Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Obama’s Syrian Press Pass

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Obama’s Syrian Press Pass

Click here to access article by Margaret Kimberley from Black Agenda Report.

The corporate media are the megaphones of humanitarian death

The corporate media are the megaphones of humanitarian death, as dispensed by the U.S. and its allies. If Obama says “Assad must go,” the high-paid press do all in their power to make the public crave his blood. “The media are loyal to the system, not to their profession, their readers, or their listeners.” [my emphasis]

The only problem I have with this piece and most of what is posted at this website is the overwhelmingly emphasis on racism to the exclusion of "the system". Here the author mentions "the system" twice, but fails to identify it. It has a name...capitalism. Racism has always been a convenient way for the ruling capitalist class to exploit people who superficially exhibit different characteristics than the dominant European derived populations. It has also been a very useful way to divide and control working people in general.

There is no reason for capitalism to be inherently racist, and capitalists drop this method of dividing working people whenever it suits them as we have seen to a significant extant in many capitalist countries. Witness what we have today in the US: an African-American man for President. In the vernacular of street-Blacks, Obama is an "Oreo-cookie": black on the outside, and white on the inside. More accurately, he is a thoroughly indoctrinated man in capitalist ideology who is identified as Black because of his superficial appearance, (He was mostly raised by his grandmother who was a white banker in Hawaii.) This ploy has been exceptionally useful to the ruling class by co-opting people on the liberal-left to support their policies and actions which they would otherwise oppose. Consequently, the transition from Bush Jr to Obama has been seamless.

"The system" is always about a dominant class of major property holders who have enormous advantages due to the artifact of property rights under the capitalist system over socially produced wealth. Over time this class has accumulated ownership and power in ever greater concentrations while their numbers as a percent of the total population has declined. They now exercise overwhelming control in every facet of our lives, and the author correctly describes how this control is reflected in the critical function of reporting news and information.