Blaming the Mainstream Media for being Dis-informed

Blaming the Mainstream Media for being dis-informed is like blaming McDonald's for being fat or Molson's for your drinking. It a common scapegoat, I understand, but the problem is elsewhere. The problem is in a population which, for various reasons, does not take the time to educate itself on our state of affairs.

Typically, the citizen forms an initial opinion -- most often it comes from the schools or news outlets or state propaganda or their own parent's learned stupidity -- and then seeks the narrative which gives it support: 'It is true because they said it is true, and they told me that they always tells me the truth.'

Let's consider WW II, for example. We all agree WWII was unavoidable. The diabolical Hitler, the Nazi movement and the rising Japanese militarism had to be stopped. Every sane person knows this, no?

So why has the western world's disregard for both the German people's dignity and the economic oppression we imposed on them following WW I been omitted from our common narrative? What role did that play? Could the west have done anything different to head-off WW II?

This part of history is effectively lost. It's as if it never happened. Suggesting we somehow contributed to the rise of Hitler or provoked the German citizenry is off our collective radar. 'Just look at what the Nazi's did!' -- and that's all we need to know.

To now explain what veritably happened cannot be easily done. Nor can it be accomplished in a news clip or a sound bite. It is this systemic reality that the corporate media uses with precision to shape the news, to give us the palatable narrative so desired over and over, until it becomes the only truth we know.

NB. Meanwhile the Bankers and high-capitalists were making too much money extorting Germany to act prudently and in the interests of the people -- much like they are today with the global ecological destruction being conducted under their watch.

The corporate media feeds on its designed need for concision, for the sound-bite or the discussion which neatly fits between commercials. In turn, this need for concision becomes our own. We tell ourselves we only need the 'facts' but neglect to add, 'only the facts which fit our narrative which makes sense of matters'. Ultimately this keeps the other side of the story, which would help overcome our national/cultural biases, from being heard. And without a well-informed public, democracy cannot exist.

Referencing the example one more, today there is no honest, public account as to whether WW II was truly unavoidable. And we don't much care. We know the truth and we all agree. And with this known truth we move forward without ever looking back.

But I do not blame the MSM for making a buck at our expense. We accept the economic paradigm which gives a right to capitalistic predatory practices. Buyer beware. 'It's only business, nothing personal', right? (Capitalism is the best form of economics, do we not all agree?)

It is this scenario, where we all allow biased-information to be accepted as truths, which is the tragedy of our broken democracy. According to the storyline, what our government did (in collusion with its Allies) to Germany after WWI is moot. We did nothing wrong. And the story marches on. We no more care today about our acts abroad than we did nearly a century ago. It's just now we no longer care about anything affecting our neighbours or even our own survival unless we see a buck in it.

Behind all of these published wars, a much larger and covert one carries on. It is the century-old struggle for control of our minds and our thoughts. And if our behaviour is the benchmark for success or failure, at this point the outcome doesn't look promising.

Questioning the Basis of AGW Denial

Do we not all know that the banking crowd will glom onto any vehicle, hijack any cause, to turn a buck? History is rife with evidence that the Empire, too, will piggyback a noble calling (like saving the African children to ouster a madman) as an excuse to invade en route to stealing the resources of other nations. Likewise, the money parasites will create Carbon Taxes and Credits and derivatives and the like to save us from Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). But as a fallout, others will point to this capitalist exploitation as a sure sign of the fraudulent existence of AGW in the first place. In reality, AGW is no more a scam than the very real exploitation of the African children.

Rather than read the history of global warming for themselves found HERE [put aside a month to do so], they prefer to see AGW as a underhanded plot. But this in itself makes little to no sense.

The premise is that the data supporting AGW is scientifically fraudulent. What this means is that ALL the data collected regarding Greenhouse Gases since the 1950s -- from Roger Revelle on, has been part and parcel of this banking and government conspiracy. And the bankers-governments involved continued funding this ongoing fraud until the mid 1990s when, at that point, they decided to cash out.

