There will be hell to pay once the dust settles.
A small band of terrorists got real lucky, if we can call that luck, and managed to murder thousands of Americans.
On September 11, 2001, the planes that crashed through three buildings destroyed far more that three buildings, four jets, and several thousand innocent lives. They also destroyed the principles that had been the foundation of the American state and the foundation of American society. The legitimacy of the the reasoned rule of law that had characterized America has been replaced by laws of fascistic convenience. If their intent was to destroy America, they pulled it off beyond their wildest dreams. But America has been destroyed not by the 9 - 11 terrorists as much as Americans themselves. Cowards shrieked and paniced and watched for the sky to fall; it didn't.
There is now an emerging groundswell of sobriety as the dust settles. People are waking up by the thousands and it will soon be millions. The drunken hysteria is fading and the sun is coming up. The drunken orgy of killing continues but many that were caught up in the confusion of the moment are realizing that American was founded on ancient principles and not on the brutality of cowards. Those principles were penned at a time of threat from a foriegn imperialist state.
While it is true that American had often behaved badly and perhaps didn't deserve a reputation for justice, freedom, and democracy, it still held this noble esteem worldwide. The reputation that it had gained has vanished. The big difference now is that new laws have become legal rot within the body of American law and have sickened the integrity of the nation. The Patriot Act is an affront to the founding fathers of America. It not only undermines and subverts the Constitution but renders it a worthless scrap of paper.
Those that are hawks and those that scream for more protection against 'terror' have done far more to subvert the spirit of America than a thousand box cutter terrorists could have. They are still busy and working hard to build a fascist empire of terror and tyranny. They not only subvert the spirit of America, they are its nemesis.
The Spirit of America
The spirit of America had raised the bar and challenged the world to live up to the noble ideals of truth, justice, and freedom. In spite of the Vietnams, the communist witch hunts of the 50s, and all the crimes commited under the American flag, the spirit of America did not die. It perservered through generations of cowards that not only acted pragmatically for gain and profit, but it also perervered through deliberate attempts to destroy it.
In spite of it all, the spirit of America is far from dead. It can be found in the music of Bruce Springstein, Ani Defranco, and Neil Young. It can be found in the writings of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and William Blum. It can be found in the artistic creativity of Michael Moore and Oliver Stone and it can be found on the streets of Washington and in towns and cities and homes all over the planet. It can also be found in Palestine, in Israel, in China and in Iraq. You will not find the spirit of America in the KKK or the BNP and you will not confine it to America or to capitalism or to socialism. You can beat it and twist it but you can never kill it because it really isn't the spirit of America. It is the spirit of humanity and it has been around since hunter-gatherers hunted and gathered. America just gave it a clear basis in legal legitimacy.
Across the globe people have been appalled and astounded, but not altogether surprised, at the reaction of the Bush Administration to the 9-11 attacks. It has been widely understood that those with control of the American state are ruthless and pragmatic. Murder for profit is nothing new and using the state to steal and control resources in foriegn lands has become an expectation. Even torture and illegal detentions have been used to secure 'American interests'; in other words, corporate profit.
What is new is the open advocation of police state tactics not only in foriegn countries, but within the United States as well. What is new is the open promoting of arbitrary arrests, torture, and murderous collective punishment as we have seen in Fallujah and many other places. What is new is the the open and aggressive attack on the freedoms that have not only defined America, but all modern and progressive societies.
A Painful Hangover
There will be, inevidably, a reaction to the reaction. A negation of the negation of the fundamental principles of the rule of law over the excesses of imperialists and cowards. In fact, it has never been absent. So far, it has come mostly from the left and from sincere intellectuals on the right. But it is about to move into the mainstream as the rats scurry off the decks of the sinking ship of Bush's so called war on terror.
The Patriot Act will be scrapped and the torture camps will be emptied with nothing left but a cold wind and bitter memories blowing through them. The carnage will end and tired and disillusioned troops will make their way back home and they won't expect a hero's welcome and they won't get one. Like an orgy of perversion, those that partied hard and participated in this horrible debasement not only of the American Constitution, but of humanity itself, will be exposed for their abominable and cruel acts of opportunistic brutality. And those that urged them on will fall silent under a blanket of shame.
Like the Germens that followed their Furher in the 30s and 40s, they will slip underground. Their families and friends will be ashamed to be associated with them. Their names will live on in infamy in this age of freeflowing information. They will never live this down. Even past their deaths they will not escape judgement for making the beginning of the new millenium the darkest of dark ages; especially for the long suffering people of Iraq.
