Anyone that relies on the traditional commercial media outlets for their information might be aware of the fact that there have been a fair amount of protest movements making the news but they almost certainly won't be familiar with the majority of the details that people are protecting about or how much protests are going on around the world. In order to find out more about this it appears necessary to become familiar with a lot of different alternative media outlets that do a much better job reporting on this even with much fewer resources; or become familiar with where to find good non-fiction books that report on many of the corrupt activities that government and corporations have been conducting.
Most of the biggest frauds don't involve well kept secrets; there are hundreds of books exposing them. Unfortunately the commercial media doesn't report on them much if at all so only those that either take the time to read up on these or those that have help from others, at the grass roots level, who pass this information on to them would be familiar with them. These books include many reports exposing the lies that we have been fighting wars over; books that consider different ideas about fiscal ideology; books that expose many corporate frauds; books exposing methods corporations use to market to people starting at childhood and how it is interfering with eduction; books exposing CIA tactics and environmental destruction and much more. There are literally dozens of books about Wal-Mart alone and although many of them are puff pieces that have almost certainly been at least partially influenced by Wal-Mart executives many more are quite well done and there are a growing number of people that are reading these books and learning about all the corruption that is going on. this would be the same for many other subjects; but the most reliable sources do the best job backing up their claims so once they're subjected to scrutiny, assuming it is fair and accurate they will prove to be the most credible.
Many of the people involved in these protests seem to be familiar with at least some of them and they're trying to get their views across to a growing number of people. The government and the media continue to pretend this isn't happening and they continue to act even more incompetent and dysfunctional. With all this corruption going on and escalating environmental destruction, poverty and military activities based on lies the number of people being effected by it directly is growing and so complacency is shrinking. Also many of these scandals can't go on indefinitely; for example Enron played shell games but they were involved in something similar to a Ponzi scam so it eventually had to become so big that it collapsed; the same went for many other scandals including Bernie Madoff, Bear Stearn's and many others. It is a matter of time before it happens with some of the other bigger scandals. Wal-Mart has already cut so many corners that their products have become so pathetic that their complaints are much higher than most people realize and the damage being done by pollution from the energy companies is much worse. Environmental damage has been escalating throughout the world in areas where there is little or no political power and this can't go on forever especially with the escalation of natural disasters going on.
Current policies being implemented simply can't go on indefinitely and there are alternatives although the commercial media isn't covering them. The inevitable result may be that eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later, we will have to implement major reforms and make many of the most important decisions on rational facts, or at least the closet thing we can come to or there will be an escalation in the destruction of the environment and democratic system.
If the current establishment wants to avoid this then they are going to have to escalate efforts to suppress information and it could lead to an escalating amount of censorship or at least attempts to censor. In fact there is some indication that this has already happening, although a lot of it is incompetent and it has backfired at least when it comes to those that have paid attention to the alternative media outlets that have exposed these attempts. Escalating the denial of reasons why "terrorists" keep attacking us could lead to an escalating amount of violence as well; and if some of the most extreme factions have their way, which fortunately I don't expect, violence against opponents will continue to incite more violence until it escalates so much that when ever we successfully kill a "terrorist" two or more will be incited so it won't end until either we rethink things or we wipe out all of the opposing view points through violence.
My best guess is that these two extremes won't happen or they won't get to far before a growing number of people start speaking out against them. In fact this is already happening and some of it is slowly making it's way into the the commercial media although the best material remains only in alternative outlets. A more likely possibility is that some of the "progressives," as presented by the commercial media attempt to implement a token amount of reform and give credit, primarily to those high profile "progressives" that the commercial media presents to us without acknowledging most of the grass roots protests that has slowly made it clear that without even that token amount of reform the commercial media would lose the last shreds of credibility that they have left.
