According to the Media Reform Information Center nearly 100% of the news being reported to you is controlled by just 5 huge International corporations!
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly.
In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.
They decide virtually everything in your life…whom to vote for, whom to vote against, what to buy, what not to buy…and on, and on, and on. They have an agenda, you are not it.
One reason we were given a choice this year is because there is a major war in the US Oligarchy, the Neoconservatives supported by Murdoch's News Corporation versus the "Old Establishment" supported by General Electric's NBC.
In a future World there will no doubt be many history books written about how these 5 corporations were able to direct the lives of over 300 million American people while overseeing their total destruction.
This year huge numbers of people were motivated by the ideas of hope and change. They voted for things like the end of warfare and social and economic development. They did not vote for Rahm Emanuel, Jane Harman and Dennis Ross. Jane Harman is in line for Homeland Security and Dennis Ross is in line for chief architect of a looming Iranian War. The only one missing is Steny Hoyer. These are the Neoconservatives in the Democratic Party. The only difference between them and the Neoconservatives in the Republican Party is that they can take us to total war quicker and smarter while making us even dumber.
The American public opinion has been roused from its slumber. It knows how to get its information from sources other than the corporate media. It must not be lulled back to sleep.
Al Giordano, long time Subcommandante Marcos and Zapatista chronicler returned from Mexico to chronicle Barack Obama's presidential campaign and has one of the few websites that explicitly recognizes the above stated fact, see here. This may seem an odd combination, but Subcommandante Marcos and Barack Obama are both organizers in the Saul Alinsky model, as is our own local ACT (Allied Communities of Tarrant County). Giordano, obviously, sees similarities between the two and sees Barack Obama as a solution for the problems of the citizens of the United States. Subcommandante Marcos is about helping the Mayan Indians take back their lives, their economy, and their country, he would never place someone like Rahm Emanuel is a position of power. The cynicism is striking.
It was Rahm Emanuel who created our current NAFTA/Neoliberal/ supply-sider/ trickle-down economic nightmare and as an unintended consequence, the very Zapatista movement for which Giordano became famous following around in the jungles of the Yucatan and the mountains of Chiapas.
Al Giordano has a complete and ingenious rationalization for the Rahm Emanuel pick, see here.
I fervently hope Giordano is right, I bet he's not.
5 comments:
I hate Rahm Emanuel. For being a shitty DCCC chair, for battling with Howard Dean over the 50-state strategy, doing everything possible to undermine it, then taking credit for it when it worked. "Less than pleased" would describe my feelings as chief of staff.
But then I thought, "what would Saul Alinsky do?" My hunch is it's a "keep your enemies closer" move. Obama took out a major, ongoing congressional headache and will have him scheduling meetings. Not to mention Emanuel might as well be the state of Israel.
Reading Giordano's far more informed take made it crystallize. Obama trusts Axelrod, Plouffe, Valerie Jarrett, and his wife. He doesn't need to trust Emanuel, who may be that hypoallergenic dog the girls were looking for.
Obama is one smart SOB. Co-opting a vicious oligarchy probably isn't going to work, but a guy who's read all of Kevin Phillips' books is precisely the guy you'd want for the job.
Also:
Obama seems to believe in a frictional style of decision-making, wherein you set up a heated debate and trust the winning outcome is better-evolved. FDR was a master at pitting the angle-bearer against each other, and Emanuel will be knocking heads with Barney Frank for years.
Hey man, I love your comments. I piss and moan but I cannot second guess Giordano's take on the situation. I have great admiration for him.
Phillip Weiss at Mondoweiss is always great, but he is having a field day with all of this. He points to an extraordinary piece by Wayne Madsen about Rahm's FBI counter-intelligence file.
See here:
http://tinyurl.com/5q8wry
Anyway, Obama is a genius and a master politician. I have never seen anyone like him. It's going to be a hell of ride, one way or the other.
There is also this from Webster Tarpley
see here
http://tinyurl.com/5af4v2
I can never figure out where the LaRouchites are ultimately going, but you cant ignore the points he makes.
hey, no blogging on shabbas. But man, you dig up the good stuff.
Yeah, the Mossad stuff. Maybe this way they can finally trim their out-of-control field work budget a little. Unfortunately Tarpley is even more right than he knows: we're all the abject puppets of the Wall Street derivatives merchants and warmongers.
If Obama is as good as I think he is, his will be an incremental game. Little nudges that look perfectly reasonable and don't tip off the agenda.
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