“Insurrection of subjugated knowledge” is well under way

Suppression of  information – prison.

Freedom of information – paradise.

- David Icke

Media  play a huge role in  politics nowadays, that’s why some famous  journalists as John Pliger  even consider  it as  “invisible government”.  Journalists today have to keep in mind their great responsibility for the information they provide, because it may cause a tremendous dramatic consequences as wars and deaths of many people.

This blog is merely an attempt to discuss the discrepancies and fallacies  used in media, particularly in Thai Media and also  related  to that – other forms of propaganda, as by government and by other groups like academics and  different political movements.  Thai Media, now already even self-admitedly, has become a “more middle class’ media than “mass” media“  (although certainly a large part of it is also influenced by upper class elite). And unfortunately, middle class  is becoming increasingly anti-democratic reactionary !

While large portion of Thai people still prefer to stay “apolitical”,  there is an ongoing battle going on by major Propaganda players  to sway this large mass into one or other political direction. There are full scale “info-wars”  and even officially announced by Thai government “Media war” going on. Many alternative sources of information are rigidly being censored or completely closed, many websites blocked, and the remaining Thai MSM (Main Stream Media)  exercise a lot of “self-censorship”, at the same time fiercely attacking any rivals.

In such a climate of  intense “Media war”  we feel it necessary at least to attempt dismantling the “fog of war” so to say – try to sort out true facts from distortions and valid points from fallacies and demagoguery tricks.  certainly  this blog is just a small contribution into  the efforts done by many other  bloggers and folks who participate in discussions there.  Because now more than ever there is need for what Pilger mentioned as ‘critical public intelligence and moral sense‘.

“Real truth is always subversive“

- Zdener Urbanek

“Truth comes from the ground up, almost never from the top down“

- John Pilger

“Never believe anything until it is officially denied”

- Claud Cockburn

“Each word  has an echo. So does each silence“

-  Jean-Paul Sartre

“The Indian writer Vandana Shiva has called for an “insurrection of subjugated knowledge.” The insurrection is well under way. In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions of people are turning away from the traditional sources of news and information and toward the world wide web, convinced that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power.“  – John Pilger

“Democratizing of knowledge becomes a central precondition for human liberation because the contemporary knowledge system excludes the humane by its very structure. Such a process of democratization would involve a redefining of knowledge such that the local and diverse become legitimate as knowledge, and they are viewed as indispensable knowledge because concreteness is the reality, and globalization and universalization are abstraction which have violated the concrete and hence the real. Such a shift from globalizing to the local knowledge is important to the project of human freedom because it frees knowledge from the dependence on established regimes of thought, making it simultaneously more autonomous and more authentic. Democratization based on such an “insurrection of subjugated knowledge” is both desirable and necessary component of the larger process of democratization because the earlier paradigm is in crisis and in spite of its power to manipulate, is unable to protect both nature and human survival.“

- Vandana Shiva

(from book : Monocultures of the Mind.  Chapter:  “Democratising knowledge“)