Western Media Propaganda Arm of Empire

The evidence should be clear more now than ever. News organizations are tools of specific segments of ruling class political opinion. The only reason to "read" them is to understand what agendas are being advanced and foisted upon the general public.

It is here that the truest form of democracy we have access to in late capitalist society exists - the "democracy" of the commodity purchase, in this case the purchase of propaganda. The news we buy and read tilts the economic landscape this way and that. So it seems that all we have left is to "vote with our dollars."

That, or reject the entire corrupt edifice wholesale.

From an excellent article by Toni Solo:

The main reason now to read most Western Bloc corporate media is to discover what lies they are spreading on behalf of their countries’ governments and corporations. In the case of Venezuela, Carlin’s piece indicates that one can expect a ratcheting up of the propaganda war against Venezuela over the next year or so.

[...]

But perhaps the most relevant point about Carlin’s particular brand of misreporting is that it confirms the intimate links between European mainstream media and European country governments and security services. Carlin’s piece is very much in the style of an older UK anti-journalist called Chapman Pincher. Pincher used to make a comfortable career writing screeds just like Carlin’s, based on unattributable sources, smear and guilt by association, regurgitating whatever the official propaganda line of the day may happen to have been.

Solo, Toni. The Observer Exclusive: Hugo Chavez is President of Venezuela. Venezuela Analysis. 03-Feb-2008.

From the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

Journalists are unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these days. Many give poor grades to the coverage offered by the types of media that serve most Americans: daily newspapers, local TV, network TV news and cable news outlets. In fact, despite recent scandals at the New York Times and USA Today, only national newspapers ­ and the websites of national news organizations ­ receive good performance grades from the journalistic ranks.

Roughly half of journalists at national media outlets (51%), and about as many from local media (46%), believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction, as significant majorities of journalists have come to believe that increased bottom line pressure is "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage. This is the view of 66% of national news people and 57% of the local journalists questioned in this survey.

Journalists at national news organizations generally take a dimmer view of state of the profession than do local journalists. But both groups express considerably more concern over the deleterious impact of bottom-line pressures than they did in polls taken by the Center in 1995 and 1999. Further, both print and broadcast journalists voice high levels of concern about this problem, as do majorities working at nearly all levels of news organizations.

The notable dissent from this opinion comes from those at the top of national news organizations. Most executives at national news organizations (57%) feel increased business pressures are "mostly just changing the way news organizations do things" rather than seriously undermining quality.

Bottom-Line Pressures Now Hurting Coverage, Say Journalists. The Pew Research Center. 23-May-2004.

Of course the executives don't feel quality has gone down. Quite the contrary, from their perspective, quality has gone UP. Because the product they wish to generate has nothing to do with a free press, but with satisfying their class interest in order to secure their continued advancement upward in bourgeois society. Nevermind those pesky journalistic ideals. From a capitalist perspective, these are nothing more than product defects. The removal of which need not even be (consciously) poltically motivated.

Ellen DeGeneres is a Scab!

From Union Review:

A press release from the Writers Guild of America, East is circulating this evening about Ellen DeGeneres, which the union is very disappointed with and Union Review is outraged at.

The talk-show host comedianne, whom I have been a big fan of for many years, respected the picketing writers for one day and then went back to work with her own material -- and that stinks (not her material, the fact that her going back to work disrespects the strike). Her performances this week is no different than a scab laborer breaking the strikers backs.

This is explained fairly well in the release (below), however, it is important to note that when a star like Ellen does this, she is only raking in the revenues for the companies that won't fairly negotiate with us -- it prolongs everything.

Ellen DeGeneres is a Scab! Union Review. 09-Nov-2007.

Union Busting USA

As union membership in the United States declines, support for unions continues to rise. A recent Gallup Poll shows that although union membership has declined to 12% of the working population in the US, 60% of Americans support unions and would join one given the chance (Unions garner public approval, Randolf Heaster, Kansas City Star).

Although a paradox to the capitalist press, it seems quite obvious why this is so. More people than at any time in the past 35 years need unions, but aggressively anti-union tactics in the private sector have taken away or suppressed worker's rights to organize. This process has been greatly assisted by a mass media which is extremely hostile to organized labor across the board (newspapers, magazines, television, radio and movies). Finally, the linking of liberal and Democratic Party causes to organized labor has made labor's political agenda subservient to these other forces.

