Decius wrote:

The Politic wrote:
I ask this question constantly of my students. I teach history at a community college, no big deal, but it shapes me as much as I shape anything... I ask them if they feel information can be controlled. Their answer is hell no.

I don't think so. Repressive regiems certainly try, but they mostly succeed at creating inconvenience rather then absolutely controlling access. The degree to which information can be controlled largely relates to whether people are willing to accept the controls and how much they are willing to learn or risk to spread the information.

At the root of this, I think, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between the control of information and the management of perception. If, for example, you've managed to convince all of the proles in your dictatorship that the western media is corrupt and dishonest, chances are most of them won't have a problem with your blocking of "libelous and misleading" media. The blocking will keep the seeds of certain ideas from being sewn in people who have been culturalized to distrust such sources from the outset, and so it becomes self reenforcing. A systemic willful ignorance. On the other hand, if freedom of speech is enshrined at the root of your culture, any attempt to control it will be immediately distrusted, and you're going to have a hell of a hard time keeping certain kinds of things under wraps without a long term project of conterveilling cultural programming.

The free press is a far more sophisticated machine than anything a totalitarian state produces. As the Orwell quote goes 'a well trained dog jumps when the trainer cracks his whip..but an even better trained dog jumps when there is no whip'. That's our media.

It's much clearer that we have the most ignorant population on planet earth when it comes to knowing what we do. There is a great deal of focus on the crimes of others of course..and those who wish to be seen as knowledgable oftentimes turn to these affairs, and stick with them (most likely..because it's what they know)... so you can find them everywhere.. spouting off about the crimes of others..ignoring the dozens of democracies we've overthrown, the sheer volume of millions and millions killed by our clients and ecnomic policies..dwarfing anything produced by anyone in the post war world.

That is what is going to come to light here. Take say.. the case of Haiti, where we overthrew their elected government (as we have done time and again) in 2002... to the near silence of the western media. You have military rapes of civilians, people living in the worst of conditions, and it's all because they elected the wrong people again.

Well.. nobody wants to cover that. But in my world of the future, anyone with a DV cam, and maybe some donated resources (which should be culturally established as a norm in the next 5-10 years) can send reporters to places where the old guard could prevent the story from getting out in any meaningful sense. Now you can put a screaming mother, or you can show soldiers raping Haitian women--as was routinely, brazenly done during the 1st coup (91). Or you can show UN troops shooting the lavalas members, in an effort (which STILL failed, but this time, just barely) to wipe out the only popular political party of the poor.

The bottom line is what was controllable before, will and should become uncontrollable. Out of the period of media chaos, there should be a non-market organized (elected or council organized) media.

But i'm old enough to know that the power of capital...will not be outdone with ease.

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