Some of them still rattle on and demand more war in Iran and more draconian laws to enure that 'Americans' are protected from terrorists. Some demand that democracy and freedom be installed all over the planet at the point of a gun and with the threat of B-52s. They are no different than masianic manics spreading communism, democracy, Islam, Christianity or any other ideology of salvation to the world. What they all have in common is that they know what is best for everybody else and they will slaughter as many as need be to entrench their salvation deep into all societies, forever. What they also have in common is that they are the starkest perversions of what they aim to promote.
And in the End...
The strange irony of this dark age is that those that scream and wage war for America are the antithesis of what America had been. Those that are ostensibly anti-American are true to the principles and foundation of it.
It may be that this is the beginning of an age of tyranny that will last many generations. But we can be optomistic. Even when information could be controlled and communities and societies were isolated from one another, greater ideals and visions defeated the enemy in time. Nowadays, we have the means to share information and ideas around the globe in a split second. The fog of ignorance that tyrants of the past relied on has vanished.
The end is near for the enemies of freedom, equality, justice, and democracy. When the nightmare is over, we will stand tall and drink a toast to one another for having fought a noble fight. And those that have disgraced themselves will be silent.
They will, all of them, have an enormous debt to pay.
This blog is an archive of articles I've published in MWC News, Indymedia, and on Newsgroups.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Sunday, May 14, 2006
The Oil Wars
We will soon witness another major war crime. America will bomb Iran. It's not likely that they will invade on the ground after the punishing reaction that the people of Iraq have delivered to the occupiers. But Uncle Sam will do what he does best. He will slaugher the people of Iran from a place near space where the USA can wage war with impunity. Like a video game, the bombers will not even have to see the blood and the charred corpses of babies and their terrorized parents.
The propaganda campaign has been shifted into high gear in the past few months. We've seen this script when they invaded Iraq and prior to that, it was the Taliban in Afghanistan. Prior to that we've seen urgent and hysterical calls to take out the demons in Yugoslavia, Haiti, Grenada, Lybia, Panama, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Vietnam, Chile... it would be easier to list the countries that they have not aimed to control through violence and meddling. As we watch them invading and killing, we can watch patterns emerge. One pattern is that they usually have no qualms about telegraphing their punches. That is, they build it up as if they were promotong a new, huge blockbuster movie. And in some ways, it is like a big blockbuster movie. The chicken-hawks can prepare their favourite armchairs and popcorn and watch the bombing begin on the evening news. CNN, Fox, and other large mainstream media achieve Neilson ratings as if they were brodcasting the World Cup when Uncle Sam has blood dripping from his teeth. It's quite a show these Americans put on. Quite a show indeed.
The Americans want to punish the people of Iran for rejecting McDonalds and Wal-Mart and for throwing out their installed puppet; the Shah. That is purely political and on its own wouldn't be sufficient, especially at a time when the world is heavily war weary. But pressing economic considerations are pushing them to attack in this war weary time. They need to control oil as much as possible and Iranian oil is located next to China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea and it also happens to be in the Islamic Middle East. Control of Iranian oil is a powerful position to hold on the global chessboard.
Control of oil is important. Saudi Arabia has a lot of control of oil and at the moment, they have turned down the taps to raise the prices. Between OPEC and the large oil companies, they have the power to raise or lower prices simply by turning the taps on high or on low. They have immense economic leverage.
Both China and India are embarking on their own paths of capitalism and mass production of all things buyable. The demand for oil in these countries of several billion people is rising and will rise more rapidly in the near future.
American oil billionaires are salivating over the propects of getting their hands on exploiting that vast energy resource as they have done with Iraqi oil resources.
The Nuclear Ruse
There is a lot of bluster coming from Washington about the threat that Iran presents to the world. They are spinning the same cartoons they spun prior to the massacres in Iraq and they are suggesting that Iran threaens to obliterate America and Israel in a nuclear holocaust.
They will not say that they are atttacking Iran for oil. They will never say that. They will never say that because that is the truth. Instead, they will spin out the big lie and it will be delivered to your living room courtesy of mainstream media.
As it is, there are five states that can own nuclear weapons according to the Non Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons. They are France, China, Russia, The UK, and the USA. Three states have them that should not (Israel, Pakistan and India). The USA provides nuclear bombs for use by four European countries as well as Turkey. They also arm Israel to the teeth and Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons as well as delivery systems, enough to evaporate Iran in a very short time.
The bottom line is that if Iran were to use weapons of mass destruction against Israel, the USA or pretty much anybody else, it would be suicide for them.
