“What must be said“, the short poem by Nobel Laureate Guenter Grass, does something few people in the mainstream Western world ever do: speak critically about the State of Israel.
Israel is a “threat to world peace”, writes Grass, whose poem highlights the hypocrisy of the West for condemning Iran’s search for nuclear power while simultaneously allowing Israel to proliferate it’s own nuclear capabilities. (more…)
A poll came out this week showing more than half of Canadians believe Muslims to be untrustworthy, scoring far worse than any other group.
What is up with that, Canada? (more…)
US pro-war propaganda reached new heights this weekend as Act of Valor hit the silver screens across America. Unlike other war movies, this one was backed by none other than the US war machine itself.
So how has the glorified recruitment tape fared with the critics? (more…)
A $40M, 10 year campaign designed to promote fear of Islam and Muslims – coordinated by interconnected foundations, think tanks, pundits, and bloggers – has been uncovered by the Center for American Progress (CAP).
The 140-page CAP report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” identifies seven foundations that have quietly provided the multi-million dollar funding needed to spearhead the nationwide effort from 2001 to 2009.
The anti-Islam propaganda party includes what the report calls “misinformation experts” who are often tapped by television news networks and right-wing radio talk shows to comment on Islam and the threat it allegedly poses to U.S. national security.
“Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of ‘creeping Sharia’, Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran,” according to the report.
Once these ‘experts’ get their hate speech out there, it gets reverberated in the “Islamophobia echo chamber” consisting of leaders of the Christian Right, Republican politicians, and FOX news.
Judging by recent polls, the Muslim bashing network has proved remarkably successful, according to the report which cited a 2010 Washington Post poll that shows 49 percent of U.S. citizens held an unfavorable view of Islam, up ten percent since 2002.
So what’s the lesson here? Well, for one, it demonstrates how, for a modest sum and with a coordinated effort, one can significantly alter public opinion and media messaging.
More importantly, this report shows us the importance of getting our information from a wide range of sources. If we trust just one source for all our news, we could very easily fall victim to brainwashing.
But, if we take the time to diversify our news gathering – relying on Internet news, foreign sources, and a multitude of ideological perspectives – we will be immunizing ourselves against the power of special interests, ensuring that we have the most accurate to perception of reality.
I was planning to write another piece about how Democrats and Republicans both toe the same line for many key issues, be it armed conflict, pro-corporatist legislation, or a widening of the gap between the super-rich and everyone else.
The post would have highlighted how comparatively trivial issues, like same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, or Anthony Weiner’s penis, dominate the political sphere while actually significantly issues, like reforming Wall St. or slashing defense spending, remain mostly untouched by both politicians and the mainstream media alike.
But rather than write this piece, which I’m sure would have been timely and eloquent, I found the following picture which sums up what I’m trying to say quite nicely. So we’ll go with that instead:
A terrorist is someone who uses violence or the threat of violence against the public to further their own agenda. When one thinks of a terrorist, it is easy to picture a radical ideologue making a martyr of themselves in a crowded place, which creates an immediate increase in terror due to the violence caused by blowing one’s self up.
However, the lasting effects of such terrorist acts – a heightened state of fear in the minds of the population- is the purpose of terrorism. Instilling a lasting fear is what they do… and these effects are just as significant as the actual act of taking innocent lives, perhaps even more so to those whose lives are not touched directly by the people who are killed.
When a politician uses references to terrorism and terrorist acts, like when they say ‘In this post-9/11 world’, they are using fear to further their own agenda. When it comes to politicians, their agenda is almost always to maintain and gain power, and they do so by scaring the population so that they give up some of theirs.
The mere threat posed by an insecure world is often enough for some people to abandon their rights and liberties, and this power can be acquired by the politicians and used for whatever they want (including policies that make the world even less secure).
Just like the terrorists, some politicians instill an lasting sense of fear into the population in order to further their own agenda.
Even worse is the corporate news media. Except for the weather, the sports, and the occasional “feel-good” piece, the news is always bad news… death, demise, debauchery. Chaos and uncertainty… except the certainty of knowing one will be getting a solid dose of FEAR.
Part of the media’s agenda is to capture the viewers attention, and the news media accomplishes this via sensationalism and fear. By inducing a heightened state of fear, the viewer will be both more inclined to tune in later, to see if the coast is clear and all is safe. But it never will be… the shadow of fear can never be cleared as long as their agenda remains the same.
Just like the terrorists, the news media instills a lasting sense of fear into the population in order to further their own agenda.
Make a note of this:
Q: Why are they not being punished? Q: Why are politicians and the news media not being labeled as the terrorists that they are?
A: The same reason why many people will have trouble accepting the aforementioned statement: because we are taught (read:indoctrinated) to trust our politicians and the media.
Both politicians and the members of the media can be like any other human – selfish and greedy- and they have no real reason to have anything but the most thinly veiled pretext of concern when it comes to the population that they rely upon.
What’s worse is how politicians and the news media will even work together to compound their fear inducing tactics, with our political leaders telling us their distorted versions of the truth, and having all the news personnel, who, like mindless parrots, repeat what they are told without verifying the integrity of what they are saying.
It is up to those who see how our fears are being exploited to stand up and let our voices be heard. We need to speak out against corrupt, self-serving politicians and the fear-mongering corporate news media.
If we can gain enough support, we can start to restructure the way we receive news, so that unnecessary fear is not the norm. Once the media’s shadow of fear lifted, we can go on to reform our political system into one where peace and justice and the plight of the masses takes precedence over the interests of the elite minority.
