCain, who’s now lying low himself. It’s all about the Democrats, baby. Even when some of them are acting like Republicans.
Hillary Clinton gave up her fight to provide Americans with good health care, which she’s now hoping to make up for. But she also supported the attack on Iraq, and whilst, yes, it’s an international issue, and it sure is sexy, it’s still a pretty important factor, one that has an enormous effect on the world, and also gives us an idea of what kind of people certain politicians are.
But hoping for a Barack Obama win isn’t just about Iraq. Do you realize that the alternative option will plunge America into a monarchy? The Presidential list of over twenty years would be: Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. That’s right: George HW Bush Sr (1988-1992), Bill Clinton (1992-2000), George W Bush Jr (2000-2008), and Hillary Clinton (2008-2012). Is that what America really wants? Because in that case, let’s just repeal its independence and put it under the rule of the Queen.
Barack Hussein Obama is a symbol that all is not lost in the United States of America. Choosing him would be proving that it doesn’t matter if you have dark skin or even have a name that sounds similar to America’s greatest two manufactured enemies from the last twenty years, and it’d also suggest that they’re not just going to shoot and ask questions later. What America needs now is a statesman, who will act rational – whether you agree with him or disagree with him. “Barack says he’s going to lay the smack down on some roody-poo candy-asses…but only after debating and deliberating first, because war sucks, jabronies.” Wouldn’t that be nice to hear for a change? The cycle can be broken.
The last time I was in the United States, in 2001, I took my feet from the ground of Pennsylvania onto a plane across the Atlantic, and never looked back, as the Twin Towers collapsed behind me and with them any sense of rationality, reason, or restraint. That was the last place I set foot. If they make the right choice today, it may well be the first place in the United States I want to set foot next.
“Four Million Americans Over The Top” (from MediaActivist.com; November 2nd, 2008)
“Here we go again,” you’re probably saying. “Another American election; the more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s no surprise so many people are cynical. But people are also hopeful- it’s just that they’ve had their hopes dashed so many times they don’t like to build them up too much anymore.
Well, this election really does matter, more than any other in American history. Here, I’ll explain why. But first, we have to go back to the beginning, to the demise of the left, and to a place at the other side of the Atlantic…
In 1990s Britain, Bill Clinton was seen as an inspiration by Tony Blair, and there’s a reason for that: the party of the progressive movement couldn’t get elected in the system ruled by money, until the leader used his charm and smarm to trick the left into supporting him while selling-out his party to the same business interests his opponents courted – the Rupert Murdochs of the world that influenced the information people received, as well as the economy. The cynical sell-out strategy worked in the United States, and it worked in the United Kingdom, too.
Bill Clinton said he smoked marijuana but “didn’t inhale,” still getting into power with the backing of the corporations, the media and its moguls, pushing some progressive policies but also rewarding private interests by throwing ten million people off welfare, bombing Sudanese aspirin factories, and supporting sanctions that led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, his Democratic colleague Madeleine Albright explaining that “we think the price is worth it.” The seeds had been sown in the Middle East; forget the CIA-funded Ba’ath Party led by Saddam Hussein – it was the CIA training given to the Taliban’s Osama bin Laden that was really being used now to plot against America through Al Qaeda. We knew who really had the Weapons of Mass Destruction – those we sold them to!
Al Gore was set to take Clinton’s place, which the Democrats welcomed, since, despite economic growth, he experienced growth of another kind during his sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinski – over $6,000,000 of taxpayers’ money being spent on investigating the affair. However, we all know the next part of the story: Florida’s Secretary of State in charge of elections, Katherine Harris, paid $10,000,000 to Database Technologies to remove specific kinds of people from voter rolls, who just happened to be Democrat voters, while she just happened to be co-chairperson for the Republican campaign as well! Technically, the Republicans had fewer votes and lost the election, but the scam worked, and with a media portraying Gore as a sore loser, he stopped protesting to save his party’s public image, and the rest is history. Cocaine-user George W Bush Jr was the first man to be sworn-in amongst riots, not allowed to walk the last block to the white house, in a break from tradition. Heck, the whole thing was a break from tradition – back when I was a lad, it used to be that the candidate that got the most votes became President. Not anymore! I feel so old-fashioned now, believing in that “democracy” stuff.