Iran can legally enrich uranium to 3% and it would require enrichment to over 90% to make weapons grade uranium. Experts agree that Iran is not a nuclear threat. But this will not stop Bush and his media acolytes from whipping up war fever through lies and stories of impending doom.
American Security
Bush has been using the threat of what might happen if America doesn't commit this atrocity or that atrocity in its own defense. They have removed the fundamental freedoms of not only Americans but of Canadians, Brits, Australians and many other Western nations under the guise of security. They have used fear mongering to attack Afghanistan and Iraq and to arrest people for no reason whatsoever. They use private bounty hunters to gather up Arabian men and lock them away and throw away the key.
They have crossed the line into tyranny. On the 'freedom and democracy' side of that line there are no pre-emptive strikes or arbitrary detentions. It isn't possible.
The excuse they use is that Iran (or whomever the enemy of the day is) will develop nuclear weapons and that since it is a rogue state it is potentially violent, they must take protective measures. But it is not Iran that has invaded other countries and it is not Iran that wages war with impunity. It is not Iran that invades, assassinates, and massacres people because they 'might' be a threat; someday. These charges will stick to America and they will stick to Israel.
If any nation fits the definition of 'rogue state', it is the USA. It also has come to fit much of the criteria for 'fascist state'.
America compels nations to develop nuclear weapons through their threatening and belligerent behaviour. They are not about to attack North Korea because North Korea may have nuclear wepaons. Neither would they attack the Soviet Union or Russia. But they will badger and harrangue nations that do not have nuclear weapons. They have proven that over and over again. They take a special interest in those nations if they happen to be standing on a sea of oil.
The biggest threat to American security is the actions of the American State on behalf of the oil billionaires that run it. As Noam Chomsky said, if the Americans want to put an end to terrorism, they should stop it. And if they do stop it, the threats and the monsters under their beds will go away.
The propaganda campaign has been shifted into high gear in the past few months. We've seen this script when they invaded Iraq and prior to that, it was the Taliban in Afghanistan. Prior to that we've seen urgent and hysterical calls to take out the demons in Yugoslavia, Haiti, Grenada, Lybia, Panama, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Vietnam, Chile... it would be easier to list the countries that they have not aimed to control through violence and meddling. As we watch them invading and killing, we can watch patterns emerge. One pattern is that they usually have no qualms about telegraphing their punches. That is, they build it up as if they were promotong a new, huge blockbuster movie. And in some ways, it is like a big blockbuster movie. The chicken-hawks can prepare their favourite armchairs and popcorn and watch the bombing begin on the evening news. CNN, Fox, and other large mainstream media achieve Neilson ratings as if they were brodcasting the World Cup when Uncle Sam has blood dripping from his teeth. It's quite a show these Americans put on. Quite a show indeed.
The Americans want to punish the people of Iran for rejecting McDonalds and Wal-Mart and for throwing out their installed puppet; the Shah. That is purely political and on its own wouldn't be sufficient, especially at a time when the world is heavily war weary. But pressing economic considerations are pushing them to attack in this war weary time. They need to control oil as much as possible and Iranian oil is located next to China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea and it also happens to be in the Islamic Middle East. Control of Iranian oil is a powerful position to hold on the global chessboard.
Control of oil is important. Saudi Arabia has a lot of control of oil and at the moment, they have turned down the taps to raise the prices. Between OPEC and the large oil companies, they have the power to raise or lower prices simply by turning the taps on high or on low. They have immense economic leverage.
Both China and India are embarking on their own paths of capitalism and mass production of all things buyable. The demand for oil in these countries of several billion people is rising and will rise more rapidly in the near future.
American oil billionaires are salivating over the propects of getting their hands on exploiting that vast energy resource as they have done with Iraqi oil resources.
The Nuclear Ruse
There is a lot of bluster coming from Washington about the threat that Iran presents to the world. They are spinning the same cartoons they spun prior to the massacres in Iraq and they are suggesting that Iran threaens to obliterate America and Israel in a nuclear holocaust.
They will not say that they are atttacking Iran for oil. They will never say that. They will never say that because that is the truth. Instead, they will spin out the big lie and it will be delivered to your living room courtesy of mainstream media.
As it is, there are five states that can own nuclear weapons according to the Non Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons. They are France, China, Russia, The UK, and the USA. Three states have them that should not (Israel, Pakistan and India). The USA provides nuclear bombs for use by four European countries as well as Turkey. They also arm Israel to the teeth and Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons as well as delivery systems, enough to evaporate Iran in a very short time.
