CAB - Communication Agents Blog

10 Steps To Mainstream Media Indipendence

RYCKAERT, David the Younger
Flemish painter (1612-1661)
Man Sleeping

If we believe that the media are completely controlled as is the Internet and all telecommunications. If the propaganda around us is so loud that when we ask to look with different eyes nobody can even hear us, what can we do to awaken our fellow sisters before it is too late?

Which are the ethical ways in which we can make a difference in changing the reality we see in front of us?

William Thomas has put together 10 unique steps to fend off and intelligently manage the overpowering presence of big media, propaganda and vested multi-billion dollars interest selling themselves for another Cinderella.

Could this be the draft for a yet to be developed Communication Agents Manifesto?

(via Zoe Lenska)

Step 1:
Stand together. Love and support one another. Calmly and compassionately correct the misinformed privately and personally. Never attack people and organizations working with good hearts and intentions on the worldwide web. Do not forward or contribute to hurtful gossip on Internet chat rooms.

Step 2.
Ignore mass media mesmerizers. Learn to read between the lines of newspapers - or don't read them at all. Network news is 9/10 disinformation and distraction. Turn it off. Televised negativity sent hypnotically into your central nervous system cannot be "edited" out. It is spiritual and physical poison.

To catch vital "stories", load fresh tapes into your VCR and radio recorder and tune into live, on-the-scene interviews with eyewitnesses. This could be your only opportunity to hear the truth from network affiliates: such as the shootdown of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, or military pilots describing the missile which destroyed Flight 800 over Long Island Sound. Tape these segments. Post pertinent clips and verbatim transcripts on the Net. These initial live feeds tend to be broadcast once locally - often in the early morning hours -and are never seen or heard again.

Step 3:
Vote with your wallet. Boycott network-advertised products from corporations engaged in war-making, environmental degradation or "food" and drugs that harm human health. Become informed. Search the Web and learn who really owns the companies offering goods and services. When purchasing necessities, buy from local producers whenever possible. Buy used. Recycle. Repair. Swap. Park you car and check out electric-assisted bikes (3,000,000 now in use in Japan). When upgrading computer gear, give away your older, working equipment to activists and community orgs.

Step:4:
Support independent authors, reporters, documentary filmmakers and independent media.
Recent polls show that the majority of Americans with Internet access are ignoring network "managed news" in favor of direct access to first-hand news sources, commentators and analysts on the worldwide web. Cross-check all information with your heart as well as your head. Does it "ring true"? Does it resonate? The most reliable reports include references and sources.

Consider the blinkered, built-in bias of mass media. Understand the symbiotic synergy of an out-of-control Military-Corporate-Entertainment establishment that battens on bloodshed. Since the slaughters in Vietnam, Panama, East Timor, El Salvador, Tibet, Kosovo and the Persian Gulf it is clear that broadcast and newspaper chains have become self-censoring sales arms of nine multinational owners: Time Warner, Disney, News Corp., Viacom, Sony, Seagram, AT&T/Liberty Media, Bertelsmann, GE.

With assets greater than most treasuries of once-sovereign nations, weapons-makers such as General Electric (NBC) must "sell" attacks on former allies and henchmen in order to market, manufacture, deploy and detonate obscenely expensive weaponry. Cheerleading broadcasters (CNN) boost ratings and ad revenues by glorifying weapons and warfare. This self-perpetuating war economy enriches weapons makers, while impoverishing entire nations. Now moving toward the "high ground" of orbital space, a Pentagon monopoly on increasingly destructive and robotic weaponry is intended to keep the world's "have nots" from claiming their share of resources enjoyed by a wealthy minority. This is folly. You cannot eat, inhabit or make something useful out of an ICBM buried in the ground. It is unnecessary. If we are conscientious in our consumption, there is still plenty to go around.

Fear and lies perpetuate this planet-threatening scam. World trekkers who find lodging among local populaces know that most people in all cultures are friendly and warm hearted. Contrary to incessantly negative news reports, travelers like myself have found that random violent death is unknown in most communities, and that almost everyone everywhere wants only to see their children grow and prosper in peace.

Demand new directions in the spending of your tax dollars. The money, talent and resources squandered annually on armaments that failed to protect America from an alleged few fanatics armed with Exacto knives is enough to eliminate the scarcity, female oppression, environmental degradation and illiteracy that drive most conflicts.

Step 5:
Remember who and where you are as a crewmember operating a fragile, bio-connected space colony hurtling through the cold, irradiated vacuum of deep space. Every Trekkie knows it makes sense not to rip apart the solar radiation shielding, pave over water-purifying wetlands, cut down oxygen-replenishing forests, or pour carcinogenic and DNA-altering poisons into fresh water recirculators. There are no lifeboats. Respect your ship. It's the only one you have.

Step. 6:
Long live the 'Net! In the credibility wars currently being waged over the survival of Spaceship Earth, the attacks on Afghanistan to secure oil and heroin routes...efforts to escalate the bombing of Iraq (one million dead so far)...the Sept. 11 deception...and ill-advised attempts at "climate control" to maintain petroleum pollution and profits (instead of switching to more efficient and renewable energy) - are now running head-on into the Internet.

And losing.

The world is waiting for good-hearted Americans to wake up to the cynical deceptions practiced on them at Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, the "incubator babies" of Kuwait, 9.11 and the (s)election of a president who immediately proclaimed his preference to be dictator. The tyranny of an unchecked Superpower presidency backed by a compliant and complacent media will end when the present-day Internet becomes accessible through TV sets in every home. There is major money driving the fiber-optic revolution toward mass Internet access. Watch for it soon.

Protect your cyber freedom now. Beware newly instituted "Cyber Security" offices, and attempts by any government to install Communist China-style official "filters" on all Internet and Email access. Fortunately, would-be government censors in North America and the European Union know that any attempt to restrict free access to Email traffic and the Internet will instantly impact the digital information and cash-flow on which nearly every business depends. While threats to Internet access remain moderate at this moment, efforts by the Military-Corporate-Entertainment establishment to control all public information have gone into hyperdrive since Sept. 11.

Anyone hosting truth-telling websites can consider setting up "mirror sites" on the computers of friends in at least four countries. Each replica site is capable of being activated within minutes if their North American site is "taken down" by government pressure on servers, or a “hack” attack. If necessary, limited Internet access can be delivered by commercially available Single-Sideband radio. Check the ocean-cruising (sailing) sites for more info.

Step 7:
Vote "yes" for reality. If you like it, celebrate it. If you don't like it, change it. Remember why dope is called "dope". Take yourself and your children off Ritalin, Prozac and Paxil. Keep vaccination needles out of your children's arms, and your own.

As Edward Abbey echoed Walt Whitman: "Resist much. Obey little." Enjoy and protect your freedoms by exercising them in responsible ways every day. Learn to differentiate chemtrails from contrails. Call local authorities and the media if you spot chemtrails being spread over your community. Call them back. Support the revival and immediate implementation of U.S. House Resolution 2977, which calls for a ban on space weapons, electromagnetic warfare, mind control technologies and "chemtrails".

Know that power has nothing to do with megatons or megabucks. Real power is instantly and only accessible through the truth of an open heart. Do not fear would-be warmongers and controllers. Though they can be immensely destructive, evildoers always collapse from their own corruption, conceits and contradictions. This is the law of karma. There are no exceptions.

Step 8:
Express your gratitude aloud at every opportunity. Laugh often. Remember that well-informed ridicule is the surest way to skewer arrogant authorities who overstep legal, ethical or spiritual bounds.

* Be vigilant without becoming paranoid. Authorities caught in their own fearful projections are most likely far too busy to notice you. Taking sensitive information public is your best defense against those who want to restrict it.

* Be thankful. Always support, encourage and congratulate conscientious officials. Exercise every available democratic process to hold the rest accountable. After all, you are paying government officials, police and military personnel to serve and protect you and your community.

* Be accurate. Help reporters do their jobs. Use proper punctuation and capitalization in news messages. For rapid referencing in clogged "Inboxes", include immediately recognizable descriptions in Email "subject" lines. When posting articles, provide sources - time/date and name of publication or news broadcast, title and author's Email and URL if available.

* Be careful. Seek second opinions on the most alarming information you receive online. Reflect on hysteria-heightening messages for at least 24 hours before forwarding widely or posting on the Web. Misinformation can be dangerous. Issue full retractions immediately. Remember that information cannot be recalled like faulty tires. No matter how quickly errors are caught and corrected, once posted they can haunt the sender for months. (I know!)

* Be helpful. Accompany all issues of public concern with suggested solutions, including descriptions of working alternatives already in practice. Include access phone numbers, URLs and mail addresses to publications and organizations that address public problems in ways that affirm and protect life.

* Be passionate! Show your outrage at injustice in creative, constructive and nonviolent ways. Avoid expressing or supporting hatred, which leads to blind intolerance. Foster and learn from diversity in gender, customs, locale and individual viewpoints. Remember that the most contagious and subversive act is a smile.

Step 9:
Love your home planet. Respect and learn from your elders. Remember that all children are in our care. Honor their trust. Our shared future is either enhanced or encumbered by every choice you make. Thank you for your choices.

Step 10:
We are all in this together.

With love and respect,

William Thomas

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE MEDIA, THE INTERNET AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

Original article available here.

The Kids Will Be The Army For Our Cause

In the CA Learning Hub I am working at hard with each Communication Agent to clarify and define the Focus and direction of their future path.

The process has produced lots of valuable content as well as the realization that some among us were really after issues and causes which were rather personal, business oriented or simply meant to support and refine the "system" as is.

I find it critical at this stage in the development of this project that the core group of Communication Agents effectively shares a wide, open-minded vision for what is outlined in the Areas for Change manifesto.

Unless we can tightly coalesce around the core axioms of our mission of agents of change, we can't expect our future efforts to have any singificant and lasting effect.

The latest challenge in this respect has been the area of Education where notions and ideas of what is change and why it is required is home for deep and heated discussion.

In order to further clarify the understanding of what the Communication Agents Initiative is set to achieve in one such critical area of human life, I have gone out of my way to bring back the vision and words of those great thinkers who have already preceeded us in this effort to create a vision and a pathway for better understanding of what Education should really be.

One of such visionary men of our time is Seymour Papert.

A mathematician, an early pioneer of artificial intelligence, and an internationally recognized seminal thinker about how computers can change learning, Seymour Papert worked with educational psychologist Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva from 1959 to 1963, a collaboration that led Papert to consider using mathematics in the service of understanding how children think and learn. As more and more students have gained access to computers and to the Internet, Papert has offered his prescriptions for consummating the marriage of education and digital media technologoes effectively. He sees most present uses of computers in schools as mere flirtation.

Here as some excerpts from his 1998 essay entitled "Let's Tie the Digital Knot". Papert writes:

"A call to redefine faculty roles from servers of education-as-it-was to inventors of education-as-it-will-be. Here I want to repeat this call and prescribe three remedies to help cure inhibitions that prevent some people from heeding it.

1) No such thing as fourth grade, because age segregation has gone the way of other arbitrary divisions of people.

2) No such thing as a classroom, because learning happens in a variety of settings.

3) And no such thing as curriculum, because the idea that everyone should have the same knowledge has come to be seen as totalitarian.

I am doing something different in kind from proposing or predicting: I am suggesting that seriously developing and seriously confronting alternative scenarios be recognized as a valuable kind of work—work needed to facilitate the emergence of the future.

What is needed is to mobilize an intellectual community to give to this kind of problem the level of attention and resources currently reserved for efforts to bolster a traditional curriculum that is in any case condemned by history.

I cannot make this last point too strongly: I believe that the major reason for the slow response of the education world to the possibilities opened by new technology is the failure of our community to assume intellectual responsibility for long and full discussion of such questions.

More inhibiting than the lack of technology or funding or brain research or anything like that is a lack of serious, controversy-rich, conceptual discussion about difficult issues such as the epistemological foundations of knowledge (for example, what is mathematics?), the nature of learning (how active must learning be to count as active learning?), and the sociopolitics of our own movement."

Professor Papert strikes all of the correct chords in portraying the vision of Education that the Communication Agents Initiative support. It is exactly in the direction that he so clearly outlines that our energies must be focused.

If our initial efforts will be successful as I am designing them to be, I can only envision with joy the opportunity that Kid Power, as Professor Papert so aptly labels his idea, will become a critical part of our very own Initiative.

Here is what he writes about "Kid Power":

"In this article I have been urging you—my colleagues—to action. Some of you will take up the challenge. Many have already done so.

But the real army that will make the system change is filled with troops of kids.

The ideas I have expressed will trickle down to these kids—or, more likely, be reinvented by them. Kids who have grown up with computers at home will be less and less inclined to let parents or teachers get away with loose talk and backward ideas.

They will be less and less willing to buy into a school system that offers learning that is inferior to what they can experience outside.

A hundred years ago John Dewey criticized school much as we do today. He had only a marginal effect because philosophical arguments have never budged an entrenched social system. At least not without an army.

The kids will be the army for our cause."

[via Stephen Downes]

Books by Seymour Papert

Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1996.

Essays by Seymour Papert

Exploration in the Space of Mathematics Education. International Journal of Computers for Mathematics Learning 1, pp 95-123. 1996.

Why Education Reform Is Impossible. Journal of Learning Sciences 6:4. 1997.

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Seymour Papert
Since the early 1960s, Seymour Papert has been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where, with Marvin Minsky, he founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and coauthored the seminal Perceptrons (1970). Papert is the inventory of the Logo computer language and, in 1985, was one of the founders of the Media Arts and Sciences Program and the MIT Media Laboratory. In 1988 he was named LEGO Professor of Learning Research, a chair created for him. Papert, who lives in Maine, can be contacted at papert#ml.media.mit.edu.

Swarming Tactics Among CAs Ammunitions

In a heated, rapid-fire exchange on the APFN network between Gaiacomm physicist as well as G4 wireless technology promoter Dr. Judah Ben-Hur and Susan Carlos, the latter introduced the concept of swarming tactics and the leverage of dynamic groups (flocks) of like-mided people to attack via communication tools and consequent actions key issues and social problems of our times.

The discussion takes place on the APFN network

Susan says:

"In searching for an arm to use to overcome the dark force upon us, and being already interested in the art of war, I came upon a recent report done by a Rand Corp. think tank called "Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present, and Future". The report is in PDF and can be directly downloaded here. Well worth the effort.

The arm is information collection and communication. The Arm then is used using the war tactic of swarming to unleash truth and in that way send the force back to the limbo from which it came.

Many people have already joined in using this tactic but most likely not realizing what might they are wielding. Each discussion group, blogger or "communication agent" has its close group of like-minded troupes who can and do make waves, reaching to further and further shores.

The pressure is mounting out there and we just have to coordinate a bit to put the pressure on [them too]. We can do it!

There are sites that give space to bloggers and even in the case of Robin Good who guides the would be "Communication Agents" through every step until the CA is able to do everything himself and then he is ever ready to help him set up as a "hub". Go check it out. http://www.masternewmedia.org/ "

Continue reading the online discussion between Susan and Judah right here.