Really Real News… Had Any Lately?
From the editor…
So… I got a third hand report the other day about how someone was discussing an article about fracking that they’d read in the Blackfly at that sober and mature daily public forum that is held at our local Tim Hortons. The person they were talking to, who happened to disagree with the slant of our story, dismissively announced that “the Blackfly Gazette isn’t a real paper anyway.”
This made me laugh….everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course. But it begs the question, what is a real newspaper, anyway?
Certainly the Blackfly Gazette exists in 3D reality….you can touch it, fold it and start a fire with it! But that’s not what was meant by that crack. Apparently, the speaker believes that only big corporate owned and run media are worthy of being regarded as “real newspapers” but here’s where it starts to get fun!
Ever since writing was created people have used the written word to influence and sway public opinion, and once the printing press was invented, well…everybody got in on the act of trying to sell their own version of reality.
And, as the 20th Century got underway, and bankers and corporations consolidated their power and rule over the people of the world, their papers have only reflected their own agendas. They have used the people’s trust to influence public opinion to their own advantage.
As an example, one of the most diabolical campaigns ever waged by a news empire took place in the 1930’s. This is when newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst conspired with the DuPont Chemical Corporation to turn public opinion against the most profitable and useful crop in the United States…. the common hemp plant.
Industrial hemp was poised to become a billion dollar crop, with thousands of uses including fibre for clothing and paper, building materials, food, bio-fuel, bio-degradable plastics…the list of uses for industrial hemp are virtually unlimited. And, it grew anywhere and everywhere. Thousands of farmers grew it and depended upon it as their main cash crop.
Hearst owned vast tracts of pulp forests, and Du Pont had millions tied up in developing products made from petroleum. Clearly, hemp had to go, and so the Hearst campaign of lies began.
Industrial hemp is a completely different plant from psychoactive cannabis, although the strains are related. However, the conspirators demonized hemp by targeting cannabis, and telling the public that they were the same plant.
It worked. Hearst’s papers were constantly filled with made up stories about people who smoked cannabis who turned into crazed killers, and finally a bamboozled and confused public did absolutely nothing as one of the most useful plants on our planet was criminalized.
Heart’s pulp wood industry was then safe to engage in massive clear cutting operations, and Du Pont and other chemical companies were now free to continue to pollute the planet.
Even now, 80 years later, this self serving and evil conspiracy continues to destroy lives and dictate political policy.
This is merely one example of a news monopoly using the gullibility of the public against its own citizens for its own nefarious purposes!
And how about all the news that is deliberately omitted? Corporate owned papers don’t want us peons getting too informed…an informed public is dangerous to the powers that want to rule the world!
Have you heard about the successful revolution in Iceland? Did you know that the citizens of Iceland rose up in revolt against the corrupt banksters and government that had saddled their country with crippling debt….like every country…which they then expected the people to continue to pay for?
The people said enough! They forced the entire government to resign, they nationalized the bank of Iceland, they held a referendum enabling the people to determine their own economic system, they have jailed the bankers and officials responsible and the people have re-written their constitution.
The banksters in the US all got bail outs and fat bonuses, but in Iceland they threw their banking criminals in the pokey!
This is significant stuff, but have we been informed about this through the main stream media? Has any political program on radio or TV commented on this?
The people of Iceland have demonstrated a way to beat the international money printers and controllers of information. The last thing entrenched usurers would want is for you to think you could also free yourself from their chains, so the media has kept a lid on this amazing story!
Just a handful of corporations now control most of the world’s media. True investigative journalism no longer exists, in fact, reporters who have dug too deep for the truth have found themselves fired, black listed or even suddenly and mysteriously dead.
But, the truth is out there! Just think two or three times before you believe what you read, hear or see in the mainstream media!
And as for our little paper? Well, we have an agenda too, of course. But we want to help rebuild community, not promote ways to destroy our province for corporate profit.
Stephanie Kelley