There are numerous signs that they're already trying to do this. One of the clearer of these signs is a Melissa Harris Perry propaganda piece where she talks about how her daddy used to close his notes to her by saying, "the struggle continues." Her take on this is that we constantly try to reform things and we get a little done at a time and keep on trying, or something like that. "But what" this propaganda "means and what I've taken as my own" is that by repeating this message over and over again without providing an enormous amount of higher quality reporting she is setting herself up to take credit for changes along with other "progressives" from the commercial media and attempting to prepare the public to settle for the moderate changes that they present to us, without pushing for the more extensive reforms that we need due to the extreme positions that our government has been taking and the enormous amount of environmental damage that is already escalating and other social and economic problems including a major deterioration in constitutional rights already going on.
Many alternative media outlets have clearly indicated that there are opportunities for major reforms, not just the token ones that the "progressives" presented by the commercial media have promoted; and if they had their chance to get their views across to the majority there would be a good chance of implementing them.
One of the most blatant examples of how incompetent the commercial media has become is how much time it sells to the oil companies that have been putting about an enormous amount of propaganda presenting themselves as good corporate citizens that are concerned about our economy and protecting the environment and how little coverage they present about the enormous amount of environmental damage they've been causing. Real environmentalists don't have much if any chance to present their views on the commercial media, due to the fact that, for all practical purposes, the truth according to the commercial media is for sale to the highest bidder regardless of the facts. In all fairness they do occasionally cover some of the accidents when they occur; but they don't cover them nearly as well as they could or should; and they certainly don't provide the public with a well organized list of the enormous volume of these accidents; instead what they do is report them one at a time as isolated incidents and most people forget the vast majority of them before the next one happens so they don't realize how many there are. On at least one occasion I did a search of the internet that was far from complete and quickly built up a surprising list of oil spills or tanker explosions and listed them on the blog post BP is just the tip of the iceberg. this only lists a fraction of the oil explosions and there are many other types of environmental damages that could be further reported and they would easily turn up as much damage for them as well by searching for things like deforestation, coal disasters, nuclear disasters and many other types of pollution. (Additional blogs of mine that cover this include Environmental Apocalypse and Natural Born Killers of the Planet; and of course many environmental outlets report much more on the subject.)
However on at least one occasion when three of the organizations much fewer resources attempted to get their view across with a much lower budget that could only buy a small amount of air time the commercial media was intimidated by a possible law suit from ExxonMobil as reported by Marcia G. Yerman in “ExxonMobil Hates Your Children” and This Ad. If you look at it technically ExxonMobil almost certainly doesn't hate children; however they care much more about their profits than the lives of children, many of which continue to die as a result of the pollution they cause and many more of which will die in the future if they continue business as usual. the result is that ExxonMobil and the other oil companies can continue dictating their version of the truth to the public without much if any opposing views assuming the public relies solely on the commercial media for information. However as these stories get out it becomes increasingly obvious that the public clearly can't rely on the commercial media for their information and they're losing the last of their credibility.
This is just one of many examples where they have attempted to suppress the truth and to some degree they succeed, at least when it comes to what they present in the commercial media but every time they do this it is reported in alternative media outlet and the commercial media loses a little more credibility. Sometime this even happens when it comes to outlets that are considered alternative media outlets like Facebook which was forced to restore a couple accounts and they were exposed for extreme censorship attempts. This was reported in Facebook Censors Freedom Of Expression - Mom Who Protests Genetically-Modified Food which cites Facebook wages censorship war against moms of autistic children who protest GMOs: Exclusive interview with Andrea Lalama. The account is now apparently back up with explanations about how they were censored at "Reversing Autism" by Andrea Lalama (Facebook) A similar incident occurred with Natural News' account when Facebook bans Gandhi quote as part of revisionist history purge and they had to restore that account as well. the fact that they aren't completely suppressing these incidents indicates that it is backfiring in the long run although in the short run they may have some degree of success with those that still rely on the commercial media.
