Non-violent grass roots reform and Democracy: Should Victims Of Illegal Wars Be Able To Influence Our Elections?

It's standard operating procedure for our government to make major decisions that have an impact on people all around the world, often killing thousands, if not millions of people. This is supposedly often done in "defense of freedom and democracy," yet they rarely, if ever, consult with the people impacted by these decisions outside of our country.

This includes refugees currently fleeing from central America and being held in detainment or concentration camps, often refereed to as "illegal aliens." I'm not going to go into the long history of intervention in other countries including Iraq, Central or Latin America etc. (Some sources are listed below), but many of these refugees are victims of past interventions without there consent, in some cases to overthrow Democratically elected governments, including Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Honduras, among many others.

Abraham Lincoln once said, "No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent." This should also involve informed consent, which means that people should have access to education and credible media reports about political activity. If you accept this fundamental concept of democracy then we should be trying to figure out to accommodate people that have been, directly or indirectly, victims of past wars based on lies; instead we're suppressing their right to seek asylum and trying to use many of them for low wage labor without rights allowed for citizens.

No doubt many people might disagree that undocumented immigrants or people in foreign countries should be allowed to participate in our democracy, one way or another, even if they're not allowed to vote; however, we should keep in mid that what the oligarchy will do for us they'll do to us, and in many causes they're already doing that, since the vast majority of the benefits for foreign activities and globalized trade, if not all of it, is going to the richest, while the majority of the public are having their wages suppressed in this rigged system.

A major part of the reason why most people don't understand the fundamentals of democracy and propaganda is because the media repeats the same ideology over and over again and as a famous quote ironically attributed to Vladimir Lenin says, "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth," or at least it seems to. Malcolm X also recognized this when he said “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

What the mainstream media, of course, fails to mention is the fact that they're controlled by six large corporations and the next half a dozen biggest news outlets are all either owned by billionaires as well, or controlled by stockholders, which are mostly millionaires if not billionaires, and they routinely only cover a small fraction of the news or candidates. Some of the best reporting doesn't come from them at all, and in many cases it's often referred to as Russian propaganda even if there's no evidence to prove one way or another.

Many of these allegedly Russian news outlets come up with large amount of reporting that can be independently verified by any rational person, and it's often quite clear that even if the source can't be verified, the reporting is accurate. In many cases they report things that the mainstream media doesn't actually dispute and even admits to in low profile articles; but they often repeat deceptive propaganda over and over again, while those low profile articles are quickly forgotten.

Some of these news outlets reported on the lies that led us into the war with Iraq based on weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. This includes some reporting that was covered months if not years before the preparation for the war by the mainstream media, although they didn't present it as credibly as some alternative media outlets. Both Scott Ritter and Mohamed ElBaradei reported about how Iraqi weapons were mostly if not all destroyed years before the invasion. This was covered in the mainstream media; however they also covered false smears against both of them, often from unreliable sources which they didn't accurately investigate.

After the invasion it was clear that they were right all along, and there was much more to prove that it was based on lies, but mainstream media refused to cover the most credible news or expose the lies until it was too late. The same mainstream media that now tries to present itself as the more reliable source, compared to Trump, also gave him the obsession coverage he needed to get name recognition years before the 2016 election. They also presented Hillary Clinton as the inevitable nominee years before the election, even though both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had incredibly record breaking high negative poll ratings during the primary season.

They refused to cover many other candidates for office, which is part of their routine. They rig elections by only covering candidates they support, which means ones that go along with the agenda fighting wars for one reason or another, whether it's for oil, profits, ideology or some other far-fetched idea. This seems hard for some people who haven't kept up with alternative media outlets to believe, but there's an enormous a mount of evidence to support this conclusion, although some things remain unexplained.

There should be little doubt that the bigger problem isn't Russia interfering with our elections, it's the fact that a small fraction of the public in this country is allowed to control almost all of the mass media and they're rigging elections, and the economy in their own favor.

This was clear even before the alleged Russia hacking to interfere with the elections; but even if you accept this claim, the hacking exposed additional details about how the Democratic Party is colluding with the media to rig the primaries for Hillary Clinton.

