Towing the Line with the Mainstream Media

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
- Benjamin Franklin

“The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.”

Noam Chomsky

As Chomsky accurately pointed out – merely stating what should be obvious – the major media set the boundaries of acceptable discussion. They serve the function, among others, of saying in effect, “Thus far, and no further.” To step outside these parameters is thus implicitly portrayed as stepping off the edge of the earth. Beyond these bounds we enter the irrational, lunatic fringe. However, as also should be obvious, the bounds of discussion are extraordinarily narrow. Five corporations control network media in the U.S., six in Canada. They share a common perspective and present an extremely narrow range of views. Major issues are framed within a common lens of spin, omission of certain critical, salient facts, and outright distortion. Other major issues are not covered at all, or buried on page 39, in a minor note, right next to a recipe for oatmeal porridge or some other riveting feature. It should go without saying that if we allow the corporate media to set the parameters of discussion, we are lost.

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the media.

Noam Chomsky

It is now a matter of public record that the U.S. government has contracted out to Haliburton subsidiary KBR to build detention centers in America. KBR itself announced this in their own press release, stating that the contract is “open-ended” in terms of time-frame and scale. This should be worrisome. We remember that detention centers have been built – and used – before. In the U.S. and Canada during the second world war, the Japanese detention centers left a horrible and grotesque legacy. And of course, we have the chilling memory of the Nazi prison camps. When the U.S. government, already moving rapidly in the direction of fascism, as any sane observer recognizes, starts building detention centers, we should take this as noteworthy. This is newsworthy, or nothing is. But if the major media don’t cover it, then we all feel it is unacceptable to talk about it.

It is now a matter of public record – not theory – that the executive branches of the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments, along with at least three extremely powerful corporate lobby groups, have begun, under the signed agreement called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), what is being called a “dialogue” to create “full regulatory harmonization” and “deep integration” within “Fortress North America” in “the new security environment.” This is a program that is far more broad and ambitious than NAFTA, CAFTA or the FTAA, yet it is being met with almost complete silence by the mainstream media. Are we to then accept that such a major program, which is being carried out without Congressional or Parliamentary oversight or debate, which will redefine the economies, military and security structures, laws, regulations, borders and political process of the three nations, is not fit for public discussion, is not a legitimate topic of debate or dialogue, is beyond the range of acceptable discourse? The answer is, of course - or should be - obvious.

If we concede to the major media setting the bounds of discussion, and thus accept that these are the limits to rational or legitimate dialogue, then we have conceded defeat. Must we accept such narrow and arbitrary terms on the bounds of sane and reasonable discourse? What are we, men and women, or cattle?

“Half the American population no longer reads
newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.”
- Gore Vidal

“If words were invented to conceal thought,
newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.” - Thoreau

“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele.” - Ben Bagdikian

“If you don't want to work, become a reporter. That awful power, the public opinion of the nation, was created by a horde of self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditch and shoemaking and fetched up journalism on their way to poorhouse.” - Mark Twain

“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.” - G B Shaw

"The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer." - HL Mencken

“If you're not careful the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” - Malcolm X

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers…[A despotic] government always [keeps] a king of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or what should look like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”

- Thomas Jefferson, 1785

“I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time.” - Thomas Jefferson

“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he who’s mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” - Thomas Jefferson

As my father used to say, if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you follow? Or more directly, if everyone else is content to eat shit sandwiches, do we have to do the same? Why do we tune into the corporate media at all? Surely we are more intelligent than this. I believe most are. And polls show that the great majority of people have a pretty clear sense of what’s going on; and further more, have a high degree of skepticism about the major media. Why then do we continue to tune in, to eat this stuff up, or to allow the mass media to define the parameters of debate and discussion? I have to guess, or conclude, that it is a matter of group think. Heaven forbid that we deviate from the herd.

“In matters of style, swim with the current;
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

- Thomas Jefferson

As every intelligent observer knows, mainstream media in Canada and the U.S. are either corporate owned or corporate dominated, due to dependency on advertising revenues. As such, we cannot be surprised to find a very narrow range of perspective and a remarkable commonality of spin across the mass media, with disinformation, distortion and omission of vital information being the norm.

The independent media in general do an excellent job of broadening the range of discussion and covering issues that are under-reported by the corporate media monopolies, but there are areas where the independent media also fall short. The SPP is one glaring example.