Similar incidents may eventually backfire when it comes to the way they continue to fight the so-call "war on terror;" although in this cases the short term repercussions could lead to potential divisions that could have serious results that many might not recognize as easily for emotional reasons; but fortunately many others do recognize this and they're attempting to point out the double standards of our government. One example of this is the recent Woolwich incident where two "terrorists" ran down a soldier and hacked him to death.
Glenn Greenwald raised some difficult questions about whether or not this should be considered terrorism if we use a consistent definition of terrorism in, Was the London killing of a British soldier 'terrorism'? One of his doubts is based on the assumption that terrorism is defined as attacking civilians that aren't involved in combat and since this soldier was involved in combat he doesn't fit the category but when we kill their civilians one way or another it is called "collateral damage." He allows for other definitions of terrorism but no matter which one you pick there is a problem of a double standard when they apply it one way to them and a different way to us. He also indicates that they clearly won't overlook the double standard so if we continue to then this problem will only escalate and we will never end this "war on terrorism" without either reconsidering our tactics or escalating to genocide eventually. Fortunate sine there are enough people, at least in some of the alternative outlets, speaking out about this, hopefully more rational views will be considered before it is too late. Mark Crispin Miller was also little more blunt when he changed the title to the same article to “Why do they hate us?” Because we keep killing them, stupid!
Even though there tactics were clearly unjustified and other tactics would be far more effective when enough people participate in them, they got one thing right our so-called leaders "don’t care about" about us.
“We swear by Almighty Allah, we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. The only reasons we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We apologize that woman had to see this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don’t care about you.” Complete article
If our government did care about us as much as they imply with their propaganda they wouldn't be giving us all this propaganda without allowing opposing views to have a fair chance to explain some of the inconvenient facts that the government and the commercial media don't cover adequately. If they cared as much as the implied they wouldn't give overwhelming preferential treatment to corporations that are involved in epidemic levels of corporate fraud, or use this amazing double standard when it comes to defining terrorism and rights to free speech and many other things. When Mayor Bloomberg spoke about the letter recently sent to him he claimed that he felt safe and that there were always some kind of threats; this is presumably because he has access to an enormous amount of security to defend him, which the vast majority of us don't have. He isn't the only one with enormous amounts of security, of course, many of the other business leaders and politicians that make all the decisions also have an enormous amount of security so they don't have to worry to much about these death threats.
The soldiers that they hire to do all their fighting for them don't have all that security nor do most citizens. In fact the people with the least say in how our government usually have the least amount of protection. the government provides much more protection to those with political power even when they're involved in an enormous amount of white collar crime, or some times even worse, when they provide funds for violent regimes like the oil companies and many other corporations that deal with violent dictators. When there soldiers do leave they don't receive nearly as much help whether it is security or access to employment or even health care and many of them are left homeless. First they recruit people with few choices, partly due to the infective economic system, then they indoctrinate them and train them to follow orders based on lies; then when they no longer have a use for them they abandon them. In many cases like in Abu Ghraib when they do follow orders based on lies they even leave them to take the blame without holding those that gave the orders accountable.
We're supposed to believe that an establishment that behaves like this cares about us?
This "terrorist" was right about the fact that they don't care about us but that doesn't mean that his methods ale likely to work; in fact they run a major risk of escalating the conflicts and there are many in power that might be inclined to try to use this as an excuse to clamp down violently against many dissenters, possibly even the peaceful ones which they have demonstrated that they don't care about either be continuing to ignore them.
When Michael Moore said "I am outraged that we can't kill people in other counties without them trying to kill us!" he had a major point as indicated by some of the examples that Glenn Greenwald pointed out in his article and many more that those who keep up with alternative media outlets might be aware of. One the responses to this said, "Look Michael unless we are killing them for the wrong reasons, I really don't want to hear about it." this might be more common among many closed minded people that have been paying to much attention to the propaganda; and the clear response to this is that we are "killing them for the wrong reasons," and if this person was paying attention he would know it.