Now they're not only using this as an excuse to suppress speech that they suspect is from Russia trolls, but they're also suppressing an enormous number of accounts from people in the United States. Not only are they not limiting their censorship to people from other countries that don't have the right to vote but many of the people in other countries are impacted by our foreign policy and their own governments are often oppressing them as a result of American interference in their elections, assuming they have them at all, in many cases our government is propping up dictators that are violently oppressing their people!

And many of these refugees that are being detained or deported, either on the Mexican border or elsewhere, are fleeing violence that resulted in United States intervention. this includes the seven countries on the travel ban, all of which the United States intervened militarily, either by invading or by overthrowing their governments sometimes democratically elected, or at least elected with far more popular support than the puppet regimes the United Stated installed in many countries, including Iran, which is on the ban.

The citizens of these countries are also subject to oppressive labor practices as a result of United States intervention, and when they migrate to the United states it may not be much better, especially if they're undocumented. Corporations routinely take advantage of their status to suppress their wages and force them to work in hostile work environments. This includes on the property of many wealthy people that are routinely caught hiring undocumented immigrants, including Donald Trump, who had many of them working at his hotels, at least until they were exposed the latest time. Supposedly he fired them and blamed them for their status; but this is part of a pattern of behavior that has been going on for decades, and whenever he gets exposed, he goes through the same routine and after the media stops paying attention he does it again until they expose, him again, so it's virtually guaranteed that although he may have some deported, he only hires more so that he can profit off of people not allowed to participate in the democratic process.

There are plenty of credibility problems with some of the sources that they tribute to Russia; however, in many other cases what these alternative are much better, often exposing the lies that lead us into war, and the leaks that exposed additional information about how the democratic establishment was rigging the primaries for Hillary Clinton, including when Donna Brazile leaked questions to the Hillary campaign, and much more. And of course there'are many examples where alternative media outlets mix in unreliable news with reliable news, which the mainstream media routinely does as well.

This is why we need a diverse media, so that the public can sort through different sources and do their own fact checking. If the mainstream media was really concerned about "Fake News" the most effective response might be to teach people how to recognize propaganda tactics so they can sort it out themselves, since the media can't possibly debunk every false story on the internet. However, if they did a good job at this they might expose their own manipulation tactics, which is presumably why they don't.

Under the current system a small fraction of the public controls a massive amount of propaganda designed to indoctrinate the majority. For the most part it's very effective, although they divide the public into various factions, mostly controlled by demagogues approved by the mainstream media; which essentially mean that although we have the illusion of a debate the leaders are controlled by the same small fraction of wealthy college educated political operatives and media pundits.

There's another small percentage of the public that learns how to check facts, and sort through the propaganda reasonably well, and recognize that our government and the media are manipulating us. This percentage of the public is probably larger than the elites controlling the mass media; however, they don't control large institutions that can get their message across to the public, although some of them do control some of the alternative media outlets, some of which are being demonized as Russian propaganda.

Our leaders would have us believe that if we vote to invade another country based on their lies that we're justified in killing them, including what they call "collateral damage" or innocent men, women and children, yet these men women and children shouldn't be allowed to vote on whether or not we kill them and if they flee their country after the United States supported a coup like in Guatemala, Honduras and many other countries around the world, then they're treated like criminals instead of victims, while some of the same people that are responsible for their oppression also control large corporations that exploit their labor victimizing them again.

We're supposed to believe this political establishment is protecting out democracy?

I certainly agree that we should have disclosure when ever possible from our sources of news; however, that should apply even more to mainstream media than it does to social media since they have a much larger reach than even the most popular Twitter or Facebook accounts; yet, when they were exposed for their fraud, instead of admitting that they were involved in rigging the primaries, which ultimately enabled Donald Trump to get elected and allowing fair coverage for all candidates who run for office they provided an enormous amount of obsessive media coverage to convince the most complacent people that they were justified in rigging the primaries that that the only problem was someone allegedly hacked their computers and exposed what they were doing!

I can't completely guarantee you that some of these accounts aren't from foreign powers; however, even if they are, they're not doing nearly as much damage as the mainstream media, and some of them might be acting to prevent American atrocities by helping elect reasonable candidates that aren't catering to the corrupt oligarchy. This is actually far more rational than terrorist that are so outraged by constant bombing of foreign countries that they go on shooting sprees or the Boston Bombing.

