USA Gives India a Warning About Trade

Modern day Imperialism at its finest. Isn't it lovely that in this modern day where freedom is said to exist a large world power is telling a country who to trade with or else? It just goes to show that absolutely nothing has changed since Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492, except for the states which exploit. Instead of Britain, Portugal and Spain, it is the United States who imposes power on the weaker states.

Kony 2012 and It's Impact

Over the past 2 weeks people have been going insane about Kony 2012 and how we must all "Make Kony famous to the world" so that he can be captured.
Video here:

So I am all for taking down someone who kidnaps children and forces them to fight in armies and become sex slaves and initially I was on board retweeting, tumblring and facebooking all this information about Kony 2012 and then it hit me... do I really know anything about this Kony, about the Invisible Children Organization and about Uganda's situation other than what was fed to me in the video? No I didn't and with all the hype and outrage surrounding this Kony 2012 issue I didn't even bother to question what was under the surface and what is the real agenda behind this video. Interestingly enough I found out that this organization does collect donations but only 34% actually goes towards the actual cause. The rest of profits goes towards staff, and to making movies to promote themselves. Also there is the issue of where is Kony? There are rumors that Kony's army hasn't struck in over 5 years and that a lot of the footage shown in the video is over 5-10 years old. It brings forth the question of how much we intake from the media without truly questioning it's content and what is behind the message. This Kony video proved two things, the large impact of social media on social action and how powerful "group think" is in this modern world. We do not question, we just allow these hegemonic forces to impact the way we think, without thinking for ourselves.

According to this video Kony is not even in Uganda anymore...

The Coverage of the 99%... Oh wait, what coverage?

The Occupy Movement has grown into a global movement thanks to the impact of social media and globalization. Persons from the United States to Japan have taken to the streets to protest the growing gap between the poor and the rich; the 1% rich vs the 99%. I became interested late last year when these protests picked up steam and I have been following it ever since but I have noticed something. The occupy movement is no doubt huge and something that is imposing and showing change in the way people think so with something this huge you'd think it'll be all over BBC and CNN and any major news station but guess what... Nothing. I mean absolutely nothing is being covered on this occupy movement. No footage is being shown of the protest, police brutalities and the fights for equality. Why?
Maybe because some of the main themes of occupy are things like this:

 Or this:

All themes that attack major corporations and question who owns the power. This brings into question, who owns the media? Who has the power here to decide that this movement which is questioning and criticizing large corporate powers, is not important enough to receive worldwide coverage. After all if something is not covered by the media then it does not exist. CNN is a large, international news network which is owned by Ted Turner a media mogul who also is affiliated which television channels like Cartoon Network and TNT. He is no doubt part of what occupy refers to as the 1%. Why would the media cover any movement which threatens to question the dominant powers when media itself is part of these large corporations which people are ranting and raving about? That's right, they won't. It is not part of their agenda and the media itself is one of the socializing agents of society so they won't air material that allows for the questioning of society's set social structure. The media itself can be used to inform but also to censor and twist things to suit the agenda of the elite. Remember the videos which came out about Guantanamo Bay and the torture prisoners went through which was not aired in the US until a long while after the controversy had exploded? Why was it not aired, because the media itself is owned by persons who are in high positions in society and if they want to make something none existent to the public they can simply not cover it, like the occupy movement.