Underneath the different forms of "media blockade" the most lavish perversions and negligence (on the part of reformist leftists and tutti fruti right-wingers, of sects and bureaucracies) can curl up to profitably navigate in the swirling waters of the river of ignorance prefabricated at the request of bosses and oligarchies.

Even Pontifical formulas are taken up by many and repeated as the gospel of self-confidence: "a lie when repeated a thousand times becomes truth"...they say. One simply cannot become resigned.

There is no single episode in the bourgeois "media blockade" that is not part of an open war and of a war of symbols to enslave conscience. In particular, the conscience of workers, farmers, and students...The blockade of the media, with its chameleon-like forms, has preparatory tasks for the present and the future, in which the most prolific stories of psychological violence and torture unfold, and the assassination of truth or calumny becomes "our daily bread"... Denouncing the "media blockade" has become a compulsory phrase in every analysis - sometimes a casual meaningless phrase - following which some people easily forget that were talking about a scandal, a bare-faced and shameless offensive that specializes in infecting reality and consciousness with the most sophisticated poisons of capitalist alienation. And that must be denounced, as well, in international fora...the UN, UNESCO, OAS. It is a matter of national security, a problem of emotional integrity, of political strength... of freedom of speech. Nothing less.

"Media blockades" are not neutral, inasmuch as s/he who plays along with suppressing, distorting, violating or disguising reality - which in capitalism shamelessly reigns in the form of exploitation, barbarism and misery - is giving his/her being to the service of one of the most devastating attacks against social life.

There are schools where this is taught with abnormal and creative obscenity. One already knows the kinds of outrages that the bourgeoisie finances in order to get away with its maneuvers when it strikes out against working class consciousness... there are all sorts in the world of the lords.
Things can range from the disappearance of the entire print run of a newspaper (as has occurred with the Jornada de México, an action repeatedly denounced by Julio Hernández); to the open or concealed banning of television transmissions (as is the case with Venezuelas TeleSur in several countries); to the systematic suppression of social expressions (as in Valencia where the "authorities" have ordered the silencing, with gray paint, of the walls of liberty which have emerged out of rebellious dignity, or the beatings paid for by the increasing Spanish Nazism and supported by the masters). These are just a few examples.

Here one could also include the shyster-lawyer method of banning the sale of "accursed books" (as invariably happens against the Fredrick Engels Foundation in many Book Fairs where thousands of ways are contrived to block, frustrate, aggravate or suppress the divulging of Marxist scientific thought.).
Neither should one forget the shameless invention of calumnies, the propagation of ideologically imposing rumors, and of course capitalisms proverbial silence in the face of every triumph - not infrequent - attained by the working class. One day we shall be able to draw up the inventory, more terrible than ever, of the concrete actions paid for by capitalism to twist all of History and, in particular, to conceal the story, which cannot be hidden, of its inevitable collapse.

One cannot (or should not) discuss the "media blockade" alone or in groups. It is a matter of an international struggle that requires open collective analysis, an action program for workers in all sectors (especially for workers in communication media), and direct action at all levels.

It is a Symbolic War that socialist intelligence should embrace as an object of study aimed at permanently combating its adverse effects even in the most subtle territories of subjectivity. Being naive (or pretending to be naive) is suicidal. For that there is an urgent need, among many other things, for an International Communication Movement towards Socialism.
It is imperative to open spaces in every university classroom, dedicated directly or indirectly to studying Social Communication and to debate, accusation and disclosure.
It is essential for professors to encourage in their students the transformative capacity of observation and combat; it is peremptory for workers to promote workshops for study and struggle; government officials are urged to elaborate strategies and set up organizations aimed at manifesting publicly against the toxic silence of the "media blockades".
We are obliged to organize ourselves and to spread the struggle with the spirit of integration...to be an internationalist. This is not a struggle of the genius or the erudite, it is a struggle of the working class.

Workers are only saved by workers, and as to the struggle against "media blockades" we must not sit down and wait for the "good will" of reformists - or of their masters - to give us the charity of producing the information that we should be generating with political and semantic independence ...against the scraps or tips of information that they offer us about our struggles, triumphs or failures. We have no use for their mirrors or intermediary "news programs" to tell us who we are, or if we are qualified to understand and to debate. We do not need to repeat the masters discourse.

Every daily incident of the "media blockade" is a challenge that shows (shows us) our weaknesses and our lack of organized leadership, even in our international combat. It leaves us naked and fragile. It offers us the panorama of our failures, and brings to light, with spine-chilling clarity, a battlefield to which we arrive late, and not with a little bit of naivety or negligence.
This is a transcendental battle of the first order in which we are not investing what is necessary, neither the most vital tactic nor strategy. Among other things, this is because we are disorganized and immature as a class that very much lacks a revolutionary program of communication transition against alienation. There is an urgent need for an International Communication Movement towards Socialism.
Pretending to be the victim, and getting used to being one by repeating, for instance, the stereotypes that inoculate many soap operas, is unforgivable. There is no room for self-righteousness, even if disguised as self-criticism, no matter how much saliva is invested in making up excuses.

(Cubanow)