What I’d like to suggest is that we keep the obvious in mind at all times: if we are writers, bloggers, independent journalists or media workers, or for that matter, anyone who is involved with or interested in the actual goings on in our world, we must not allow the mainstream media to set the parameters of legitimate public discourse.

Nor can we allow the mainstream media – the corporate-dominated media – to set the tone. The tone in the mass media is tepid, timid, blasé, and not truly objective at all. The media gets itself worked up into a frenzy in order to vilify the proper enemies, or pronounce the corporate party line, but when it comes to reporting or commenting on the short-comings or failures of business as usual and the party line, the best they can muster is a valium stupor of spiritless, apathetic hand-wringing – and this only when the far more common response of rationalization, justification, spin and denial are not the reaction. Genocide in Africa, the race toward ecological self-destruction, risk of nuclear confrontation over Iran or other conflicts, the institutionalization of war crimes as defined by international law, the legalization and routine, systemic use of torture, the destruction of constitutional rights and liberties: these are just a few examples of subjects that demand more than a luke-warm response; at least, that is, if we are to retain our human decency, if we are to address ourselves to the issues in a sane or humane manner, or if we are to introduce into the debate and discussion any of these qualities.

Call it like it is. Euphemistic, wishy-washy reporting and commentary smacks of either intellectual timidity or simple laziness, as well as moral cowardice. The people I admire most in terms of writers are those who have a marked intelligence, or more simply, a basic clarity of mind, and far more importantly, a deep sense of compassion, combined with a willingness to frankly speak the truth, even when it is unpopular to do so. Chomsky, and even more so, Thoreau, come to mind along with others. What we need to hear more of is people speaking plainly and intelligently, with compassion, and also with spine. Journalism that sparks little more passionate response than three day old porridge is not what we need. The usual skirting of issues and bland hedging, is about as effectual at addressing the issues we face as is making love in a wet suit.

In either case, if we allow the mainstream media to set the parameters of debate, the framing of the issue, the bounds of discussion; or to set the tone of public discourse - then we are lost.

As should be self-evident, the relevant facts and evidence must be brought forth, even if this is outside the bounds of discussion as defined by the dominant corporate-controlled media; and the tone of our dialogue must be at least somewhat more impassioned than what is set as the norm of reasonable discussion by the same dominant media forces. To do otherwise is to lose before beginning.

Effective action, or even simple integrity, can be based only upon truth, and courage to speak the truth. It also requires a willingness to meet the issues of the day with more than a banal and blasé spiritlessness, pretending to objectivity, neutrality or “balance”. We need to break the barriers of the media monopolies, and firstly, within our own minds and discourse.

J. Todd Ring

April 10, 2007

Useful links:

Manufacturing Consent

Necessary Illusions

Thoreau's "On Civil Disobedience"

Amazon.com: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies: Books: Noam Chomsky

Democracy Now!

Free Speech TV

Big Picture TV

oneworld tv<

Project Censored

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Who Owns The Media?"

Your Media: Preserve Freedom, Diversity, Independence

Imperial Hubris and Bzezinski's Second Chance

I'm not sure what Bzezinski's intentions are with his recent scathing criticisms of the Washington neocons. Has he had a genuine change of heart? Is he now opposed to imperial warfare? Or is he merely questioning the strategy of Bush and company in pursuing the natural prerogatives and noble objectives of empire?

This is the man who, in 1998, in a Paris interview, said he had no regrets as to having orchestrated the CIA funding, arming and training of Al Queda in Afghanistan, for the purpose of luring the Soviet Union into "their own Vietnam" - a war they could not win, that would cause destabilization of the Soviet regime, and hopefully contribute to its ultimate downfall. "Zbig" was the man who, as National Security Adviser to Carter, dreamed up and implemented the creation of the Mujahadeen. Imperial warfare is his specialty.

He is now getting up there in years, possibly reflecting on his life, and maybe has had a serious change of heart. Maybe this is Zbig's "second chance" - reflecting the title of his most recent book (which is ostensibly about America's second chance). Or maybe he is still the same old coldly calculating imperial strategist, and simply believes that the Bush administration is making bad strategic decisions in the rightful pursuit of continued global dominance. After all, he did write, explicitly in the foreword to his 1994 book, The Grand Chessboard, that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. emerged as the world's "first and only truly global superpower" - and that his intentions in writing this book were to outline precisely what must be done in order to maintain U.S. global dominance. He even said, we will have to "harken back to a more brutal imperial age."

