STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Transparency Meme Creeps Closer
By admin - September 30, 2011

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe … Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries. Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over. They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box. – NY Times

Dominant Social Theme: People are upset with the way modern societies function and don't believe in 20th century-style democracy. Who knows what the 21st Century will bring, but probably the Internet will play a role in disciplining government and making regulations work better. Transparency is key. The Times says so.

Free-Market Analysis: What's the New York Times up to? This story excerpted above was prominently featured the other day in the New York Times and that doesn't happen by accident. The Times is a virtual meme machine, churning out articles that support the Anglosphere's dominant social themes on a regular basis.

In the 20th Century, especially, this mechanism worked with great efficiency. In America, the Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal – among other publications – smoothly integrated their editorial positions with the fear-based propaganda being generated by the Western power elite in order to promote globalism. In the 21st Century, thanks to the Internet Reformation, this mechanism has ground down considerably.

People generally are savvier about Western media in our view in the 21st Century, especially thought leaders posting blogs, websites and articles about the sociopolitical and economic scene. It's no coincidence that the mainstream media loses viewers as the Internet thrives. This is an enormous and implacable shift, and one that elites will struggle to control for the foreseeable future – despite Internet doomsayers.

That doesn't stop the elites from continuing to use the system that was so effectively developed in the 20th Century. It doesn't work so well these days but given the trillions that have been poured into organizing and disseminating certain kinds of information, the process will never be abandoned.

So, when the Times features an article like this, we take notice. Something is going on. We believe it's part of a much larger, perhaps fundamental, effort to reshape how democracies work. The theme, perhaps, is merely being developed now but eventually we will see its fruition. Some sort of "solution" is being contemplated.

We think the solution was supposed to have something to do with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, but given Assange's arrest and the Internet's developing skepticism of Assange, that promotion may be failing. The larger promotion, however, having to do with government transparency – and the Internet's efficacy in creating it – is yet unscathed.

In fact, there's actually an organization (global of course) promoting government transparency around the globe. We're supposed to believe such an organization sprang up spontaneously. We don't. And this Times article in our view ties into it somehow. Here's some more from the article:

"Our parents are grateful because they're voting," said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards' decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. "We're the first generation to say that voting is worthless." Economics have been one driving force, with growing income inequality, high unemployment and recession-driven cuts in social spending breeding widespread malaise. Alienation runs especially deep in Europe, with boycotts and strikes that, in London and Athens, erupted into violence …

In the world's largest democracy, Anna Hazare, an activist, starved himself publicly for 12 days until the Indian Parliament capitulated to some of his central demands on a proposed anticorruption measure to hold public officials accountable. "We elect the people's representatives so they can solve our problems," said Sarita Singh, 25, among the thousands who gathered each day at Ramlila Maidan, where monsoon rains turned the grounds to mud but protesters waved Indian flags and sang patriotic songs. "But that is not actually happening. Corruption is ruling our country."

Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web. In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.

The critical mass of wiki and mapping tools, video and social networking sites, the communal news wire of Twitter and the ease of donations afforded by sites like PayPal makes coalitions of likeminded individuals instantly viable. "You're looking at a generation of 20- and 30-year-olds who are used to self-organizing," said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. "They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren't anymore."

All of the above has a certain amount of truth to it, but a good deal of exaggeration and misleading information as well. As has been extensively documented by DB and other publications, the youthful rebellions in the Middle East and Africa are at least in part an outgrowth of CIA tactics and Foggy Bottom manipulations featuring a corporate-led global youth movement – AYM. Hillary Clinton is a big proponent.

The rising disillusionment with democracies (we learn from the Times) "comes 20 years after what was celebrated as democratic capitalism's final victory over communism and dictatorship." The consensus was to be that liberal economics (Keynesian, of course) combined with democratic institutions represented "the only path forward."

Now that consensus, the Times tells us, has been shattered. Carefully, the Times rules out a return to authoritarianism. "Frustrated voters are not agitating for a dictator to take over," the article explains. "But they say they do not know where to turn at a time when political choices of the cold war era seem hollow."

The whole article is a kind of weird mess. Deconstruct it and it falls apart. It's propaganda dressed up as trend analysis. Did you know, dear reader, that people around the world think democracy is worthless, or that the "elite" is under attack?

The Times won't explain just who or what this elite is but no doubt, when the explanation comes, we will learn it includes the usual suspects – mostly corporate and political leaders. As for the solution? This strange article doesn't provide it. Over time we will learn …

The closest the article comes to providing a clue is in a paragraph toward the end stating that, "emerging movements, like many in the past, could end up being absorbed by traditional political parties." But the paragraph ends with a dangling statement, "Yet purists involved in many of the movements say they intend to avoid the old political channels."

Now what the heck does that mean? Who are these "purists" and what are the "new" political channels being contemplated. This is a pure promotion being rolled out, cold-bloodedly and with cold calculation. Promotions never reveal the solutions all at once. There has to be a steady drumbeat of "problems" first to capture the attention.

But we're pretty good at this stuff. We already "get it." At least we think we do. Watch for other articles in the Times – or maybe elsewhere – explaining how a generation of young activists is taking to the Internet to REINVENT democracy. This is the key issue. Having lost control of the media, the real elites – the Anglosphere central banking families – are plotting to take it back by using the Internet as a mechanism of policy.

Those who constantly warn that the Internet is about to be shut down or otherwise censored underestimate the subtlety of Tavistock and other elite institutions of mind control. Soon we will learn, perhaps, that there is a swelling movement (one that was supposed to be led by Assange?) involving the use of the Internet to root out corruption and to make democratic institutions more "transparent" via online activism.

After Thoughts

The Internet is not to be shut down after all. It is simply to be recast as a promoter of the dominant social themes that the powers-that-be want to emphasize. It is to be made over by activists into a tool that reemphasizes the primacy of government at a time of blossoming globalism. The best propaganda is subversion and mind control, not censorship. If our supposition is correct, this Times article marks a further evolution of this campaign.

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