“The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.”—Ward Churchill
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”—Frederick Douglass
Those of us who demand and strive for an end to corporate-government subterfuge, wars, hypocrisy, and deceit must of necessity understand that the U.S. government and its corporate masters and assorted accomplices have used, and will continue to use, every conceivable vicious and dastardly tactic to discredit and neutralize us individually and organizationally. With this clearly in mind, we should, in fact, expect, and be undaunted by these old, continuing tactics on the part of the corporate U.S. government and its assorted accomplices, whether they are perpetrated by individuals or agencies.
Notwithstanding a prior long, odious, and overwhelmingly hidden history of U.S. government subterfuge, dirty tricks and deceit; the past six decades to the present, in the United States of America, have been, and continue to be a particularly dangerous period for politically conscious and active Black, Brown, White, Red, and Yellow people who oppose this corporate-government’s hideous and hypocritical internal and external policies. Does this mean we should become paranoid and inactive? Absolutely not! To the contrary, now is the time to intensify in our efforts to demand, and organize, to bring about a just, open, and egalitarian society, and an end to corporate domination, subversion, and economic blood-sucking.
The corporate dominated and controlled U.S. government, inclusive of its economy, “news” media, and society as a whole has, in the year 2011, brought into fruition the chilling but accurate words of the late Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, when he said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Indeed, notwithstanding the deliberately perpetuated illusion, fraud, and veneer of there being a genuine people’s ‘democracy’ in the United States, there has been brought about in this nation the irrefutable, de facto “merger of state and corporatepower.” Corporations significantly control and/or manipulate the crucial flow of information [ie. news, analysis, and opinion, etc.]. They substantively outright own or ‘sponsor’ virtually allmajor news and information outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, and substantially even the Internet (which some people erroneously believe is “free,” or somehow not corporately controlled or manipulated). The corporate elite own and/or control what is left of the industrial base in this nation. The U.S. corporate elite, in chillingly real terms, own the politicians [both Democrat and Republican] as well as the bottomless corporate trough from which these politicians incessantly feed.
In other words, the upper 1 percent of the U.S. corporate elite owns the U.S. government itself, and in so doing, effectively subverts so-called ‘democracy.’ Moreover, the corporate elite of corporations such as Lockheed, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, CitiBank, Bank of America, Honeywell, General Electric, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Cargill, Monsanto, and a sickening and seemingly endless list of others, are the primary avaricious financial beneficiaries of Wall Street manipulated money-markets and/orof perpetual U.S. wars. Meanwhile, it is the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout the world who are the economic and military cannon fodder of the U.S. corporate-government.
Is the struggle by everyday people against corporate hegemony, and for a fairer, saner nation and world really worth it? The answer to this question is not complicated. If we everyday people shirk or fail in our responsibility to organize and struggle against corporate hegemony, this nationand the entire planet of Mother Earth will be doomed. Make no mistake about this: The corporate elite and their accomplices come in all colors and both genders. We can ill afford to be hoodwinked into thinking that color or gender are somehow the automatic and sole determining factors as to who our allies are in this ongoing people’s struggle, be it in this nation or abroad. Ours must be the collective actualized vision of the people. There cannot and will never be justice or democracy at home while corporate-backed U.S. military occupations and/or wars are raging abroad. This inextricable connection must be clearly understood.
From the infamous and no doubt ongoing internal U.S. corporate-government COINTELPRO activities to “frame, discredit, murder, and/or imprison” political activists, to the now legally codified version of COINTELPRO known as the ‘Patriot Act;’ we must thoroughly understand that disinformation, misinformation, distorted information, etc., will be, and are, among the many tactics long used by this corporate-government and its individual agents and agencies. These tactics are meant to divide and neutralize the struggles of and by everyday people for systemic change. The everyday people’s struggle for economic and judicial justice, and real systemic change is a serious threat to the corporate status quo and we must harbor no illusions about this. Nevertheless, the successful waging of the people’s struggle against corporate/military hegemony, in this nation and globally, is what must remain as our focus.
Yes! This struggle is not only worth it, it is absolutely essential to the survival of this planet and humanity as a whole.
Onward then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
BlackCommentator.comEditorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.
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Is the people’s struggle against corporate hegemony really worth it?
