the function of the media

these are the things i find surprising about the whole situation

1) the theft itself
2) the lies to cover it up
and most of all
3) that the lies go unchallenged


1) the theft itself

while it is oversimplifying
to say that america invaded iraq to steal their oil
it's pretty much the truth

they will of course obfuscate the theft administratively
by setting up a pretend government
and having private companies selling the stolen oil

but the brute facts of the matter are
murder and theft
by the team with the biggest guns

while we are conditioned to such behaviour
by the bloody litany of american postwar foreign policy
and shielded from it by supposedly comforting cover stories
like regime change, weapons of mass destruction and the war on terror
we are watching murderous theft being conducted in our names
and allowing it to happen

while the muslim world calls it a crusade
i fear that's putting too optimistic a spin on it
cos at the end of the crusades
the invaders packed up and went home

to the americans it's the wild west
as baghdad burning's post about the green zone
june 21, entitled general update
and this story about recovered australian hostage douglas wood make clear
it's already a cowboy economy

that wood was on the run with us$50,000 that wasn't his
not only suggest that his adbuction wasn't part of the jihad
but demonstrate the cowboy culture that america is creating

basically they're invading simultaneously with military units
and companies and their contractors

this is different to the israeli method of military plus settlers
because the objective is different
israel wants land, america wants money

but yes
there is a huge theft going on here
in a community we expect our neighbours to not take our stuff
[america sets itself up as a monument to that idea]
and here is a bully taking someone else's lunch money
after having rounded up a gang of weaker thugs

there's really no need for the bully to be hiding the fact too much
because everyone else is powerless to stop it

in fact it's in their interest that it's visible
so everyone else knows what to expect


2) the lies to cover it up

first there was the domino theory
and the communist witch craze

the war on drugs
while simultaneously flooding the inner city with drugs
was a relatively effective way of maintaining violent pressure
over the populace on the part of the state

this time around we have the war on terror
hot on the heels of
regime change
and weapons of mass destruction

the reason the allied countries were so sure
that saddam had weapons of mass destruction
was because they had sold them to him

as the downing street memo makes clear
they knew that he had gotten rid of them
by the time of the most recent invasion

now we are being sold the war on terror

the hooha about karl rove
is actually the final shards
of the weapons of mass destruction cover story
falling away


3) that the lies go unchallenged

this is perhaps the most surprising part
while we would hope against it
we must acknowledge that sometimes people steal
and would not be especially surprised
that they would lie to cover up the fact

what is surprising
is that apparently everyone involved in
manufacturing and disemminating mainstream opinion
happily relates these cover stories
and pretends that they're true

journalism was once taken seriously
as an occupation for intelligent people
and as constructing a reasonable representation of the world

leaving aside the question
of whether this opinion was valid or not then
it most certainly is not now

presumably there are smart people working at the news wire companies
and even in the offices of newspapers and tv stations
to whom it would be patently obvious
that the war on terror is a sham

that going into a country and dropping bombs on them
and taking what's theirs
is going to upset them
and increase the likelihood of some kind of retaliation

why then, do they relate these lies
as if they are believable?

if we assume for the moment
that the people whom are continually bombarded
by these lies from newspapers and the television
actually believe them
we can perhaps forgive them
given that they may have few other options

i assume the justification
on the part of the media manipulators
must be something like
yeah i know it's horse shit
but nobody takes it seriously
and if i shutup about it
i get to keep my lexus and my house and my hot wife

this situation makes clear the fact
that the function of mainstream media in western society
is not to transmit the news
but to spin the news

it operates under the pretense of providing information
but its actual function is to supress information

try and find in a mainstream media report from this week
a reference to the number of enemy combatants
or civilians killed since the start of this invasion

i'd be surprised if you could
it is, however, quite easy to find citations
of the number of iraqi civilians killed by insurgents
or the number of u.s personnel who have died

that you don't discover the former facts
is much more important to the function of the media
than that you do discover the latter



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