The private sector has a low 7.4% of workers organized (compared with 36.2% in the public sector). This is a direct result of the private sector routinely breaking labor laws, using intimidation tactics and firings, and all with a blind eye from the so-called Department of Labor - more of a joke than ever under the Bush administration.

From an article by Cosmo Garvin in Union Review:

As a rule, they don't shoot workers in the fields and at the loading docks anymore [as long as they are white Americans, workers in the US and throughout Latin America are frequently beaten, forced to live in labor camps, held in slave-like conditions, and even murdered - RiR]. This Labor Day, we can all be thankful for that. But trying to form a union can make your life miserable still.

Just ask Gene Esparza, a forklift driver who’s been with Blue Diamond, the international almond exporter headquartered here in downtown Sacramento, since 1969. That’s 38 years. Esparza makes $15.45 an hour, and he pays $500 a month for health insurance for himself, his wife and his two kids.

Esparza is among the workers trying to organize a union at Blue Diamond. “We’re not trying to hurt the company,” he says, “but I’ve got a family to raise. My kids want milk in their cereal. I need to put gas in the car.” He said he hadn’t gotten a raise for 15 years, until the International Longshore and Warehouse Union started helping workers organize a union in 2004. For Esparza and other plant workers, unionization is a no-brainer. But the campaign has been bitter.

The company sends out regular anti-union memos and makes attendance to meetings with supervisors about the union mandatory. Bosses constantly dog workers to make sure they aren’t talking about union business, Esparza claims. “I’ve had bosses come up to me and ask me who I was talking to, how many minutes I was talking to them for. Every time that happens I whip out my little notebook and I say 'I feel you are harassing me right now.’

“There are a lot of people who aren’t very happy. The morale is low. And some people won’t talk to me anymore because they are afraid they are being watched,” Esparza said.

Union Review: Holding All the Cards

With the structural crisis in capital coming to a head over the housing crisis, it is only a matter of time before workers will turn to themselves and form unions to protect their interests.

Its time to fight for union rights now and to break the stranglehold capital has on our work and our lives.

Its time to force the government to enforce its own good labor laws and repeal the bad ones (such as the egregious Taylor Law in New York State, a favorite of Democratic governor Elliot Spitzer).

Its time for a socialist alternative, a true friend of labor, instead of the two-headed capitalist duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans, which has worked tirelessly and brutally to deny the rights of working people for over 150 years.

Another Television is Possible

It is interesting that only socialist countries seem to have the will to control the flood of vulgar bacchalian depravity that has completely taken over media. The drive for profit led to the complete deregulation of media in the west starting in the 1980s. Now we see that we are on the brink of, if we have not already reached it, total moral breakdown.

It is sad to see in Blockbuster that 50% or more of the videos are graphic horror films (most of the rest being graphically violent "action" films). The prospects for the current generation growing up with this spectaclist schlock as the norm are grim indeed.

SYDNEY (Green Left Weekly) - “We at Telesur believe that 'Another television is possible’”, Aharonian told the Australian brigadistas. “Telesur is the first Latin American experience in mass television. We have always been seen through foreign eyes. From the North, they only see us in black and white. Black, because we only appear in the news when there is a big problem in our countries ... We are a very diverse and plural region; we need to see ourselves in our own way.

As “alternative media”, Aharonian said, “we must not be marginalised. We must be a mass-based alternative. All the documentaries and programs on Telesur come from alternative sources — independent producers, universities and national radio and TV from various countries.

“At this stage, we don’t have our own documentaries or musical programs, only the news. We try to pass on what other independent and alternative producers are doing.”

and...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has called on TV and radio stations to ignore ratings and "vulgarity" in their programming and promote socialist values instead, state media reported on Tuesday.

China keeps a tight grip on its state-owned broadcasters, but market reforms have spawned increasingly outrageous shows, including reality TV, to attract viewers and advertising revenue.

The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) urged broadcasters to boycott bad taste, "build harmonious culture and provide noble and rich programming for the masses," Xinhua news agency said.