If I were to take a pessimistic view, the following might be said. I'm not sure if this is accurate, not knowing the man personally, but here is one possible interpretation, and a rather skeptical one.

Brzezinski is railing now at the Bush order, not out of some new-found moral fervour, but because he is a died-in-the-wool strategist, and feels Bush is making poor strategic decisions. He wants the empire to flourish – zeig heil! – and knows the neocon gambit may cost the corporate elite the whole game. He’s in for the long haul, and wants to see a win – for the elite that he has so ruthlessly, mercilessly, shrewdly and with Machiavellian flair, supported and aided and abetted for years and decades, with all of his cunning and sophisticated strategic thinking.

What is interesting is not his new-found moral fervour, or ostensible morality, but his awareness and open statements about the turning tide: the world is changing, the game is being lost; the sea of humanity is rising up, and the BRIC alliance as well - though less importantly - threatens the global hegemony of the corporatist powers of the West.

Whatever Bzezinski's intentions are - and I don't follow his words or actions closely enough to know - his recent statements at least make three things clear. One, the Washington neoconservatives are engaging in imperial warfare in a manner that is full of foolish hubris and bespeaks imperial over-reach, according to Brzezinski; and I think we would have to agree. Bzezinski's argument seems to be that if such over-reach and hubris is followed, the American empire may collapse completely. Not a bad thing, if you ask the vast majority of the world's people, but a result that Bush and company certainly did not intend.

Second, a shift in global power is occurring, and the U.S. does not have the hegemony it once had. Brzezinski notes two major challenges to U.S. global hegemony. The first challenge is the rising power of Asia and the South, particularly the BRIC alliance - Brazil, Russia, India, China and others. The U.S. economy, as well as that of the EU, and the entire Western-based corporate empire as a whole, is rapidly being eclipsed by the rising giants of the BRIC alliance.

Thirdly, the second threat to U.S. hegemony, and the one that is more profound, is from that group referred to by the business press as "the other superpower" - the world's citizenry.

Whatever Brzezinski's motives, his warnings to the U.S. government on these three points should be read loud and clear - coming from a top level long-term strategic planner for the U.S. and Western business and political elite, we should take note. The end of the American empire is in sight. The end of empire per se may even be in sight. With the rising superpower of global citizen's movements, we may have an end to imperial warfare in our lifetimes, and perhaps soon. This is, in truth, a cause for hope.

I hope Brzezinski has in fact had a change of heart. But in any case, the real news is not the messenger, but the message. The tide has turned.


Brzezinski now:

YouTube - Brzezinski: Colonial war in post-colonial period does not work.

Zbigniew Brzezinski:US Terrorized by The Mantra War on Terror

YouTube - Zbigniew Brzezinski and Bill Maher 3-23-07


Brzezinski then:

No Regrets: Carter, Brzezinski and the Mujahadeen

Democracy Now! | Ghost Wars: How Reagan Armed the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan

YouTube - God is on your side! Zbig arms Mujahadin

An Important Date for the Calendar!

Stop the Serfdom for the People Program! Actually, the SPP is officially called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership," but I like my title better, and I think it's a more honest name.

Please join this important international grassroots conference in Ottawa March 31 - April 1. Activists, journalists, political representatives and academics will be in attendance from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

This is possibly the most urgent issue facing the three countries of North America at this time. If we don't stop the SPP, there will be no Canada left, no sovereignty for any of the three nations, and no democracy: this is the institutionalization of corporate rule. Let's get it together, left and right, and all who support democracy over fascism, to stop this very quiet corporate coup. Even though few have yet heard of the SPP, momentum is already building to defeat it. This can be stopped. Get involved now.

On a lighter note, ever read Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss? Well, as in the Seuss story, we need every voice if we are going to win on this one. This is not a small event. The SPP formalizes the dominant power of big business over the political process. This is, quite frankly, the next step in the destruction of democracy in the Western world. Take action now. Stop the SPP.

If you have any doubt as to the significance of the issue, please see the excellent article by Toronto lawyer Paul Bigioni, below: Power to the People (in Suits).

If you are new to the SPP, one of the best introductions can be found in the Council of Canadians' Integrate This! A Citizen's Guide to Deep Integration, also linked below. I would urge everyone to take the time to investigate this issue for yourselves. It is of utmost urgency.