Isn't it far more likely that it wasn't until the mid-1990s, shortly after the BigOil denial campaign took off, that the issue of AGW was fiscally bankable with the public and so the bankers responded accordingly? And that the consistent and diversely collected data evidencing AGW via greenhouse gases since the 1950s is real, despite the hiccups of some recently overplayed emails?

Stephen Harper, neither psycho nor insane

Still one must wonder what is sane about Mr Harper's world? There is little logically sound about his general reasoning. True enough, if one adopts any variety of Harper's well understood as erroneous premises, one may reach the same ridiculous conclusions.

Recall the revealing snipe Stephen Harper made early in his political career while delivering a controversial speech to a rightwing American think tank, the Counsel for National Policy:

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

So how widely dis-educated is Stephen Harper when it takes so little to get up to speed with the fundamental error of that view? From an on-line encyclopedia:

...Ideas such as the culture of poverty first promulgated by Oscar Lewis blamed poor people for perpetuating their condition through inappropriate values and “weak ego structures.” ... Blaming the victims (stigmatized and disadvantaged groups such as the poor) was shown to not only hide the effects of power and privilege but also to stifle recognition of a need to address social problems through sociopolitical change. ... Yet these explanations, which blamed specific populations for social pathology, merely replaced racial determinism with cultural determinism. (emphasis added)

Social Pathology LINK


This is just one of many available examples of dumb positions held by Harper. Positions which, when examined, help anchor him to his ideological faiths on various fronts -- theological, scientific, economic, political, etc.

Stephen Harper is neither a thinker nor an educated man. He is well-schooled in the myths, old and new, which perpetuate the false hierarchies of select men over all others.

In short, Harper's mind has been "instructed with learned ignorance, and furnished with unlearned wisdom" (as coined by Bertrand Russell). And for our own democratic safety, we must steer clear of that lot.

The Truth is Front and Centre

It was necessary for the federal government to intervene in Air Canada's labour disputes because a shutdown at the country's largest airline at a peak travel time could take a toll on the economy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday.

I see. The union can bargain against one of the most powerful businesses in the nation provided it doesn't substantively upset the business itself.

So this is it. The dual is on. Here's your pistol, Mr Labour, but, oh wait, I first need to remove your bullets.

OK, carry on.

Fair is fair, right?

Harper is a clown. Unfortunately he is a dangerous one as well. But what's even worse is the fact that most people will cling to the delusion that the system is going to be, or can be, fixed from within. They think they can still vote themselves a cure. Now that's mass delusion -- even worse than the individual disease that Harper suffers from.

If a fix was coming our way, if the interests of the population at large were the primary concern of government, then why is our society so far removed from such a result? We've had 145 years of this democracy, and still most people are left unfulfilled.

Meaningful human relationships are damn near non-existent, the environment is on the verge of sustainable collapse for all of humanity, our national policy now supports blowing up another country if it dare try to defend itself -- and still we carry on, participating with these criminals on their terms as to what constitutes political engagement. Does anyone sincerely believe this is the very best we can do?

Obviously the best minds are not making it into government or business, despite the rhetoric. The most dogmatic, brainwashed, socio-pathological and selfish, perhaps. But intelligence if nothing if it isn't tempered with intelligent behaviour, something we've been in short supply of for quite some time.

Why the crimes of state everywhere we look? Foreign. National. Regional. Is this all we can create in a land of golden opportunity after 145 years of our non-primitive ways? And we think this is OK? We are willing to accept this as good enough? Are we unable to stop the lunacy? Must we repeatedly elect and follow complete rejects representing the worse of people into office? Folks, these people are not leaders. They are opportunists.

The absolute truth is simple: our governance is so broken systemically that it cannot even try to make this world better for the people first and foremost, despite its paper obligation to serve the people.

Have we so little self-respect and confidence that we feel the necessity for all this?