Unfortunately he isn't alone; since then there have been anti-Muslim protests that don't seem to acknowledge these inconvenient facts. If to many people increase the opposition and violence against Muslims and others that disagree with us it could only escalate and, if unchecked, it could even lead to genocide; fortunately as I said before I don't expect this to happen but the reason is because there are plenty of people like Glen Greenwald and Michael Moore speaking out about it and even though they don't have as much air time as the commercial media I suspect that in the end they will eventually get their views across and many of them will stand up to scrutiny.
There is an enormous amount of news in alternative media outlets that could provide alternatives to the current situation and if enough people read them or for those less inclined to read them if they have help from sincere people who do and relay some of this information to them then there could be a major opportunity for reform. If they don't then it could deteriorate badly. this isn't the first time we have wound up in a similar situation but many people aren't doing a very good job learning from history. Harry Truman recognized some of these same problems in 1950 when he made the following statements as part of a speech to congress; unfortunately not all of his policies avoided panic but some of them at least tried to.
photo source
Harry S. Truman: Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States. August 8, 1950
Soon after our Government began functioning under the Constitution, there was enacted, in 1798, the group of legislative acts known as the Alien and Sedition Laws. These laws were ostensibly designed to prevent activities which would undermine the Nation's safety and independence. But in fact they were broad enough--and were used--to imprison many leading citizens, including a Member of Congress, who expressed disagreement with the policies of the Administration then in office.
The Alien and Sedition Laws were so repugnant to the free spirit of our people that they played an important part in the disappearance of the Federalist Party, which sponsored them, and the objectionable features of these laws were shortly repealed or allowed to expire. That experience taught us a great lesson: that extreme and arbitrary security measures strike at the very heart of our free society, and that we must be eternally vigilant against those who would undermine freedom in the name of security.
Since the time of the Alien and Sedition Laws, there have been recurrent periods-especially in wartime-when the safety of our Nation has been in danger. Each of these occasions has confronted us with a new set of conditions, to which we have had to adjust our internal security laws and procedures.
At the same time, each of these periods of danger has been seized on by those who, in good faith or bad, would severely limit the freedom of our people in a misguided attempt to gain greater security. As we look back now, we can see that there have been certain times when we have, to some extent, repudiated our own ideals of freedom in an excess of zeal for our safety. Nevertheless, it is a tribute to the strong faith and common sense of our people that we have never for long been misled by the hysterical cries of those who would suppress our Constitutional freedoms.
The present period is one of the times in which it has been necessary to adjust our security measures to new circumstances. .....
Nevertheless, there are some people who wish us to enact laws which would seriously damage the right of free speech and which could be used not only against subversive groups but against other groups engaged in political or other activities which were not generally popular. Such measures would not only infringe on the Bill of Rights and the basic liberties of our people; they would also undermine the very internal security they seek to protect.
Laws forbidding dissent do not prevent subversive activities; they merely drive them into more secret and more dangerous channels. Police states are not secure; their history is marked by successive purges, and growing concentration camps, as their governments strike out blindly in fear of violent revolt. Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
We must, therefore, be on our guard against extremists who urge us to adopt police state measures. Such persons advocate breaking down the guarantees of the Bill of Rights in order to get at the communists. They forget that if the Bill of Rights were to be broken down, all groups, even the most conservative, would be in danger from the arbitrary power of government.
Legislation is now pending before the Congress which is so broad and vague in its terms as to endanger the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly protected by the First Amendment. Some of the proposed measures would, in effect, impose severe penalties for normal political activities on the part of certain groups, including communists and communist party-line followers. This kind of legislation is unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous. ...... Complete speech
Soon after our Government began functioning under the Constitution, there was enacted, in 1798, the group of legislative acts known as the Alien and Sedition Laws. These laws were ostensibly designed to prevent activities which would undermine the Nation's safety and independence. But in fact they were broad enough--and were used--to imprison many leading citizens, including a Member of Congress, who expressed disagreement with the policies of the Administration then in office.