Posted on July 19, 2011 by Larry Pinkney
“The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.”—Ward Churchill
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”—Frederick Douglass
Those of us who demand and strive for an end to corporate-government subterfuge, wars, hypocrisy, and deceit must of necessity understand that the U.S. government and its corporate masters and assorted accomplices have used, and will continue to use, every conceivable vicious and dastardly tactic to discredit and neutralize us individually and organizationally. With this clearly in mind, we should, in fact, expect, and be undaunted by these old, continuing tactics on the part of the corporate U.S. government and its assorted accomplices, whether they are perpetrated by individuals or agencies.
Notwithstanding a prior long, odious, and overwhelmingly hidden history of U.S. government subterfuge, dirty tricks and deceit; the past six decades to the present, in the United States of America, have been, and continue to be a particularly dangerous period for politically conscious and active Black, Brown, White, Red, and Yellow people who oppose this corporate-government’s hideous and hypocritical internal and external policies. Does this mean we should become paranoid and inactive? Absolutely not! To the contrary, now is the time to intensify in our efforts to demand, and organize, to bring about a just, open, and egalitarian society, and an end to corporate domination, subversion, and economic blood-sucking.
The corporate dominated and controlled U.S. government, inclusive of its economy, “news” media, and society as a whole has, in the year 2011, brought into fruition the chilling but accurate words of the late Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, when he said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Indeed, notwithstanding the deliberately perpetuated illusion, fraud, and veneer of there being a genuine people’s ‘democracy’ in the United States, there has been brought about in this nation the irrefutable, de facto “merger of state and corporate power.” Corporations significantly control and/or manipulate the crucial flow of information [ie. news, analysis, and opinion, etc.]. They substantively outright own or ‘sponsor’ virtually all major news and information outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, and substantially even the Internet (which some people erroneously believe is “free,” or somehow not corporately controlled or manipulated). The corporate elite own and/or control what is left of the industrial base in this nation. The U.S. corporate elite, in chillingly real terms, own the politicians [both Democrat and Republican] as well as the bottomless corporate trough from which these politicians incessantly feed.
In other words, the upper 1 percent of the U.S. corporate elite owns the U.S. government itself, and in so doing, effectively subverts so-called ‘democracy.’ Moreover, the corporate elite of corporations such as Lockheed, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, CitiBank, Bank of America, Honeywell, General Electric, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, Cargill, Monsanto, and a sickening and seemingly endless list of others, are the primary avaricious financial beneficiaries of Wall Street manipulated money-markets and/or of perpetual U.S. wars. Meanwhile, it is the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and throughout the world who are the economic and military cannon fodder of the U.S. corporate-government.
Is the struggle by everyday people against corporate hegemony, and for a fairer, saner nation and world really worth it? The answer to this question is not complicated. If we everyday people shirk or fail in our responsibility to organize and struggle against corporate hegemony, this nation and the entire planet of Mother Earth will be doomed. Make no mistake about this: The corporate elite and their accomplices come in all colors and both genders. We can ill afford to be hoodwinked into thinking that color or gender are somehow the automatic and sole determining factors as to who our allies are in this ongoing people’s struggle, be it in this nation or abroad. Ours must be the collective actualized vision of the people. There cannot and will never be justice or democracy at home while corporate-backed U.S. military occupations and/or wars are raging abroad. This inextricable connection must be clearly understood.
From the infamous and no doubt ongoing internal U.S. corporate-government COINTELPRO activities to “frame, discredit, murder, and/or imprison” political activists, to the now legally codified version of COINTELPRO known as the ‘Patriot Act;’ we must thoroughly understand that disinformation, misinformation, distorted information, etc., will be, and are, among the many tactics long used by this corporate-government and its individual agents and agencies. These tactics are meant to divide and neutralize the struggles of and by everyday people for systemic change. The everyday people’s struggle for economic and judicial justice, and real systemic change is a serious threat to the corporate status quo and we must harbor no illusions about this. Nevertheless, the successful waging of the people’s struggle against corporate/military hegemony, in this nation and globally, is what must remain as our focus.
Yes! This struggle is not only worth it, it is absolutely essential to the survival of this planet and humanity as a whole.
Onward then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.