Animal Farm Utopia

I wonder when they'll want to privatize parliament, where corporations, including our "wealth creating foreign investors" could bid for the seats? ~ Ed Deak

That would be counter productive, Ed. As it is, governance has long been privatized. And its current illusion remains the perfect cover, convincing the deluded masses into thinking (or is it believing?) we live in a democracy. But how can things possibly be any other way? Where would 33 million well-informed and truly educated folks fit into the Canadian economic model?

I am not saying people are incapable of being happy under circumstances that are unnatural, for we are an adaptive lot. But the natural order of free-thinking, autonomous, self-directed individuals everywhere has long been compromised.

We collectively exchanged such positions in life for the security of a job (corporate-government-institutional-professional). We unwittingly traded our individual responsibility to safeguard our own natural freedom and liberty for the protection offered by others who claimed they will do our job for us.

At this juncture, short of a complete collapse which would bring with it a forced enlightenment, there is no going back. We are incapable of living 'free'. We have effectively become domesticated, one and all. Animal Farm Utopia.

Defining Left-Right Politics

As for understanding the Left-Right political debate, there are numerous models available. I don't think any of the ones I've been exposed have been comprehensive, so I created my own -- deficiencies and all.

My model is circular, lying horizontally like the equator. At the front-centre is the theoretical balance between state and private control. Here the state has full sovereignty and always enforces the 'social contract' for the benefit of all people, while the citizenry, the private sector, has the freedom to pursue its own ambitions and bloom with autonomy. As you move further to the left or to the right, there is a corresponding increase in state or private control, respectively. The extreme in either direction, at the back-centre, is where all power converges into the hands of either the state or private interests. Here, unabashedly, stands fascism.

Voting for What?

We lost control of our democracy the day borders started to be meaningless. When we allowed corporations to move capital across borders without any regard for the people, this started ~Skywalker on thetyee.ca

It's far more perverse than that, and it started long before 'corporations moving capital' became fashionable.

Clearly non-democratic or totalitarian acts can be highly localized and performed by individuals. Slavery is one such form, where one's work is usurped by another. Here one man is convinced it is in his best interest to accept the arrangement. That is the politics of one man over another.

And that formula is politics at large -- the marketing of ideas to convince the masses to accept a certain form of slavery in exchange for real and fraudulent benefits.

If one does not understand this simple truth, then he is bound to make all sorts of broad and absurd assertions like the necessity of voting simply because it is offered. At certain times, I can only wonder if he has any idea what he is voting for?

Ignorance, learned stupidity and a Happy New Year

From The Tyee, hollinm: "When he (PM Harper) starts giving himself more powers, banning opposition parties and outlawing the media then we can talk"

OK, let's talk.

Did you hear about Canada and the USA agreeing to the Beyond the Border Pact this past holiday season? Probably not considering it was signed without any democratic oversight or involvement.

This Pact formally makes Canada de facto a security state. Meanwhile our media remains effectively mute on this point. At best the Pact's been sold to the population as a way to streamline the transportation industry and to prevent that bastard child called Employment Insurance fraud from spawning. Still, it is hard to imagine that is worth a thousand-million dollars to anyone but the powers that be.

A couple other things one likely won't hear about the Pact is that it allows the authorities to chase bad guys into the reciprocating nation. On first blush, this might not alarm too many folks. But the more egregious offense comes to light when considering the recent American signing of section 1867 of the NDAA, which codifies the dismissal of habeas corpus amongst other legal safeguards. Today, the USA can apprehend and detain without trial anyone it deems a terrorist on a simple allegation. And now that includes you.

The Pact also agrees to a comprehensive exchange of information between the nations of everyone crossing the line. And in the USA, its border patrol systemically turns over all collected information to such bodies as the CIA, FBI, DEA, FEMA, Immigration and other investigative branches. So now each file will be considered in accordance with these various bureaus' visions about their specific security needs.

