Shut Down The Propaganda Machine!

Propaganda is treason in a "democracy"

People protest. They march in the street, usually on government buildings, symbols of corruption, tyrany and ordinary incompetence. They generally hope to get media coverage and are dissapointed when it is lacking or twisted. The gigantic anti-war rallies accross the world and the 3/4 of a million person demonstration at the GOP convention were hardly mentioned in the corporate media. When they were their numbers were divided by ten. A million became a hundred thousand, a hundred thousand became ten thousand and ten thousand became nothing at all. If there was any detail of any of these massive protests it was the one person who broke a window or the police undercover agent provocateur doing something to discredit the protest.

Hitler, now the standard by which all corporate and government evil is measured, used propaganda as his main weapon. Joeseph Goebbles, his propaganda minister was like part of his family and died in Hitler's bunker with the family. Stalinist propaganda is world infamous. In addition to Osama Bin Laden's notorious video tape releases other Al Qaeda propaganda is fairly well known and the recent bombings in London are thought by some to be carried out by individuals who have only an ideological connection with Osama and the rest of Al Quaeda rather than a spy cell working on strict orders from Al Quaeda.

Nixon routinely blamed the "liberal" media for picking on him and the GOP started a serious and very well financed drive to change that. Big bucks for corporate takeovers of media companies and the creation of Fox "News" and other bellicose propaganda machinery plus legislation to legalize increasing monopolisation of the media by the extreme right wing.

Exactly who are we now talking about? The Nation magazine has a chart of the top ten and Media Reform Information Center
explains in detail with more facts, figures and links. It is the source of this chart which cuts pretty quickly to the chase;



It has a very strong inverse correlation with the increase in the national debt starting with the GOP's regaining control of the White House by hiring actor Ronald Reagan to play president in 1980.



It also correlates very well with the loss of our freedom as shown in this chart of federal incarceration numbers since Reagan and his GOP script writers assumed power though the current figures are even higher. Much higher. World leading if you check my previous log entry.

Shutting down the propaganda machine

Turn the lights on, dispell the darkness of this artificially induced ignorance and stupor. Wake people up first to the fact that the media is a propaganda machine. That all the channels don't have identical news because it is the truth but because they are all one entity with a common corporate agenda.

I am not opposed to street protests, in fact the poor access to the the mass media leaves little else other than the vulnerable right wing owned internet. But I am in favor of shifting the focus of street protest, marches and picketts on Government buildings with a view to gain media attention to marches and picketts on media outlets to focus attention of the public on the media. A 24/7 vigil outside Fox corporate offices, studios and local affiliates seems appropriate to me and is a very easy thing to do since it doesn't require travel to D.C. or some other large city, this can be done in shifts that work with people's schedules and so on. Frequent or regular pickets are probably more appropriate than a 24/7 vigil in most cases but Fox is an easy target and number one offender. Rather than gaining media attention hope the corporate media will ignore you and they probably will. Ignorance means to ignore. That is what they do.

"Ignorance is bliss where 'tis folly to be wise"