Againt the Grain

On Oct 14, 2007 a Polish immigrant was tasered at the Vancouver International Airport. The man was confused, he had been waiting for a very long time, and he could not even speak English. Obviously he was annoyed and agitated, who wouldn’t be? The RCMP officers then proceeded to shoot him with a taser, which sent him onto the ground in what was an obvious case of helplessness. The man later died on the scene and the tape of the incident has just lately been released (http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=eM44P3J0IF0&feature=related).

This is horrible, it is very sad, but it is all that seems to be on the news. Children are starving around the world and violence is erupting as we speak. We hear nothing about the plethora of issues that exist elsewhere. Instead, the media will concentrate on one issue, such as this one. When the media does this, when they concentrate on a couple of issues they are limiting our information. We are getting used to only having a few news channels now and only a few stories for which they speak of. This phenomenon is called ownership concentration. The fact that the few control so much causes us to get used to the mainstream.

We began to see ownership concentration with the introduction of companies like Clear Channel. Companies such as these will monopolize an inustry until they essentially dictate what goes on in that industry. The scariest thing is that these corporations are not only dictating a product, they are ictating what we see, how we rhink, and subsequently how we act.
I suppose that one can relate this concept to the events on Oct 14 to the Polish immigrant. The man is confused and he is looking for information. This is the same thing that many Canadians do when they access YouTube Videos or watch the 6 o’clock news. We are just looking for information, we are looking for answers. When we do not behave like everyone else is than we are confronted with the mainstream. We must conform to what is considered the norm. If we do not than the mainstream goes against us. The power of this stream stuns anyone who goes against it. This mainstream can be represented by the four RCMP officers, in matching uniforms, who tasered the man and then paced their knees on him.
This takes away from democracy. The people do not have free access to information. This allows politicians and news agencies to push certain agendas. A great example of this can be seen in the introduction of the War in Iraq. Bush and his administration paint any opposition as “evil doers” and makes claims that they have weapons of mass destruction. If this is all that the American people hear than obviously they are going to jump on the bandwagon. They have no other options; they do not have free access to information. View this video to see the sort of mainstream agendas that are pushed due to our limited scope of reality due to our lack of free information (http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=gMStCHtUNeY).