Further, the Pact allows the Prime Minister to hold a sort of Imperial-esque homecoming, one where he can call upon the US military to help suppress any domestic unrest, arguably even any peaceful dissent, against the Canadian state. This single fact alone should make us all take pause. Just consider why any Canadian government would feel it had the authority, let alone the democratic right, to enter such an agreement designed to oppress its own democratic forces?

Does Canadian democracy only exist if one complies with state? More often of late, this democracy falls dangerously short when one asks to invoke one's fundamental freedoms or democratic rights. It seems that when one's civil rights are most needed, the rights don't count. Who can forget the Toronto G-20 fiasco with its agent provocateurs, its enforcement of wholly fictional laws, its billion dollar budget largely used to train and spend on militarizing the police, and its 1100+ arrests securing a whopping 24 convictions?

Let's also reflect on Canada's unlawful warring adventures under the cover of NATO so we can march lock-step with the leader of the US killing machine.

Mix in some of the torture allegations, now virtually facts, levelled against the government lead by the Conservative Party of Canada and Stephen Harper since 2006.

Add a dash of the easily forgotten double prorogation of Parliament by Harper, actions clearly in contravention of the spirit of the law, (used solely to avoid the constituents' democracy in its representative form) and to retain its death grip on power.

Need I mention the CPC's de-funding of other political parties and of the largely propagandizing CBC, the national broadcaster (ironically a rag that is little more than a stenographer for the status quo in the first place)?

I wonder, are you getting the picture?

The acts of the Canadian state against the people are long and ongoing. Certainly this Harper-led Canadian government is worse than the last. But if we do not respond intelligently, if we refuse to see what the larger geopolitical picture is and how it has an immediate impact on our domestic politics with weak leadership, the next Prime Minister will be even worse.

The evidence of the Canadian government centralizing power in the last number of decades is vast. And without paying too much attention to the collective importance of these individual pieces of legislation and the like, we tend to miss what is really happening right before our very eyes. So now, more than ever, the affairs of government and power are demanding we each seek a more comprehensive explanation than the very restricted one disseminated by the usual sources, We need to re-discover our political history. We need to trace back through time to see how we have got caught up in such an entanglement, one where absolutely everything is commodified. Everything considered valuable to the people whom appraise such matters, that is. To make meaning of it all, this Gordian Knot of propaganda and state showmanship must be unravelled.

For these reasons, when Murray Dobbin says in The Tyee:

No prime minister in Canadian history has come to power with such a ruthless determination to implement an agenda so at odds with the interests of the country and the values of its citizens,

I must take some exception. Most Canadians believe their propaganda. Most Canadians remain enticed by the national rhetoric massaged daily by the tentacles of the corporate media. Who can accurately say what Canadian values or interests are any more? I believe, in short, 'the truth is in the pudding'. And the sniff test tells me our pudding has turned.

For example, I suspect that if Canadians were asked, "Should the prison population be used as a free or very cheap work-force to help pay for inmate incarceration?", the majority would resoundingly say 'Yes'.

Case closed.

Or maybe not. For if the question were posed, "Should we grant the prison population jobs from the labour pool, leaving an equivalent number of innocent people unemployed?", I suspect this time the majority would resoundingly say "No".

And that, folks, is but a simple example of how politics and propaganda work hand-in-hand to shape the discussion we are directed to see.

Canadians, predominantly through the mis-guided leadership of government, have such a poor understanding about political matters that the majority will agree to support just about anything. Anything except, perhaps,the excesses of state which actually impose upon them personally. A fraudulent banking system oppressing everyone but the elite simply goes unrecognized. In fact it's been off the collective radar now for more than three generations.

And there is the rub. Being 'effected personally' is only comprehended relative to other persons very nearby; not to the unknown and certainly not to the unseen, statistically the other 7 billion inhabitants of the planet. And until we see the matrix of humanity and start behaving with that in mind, we will continue marching in the wrong direction.