In America, we have corporate, government, and military faux-media prostitutes like Lara Logan, most of the FOX news channel, and scores of teleprompter readers on the networks and within cable. Even the President, now, is just a talking head and we can not know if he is truly in power.
We know nothing about what our government and other governments are doing except through real journalistic outlets such as the Real News Network online, Alex Jones, TVNewsLies online, 9-11 bloggers, Richard Gage, and others who risk money, ridicule, and well-being to bring us the truth. I think David Icke is more of a journalist than most seen on television though I question his theories while allowing they are possibly true.
Here is a very short list from the millions of independent websites and news organizations that are not occluding reality by ommission:
A few specs of the true depth of government tyranny and corruption have bubbled to the surface on CNN and on MSNBC, but rarely do we see 9-11 truth taken seriously even given the huge swath of people and the overwhelming evidence for a demolition.
The media is the sum total of all available information that is put out for general consumption in forms such as television, movies, books, newspapers, internet sites, and radio broadcasts.
The media in some oppressive countries is blasted from public loudspeakers and contains coercive propaganda. In most countries, the media is censored to some degree. In free countries, the media is often censored for inappropriate public content but not for political content. In countries without a free press, the media tends to only portray the existing power structure as good.
The media in America uses sports and celebrity scandal to hypnotize a generally complacent public. Here is a geat video highlighting this idea.
The media is subtly coercive. Most people whose beliefs have been influenced by the media have no idea that it has happened at all.
For example, the Huffington Post (at www.huffingtonpost.com) censors all ideas concerning the 9-11 controlled demolition false flag incident. If you write anything contrary to the views of the post, you are banned from commenting. They would not let Jessie Ventura's article be posted, for example.
Women in the west are shown images of thin, flawless women and large portions of the female population have developed eating disorders and self-esteem problems in general. The media tells men that they should be strong, tough, and masculine. Outdated gender roles and unrealistic body images are showered out of every television screen, computer monitor, magazine, and movie.
Many of the men and women in glossy print magazines are digitally altered for proportion, their blemishes airbrushed away, and their wrinkles vanished by the click of a mouse. In reality, we can not use our computers to remove our fat, our wrinkles, and to whiten our teeth.
The obsession in America and in the west, with physical appearance, is a sign of our shallowness. But, we have been fed this shallowness. We have licked it up and come to have faith in it.
Buy more and work harder so you can truly succeed. Success in America is determined by the zeros at the end of your bank account and not necessarily the quality of your life. it is often judged by the quality and size of your home and not the condition of the family's love therein.
The poor, the media tells us, are poor because they are lazy, no-good slobs who just haven't pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. It's not our fault they can't read, they have to steal to get by, and they have never been to a doctor or dentist. It's not our fault, say the media, that some people are not worth as much as others.
The media in America and, in the west in general, has a subtle militarism in video games, history documentaries, and shows concerning weapons and military hardware. We are taught to be in awe of our stealth bombers rather than realize the death and destruction they are meant to cause.
Games, like Call of Duty, where the player is realisitically slaughtering whatever enemy, desensitize us and removes our sense of the wrongs of violence in a subtle and slow way. I have played early versions of Call of Duty and I have a hard time not being disturbed so I can't imagine the newest version's reality.
"Believe TV", graphic art, 2001, by Anthony Peter Iannini
Even the name "Call of Duty" is propaganda, though I do think there are rare times when armies should be gathered but only in absolutely just defense. I am not saying such games or displays should be banned because I believe these things are first amendment issues.
Also, I am not criticizing cartoonish violence in many games and I have enjoyed and played many of them. But, ultra-realism is the way of the future and the armies of the world will and do use these games as recruitment and training tools. The army itself has made a first-person shooter army game.
A lack of coverage of the true carnage of war in our media is both propagandist and detrimental to a people's deep understanding of the carnage involved in bombings or invasions.
If we saw more pictures of the small children who lose limbs, brains, and life due to imperialist criminal campaigns, perhaps public outrage would stop more wars. But, as I have often heard, the military does not want another Vietnam, where the cruel realities of war caused mass non-cooperation by students around the world and in America.
War is peace. The war department becomes the defense department and, eventually, it may be called the peace department and secretaries of peace will engage in neverending war in order to secure the peace. "Work is freedom" said the sign above Auschwitz.
That work is freedom is the Protestant ethic of productivity in America. Real freedom, know the ruling class, is to be able to do what you please when you please.
"We are at war" drum the Republicans who must define current events in the best possible light of their stock in various military corporations. Every civilian casualty is a war crime though we call such people "collateral damage". "Collateral damage" is a lot nicer of a term than "Five year old Iraqi girl with her head blown off".
We must wake up from the Orwellian use of phrases like "Homeland" and "Enhanced Interrogation" that are taken almost right out of the pages of Nazi Germany's history. "Homeland" is a propagandist term used to solicit our deepest emotions and memories as a child. "Enhanced Interrogation" is what the Nazi's called their tortuous procedures in secret prisons.
In 2003, all across the American media, one could hear the war drums beating. Louder and louder they grew until, eventually, war was inevitable. Or, so they told us. Watch for the war drums against Iran. Watch for the war drums against any country that refuses to submit to our corporate empire.
"We will bring freedom to you and your people even if we have to kill every last one of you" is the mantra of ignorant Republican warmongers. If we were not so completely brazen about the lives of people of different countries I am certain that the United States would not face nearly as many domestic and international threats.
"They" do not hate our freedoms, they hate our bombs. "They" do not hate our tolerance, they hate our occupations and our intolerance. "They" will only grow in number and strength as we forgo our constitutional ideals and international civility.
We will continue to reap what we sow and, if we do not reverse our course, I think it is only a matter of time before we experience real calamity. As biological, chemical, and nuclear technology becomes more and more easily made and accessed, I should hope that we will engage in war against our own injustices rather than continue to press desperate and exploited people into attacking us.
How many terrorists would lay down their arms if we tried the Bush administration for war crimes? How many terrorists are emboldened by our torture and violation of human rights and violations of the very international laws we ourselves drafted?
Hypocrisy emboldens those who seek to destroy us and, as our national hypocrisy grows, so to will our threats. Our only way to ever be safe again is not to use brutal and overwhelming force but to acknowledge our own crimes, depart from our imperalist conquering, and apologize for the places on earth we have made a living nightmare. For every terrorist we kill but kill a dozen civillians in the process, we create thousands more.