"They should relay on quality and innovative programming, and outstanding ideological, artistic and attractive works to draw viewers. They should not rely on vulgarity to cater to a minority's low-grade interests," SARFT was quoted as saying.

The creation of a "harmonious society" is the doctrine of President Hu Jintao as China seeks to remove the causes of social tension.

Fight to Build a Progressive Media Alternative

This is an elaboration of a point I made on the comment page for a post on Union-Firms-Markets titled "Losing Hearts & Minds or Lack of Political Power."

The premise of the post is that the right is able to take over any debate and turn it to their own ends. The conclusion seemed to be that the left will continue to loose group by defending so-called failed social programs that came out of the New Deal.

I disagree. We fight for and defend these programs because they are good and have good material results for the masses and the poor. We are good people, and we fight to defend programs which bring good into the world. To cede more ground to the right is defeatist and counter-revolutionary.

We must understand that the "debate" that happens on television, in the newspapers, radio and all other mass media is simply the sound of one hand clapping. It is, in the words of Guy Debord in Society of the Spectacle:

1:13

[The spectacle's] means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.

Therefore the project of progressives must be to develop a counter cultural media. We must educate people to simultaneously divorce themselves (as much as possible) from the media spectacle AND develop an informed critical eye of the spectacle so as to read between lines. Understanding what is omitted or maligned from within the media torrent reveals what the ruling classes fear the most - namely, a socialist working class consciousness.

The media spectacle omits, distorts, retards and alienates. Its purpose is to keep us afraid, weak, unorganized and alienated from each other, in our social relationships, our personal relationships and even in our relationships with our own bodies and minds. It teaches us to hate and fear and to feel disempowered.

It is clear from the history of the mass media and especially the internet media sphere including the blogosphere that another media is possible - one that does not conform to Marx's declaration that (in the German Ideology, 1845): "[the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas]."

Like our brothers and sisters in previous "epochs" we must today build a true alternative to the mass media and introduce the ideas of the working class to the broadest possible audiences. The fascists of all classes know this, it is time progressives learn it as well for the stakes are indeed very high.

The Belarus Media Chernobyl

Belarus has got quite a bit of airtime lately. Not only with the sudden heat and light focused on Chernobyl, but with various groups, including some anarchists, supposedly complaining about lack of freedom and government repression, and an awkward quote by the president, Alexander Lukashenko.

The western media has really got everyone riled up over this newest member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" but how far off the mark are they and what is the real reason for all the fuss?

Belarus is the only country in Europe that, nearly 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, still maintains a command economy, e.g. the economy is still run by socialist principles. You will find that if you do a search on Belarus, the CIA Factbook entry comes up as the first result. I can guarantee you that is no coincidence. Belarus has been on Bush's hit list for some time, but in a recent strategy document released on March 16, 2006, the leader of Our Fair Land specifically added Belarus to the new "Axis of Evil" along with Cuba and Zimbabwe, two other countries which happen to have central economies.

The statistics in the CIA Factbook are very interesting, one of which stands out from the rest, being the GINI coefficient of Belarus, which the CIA itself describes as "among the lowest in the world." The data currently published by the CIA pegs their GINI at 30.4, compared with 36.6 in the United Kingdom and 45 in the United States. However it should be noted that academic sources have measured the Belarus GINI as being in the 23-27 range.

GINI is simply "This index measures the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income in a country." Simply put, less inequality exists in countries with a low GINI. Of course GINI is not the only measure that tells us whether a country is in good or bad shape, but it is certainly a testament to the power of socialism to transform a society by creating an equal economic playing field. Belarus was one of the most important industrial centers of Eastern Europe during the Soviet era, this being accomplished even though it took Belarus from 1944 until 1971 to recover to their pre-WWII population after the Nazi massacres.

Since 1994, the country has been led by Alexander Lukashenko, who has been criticized by Western governments, Human Rights Watch, and other Western NGO for his Soviet-style domestic policies.¹

Luis M. Garcia Cunarro recently wrote the following in Periodico 26 Cuba:

According to the strategy changes implemented during Bush’s second term, the “fight against tyrannies” is added to the War on Terrorism and the administration defines a tyranny as: “The combination of brutality, poverty, instability, corruption and suffering under the rule of despots or despotic systems.” While the concept, which could be applied to the US government, merits reflection, what is certain is that we are seeing a new version of the “axis of evil.” Seven countries are on the empire’s list: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe.

