The alternative media is officially dead. Although hundreds of independent newspapers flourished in the late 1960s, most did not survive the 1970’s and those that did were absorbed into the corporate media system, becoming editorially hollow advertising cash cows while they lasted. The whole point of creating your own newspaper in the 1960s was because all the media were spewing status-quo propaganda. Even now, with the internet dismantling print media and offering unlimited options for serving content, the so-called “alternative” news sites never question the pathetic official 9/11 story or suggest a CIA/Mafia/Pentagon/Texas Oil Cartel conspiracy murdered JFK.
The op to disarm and dismantle the counterculture media was prolonged and the battle took place on many fronts. I started my own newspaper in 1968 in Urbana, Illinois, and was swiftly targeted by a State Narcotics Task Force, who set me up on bogus charges, while rousting me out of high school in handcuffs and shaming my parents at the local country club. That was one of the fronts: round up and imprison the alpha male founders of the alternative media.
I’d hung an Eldridge Cleaver for President poster in my second floor bedroom window and then went downstairs to see how it looked from the street. I’ll never forget my dad’s reaction to seeing that poster while he was hitting his practice golf ball in the side yard. Man, he took off full speed and ripped that poster out of the window and told me never to do that again. He said it sent the wrong message to our neighbors and we’d just recently moved into the neighborhood.
Funny how back in the day many of the brightest journalists wanted to get into investigative reporting. The Washington Post, a propaganda tool of the CIA decided to capture the center of energy on investigative journalism so they served up Nixon, maybe because he gave some of the stolen gold the Japanese had hidden in the Philippines back to China to buy his detente move. For whatever reason, Yale graduate Bob Woodward, a spook and secret bisexual, was transformed into a Knight in Shining Armor to lead the charge of investigators everywhere…..that’s a second front. Use your inside position to manufacture fake whistle blowers who initially release real solid info to establish credentials, but quickly switch to some absurd rabbit hole, like we never landed on the moon, lizard shape-shifting aliens rule the world, chemtrails, Elvis is alive, or Sandy Hook never happened.
I get the feeling the current generation of journalists cringe at the mere mention of 9/11. Although they realize the system is rigged by corrupt politics hidden from view, they also realize showing interest in that corruption is a sure way to end a promising journalism career. Since a handful of companies own the entire system, if you want a job (and jobs are really hard to find), better not be rocking the boat.
Of course, back in the late 1960s, you could rent a 4-bedroom house in Urbana for $150 a month, and work a minimum wage job and survive. But during the last fifty years, the system has evolved to extract increasing amounts of profit from every aspect of our lives. Womb to tomb, we are mined for profit, and most people work themselves silly just keeping their heads above water at this point, and after 30 years don’t possess a secure retirement, since all it takes is a medical problem, divorce, firing, or lawsuit to wipe you out.
Unfortunately, at this stage of the game, it’s virtually impossible for any truly honest underground media to emerge, because even if it did, it would be quickly penetrated and subverted, which is probably what happens to any big internet companies. In one form or another, The Octopus comes a knocking at your door, offers a deal you can’t refuse: play ball and become rich beyond your wildest dreams, or go rouge and and run the risk of getting whacked or busted down to nothing. The CIA and Sicilian Men of Honor are just two tentacles connected to this gigantic beast run by old money. For this class of people, war is a game rigged for milking profits and best played when both sides are funded by the same banks.
I’m currently available for hire to any media company interested in my brand of journalism as I recently got divorced from High Times. I specialize in conspiracy research and counterculture history. Marijuana, in case you didn’t know it, is a conspiracy story, because why else would the world’s most beneficial plant be outlawed everywhere, except through a massive conspiracy?
clive davis&the rolling stone mag—-research——