The bottom line is that if Iran were to use weapons of mass destruction against Israel, the USA or pretty much anybody else, it would be suicide for them.
Iran can legally enrich uranium to 3% and it would require enrichment to over 90% to make weapons grade uranium. Experts agree that Iran is not a nuclear threat. But this will not stop Bush and his media acolytes from whipping up war fever through lies and stories of impending doom.
American Security
Bush has been using the threat of what might happen if America doesn't commit this atrocity or that atrocity in its own defense. They have removed the fundamental freedoms of not only Americans but of Canadians, Brits, Australians and many other Western nations under the guise of security. They have used fear mongering to attack Afghanistan and Iraq and to arrest people for no reason whatsoever. They use private bounty hunters to gather up Arabian men and lock them away and throw away the key.
They have crossed the line into tyranny. On the 'freedom and democracy' side of that line there are no pre-emptive strikes or arbitrary detentions. It isn't possible.
The excuse they use is that Iran (or whomever the enemy of the day is) will develop nuclear weapons and that since it is a rogue state it is potentially violent, they must take protective measures. But it is not Iran that has invaded other countries and it is not Iran that wages war with impunity. It is not Iran that invades, assassinates, and massacres people because they 'might' be a threat; someday. These charges will stick to America and they will stick to Israel.
If any nation fits the definition of 'rogue state', it is the USA. It also has come to fit much of the criteria for 'fascist state'.
America compels nations to develop nuclear weapons through their threatening and belligerent behaviour. They are not about to attack North Korea because North Korea may have nuclear wepaons. Neither would they attack the Soviet Union or Russia. But they will badger and harrangue nations that do not have nuclear weapons. They have proven that over and over again. They take a special interest in those nations if they happen to be standing on a sea of oil.
The biggest threat to American security is the actions of the American State on behalf of the oil billionaires that run it. As Noam Chomsky said, if the Americans want to put an end to terrorism, they should stop it. And if they do stop it, the threats and the monsters under their beds will go away.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
The Fox Box
The incestious relationship between the Bush White House and Fox News has emerged from it's transparent closet. Former speechwriter for Bush senior, Tony Snow, has left Fox News to resume his intimate position within the Bush family. He will now work as Bush junior's press secretary.
Only the most naive of the American population can take Fox News seriously. They lie, they spin, and they bully. Even their claims about themselves, claims such as their view of world affairs as unbiased, are utter lies. This does not fall within the realm of opinion unless we want to toss out dictionaries and agree that words, such as 'bias', have no meaning. They claim that they are not conservative, an utterance that only further confirms their lack of integrity. Fox makes many such utterances.
Created by ultra billionaire Rupert Murdoch a decade ago, Fox has developed a slick system of bells and whistles to capture the attention of those with severe attention deficits. They make plenty of pretty sounds and shifting visuals and the analysis is never anything that the average ten year old can't manage. They present the world in cartoonish hues of black and white. They present a world view where the good guys are fighting the bad guys and proceed to cheer on the good guys and hackle and jeer the bad guys. They wave plenty of flags and hype up war and patriotism. They are a dog and monkey show the likes we have never seen before.
They also have a host of manic hyper-conservatives that would make Gobbels blush. Names such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have become synonmous with the raving loonie right. They also have prepetual guests like William Kristol that appear to patiently urge the Bush Administration to attack more countries - NOW.
For all its financial might and connections, the quality of what is delivered by Fox appears to be dredged up from the bottom of the barrel. They have plenty of stories about runaway brides, a missing teen in Aruba, and various other personal dramas that appear to be quite meaningless. But even in those stories there are implicit mesages. Messages that suggest that even though hundreds of murders occur within the USA each week, this particular girl is more valuable. If she were Black or poor, she would never have been paraded on national news ad nauseaum.
On the political front they are nothing more than vulgar apologists for all things right wing. Their news and opinion shows operate within such a tight frame of reference that the term, 'exlusive' takes on a much more literal meaning than is common. They exclude all but those that don't question assumptions that reflect mindless justifiations for the brutal policies of the Bush Administration.
There is a method to their madness beyond cheering on and hyping up endlesswar and neo conservative economic policies. The folksy good old boy political opinions that had been relegated to barber shops and dimly lit pubs have now found a slick outlet to provide them an air of legitimacy. This not only serves to entrench those backward right wing ideas but it also serves to convince vulnurable souls that the answers are contained within that lumpen outlook. Fox is nothing more than a prvatized, contracted out, wing of the Bush Administration and the appointment of Snow into a key White House stint will lend Fox an apparent guise of credibility.