Then came September 11th, 2001 – the day the Middle East struck back at Western aggression with mostly Saudi Arabians hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in suicide attacks. $3,000,000 was spent investigating the 9/11 atrocities, half the amount spent on the Lewinski affair, leaving all kinds of discrepancies unexplained, and suggesting that the deaths of three thousand people was less important than a stain on a dress. The important thing was that Bush’s lack of popularity was turned around when he suddenly became a “war president,” saying “I go to work with war on my mind,” meaning, conveniently, that he didn’t have time to pay much mind to social programs – slashing them because his big government needed the funds to build up arms to attack terrorists…wherever they may be.
Bush used the Al Qaeda terrorist attack on 9/11 and the nation’s grief and fear to justify passing the Patriot Act – legislation that eroded civil liberties and meant he could control and keep tabs on his own population to check for dissidents. He then ignored international law and, based on inconsistent intelligence, sent poor kids into harm’s way in, of all places, Iraq – having them shoot anything that moved, blowing everything to smithereens, and seizing the oil fields, before “liberating” anyone. The “War President” gave Vice-President Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, a big fat uncontested contract to “rebuild” Iraq – in the midst of 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and rising insurgency movements opposed to their country being occupied. But the paranoia, combined with millions more votes lost (not just in Florida, but also Ohio and New Mexico), put Bush Jr back into the White House for a second term, shocking the world, with most peoples citing not terrorists but the United States government itself as the greatest threat to peace on earth. The international community’s hatred towards America only grew.
Bush continued with making loose and outlandish connections between Al Qaeda and oil-rich Iraq, in spite of the fact that “Islamic” extremist Osama bin Laden and secular dictator Saddam Hussein hated each other’s guts. Presumably the fact that both Al Qaeda and Iraq had the letter Q in their names was enough for Bush’s so-called intelligence. The Bush-Blair “Downing Street Minutes” showed that the U.S. and U.K. had almost everything they needed to conquer Iraq: aircraft, tanks, bombs, guns – the only thing missing was an actual legitimate reason. So they did what most war criminals would do, and made up a story about Weapons of Mass Destruction being left lying around there for terrorists to pick up and play with, like kids left with matches.
After entering office with a substantial treasury surplus left by Clinton, War President Bush put the country trillions of dollars into debt, exacerbating extremism and terrorism worldwide – with everyone and their cleric arming themselves to the teeth! Meanwhile, the American people were more over-worked and underpaid than they’d ever been, getting poorer and lacking in welfare and health care, kept afloat by a short-term, unsustainable credit card system. America had caught a cold, and the world was hoping it wouldn’t sneeze.
Eventually, though, the American people were starting to spot the incredible illusion of coincidence – the illegal invasion of Iraq, the lack of WMDs there, the oil money, troops dying in huge numbers, people in poverty…and New Orleans, a city full of African-Americans, left to rot with the government ignoring the threat of Hurricane Katrina and the armed forces too busy in the Middle East to fully attend to the clean-up – another city destroyed, another big contract for corporations to “rebuild” and essentially cleanse the place of “undesirables” (what Naomi Klein called Disaster Capitalism). While the media provided us with some disturbingly racist portrayals of “black looters” in New Orleans, the real looting of the devastated Iraq was carried out not by the Iraqi people themselves, but Western corporations. However, even they were realizing that it wasn’t going to be easy to set-up shop in Iraq. The popularity of the War President waned when what he’d called a “mission accomplished” became, in essence, another Vietnam, a war of attrition with young troops fighting for years, put to battle against angry Iraqis wanting their country back.
While New Orleans drowned, Bush’s approval ratings sank to record levels, eventually hitting 23%, surpassing even those of Richard Nixon at the time of his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal (26%), and making him the second most unpopular president in American history, just ahead of Harry Truman’s 1952 rating (22%). The American people had finally had enough, along with the rest of the world. America’s economic collapse – predicted by Noam Chomsky and echoed in my article ‘A Waterfall into the Mainstream’ – finally began; it sneezed, and the rest of the world caught that darned cold.
On February 12th, 2007, I wrote that the tide was turning, that things were about to change for the better. I claimed that without Chuck Hagel leading the Republicans, they really didn’t have any chance of legitimately winning the next election. I also suggested that Barack Obama might be a good choice to become Democratic leader, citing his ability to resemble wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, joking that he might ask “Do you smell what Barack is cookin’?” Maybe someone saw my blog and told him – because, lo and behold, what does he do? He goes on top professional wrestling show Monday Night Raw itself to parody The Rock and actually asks “Do you smell what Barack is cookin’?” Sometimes the accuracy of my predictions scares even me. I’ll have to be more careful in future!