INTEGRATE THIS! Teach-In

*** ZNet |Economy | Power to the People (In Suits)

INTEGRATE THIS! A Citizen’s Guide to Fighting Deep Integration

NDP condemns Harper's push to sell out Canada

Fast-Track to Fascism: The SPP in a Nutshell

Full Implementation of Corporate Rule Via the SPP & NACC

North American Union: Time to Re-Focus

The Paranoid Right Is Partly Right

YouTube - CNN- Lou Dobbs: North American Union Update

*** YouTube - Lou Dobbs, CNN: 12 U.S. Legistatures Move to Oppose SPP

Connie Fogal: Canadians, we are losing our country - YouTube video

YouTube - Ron Paul on the North American Union

March on the Pentagon, Mar. 17:
Iraq, Iran & Oil


The coward will ask is it safe?...Vanity, is it politically expedient or popular? But conscience will always ask, is it right?

- Mahdi Bray

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

On the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and as the neoconservatives in Washington and their corporate backers plan an attack on Iran, popular opposition to such wars of empire and aggression mounts. "The other superpower" - the citizens of the world, according to the business press and the UN - is beginning to wake. Hopefully we will not be too late. The age of empires is approaching its twilight hour, but it may not die peacefully. Let us usher it out as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

As to Canadian troops in Afghanistan, about the only thing we are accomplishing is to lend legitimacy to the U.S. imperial war for oil. If we keep this up, Canada can forget about its reputation as a peace-keeping nation. Presently, we are a propaganda machine for U.S. military aggression. We are lending diplomatic cover for wars of empire. Get the troops out now! Bring them home.


"On March 17, 2007, the 4^th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around the country will descend on the Pentagon in a mass demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! 2007 is the 40^th anniversary of the historic 1967 anti-war march to the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. The message of the 1967 march was "From Protest to Resistance," and marked a turning point in the development of a countrywide mass movement.

"The people of the United States want an end to the war in Iraq. The elections in November were a clear repudiation of the Bush administration's war of aggression. The new Congress, however, has no intention of ending the war. Bush and the Pentagon generals are determined to prolong the war. Tens of thousands of more troops will be sent to Iraq. We are building a massive antiwar movement on the national and local level. Only the action of the people will stop the war.

"We are returning to the Pentagon because the Iraq war has resulted in more than 655,000 Iraqi deaths (Lancet), on top of more than 1 million killed by sanctions between 1990-2003. This is genocide.

"We are returning to the Pentagon to demand the immediate closure of Guantánamo and all other torture facilities. The grotesque revelations of torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib were the tip of the iceberg. Punishing a few rank and file soldiers and counting on the mass media to tire of the story, the Pentagon has tried to conceal the reality that it engages in arbitrary detention and torture of those it identifies as “enemies.”

"We are returning to the Pentagon to demand an end to the surveillance and other spy programs conducted against the people of this country by the Pentagon and other agencies.

"We are returning to the Pentagon because it maintains 714 military bases in 130 countries to extend the influence of US transnational corporations, oil giants and banks. The slogan of national security and the war on terror stands exposed as a pretext for a global empire enforced by military might and limitless violence.

"We are returning to the Pentagon to challenge the system that is addicted to war and global domination. The Iraq war is a criminal endeavor based on lies. It was always about conquering the entire Middle East with its vast repositories of oil. While the Iraq war has been an absolute catastrophe for the entire people of Iraq and for tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, it must be remembered that many U.S. corporations are benefiting. They are the recipients of new Pentagon orders for weapons, supplies and contracts. The Iraq war costs approximately $279 million each day. That breaks down to more than $11 million every hour of every day of the year. The total cost of the Iraq war will be $2 trillion, according to the Iraq Study Group report.

"Unless the people act now, the human and economic costs of the war will only increase. Let's unite and stand together at the Pentagon on March 17."

- Statement from the ANSWER coalition on why we're marching (for full text see links below)

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts."

- Chief long-term strategic planner for the U.S. National Security Council,
George F. Kennan, in a 1948 State Department Brief: the now-declassified NSC 68.


Note: This is not new. Bush is only the latest of war criminals. He is the successor to empire - an empire that is in crisis and crumbling, desperate to shore itself up while it may still be possible.


"The Neo-conservative agenda under the Bush administration should be viewed as the culmination of a (bipartisan) "Post War" foreign policy framework, which provides the basis for the planning of the contemporary wars and atrocities including the setting up of torture chambers, concentration camps and the extensive use of prohibited weapons directed against civilians.