What’s most important about this problem is not the definition, but instead the “package” of actions that the US proposes. These include sanctions against those countries, an international discrediting of their governments and peoples, and political and economic subversion, not just by the United States and its close allies, but also from regional organizations like the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the African Union and the Organization of American States.

US National Security is Global Insecurity

Here we see again the zealots in charge of the US identifying a group of countries to be "threats to America" and taking aggressive action to undermine and eliminate these so-called threats. Whereas these countries pose no threat at all to the American people, the fact that they, in the case of Belarus, Cuba and perhaps China and Zimbabwe, demonstrate the ability for a workers' state, deformed or not, to function even in the face of capitalist imperial aggression poses a clear and present danger to the ruling classes.

This is why the Western media, including independent sources, has been doing its very best to find any stories that discredit Belarus or link it in the public mind with other broader propaganda. It cannot be seen as coincidence that at the same time there is a media blitz against Iran regarding their alleged nuclear WMD program, somehow Belarus becomes linked with nuclear terror through a series of Chernobyl stories. Although Belarus was greatly affected by the Chernobyl accident, so were many other countries like Poland, Austria and Hungary, and in fact the whole of Europe. Chernobyl was, is and shall remain in the Ukraine.

Finally, I cannot claim to have any special insight into the mind of Alexander Lukashenko nor any detailed analysis of his domestic policies or record on human rights. Nevertheless we do well to remember how the media crucified Howard Dean during the 2004 US presidential elections and understand that these exact same techniques have been employed in the Ukraine and other countries and are being employed against Belarus.

With the US military recently releasing a document outlining their plans to "engage the enemy" through the media, the internet and via public opinion, that indeed these "terrains" are the location of the new battlefield², we can see the ominous signs of these techniques today being deployed against Belarus.

Essentially, the Western capitalist elite continues their assault on the working classes and through foriegn policy have continued to implement this program against state socialism. Through the newly articulated model of warfare being adopted by the Western military machine, we see a sort of reverse Orwellian model manifesting itself, we now have to reverse Orwell's ominous "War is Peace" and restate it as "Peace is War."

This is a new Chernobyl for Belarus, a "media Chernobyl" that is spreading radioactive misinformation across the airwaves in order to discredit and undermine a state who's only crime seems to be that it has a socialist economy.

Monument to Pro-Life

Edie at Annotated Life wrote:

Edwards' sculpture [...] conveys woman's prison. Spears did not even pose for this “Monument,” which is not a monument to her, or woman, or even the sacrifice of a great deal of a woman's liberty to motherhood. It is a monument to “pro-life,” the sovereignty of a single male cell within a woman's body. It is a monument to vessel-hood. The idealized role of woman under Christian fundamentalism is one of ignorance, pliancy, and subservience; the bearskin rug is fitting décor for such a primitive existence.

More (including pictures of the sculpture)...

Right on, sister, right on. As a socialist, this sort analysis is a dead-on exposure of the fundamentalism which feeds reactionary poltics. "Pro-Life" is nothing but. It is simply a code for the subordination of women under men. Notice how many pro-lifers are also pro-war. If their concern was truely for life, then they would also be anti-war (and anti-death penalty for that matter). This is almost never the case. These folks often also call for fewer social services (which kills the poor), "free-market" economics (which kills the poor) and are against civil rights (which kills the poor and Black).

As socialists we must resist the temptation to accept the terms of debate set forth by the Christian right regarding reporductive freedom. We must retake the moral high ground and expose their hypocricy for what it is. Too many young Western women today have grown up in a world where they enjoy the fruits of the feminist struggle during the 1960s and 1970s. They do not know the danger they face nor why they must remain militant. Thankfully the Conservative right wing is doing everything in their power to remind them. This sculpture should serve as a wake up call that pro-life means subjugating women to the role of sex-slave and child bearer. A better world is possible for women...

I encourage anyone who has not read The Handmaid's Tale to do so. Only when we have a socialist government which represents all people will we be free of the counter-revolutionary tactics of the Conservative right wing.