On April 22nd, 2008, I blogged about the Democrats needing to choose Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton not just because of his different approach, but because he represents a change in Washington – not the rhetoric he speaks, but real change from a potential Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton twenty year monarchy of the elite. The Democrats chose him, the most progressive of all the candidates. For the first time in a long time, there was a chance for real change in American politics.
As it happened, Barack Obama – who had massive grassroots support and garnered a staggering estimate of 88% of his campaign funds from ordinary people giving small donations – gave his Democratic leadership acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of another famous speech; the one by Martin Luther King when he told the world of his “dream.”
So many struggles had taken place over the last century, and this was to be another. The civil rights movement gained rights for African-Americans. The suffragettes died to gain women the right to vote. The allies fought fascism in the Second World War, defeating the Nazis who had risen in poverty-stricken Germany after the country was brought to its knees by the First World War. It was in that war that so much human life was sacrificed in record numbers. The soldiers dreaded the moment they were told to go “over the top” – to leave the trenches and head onto the fields, often doomed to be mowed-down by heavy artillery.
The facts suggest as many as four and a half million Democratic votes will be lost in this election. As Greg Palast told buzzflash.com, “four and a half million votes are going to be shoplifted.” Palast, the investigative journalist who via the BBC exposed the Florida scam in 2000, and the voter fraud in 2004, went on to explain that “that doesn’t mean that they will own the White House, it just means that they start with a big old thumb on the electoral scale.” That gives John McCain a head-start of at least four million votes already. I’ve always said that there can be no Ralph Nader excuses – Jesse Ventura is right; America needs more than just two capitalist choices. Two choices is not a true democracy. But there can be no excuses about lost votes, either. The American people have to give Barack Obama so much of an overwhelming majority that those four million votes don’t even matter, so that four million people go “over the top” first, are sacrificed, and then the other brave troops of democracy stand up and be counted, achieving victory for the Democrats.
Then there are hoax stories of extremists from the Barack Obama camp, and talk of a possible “Bradley-Wilder Effect,” where the polls are showing people are voting for the black man, but will do the opposite when in the privacy of the voting booth. I’m not sure about that – while Britain is full of racist media right now and “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack,” I think Americans are ready to have black represent their flag, and put a black man in the White House.
But ultimately, as Shami Chakrabarti said in the closing scenes of my film Escape from Doncatraz, “people aren’t any less political than they’ve ever been, they’re just less party political.” In some cases giving him a ten-point lead, it’s not just the polls that show Barack Obama with a lead over John McCain, it’s the streets – where, for example, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a friend of mine walked around this traditionally Republican territory and saw nothing but Barack Obama yard signs. There are some stating “Republicans for Obama.” Even Republican Colin Powell recently endorsed Barack Obama. Colin freakin’ Powell! This is incredible. How did this happen?!
For starters, John McCain insulted the people, his own people, when – in the absence of Hillary Clinton from the election race – he cynically “chose a vagina” (to quote suicidegirls.com) as his running mate in hopes he’d garner some female voters. Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a supposed “soccer mom” who had charged the state for her kids’ travel expenses, claimed she had foreign policy experience “because Alaska shares its borders with Russia and Canada,” became a complete liability, and had even less major political experience than Barack Obama – who himself chose as his running mate one Joe Biden, one of the least wealthy men in Washington, a man who commutes to work every day.
The Republican voters – even those in the south – have switched sides, fearing “more of the same” from the GOP (even while Bush is essentially kept off TV to distance the campaign from his legacy), fearing 72 year-old John McCain’s demise during office, and thus fearing Sarah Palin left in charge of the country. Yep, in Fort Wayne and cities like it all over the United States, people are switching sides.
This is the ultimate slap in the face of the corrupt capitalist mob in the GOP who claimed there was a link between Iraq and Osama, who lied to them for so long, who took their hard-earned money and spent it on war, who drove the country into a financial crisis. These ordinary people slapped those bastards in the face by instead supporting a candidate who opposed the invasion and massive military spending from the start, who wants to open diplomatic dialogue with the Middle East, supports a social safety net and universal health care and investment in education, a man who not only smoked pot but inhaled as well, in addition to sucking up cocaine in school too…and, yes, a man whose name rhymes with “Iraq” and “Osama” and has Hussein as his middle name! Ha, ha! This is a message from the American people that they’ve had enough of living in fear and paranoia and propaganda, and of being broke. They’ve had enough of the status quo and the predicament they’ve been put in.