"From Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, to the CIA sponsored military coups in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the objective has been to ensure US military hegemony and global economic domination, as initially formulated under the "Truman Doctrine". Despite significant policy differences, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush have carried out this global military agenda.

"What distinguishes the Bush administration in relation to the historical record of US sponsored crimes and atrocities, is that the concentration camps, targeted assassinations and torture chambers are now openly considered as legitimate forms of intervention, which sustain "the global war on terrorism" and support the spread of Western democracy [sic].

"To reverse the tide of war requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, mosques, schools, universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a US sponsored war which contemplates the use of nuclear weapons. The message should be loud and clear: It is not Iran which is a threat to global security but the United States of America.

"The corporate media also bear a heavy responsibility for the cover-up of US sponsored war crimes. Until recently these war preparations involving the use of nuclear weapons have been scarcely covered by the corporate media. The latter must also be forcefully challenged for their biased coverage of the Middle East war.

"What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State."

- Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, Ottawa U.,
founder and director of the Center for Research on Globalization

"Intelligent people realize that American claims to be a moral and democratic force are mere pretense behind which hides a policy of military aggression."
- Paul Craig Roberts, former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal


"[A] plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran [is]... Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in, quote/unquote, ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran...”
- Zbigniew Brzezinski, before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1, 2007 (emphasis added)

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

~ James Madison

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd American President

"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."
- Thomas Jefferson

"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest." - Thomas Jefferson

March on the Pentagon, March 17

Transportation for March 17

March 17 Actions Across Canada

"Why I'm marching on the Pentagon"

1,500+ endorsers of the March on the Pentagon - March 17, 2007

Appetite for Oil Fuels America's Warmongering

Al Gore: U.S. Oil Financed Harper

Criminals Control the Executive Branch

Gangsters for Capitalism

Bush Is About to Attack Iran: Why Can't Americans See it?

The Unthinkable: The US- Israeli Nuclear War on Iran

The Criminalization of US Foreign Policy

Bill Moyers: The Secret Government - PBS Video

The Power of Nightmares: BBC Documentary Shreds the War on Terror Myth

*** Even Conservatives Hate Republicans Now

US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack

America's nuclear ticking bomb

Evidence of US coercion of IAEA members against Iran revealed

Looking for a Gulf of Tonkin-like Incident

Why is the US press silent on Brzezinski’s warnings of war against Iran?

The Pentagon's "Second 911"

The World Can Halt Bush’s Crimes by Dumping the Dollar

Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home - Howard Zinn

BringThemHomeNow.org

Bring 'em Home

Gold Star Famillies For Peace

Military Families Speak Out

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Veterans For Peace

NDP Petition to the House of Commons - Support our troops. Bring 'em home.

YouTube - Country Joe McDonald - I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die (Woodstock 1969)

YouTube - COUNTRY JOE - Support The Troops

YouTube - Black Sabbath-War Pigs

YouTube - Blair & Bush 'Don't Give a Damn'

YouTube - Bob Dylan - Masters of War

YouTube - The Unversal Soldier

Peace Takes Courage

The Pernicious Price of Petroleum

Peak Oil intro - CBC 2min.

'Living on an illusion' - CNN video on oil depletion

Peak Oil alert - Houston Business Journal:

An Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil

Will The End of Oil Mean The End of America?

We Were Warned: Tomorrow's Oil Crisis - CNN

The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror

The War for Oil - BBC - Part 1/3

War for Oil - BBC - Part 2/3

War for Oil - BBC - Part 3/3

Video - Robert Newman History of oil - Google Video

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil - order video

Making Sweden an OIL-FREE Society

YouTube - Bob Dylan - Masters Of War - full version

What Must Be Done:
When corporatism and Leninism have both failed

Part One: For a future (worth living) to be possible

With the clear and accelerating hyper-concentration of power in the world, primarily via the hyper-concentration of corporate economic and financial power, which now threatens to swallow any last vestiges of democracy, freedom and human rights, we clearly need a united grassroots citizen's movement to restore and protect the basics: democracy, fundamental human rights, and freedom. If we fail to create such a united popular force, we will see the full emergence of a global corporate feudalism - a phenomenon which is already well underway.