Net Freedom Now

Some relevant propaganda, I encourage you to sign the petition:

What if …

• AT&T and Verizon blocked you from viewing your favorite podcasts and blogs?
• BellSouth cut off your net phone because you weren’t using their service?
• Comcast forced you to download MP3s from their store while slowing other music sites?
  

This threat is more real than you might think. Right now, the major communications companies are planning to discriminate against the online content and services that they don’t yet control.

http://www.netfreedomnow.org

The New Realist -or- Tradition!

Political satire is alive and well, and The Daily Show with John Stewart would have you believe that they are leading the pack. Sometimes I wonder why it is allowed to be on the air - why would the US corporate media machine tolerate it and why would sponsors pay for it?

Usually I find myself watching the show and wondering -- where's the substance?

Is the Daily Show content really all that satirical or political? Is it anything close to radical detournement? When set alongside truly subversive texts like Paul Krassner's The Realist we can only answer, unequivocally, “No.”

The Realist was published as a magazine from 1958 to 1974, the content was so edgy it earned Krassner an extensive FBI file. Krassner reincarnated The Realist as a newsletter in 1985, with the final edition published in 2001. In its pages, Krassner interviewed folks from George Lincoln Rockwell (American Nazi Party) to Jerry Garcia (Dead Head and ice-cream flavor inspiration) covering a wide range of social and political topics. When you see the magazine, it's not suprising to hear that Krassner cut his journalistic teeth at Mad Magazine. In many ways, Krassner is reminiscent of the enigmatic underground comic book artist Robert Crumb (or, as he signed his artwork, R. Crumb).

Enter blogger Bachem Macuno and his brilliant I F----d Ann Coulter In the A--, hard (Warning: NSFW ). This work is sophomoric and offensive, to be sure. Yet this sort of in-your-face satire is refreshing, insofar as it shows that free speech still exists, at least in the blogosphere. Certainly Macuno's blog is offensive to a range of people, from conservatives to feminists. That, however, is what satire is all about. And given that Coulter is the essence of offensiveness (during her speech she suggested that "we oppress liberals" - it's moronic positions like this that led to the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat), albeit state-sponsored offensiveness, this work plays an important role in counterbalancing the excesses of state authority, especially in light of the ongoing assult against public free speech in America. More about the unjust arrest of a UT student can be found here and here.

More on Krassner can be found here.
More on R. Crumb can be found here.

Workers Independent News

So I've stumbled across another Left radio network - huzzah! This one has a focus on labor issues. Listen online now and check out the site to learn how to get your local station to carry their programming. Here's the link:

WINS

The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio

OK, so I'm a convert. I've heard some Air America Radio shows in the past and they basically struck me as lamer versions of The Daily Show with John Stewart. This is not to say that I do not appreciate John and the gang and their crazy hijinx - but they are hardly the militant Left.

But lo and behold Randi Rhodes. This chick rocks the cashbah! Tonight I watched HBO's documentary "Left of the Dial" which is sort of a Startup.com version of the Air America story. Very good stuff, and a lot of focus on Randi and her program aptly called "The Randi Rhodes Show."

In any case I encourage everyone to check her show out, and also watch the documentary if you can. It is also worth noting that Air America Radio is the fastest growing radio program network in the history of radio, capturing over 400,000 listeners in 1 month with basically one affilate (in NYC). After a little over 1 year, the station has over 53 affiliates and beats all the conservative shows in most major markets. Amazing? Maybe, but it shouldn't be.

Truely this shows that there are deep rifts in Capital right now. Otherwise this programming would not be allowed to exist. It serves the purpose of some segment of capital, a powerful segment that is at war with the neocon agenda, but be certain that it is NOT against neoliberal economics. It is interesting to note that Chuck D's show has recently been cancelled. I guess with over 50 affilates Air America doesn't need the black listeners anymore, at least not the radical ones.

So what am I saying? Listen to it for sure, but with a grain of salt. The nice thing about O'Reilly and that lot is you know where he is coming from but damn, it is bloody nice to hear someone on air saying stuff you agree with!

Listen Live to Air America (RealPlayer)

HOME: The Randi Rhodes Show on Air America Radio