Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda. 4 of 4.

By Carl Herman, National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history, who blogs as the Nonpartisan Examiner at Examiner.com. Carl was one of the leaders who launched the microcredit movement, and is a tireless activist for peace and justice.

Don't be confused by the title. Carl - like all of us at Washington's Blog - is against violent revolution, following instead the non-violent paths of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. As we have previously written:

I am NOT calling for the overthrow of the government. In fact, I am calling for the reinstatement of our government. I am calling for an end to lawlessness and lack of accountability and a return to the rule of law. Rather than trying to subvert the constitution, I am calling for its enforcement.

My friend and colleague for justice, Washington’s Blog’s author, invited me to “guest blog.” I’ll provide two. First: Gandhi’s conclusion of the essential importance of speaking Truth. Second: a 4-part series to document that current US wars are unlawful, US economic policy is massive criminal fraud, and that these “emperor has no clothes” facts are lied about by US corporate media in constant deception.

I appreciate Washington’s Blog’s author for the intellectual integrity and moral courage to document powerful facts; as I appreciate readers’ thoughts, words, and acts of virtue - Carl Herman

“We denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Duties: The Extremes of Good and Evil, 44 BCE, translated by H. Rackham (1914).

Revolution is from the Latin, revolutio, a “turn around” of political power.

The US public would revolt and end unlawful US wars and banksters’ rigged-casino fraud if they understood and embraced the central facts of these issues. This four-part series of articles provides the central facts, invites passionate public response, and proposes specific revolutionary public action.

Please share the Revolution to end unlawful US wars and return trillions of our dollars to constructive work. With millions of lives at stake (perhaps billions), there is nothing more important for public participation.

Part 1: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, parasitic/criminal economics

Part 2: Open proposal for US revolution: end unlawful wars, all begun with lies

Part 3: Open proposal for US revolution: end parasitic and criminal economics

Part 4: Open proposal for US revolution: expose corporate media as propaganda

These four articles are academic in language and documentation. My citizen advocacy paper, Government by dicts, has additional resources.

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Why corporate media propagandizes and won’t expose the “emperor has no clothes” obvious: They’re complicit with government “leadership” is the prima facie explanation. Let’s examine this important question more closely.

Much of the factual evidence I provided was probably new and surprising. Given the importance of the information in this paper, verifiable factual credibility, and expert testimony to promote it, the fact that corporate media will not comprehensively report it is circumstantial evidence of collusion to support unlawful government policies. Circumstantial evidence is not definitive, but will raise your eyebrows to ask why you haven’t been informed from corporate media sources.

We have verified history of official government propaganda having infiltrated corporate media. The Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony that over 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in what they called Operation Mockingbird. This stunning testimony was then confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research and reporting. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article and it became the cover-story for Rolling Stone. Bernstein provides additional information of CIA control in the Senate report and corporate media subsequent reporting:

“Pages 191 to 201 were entitled “Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.”

Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.”

Let’s consider the specific case of corporate media collusion with official government rhetoric to lie about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s October 2005 speech and contrive a non-existent physical threat to Israel. First: for the US political leaders and corporate media to accuse the president of Iran with threatening to destroy Israel, that’s the most serious of accusations. A threat of national destruction is the most vicious statement a head of state can make. For corporate media to not be in collusion to “report” this proven lie would have to mean that everyone involved in the story never read the speech in question, never consulted with Persian experts, and disregarded all people like me who informed them of their egregious error. Again, here’s my link of corporate media’s “reporting” in print and television allowing US political leaders to lie and repeating the lie themselves.

Of course, you have to verify the speech in order to not interpret the facts as a mistranslation or possible translation. This is appropriately analogous to checking the instant replay of the pitch at the baseball game to make sure it really was so outrageously outside the strike-zone that an “official” call that the pitch was a strike is stating a known lie. If it was an immediate error, it could and should have been corrected. That six years have passed and corporate media doesn’t inform Americans of the actual content and context of the speech is absolute evidence of an official propaganda arm of the same oligarchy spinning for unlawful war against Iran.

I’ve written articles providing evidence for obvious war propaganda to attack Iran identical to what we witnessed before the US attacked Iraq. From my article on CNN’s “reporting”:

When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo for war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news.

For another specific example, Mike Wallace of the famed television show 60 Minutes won an Emmy for a contrived interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2006, where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments encouraging democracy for Palestinians was edited to appear that he was hostile to Israel. You can verify this “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies and propaganda by watching the brief 5-minute clip for yourself in this article.

"Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media," a paper published from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, found from the 1930s to 2004 that The New York Times reported waterboarding as torture 82% of the time, and The Los Angeles Times did so 96%. After stories broke that the US was waterboarding "detainees" in US unlawful wars, the papers' reporting of waterboarding as torture dropped to 1% and 5%, respectfully. In addition, after the US admitted to waterboarding, The Wall Street Journal called it torture in just 1 of 63 articles (2%), and USA Today never called it torture.