Republicans are crying about the Democrats’ campaign funds being spent on TV commercials when they “could be used to fix the economy.” What? The campaign funds are for, um, campaigning, duh; so when he is President, he can fix the economy. What a stupid, imbecilic and idiotic thing to say (though to be fair it did come from Arnold Schwarzenegger). So, when that argument fails – despite the fact that the Republicans control leading network Fox News – they complain about “media bias.” Well, the fact is that John McCain’s been flying by military jet, while Barack Obama’s invited the press on his planes with him. Besides, the media haven’t been able to control this machine – and everyone knows they like to back a winner. Nope, not even those stupid voting machines could stop the real machine.
There’s still a lot of right-wing media in America, though; almost all of it, and the attacks on Barack Obama have been significant, even at risk of turn-off from American viewers sick of cynicism. They call him a “socialist,” as though the existence of their libraries, schools, fire service and police force is not through socialist policy, when in fact it is; those are socialist principles. Obama’s said he’s a capitalist, a “free marketeer,” and it’s true; he’s about as much of a socialist as John F Kennedy, a man who also faced such accusations when in fact he was a major capitalist himself. However, Barack Obama speaks of Franklin D Roosevelt’s “New Deal” policies with admiration, and like JFK knows that all the clever capitalists in the last century have only prevented total socialist revolution by “tweaking the valve” – giving the people just enough to keep them from revolting. That’s not such a bad thing, considering that in the United States you only have two capitalist choices, anyway.
Barack Obama and the Democrats answer to different groups than the Republicans. If, like JFK, he is assassinated, Barack Obama will be martyred and the LA riots of 1992 would look like a mere playground fight, so he’s untouchable. If, however, he sells-out and betrays the grassroots groups that put him in power, he won’t be in power for long. He has to deliver, and he will – just don’t expect anything socialist, as the right-wingers are screaming. The capitalists in congress and the media would unanimously assault him, then, for sure.
We already know who the majority of people will be voting for: the Democrats – just like in the last two elections! My predictions may have a good track record, dear readers, but I don’t know what the result of this election will be; none of us do. But the change has already begun, regardless of the outcome. If Democratic voters send more than four million of themselves “over the top,” then Barack Obama will certainly be the next leader of the most powerful, most influential nation on the planet. But even if that doesn’t happen, and the GOP steal yet another election, that nation has already embraced change. The system may be broken, but the power is coming back to the people.
Leave the lights on. As Leonard Cohen once sang, “democracy is coming to the USA.”
“Angel of the Public Interest” (from MediaActivist.com; February 26th, 2009)
“The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come. Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell, an avid deregulation advocate and son of Colin Powell.
Does media matter? That’s what I’m asked a lot.
Well, ask yourself how many of your opinions have been formed by something you heard, something you saw; a television show, a magazine, a song, a movie, a newspaper, or even a conversation – which, in turn, was likely largely based on opinions formed from…media! Sorry, but there’s really no way around it, honey. Media controls the world. That’s just how it is. The more we’re informed, the more our opinions are formed.
But who controls the media? I guess that’s pretty important, then, eh? Well, unfortunately, it’s being left to rich, greedy, white, right-wing men in suits who – funnily enough – have the tendency to tell twisted tales to the people consuming their media, so that they keep hating each other and voting the right-wing political parties into power. That’s pretty much how the whole thing works, right there.
In Britain, after boom-and-bust Conservative strategies left the incoming Labour government in economic turmoil – subjected to the (first) Winter of Discontent – Margaret Thatcher led the Tories back to power in 1979 with help from not just the clever, cynical, fake and now-infamous “Labour Isn’t Working” billboard poster designed by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, but also Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspaper The Sun encouraging the population to vote for the Tories, like an evil nanny feeding a starving child arsenic and telling them “It’s good for you,” and it being trustingly gulped back.
No doubt many working class people – feeling that Labour had already significantly compromised their socialist approach moulded three decades earlier by the great Clement Attlee – felt less enthusiastic about voting for Labour again. That’s to be expected. But it was predominantly the less industrial, more middle class, more suburban south of England that provided the push needed to solidify the support necessary to put in – and keep in – a Conservative government, all the way to 1997.
The Tories didn’t simply fall from favour in 1997. No, it’s no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch had become impressed by Tony Blair’s “Third Way” route for New Labour that promised to continue the media deregulation started by Thatcherism – so much so that he had his News Corporation, and indeed The Sun, support them…resulting, of course, in their rise to power. And also resulting in deregulation and near-monopolisation of the media for Mr Murdoch.