In America there is very little in terms of credible media. Ted Turner's CNN had been operating as the number one simpleton apologist for the neo-con right but Murdoch shoved his elbow in Turner's face and is benefiting the rewards for unquestioning loyalty to the madmen that rule the planet. The American media operate within a very tight box and there isn't a lot of space in there. Outside that box lurks terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, communists and liberals, and foriegn ideas. The cozy realtionship between Murdoch's baby and those with power sends the mesage to the more 'liberal' outlets like CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC that cowering and begging and tossing away objective credibility pays off.
THE FUNCTIONS OF MEDIA
Ideally, the media functions to inform the public. If there is a danger that a dam might burst and destroy your town, the media have a respnsibilty to inform you about it. Mainstream media however function to spin and to operate slick smoke and mirrors games. We must be aware of this to keep from being seduced by it. We need to understand the nature, not only of Fox, but of the whole kit and kabootle. The past few years they have been screaming that there is a dam about to burst a barrage of terrorism toward the West but as they cry wolf over and over again, we respomd with a collective roll of the eyes. If we really want to know about fragile dams, we must turn to the ever growing world of alternative media.
The functions of mainstream media are not what they appear to be. They are not simply out to make profit. They are that and much more. The marriage of the corporation to the state complete, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. Mainstream media has become a tool of those that want to tell you that the Western world is in deep, deep danger. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the oil/ arms billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a green light to make war and they want a green light to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we see very agitated talking heads that spew drivel about the threat of the month. At the moment it is Iran that threatens to turn the USA into a charred pile of nuclear dust. It also serves their sinister designs to remove the rights and freedoms that have been built by successive generations of progressive organizers and thinkers. Political opinions are now being criminalized. In the past few years politicians have been telling us that extremist views cannot be tolerated and they pose a threat to us all. This, coming from the most extreme of all, the neo cons. Welcome to the Matrix. Wecome to Fox et al.
The corporate media is working diligently to indoctrinate the citizenry, especially in the United States. It is in the United States where this process is magnified and as a result, people outside the USA may be affected to a lesser degree. This is not aimed to slight the citizens of America. But it the Americans that have the misfortune of inhabiting the deepest recesses of the belly of the imperialist beast.
CORPORATE CONTROL OF MEDIA
The probem is that there is a single special interest group that have control of the media. That interest group is the billionaires that not only own the media, but they also control weapons maunuafacturing, oil, and most states on the national level. The most significant being the American State apparatus.
Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for mainstream media:
“...The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
The following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy (mainstream media) They shape opinion and employ sycophant mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also use scholars and think tanks to tell us what and how to think.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young. They are being used to send young people to go overseas and kill and they are being used to strip away the freedoms and rights so many have died for.
The importance of alternative news outlets and the provision of real news and opinion that has not been programmed can't be overestimated. There is a lot happening in the world at the moment and there will be a lot happen over the coming years and decades. We are in a fight and this media ground is a battle we cannot afford to lose as common citizens. Fortunately, we have the technology to wage this war and we have the smarts, the soldiers, and the energy to defeat Fox News along with the rest of that bourgoise rabble. Here in the world of alternative media, we are free and their isn't a damn thing Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch or George W. Bush can do about it. But we can't underestimate their power either. If they are stupid, they are stupid like a fox.
Only the most naive of the American population can take Fox News seriously. They lie, they spin, and they bully. Even their claims about themselves, claims such as their view of world affairs as unbiased, are utter lies. This does not fall within the realm of opinion unless we want to toss out dictionaries and agree that words, such as 'bias', have no meaning. They claim that they are not conservative, an utterance that only further confirms their lack of integrity. Fox makes many such utterances.
Created by ultra billionaire Rupert Murdoch a decade ago, Fox has developed a slick system of bells and whistles to capture the attention of those with severe attention deficits. They make plenty of pretty sounds and shifting visuals and the analysis is never anything that the average ten year old can't manage. They present the world in cartoonish hues of black and white. They present a world view where the good guys are fighting the bad guys and proceed to cheer on the good guys and hackle and jeer the bad guys. They wave plenty of flags and hype up war and patriotism. They are a dog and monkey show the likes we have never seen before.
They also have a host of manic hyper-conservatives that would make Gobbels blush. Names such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have become synonmous with the raving loonie right. They also have prepetual guests like William Kristol that appear to patiently urge the Bush Administration to attack more countries - NOW.