Just as only one in five Americans report trust and satisfaction with their government, Americans also perceive corporate media disinformation and are rejecting their “reporting.” According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their latest poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.”

A June 2010 Rasmussen poll found 66% of voters "angry" at the media, with 33% "very angry." Rasmussen also found 70% "angry" at current federal government policies.

The genesis of oligarchic control of American major media was reported in the US Congressional Record in 1917. US Congressperson Oscar Callaway claimed evidence that J.P. Morgan had purchased editorial control over 25 of the nation's most influential publications in order to create public support for US entry into World War 1 and his new banking legislative victory: creation of the Federal Reserve system. Mr. Callaway's colleagues voted down an official investigation.

Related history is summarized and documented in this brief article, "The news media at war."

Importantly, it is also likely that disinformation programs infiltrate the comments of independent writers, like this source that you’re reading. Don’t be surprised if my proposal for Revolution attracts propagandistic attack of predictable rhetorical fallacies such as slurs of my character, straw-man arguments of what I write, denial of facts, lies of omission of central facts, and whatever other BS (thank you, Professor Frankfurt). The discerning characteristic of all propaganda is non-factual bravado and specious argument in order to maintain manipulative control of an agenda and distract attention from the damning facts.

You, the reader, are sharp enough to discern such propaganda.

The specific pathway for Revolution will be created as Dr. King and Gandhi discovered: through trial and error. What we’ve learned through their process is broad public and political communication of the facts and appropriate formal policy requests to honor what we’ve already won under the law. I’m among several who champion a policy strategy of an American Truth and Reconciliation process. When one confirms the lies for war and economic fraud, the obvious conclusion is that “leadership” of both parties are so deeply involved in criminal acts that perhaps the best response is to split those willing for a “Scrooge conversion” to disclose critical facts in exchange for no prosecution.

Martin King and Mohandas Gandhi demonstrated in their campaigns that transformative civic education causes a critical mass of educated people for breakthroughs in history-altering public policy. The public benefits of Revolution are the end of unlawful US wars and turning trillions of our dollars from unlawful fraudulent profits of an oligarchy to the public good of Americans producing the real economic value.

Again, imagine: how could you have helped the Civil Rights movement if Dr. King had asked? What would you have done if Gandhi asked for your help?

In the converse: would you be proud today of rejecting Dr. King’s direct invitation for partnership in a Revolution for Civil Rights when he was only asking for public education on the clear letter and spirit of the 14thAmendment? Would you be proud today of rejecting Gandhi’s direct request for partnership in civic revolution to end the evils of unwanted imperialism by the strong against the weak?

This is how Mr. Gandhi and Dr. King saw their civic educational challenge:

"One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding… can be removed."

- Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion(1 October 1903)

“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

I do not place myself in Gandhi and Dr. King’s company, and I assume that neither do you. But I do suggest that We the People are like in spirit and will stand for Revolution in the face of War Criminals and destruction of trillions of families’ and children’s dollars.

In consideration for Revolution, you should also know that the King family's civil trial found the US government guilty of Dr. King's assassination. US Corporate media refused to cover the trial or interview Dr. King's wife. His family's opinion is that the US government murdered Dr. King to end his protests against unlawful US wars and his call to end poverty.

In conclusion: The century within which we were all born witnessed over 250 million human beings slaughtered by governments in war and atrocities. War is used as a continuous “foreign policy,” with the US in present egregious and unlawful abuse of their superpower status. History will judge when Americans developed the education competence to evolve beyond endless wars.

You can help make that time now.

Revolution in the steps from Gandhi and MLK are simple to understand:

1. Because the facts are so easily verified and all on our side, education of anyone and everyone is one component. This will become a sophisticated and multi-front campaign similar to the Civil Rights Movement.
2. Create public and political will. Gandhi demanded political independence of India. Dr. King demanded equal treatment under the law. Millions of Americans informed of the facts can and should demand an end of unlawful war, return of Constitutional rights, and the end of parasitic criminal fraud of trillions of our dollars every year. The fact of "emperor has no clothes" obvious UNLAWFUL war is a trigger for those of us with Oaths to defend the US Constitution to refuse all orders for unlawful war and act for the arrest of those who issue them.
3. An elegant way for peaceful surrender of War Criminals and “banksters.” I’m a leader for the education and promotion of Truth and Reconciliation to exchange full factual disclosure and return of public assets for no prosecution. Those who decline will be prosecuted after the window of Truth and Reconciliation closes.

There are related issues with war, economic oligarchy, and propaganda that can and should be included in this proposal for Revolution. To keep this paper relatively brief, I’ve kept the topics limited. These related issues include torture, unlimited detention, extrajudicial assassination (all of which are unconstitutionally applied, including to American citizens), unaccountable elections on electronic voting machines that exit poll data prove are "fixed," and more; all or which cannot exist in a society worthy of the title, “free.”

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government."

- US Declaration of Independence. July 4, 1776.