Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Wars are not won buying ammunition from the enemy

Thirty-six, thirty-seven million dollars has a way of making a point. If we're lucky, one point will be that a thirty-million dollar advantage spent spreading slander and disinformation can only almost sway thirty percent of an electorate away from voting for what they want and believe.

Thirty-seven million dollars is how much multinational agribusiness, led by serial environmental criminal Monsanto, is likely to spend in California trying to defeat Proposition 37, a ten years overdue requirement that genetically modified organisms in food simply be labeled. This massive flood of propaganda for one ballot proposition is a relatively small part of the rising tide of money that pulls our already deeply flawed representative democracy farther away from grappling with any recognizable representation of what matters to us.

Proposition thirty-seven million dollars proves another point: handing money over to same propaganda-distribution machinery used by our enemy -- indeed, the media and its context-less, soulless, and disempowering worldview is the enemy -- is no rational strategy for the long-term goal of working toward a better world.

Like all political spending in 2012, the vast majority of the anti-right-to-know GMO dollar deluge is going to television advertisements-- overall political ads are bringing an unprecedented 20 percent of revenues to broadcast television stations and networks. Political campaigns spend more money than ever before, adjusted for inflation, population, and an order of magnitude thrown in for fun, and the media responds by continually reducing free coverage to an analysis of the effectiveness of political ads. That's the guy selling megaphones telling everyone to make their decisions based on how loud people are, to hell with truth, justice, and the American way.

Giving money to this enemy, this enemy that is the crucial ally of nearly every other enemy we can name, is bad short-term tactic and a disastrous long-term strategy.

Concentrated wealth stands opposed to justice and liberty for humanity on many of the most pressing struggles of our time, from global warming to, naturally, poverty itself. We do not, relatively speaking, have the money. We often do have the numbers.

We need to spend our limited resources building our own, people-based communication network.

We cannot win wars buying ammunition from the enemy.

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