For all its financial might and connections, the quality of what is delivered by Fox appears to be dredged up from the bottom of the barrel. They have plenty of stories about runaway brides, a missing teen in Aruba, and various other personal dramas that appear to be quite meaningless. But even in those stories there are implicit mesages. Messages that suggest that even though hundreds of murders occur within the USA each week, this particular girl is more valuable. If she were Black or poor, she would never have been paraded on national news ad nauseaum.
On the political front they are nothing more than vulgar apologists for all things right wing. Their news and opinion shows operate within such a tight frame of reference that the term, 'exlusive' takes on a much more literal meaning than is common. They exclude all but those that don't question assumptions that reflect mindless justifiations for the brutal policies of the Bush Administration.
There is a method to their madness beyond cheering on and hyping up endlesswar and neo conservative economic policies. The folksy good old boy political opinions that had been relegated to barber shops and dimly lit pubs have now found a slick outlet to provide them an air of legitimacy. This not only serves to entrench those backward right wing ideas but it also serves to convince vulnurable souls that the answers are contained within that lumpen outlook. Fox is nothing more than a prvatized, contracted out, wing of the Bush Administration and the appointment of Snow into a key White House stint will lend Fox an apparent guise of credibility.
In America there is very little in terms of credible media. Ted Turner's CNN had been operating as the number one simpleton apologist for the neo-con right but Murdoch shoved his elbow in Turner's face and is benefiting the rewards for unquestioning loyalty to the madmen that rule the planet. The American media operate within a very tight box and there isn't a lot of space in there. Outside that box lurks terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, communists and liberals, and foriegn ideas. The cozy realtionship between Murdoch's baby and those with power sends the mesage to the more 'liberal' outlets like CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC that cowering and begging and tossing away objective credibility pays off.
THE FUNCTIONS OF MEDIA
Ideally, the media functions to inform the public. If there is a danger that a dam might burst and destroy your town, the media have a respnsibilty to inform you about it. Mainstream media however function to spin and to operate slick smoke and mirrors games. We must be aware of this to keep from being seduced by it. We need to understand the nature, not only of Fox, but of the whole kit and kabootle. The past few years they have been screaming that there is a dam about to burst a barrage of terrorism toward the West but as they cry wolf over and over again, we respomd with a collective roll of the eyes. If we really want to know about fragile dams, we must turn to the ever growing world of alternative media.
The functions of mainstream media are not what they appear to be. They are not simply out to make profit. They are that and much more. The marriage of the corporation to the state complete, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. Mainstream media has become a tool of those that want to tell you that the Western world is in deep, deep danger. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the oil/ arms billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a green light to make war and they want a green light to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we see very agitated talking heads that spew drivel about the threat of the month. At the moment it is Iran that threatens to turn the USA into a charred pile of nuclear dust. It also serves their sinister designs to remove the rights and freedoms that have been built by successive generations of progressive organizers and thinkers. Political opinions are now being criminalized. In the past few years politicians have been telling us that extremist views cannot be tolerated and they pose a threat to us all. This, coming from the most extreme of all, the neo cons. Welcome to the Matrix. Wecome to Fox et al.
The corporate media is working diligently to indoctrinate the citizenry, especially in the United States. It is in the United States where this process is magnified and as a result, people outside the USA may be affected to a lesser degree. This is not aimed to slight the citizens of America. But it the Americans that have the misfortune of inhabiting the deepest recesses of the belly of the imperialist beast.
CORPORATE CONTROL OF MEDIA
The probem is that there is a single special interest group that have control of the media. That interest group is the billionaires that not only own the media, but they also control weapons maunuafacturing, oil, and most states on the national level. The most significant being the American State apparatus.
Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for mainstream media:
“...The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
The following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy (mainstream media) They shape opinion and employ sycophant mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also use scholars and think tanks to tell us what and how to think.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young. They are being used to send young people to go overseas and kill and they are being used to strip away the freedoms and rights so many have died for.
The importance of alternative news outlets and the provision of real news and opinion that has not been programmed can't be overestimated. There is a lot happening in the world at the moment and there will be a lot happen over the coming years and decades. We are in a fight and this media ground is a battle we cannot afford to lose as common citizens. Fortunately, we have the technology to wage this war and we have the smarts, the soldiers, and the energy to defeat Fox News along with the rest of that bourgoise rabble. Here in the world of alternative media, we are free and their isn't a damn thing Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch or George W. Bush can do about it. But we can't underestimate their power either. If they are stupid, they are stupid like a fox.
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