Cable TV, ads and Saudi Women fighting back

The mass media in the US is pretty dismal, worse than most.  I just bought some rabbit ears and cancelled my cable/Dish service as I can't stand being angry at it anymore when I think for any length of time about how much this "freedom" costs me. I had to do something and I have to say I feel much freer now; its a great weight off my shoulders.

They boasted about the 200 channels I got for my money.  I used to watch about 6 of them at any given time.  When you take out all the infomercial and shopping channels, religious propaganda, sports channels and repeat channels, you don't really have 200 either.  They advertise that you can get this or that deal but there are no deals; they determine what you get get and in order to get what you want you have to include what they want you to have.  After all, we must not forget that the purpose of the mass media in an economic system dominated by commodity production is to sell commodities.  And here in the US we are never never free of it. If the show you're watching is male oriented then so are the ads.  If it is something that is more directed at women then so will the ads be.  And, as I have mentioned before; how can we be living in a free society when as soon as the ads come on the volume on my television goes up a notch?

Without my permission, they reach in to my living room and change the volume on an electronic device I have.

I remember my mum visiting me here in the US and saying how lucky I was to not have to pay a TV license like she did.  She always bitched about that.   "I wish I could pay a TV license and get rid of these ads" I would tell her.  She soon learned how intense it is.  How every three or four minutes when you are trying to watch a late night movie they interrupt it to sell you something.  They have it timed across the various channels so if you switch the ads are on the other channel at the same time and sometimes they show an ad and then repeat it---it's f*@king insulting.  I feel violated.

True to their economic creed and idea of freedom, they will let you be ad free if you purchase yet another commodity from them, another electronic device so you can watch something without being interrupted at an inopportune moment (for the viewer). 

OK, I got that out of my system. I don't know why I blogged about that except that maybe it was 'cause I was thinking about my dear old mum. Then I glanced through Business Week here for a moment and saw a short piece on Saudi women who suffer extreme oppression and control at the hands of the US stooges that run Saudi society. (Makes my issue with ads seem a little minor)  I did blog about this before and also about the worse treatment for the Indonesian working class women who have been tortured, raped and even murdered at the hands of the rich Saudi's that employ them as maids and servants. One was recently beheaded for killing her employer, an event that has caused international repercussions and tension between Indonesia and the Saudis.  The US of course, continues to ensure the stability of the Saudi monarchs selling them a record $28 billion worth of weapons of mass destruction.

But women in Saudi Arabia are fighting back. You have to consider that under this murderous misogynistic regime a woman can be publicly lashed for leaving home without a male relative or even beheaded.  In fact, one women who did leave home with just a male friend was gang raped by a bunch of youth but they gave her 100 lashes anyway for not following rules.

But they keep fighting under extremely oppressive conditions.  A woman's group has been organizing protests after one woman, Manal Al Sharif was arrested for driving a car. Since then, fifty or so women "took to the streets" in autos in support of her.  The women's group has also started a campaign to get auto makers like Subaru which has a reputation as a "progressive" company apparently to pull out of the kingdom. I'm sure that these are the wives of men with some influence in Saudi society, an Indonesian maid would receive harsh treatment at such a move I would imagine.  No matter, the struggle for gender equality doesn't or shouldn't exclude rich or bourgeois women.

Still, when you consider the oppressive conditions under which some workers are  fighting back like the previous blog pointed out with regards to Vietnam, it makes us here in the US seem pretty passive and overly pessimistic about what we can accomplish and what we can't.

It is often said that we in the US are spoiled, have too much freedom.  But I look at it another way sometimes.  We are in the belly of the beast here.  Everyone recognizes that US capitalism is the mightiest economy and the mightiest military but it is also the mightiest ideological warrior for capitalism. We are the first victims of the powerful ideological war that capitalism wages every day in defense of its interest and for the consciousness of the masses. If the US bourgeois can have a dramatic influence on the culture of a nation outside of its own, imagine the power it has to influence its own working class.  This is especially so given the lack of any significant ideological counter to their propaganda from the leadership of the workers' organizations.  There is no mass workers' party here and never has been one.  There is no significant left or broad left current within the workers movement or the working class in general and what left there is is strongly influenced by the middle class.

And our media is probably the most censored and controlled in the advanced capitalist economies.  But the internet has opened up the world to us; globalization has its positive sides. No to capitalist globalization, yes to socialist globalization and a world federation of democratic socialist states. 

We can look to the workers and oppressed people's of the world as shining examples of what can be done and reach out to them. There's reason for optimism.