Serious thought and action must be directed toward creating a broad-based citizens' coalition to defend democracy, and to create the possibility, and the actuality, of a more peaceful, just, sustainable and democratic world. In order to accomplish this, some form of federation of citizen's movements is needed. We do not necessarily have to join or form a particular political party, nor are party politics the central issue. What is required is a citizen's movement, broad enough, empowered enough, bold enough, and sufficiently united across its diversity, to create the kind of popular pressure and initiative that makes change happen. The great accomplishments of our collective human history have come about in this way: leadership from below. We should not expect it to be any different today.

If we look to history, who led the changes in society brought about by the civil rights movement? People like Rosa Parks, the students who started the lunch counter sit-ins, the ordinary citizens who launched the Montgomery bus boycott, and the millions of ordinary people who stood up, spoke out and created the people's movement that led to great changes.

Who led the movement for universal suffrage? The right to vote, first by non-property owners, then by women, was not gained by a decree from on high, but by the struggles of ordinary men and women working together to create change.

Who brought down the Vietnam war fiasco? Not JFK, who launched the bombing on South East Asia, not LBJ, who stepped it up, not Nixon or Kissinger, who took the aerial bombardment to literally genocidal levels, not the corporate elite who backed, armed, and heavily profited from the venture, and not the political "leadership" of the major parties. It was the grassroots, again. It took 14 years then, before a grassroots coalition could be built strongly enough to bring the war to an end. And should there be any doubt as to how the war ended, take the statements from then National Security adviser to the U.S. government, chief intellectual-in-residence to the political power elite of the United States, Henry Kissinger. He made it clear to his boss in the White house that in order to win the war in Vietnam, more troops would have to be sent, but if more troops were sent from America, stability could not be assured at home. The crisis at home, the crisis of legitimacy brought on by this gruesome war, the crisis precipitated by a great and powerful citizen's movement that demanded an end to this unjust and horrific war, was at a level by the mid-70's that the war in Vietnam became unsustainable. The citizen's movement ended the war, as Kissinger himself admitted directly.

In European and North American history, who led and ultimately succeeded in the efforts to bring about a work week that is 40 hours, and not 80 or more, as it had been? Who led and ultimately succeeded in raising wages, first above starvation levels, then above meager subsistence levels, to a point where a decent life is possible - despite the roll-backs of the last twenty years? Who led and ultimately succeeded in ending the worst workplace safety dangers - something most people take entirely for granted? Who led and ultimately succeeded in the drive for social programs to benefit the old, the poor, the ill or injured? Who led and ultimately succeeded in giving the people of the Western world the standard of living we now have? Not the unalterable laws of capitalism - the barons of capital opposed all of these initiatives. Not the political elite - the political elite opposed all of these initiatives, until the public demand for them was so powerful it could not be opposed any longer, and the political elite took credit for a concession they had fought for years, if not decades or centuries. It was primarily the labour movement, along with other popular movements, that won the people of the Western world these gains.

Who broke the back of the biggest empire the world had ever seen - the British Empire - the empire that controlled two-thirds of the globe c. 1940? Not another military superpower. Not America, the now self-proclaimed global super-cop, judge, jury and executioner, exporter of "democracy" through the barrel of a gun. Not Superman, the Lone Ranger, extraterrestrials or some other fantasy rescuer. It was one little Indian of great stature, Mahatma Gandhi, and more importantly, millions of ordinary heroes.

Who initiated, led, and brought considerable gains for the earth and humanity with the environmental movement? Again, not the political or corporate elite, who fought these initiatives tooth and claw the whole way, only to take credit for every concession that they yielded to popular pressure. To be fair, there have been and are business people and politicians who have sought and contributed to positive developments in society and in environmental protection - of course - but the initiative and the pressure, the drive and the creative force has always come, almost without exception, from below - from the people themselves. It is no different now.

The question that confronts us now is, will "the world's other superpower" - as the business press, as well as the UN Secretary General has called the world's citizenry - come together in sufficient unity to oppose the destruction of democracy and the earth? Is it going to be a bang, a whimper, or a shout of joy and determination that ends, not the world, but the world as it was - out of balance, out of harmony, out of time? If it is not a global citizen's movement that is decisive in this question, then arguably it will be either a bang or a whimper. We cannot afford to let this happen. It must be a collective shout of joy, a determined and powerful "no" to violence, destruction, and the prey of the few upon the many - an emphatic "yes" to the future of life on earth. We must rally unity amid diversity now.

Part Two: What Must Be Done: When corporatism and Leninism have both failed