One alleged example that Twitter blocked at least twice, the most recent time appears to be permanent is Jeanette Jing, who had a large following of Bernie Sanders supporters during the 2016 election, and was a very credible source, even if she was anonymous, as she admits. there was a claim that she's actually a gut from Singapore based on a couple of her Tweets, including one that showed two JPGs of Jeanette's tweets one that said "Was great to hang out with Adam's sister Ari," and a picture of a guy and a girl. Jeanette doesn't say who's in the picture which could have been Adam and Ari, or as the author seemed to assume it could have been him with Ari. And another saying "Late salad and soup lunch on a rainy Singapore day. In a strong aircon it feels like the U.K.!" without any more specifics, without additional details I can't rule out the possibility that she might have just been visiting Singapore assuming they're legitimate Tweets.

The person making this claim is clearly a avid opponent of Bernie Sanders, for one reason or another, which indicates as much, if not more, bias against Sanders and Jeanette Jing, and he cited extensive Tweets from Jeanette, including some of her first ones, which most of us probably wouldn't know how to find, raising questions about how he did it, or if he was archiving her form the beginning, which may raise more doubts about his credibility than hers.

However, whether or not she was from a foreign country isn't that important since she wasn't providing any first hand accounts of news instead she did a very good job reporting from reliable sources that could be confirmed independently which is considered acceptable when Twitter accounts supporting establishment candidates do the same thing.

Exactly why they're coming up with such an elaborate scheme to blame Russia for interfering in our election when the political establishment and media are doing far more to rig them by only covering candidates they support, is hard to tell. However, for years the media was in control of a fraction of the public, getting much worse with media consolidation that sped up during Reagan's presidency and peaked when Bill Clinton allowed them to consolidate until there were only six oligarchies controlling over ninety percent of the media. And two of them, Viacom and CBS, have been trying to merge for years, and already have directly interlocking boards of directors, which should be a violation of antitrust laws; the next half a dozen or more larges media outlets including Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, are either owned by billionaires or the New York Times which is also controlled by wealthy stockholders also catering to the richest percent of the public.

The bottom line is that billionaires and multimillionaires control the truth according to the mainstream media; and there are a lot of on line activist trying to create alternative media to let people know how the 1% is rigging the system against us. Whether it's because the online activists are doing a good job; the oligarchy is being incredibly obvious and taking it to extremes; or most likely, a combination of both, leading to massive mistrust of the mainstream media.

Now they're increasing their reliance on censorship to suppress views that challenge the elite narrative, which clearly appears to be a major part of the reason for the demonization of alternative media to justify censoring them. This is being used to censor citizens and foreigners alike including many of the victims of corporate corruption either here or abroad!

There are two things that mainstream politicians can't seem to do; one as Bernie Sanders pointed out is "use dirty words," they can starve children, bomb houses and innocents in wars based on lies but not swearing.

The other one, which even Bernie Sanders doesn't do nearly enough of is speak out about how those that are allowed to participate in the pseudo-democratic process are allowed to suppress the rights of those who aren't allowed to participate! Bernie Sanders does far more to criticize the mainstream media than most politicians but he still doesn't do enough and there are somethings which we have to push at the grassroots level if we're going to convince politicians to do them. Either that or we need major reform enabling those that are willing to speak out on these issues to get enough name recognition to get elected, or better yet some of both. Sanders slogan, "not me us" does far more to motivate the public, and we need to go with this.

I have no doubt that the vast majority of voters don't want to support these wars based on lies or suppress rights of those without political power, with the possible exception of the most racists ones, many of whom are strong Trump supporters. But even those have been raised in an authoritarian manner, teaching them to blindly trust their leaders and blame those without political power for their problems. The reason for that is more than I can go into in this article; but, a large portion of that is because the elites have been studying how to manipulate them for decades!

It's not the immigrants coming to this country or the poor people still in other countries that are causing problems for the working class, including the racist ones; it's the wealthy elites rigging the economy, partly by suppressing voting rights or free speech rights to prevent working class people from educating each other about massive fraud they're carrying out!