by JA Daraja

Created on: July 25, 2009

"Is Global Democracy Possible?"

People are empowered first and foremost in their minds; by having the belief that they deserve better than the status quo, and that their efforts can produce a better situation. Where that belief does not exist, the people perish, even in the midst of infinite alternatives to hurtful circumstances. - In the first decade of the 21st century, the greatest obstruction to global democracy is the control of mass media by the US and its western European allies. Through these global ideation institutions the western powers are able to maintain a kind of dominance that military forces alone could not accomplish. - The task of the 21st century is to establish a global dialogue that includes the voices of the oppressed.

For all of the 20th century the US and its allies have been at war with the rest of the world. At some points the war was actually "declared" as in WWI and WWII. But for the most part US-western European war has been conducted quietly, using covert practices, economic bombs, and conceptual sabotage. Invasion and overthrow of nations has been accomplished as part of a "foreign aid" arrangement or a business "investment" package. Only occasionally has actual military intervention been necessary. But the result has been the same. Nations, cultures and social alternatives have been relentlessly suppressed or destroyed - exclusively in the interest of corporate profits.

A global network of institutions has arisen to justify and legalize the proceedings and outcomes of US-western European war. These are the education, information and entertainment media. Brought to maturity during WWII, these idea-factories have come before and after every attack upon non-western peoples. And by their existence they have also suppressed questions or alternate views related to those wars.

At present, the voices of the oppressed are possible only as the expressions of violence that some name "terrorism". But the dread of invalidated personhood and enforced silence is also terror, and even more so when it has become institutional. At the opening of the 21st century, those who are called terrorists are themselves terrified by the monstrous "peace" that surrounds their situations, and is reported in global media as simply "unfortunate". The causes of their distress remain anonymous.

In general and simplified terms, the 21st century struggle is still between "capitalism" and "socialism". It is the struggle between equal access to the

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