Sure enough, Blair’s Britain continued along that path, as did Bush’s United States. In 2003, Murdoch claimed Bush “will either go down in history as a very great president or he’ll crash and burn…I’m optimistic it will be the former.” He put his Fox News Network to work on making his hopes a reality, almost always portraying Bush in a good light, discrediting his critics, and – most crucially – omitting certain facts about him and his party, only increasing the role of the channel as being, in actuality, Faux News, while Murdoch bought MySpace two years later, and continued his quest for his right-wing domination of the media world, and the people of the planet showed the propaganda wasn’t completely succeeding as millions marched in streets across the globe in opposition to the U.K.-U.S. led illegal invasion of Iraq.
The Bush administration, of course, didn’t let these deeds go without reward. In the spring of that same year, Colin Powell’s son, Michael Powell, in his role as chief of the Federal Communications Commission, set about dismissing thirty year-old rules while further loosening restrictions on just how much media could be controlled by a single company like News Corp. These changes threatened to allow a single network to buy stations that, combined, reached as much as a staggering 45% of the American people.
Think about that for a moment: one ideology, one message, one slant – bombarding as many as almost a half of all Americans. Murdoch could control the information of entire cities in the world’s most powerful nation. Yep, deregulation was still being attempted in return for propaganda and campaign funds donated to the bigwigs by the media moguls. It was becoming a tired old sick joke.
Speaking of sick jokes, Powell simply stated, “The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest…I waited all night, but she did not come.” This pissed off a lot of people, with leading media activist Aliza Dichter responding, “Since he had trouble seeing one angel that dreadful night on March 22nd, we shall descend upon him in droves!” and Indy Media announcing “We encourage all Angels such as yourself to come to the gathering dressed in your best Angel garb – halo, wings, glitter, the whole nine yards. (If no angel gear, come anyway!)”
They’re still waiting for the droves of angels to descend on the FCC, and I’m very tempted to come to Washington, D.C. myself. There are all kinds of media activist opportunities there, because it’s the seat of power, and if I’m allowed there, I’ll be helping to kick the legs from under it along with the rest of the people wanting change through responsible, fair media.
Barack Obama’s great. The media has pleasantly focused on the fact that, for the first time ever, an African-American now resides in the White House. Why trivialise it? Why reduce it to tokenism? He got where he is today because he wasn’t Colin Powell; he represented the wishes and hopes and dreams of America. He made promises he is already struggling to keep while under pressure from the same old system – be it by appeasing the military industrial complex by pulling forces from Iraq and simply putting them into Afghanistan, or by using the economy as an excuse to put progressive policies on the back-burner. Yes, his achievement is historic, yes it’s important – but we must not forget the real reason he was put into power, because a black man means nothing unless he represents the people, and nor does a woman.
Deregulation was pushed to unprecedented places by Margaret Thatcher, one of the most devastating Prime Ministers in British history. That’s something worth remembering. And with that in mind, it’s time to take back control of the airwaves and the printing presses, because once Murdoch and his ilk have had their way, we’ll only get their side of the story.
When the media lie, they get sued. So what do they do instead? Omit. It’s lies through omission. If someone threatens you and your loved ones, and provokes you into threatening them in return, to then accuse you of threatening behaviour would only be part of the story, and, some might say, as bad as lying. That’s what the mainstream media do: they lie through omission. Omitted details about immigration, about Iraq, about Palestine, about Ireland, about everything. There are certain things they’d rather you didn’t know about or focus on. Because if you did? You’d be ripping their papers and brand-new asses for their bosses; you’d be organising and forcing change.
Ever noticed how everyone complains about how hard life is, and how much they work, yet things just largely stay the same? Ever wondered how that’s even possible? They filter the information; they tell you that the arsenic is good for you! Everything’s okay; just blame the immigrants. Everything’s alright; blame the benefit frauds. Everything’s fine; blame the poor who went into debt. Whatever you do, don’t even consider questioning capitalism’s free market or why there are just a few privileged people with eight-bedroom mansions, limousines and lear jets, while the mass majority in the world are struggling, and 1.4 billion live in official poverty.
What the media clues you in on is nowhere near as important as what they’ve left out. It can be quotes, statistics, editorials, and the screaming headlines themselves – overpowering or even replacing a few extra crucial details to the story. Given the fact that more and more of the media is being controlled by fewer and fewer people – with right-wing interests in contrast to the interests of the mass majority – our information is being controlled more and more, as well. It’s being filtered. But heck, information is too important to our lives to be left in the hands of the right who are doing us wrong. We have to do something.
Get involved. Be an angel.