The Alien and Sedition Laws were so repugnant to the free spirit of our people that they played an important part in the disappearance of the Federalist Party, which sponsored them, and the objectionable features of these laws were shortly repealed or allowed to expire. That experience taught us a great lesson: that extreme and arbitrary security measures strike at the very heart of our free society, and that we must be eternally vigilant against those who would undermine freedom in the name of security.
Since the time of the Alien and Sedition Laws, there have been recurrent periods-especially in wartime-when the safety of our Nation has been in danger. Each of these occasions has confronted us with a new set of conditions, to which we have had to adjust our internal security laws and procedures.
At the same time, each of these periods of danger has been seized on by those who, in good faith or bad, would severely limit the freedom of our people in a misguided attempt to gain greater security. As we look back now, we can see that there have been certain times when we have, to some extent, repudiated our own ideals of freedom in an excess of zeal for our safety. Nevertheless, it is a tribute to the strong faith and common sense of our people that we have never for long been misled by the hysterical cries of those who would suppress our Constitutional freedoms.
The present period is one of the times in which it has been necessary to adjust our security measures to new circumstances. .....
Nevertheless, there are some people who wish us to enact laws which would seriously damage the right of free speech and which could be used not only against subversive groups but against other groups engaged in political or other activities which were not generally popular. Such measures would not only infringe on the Bill of Rights and the basic liberties of our people; they would also undermine the very internal security they seek to protect.
Laws forbidding dissent do not prevent subversive activities; they merely drive them into more secret and more dangerous channels. Police states are not secure; their history is marked by successive purges, and growing concentration camps, as their governments strike out blindly in fear of violent revolt. Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
We must, therefore, be on our guard against extremists who urge us to adopt police state measures. Such persons advocate breaking down the guarantees of the Bill of Rights in order to get at the communists. They forget that if the Bill of Rights were to be broken down, all groups, even the most conservative, would be in danger from the arbitrary power of government.
Legislation is now pending before the Congress which is so broad and vague in its terms as to endanger the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly protected by the First Amendment. Some of the proposed measures would, in effect, impose severe penalties for normal political activities on the part of certain groups, including communists and communist party-line followers. This kind of legislation is unnecessary, ineffective, and dangerous. ...... Complete speech
As Mark Crisin Miller says They’re protesting austerity all over Europe (and it’s not reported all over America) and there are many more protests all around the world as well, including many in the USA which aren't being reported. these include many protests in countries that rarely ahd protest due to the threat of repressions, including Cambodia and Bangladesh and many other places. And in some cases, perhaps most notably, South and Central America they have been holding a lot of trials that exposed the wrong doings of the past death squads in those countries and this will inevitably lead to exposing the participation of the US government, if it hasn't already done so. These trials have gone on in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina and there may have even been some land reform in some of the more violent countries including Columbia according to some recent news reports although I haven't been able to keep track of all of them. The important thing is that some people are and as Melissa Harris Perry's father might say "the struggle continues" but there seems to be enough educational information going on and protest that indicate that major and real reforms, not just token reform might be a possibility.
Some of these protest are already leading to reforms, or at least discussions and if the more rational ideas are allowed they could lead to real reform.
URGENT: "We will die. We will not leave without being heard."
Live from the Amazon: Indigenous Leaders Arrive in Brasília "In an unprecedented step, the Brazilian government has met protestors' demands by flying the entire indigenous occupation – as well as their legal council and accompanying journalists – from Altamira to Brasilia to dialogue with President Rousseff's Chief of Staff Gilberto Carvalho and other high officials and ministers."
The following are just a partial sample of sources that provide either news or more in depth books that could help lead to major reform. and there are many more at many alternative media outlets some of which are listed here.
The American Empire Project
The Ralph Nader Library
Mayflower Oil Spill: Exxon Doesn’t Want You to Know People Are Getting Very, Very Sick
Freedom Rider: Chickens Roost in Woolwich
In this case, the IRS did nothing wrong, whereas the press did almost nothing right
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