Mille Lacs Messenger/August 16, 2006

Shaping consent

The mass media has been covering up the truth by not telling us that our nation's unrestricted capitalistic system is responsible for a social and moral scandal associated with not only poverty within our nation but within Third World Nations as well.

In a 1986 pastoral letter on our nation's economy, U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote: "harsh poverty plagues our country despite its great wealth. More than 33 million Americans are poor: by any reasonable standard another 20 to 30 million are needy."

There are now more than 37 million Americans living in poverty, and the U.S. media has been bought by the corporate elite precisely for the purpose of concealing this social and moral scandal. The corporate elite are able to conceal the truth by buying up the press, firing the offending editors, installing those who toe the corporate line and subtly shaping the truth to fit their national and international agenda.

Today, whenever you watch television, listen to the radio or read a newspaper, it is very likely that the information you are receiving comes from a single media monolith, or, in other word, a handful of multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates which speak with one voice. And this monolith is dedicated to serving the interest of our nation's greedy and corrupt corporate elite.

Leaders of our corporate/state governmental system lead developing countries into our nation's empire building domination and dependence system, wherein they become indebted to us and therefore are easily coerced to promote our money-loving and evil power-hungry one-world empire building system.

The international systems work in away wherein U.S. firms are usually selected to help promote economic development in the Third World. These selected U.S. firms then recruit deeply impoverished Third World people and build factories to produce items they can sell abroad for a high price, while paying their Third World employees almost nothing. Many of these exploited Third World people are making some of our nation's corporate elite wealthier and wealthier, while they remain in deep poverty.

Exorbitant profits for our nation's corporations are possible when doing business in the "Third World" - profits not possible to achieve in the U.S. with our restrictions on the use of labor, with our many banking and government regulations, with our laws against usury, with our trade unions, etc. No worry in the Third World about overtime pay, sick leave, holidays, worker safety, etc. No concern there about toxic dumping. No concern about having to negotiate the clumsy political processes of democracy. It is a system which serves the interests of some of our nation's most greedy and corrupt corporate elite, as well as some Third World governmental, business and military elite.

These horrendous conditions exist today because of our nation's unrestricted capitalistic system as well as our nation's - corporate elite sponsored - mass media, brainwashing, cover-up agenda.

We can begin to rectify these injustices by letting citizens know that this evil U.S. empire building system exists and how it works.

Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon