Outward Journey / Inward Journey

Thanx @ a diary at Dailykos, here’s a list of the top 25 underreported news stories you’re unlikely to hear about on CNN, MSNBC, or FOX in 2009.  Courtesy of Project Censored, a training project in media and the First Amendment at Sonoma State University.

Here are some excerpts from one:

In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the countries where it is received.

[...]

CARE’s 2006 report, “White Paper on Food Aid Policy,” points out that the current food aid program is motivated by profit rather than altruism. The policy, which dictates that donated money be used to purchase food in the home country, results in a program driven by “the export and surplus disposal objectives of the exporting country” and not the needs of people in hunger.

The US policy implements the practice of monetization, a food aid policy in which the US government buys surplus food from American agribusinesses that have already been heavily subsidized, and ships it via US shipping lines (generating transport costs that eat up much of the $2 billion annual food aid provided by the US government) to aid organizations working around the world. The aid organizations then sell the US-grown crops to local populations, at a dramatically reduced cost. The aid organizations use proceeds from these sales to fund their development and anti-poverty programs. But several groups, with CARE at the forefront, have pointed out that this policy has the effect of undermining local farmers and destabilizing the very food production systems that aid organizations are working to strengthen.

[...]

“We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine,” CARE spokeswoman Alina Labrada said, “but local farmers are being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism.”

I watched A Clockwork Orange for the first time last night.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it; it raises questions about civil liberties, the will, violence, etc.  I found myself sympathizing with the main character, for some reason, and the violence was almost comedic.  I don’t know if this is a comment on myself or on the film: probably the former.  I saw it as an interesting depiction of the relationship that most people have with the State.  Indeed I think the State itself was a main character in the film.

 A future project for me: re-read Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern and some other works surrounding technology, Enlightenment thinking, and authoritarianism, and then watch this film again.  There’s something familiar about the theme of a government with positivistic aims and methods that is more than willing to trample civil liberties in the meantime.  Perhaps also of the realpolitik of an opposition which prods Alex into attempting suicide in order to generate sympathetic headlines and concern for individual rights and freedoms.

There was a troubling feature on Democracy Now! last night about how the debate about Video News Releases has failed to halt their use.  If you’re unfamiliar with this issue, here’s the jist: corporate public relations firms produce VNRs, which deliberately resemble news segments to promote their clients, and then release them to local television stations which air them without explanation about their origin.  In short it amounts to corporate propaganda being passed off as legitimate journalism.  You can read more about VNRs here.  For me it really speaks to the domination that corporations have over American society; while the work being done by the Center for Media and Democracy is certainly very good, it seems to me that it’s a bit like swatting at mosquitoes when really the swamp should be drained.  Every single aspect of our lives in America is affected by consumption capitalism and the corporations.  What we need is structural, democratic reform of the American economy which would in turn bring about a profound shift in our culture away from greed.

 You can read the report from Democracy Now! here.