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A message to the corporate-controlled US media: Beware, there may be worse to come Online
Journal: Bev
Conover April 10, 2003 When the retaliation for the death and destruction the Bush administration is criminally carrying out in Iraq comes—and it will come—the corporate-controlled US media had better give consideration that they may be primary targets. Television anchors may wind up at the top of the list for not just breathlessly repeating the lies of the administration and military brass, but for embellishing them, adding unwarranted speculation and debasing the value of Iraqis' lives by cheering as US and British troops slaughter them. Iraqis are not vermin. They are human beings and those who pick up weapons to defend their sovereign nation, just as we would do if invaded, are not fighting for Saddam Hussein anymore than we would be fighting for George W. Bush. While it is hard to stand up to bombs, missiles and tanks, they are rightly fighting back with every means at their disposal. Of course, the media are either ignorant of or choose to forget that Americans broke all the so-called "rules of war," to the horror of the British, in the American Revolution. Yet, we hail them as heroes, just as the Arab world hails the Iraqis as heroes. All the arguments to the contrary, Saddam Hussein did nothing to us. Nor did he pose any danger to his neighbors or the rest of the world. He had nothing to do with Sept. 11, 2001, despite the impression the media have imprinted on the minds of ignorant, flag-waving Americans who have been so easily caught up in orchestrated nationalism. The Iraqis did not ask us to "liberate" them. It would do the carefully coiffed and made-up suits currently sitting safely at their news desks to take a lesson from what happened Tuesday, when US troops opened fire on journalists in Baghdad's Palestine Hotel. That may be just a taste of what is coming from both sides, except their will be no safe havens for anchors or journalists here or abroad. It's Turning Very Ugly in the "Land of the Free" Perhaps we who oppose the carnage being carried out in our names in Iraq need color-coded Ugly Alerts. Following last attempt by a tractor-trailer rig driver to run down peaceful protesters in Ohio, we have to raise the Ugly Alert to orange. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, driver John Watters, leaning on his horn, drove his rig up onto the sidewalk and aimed it at a group of about 40 people attending a "Peace in Iraq" rally, stopping within 10 feet from the nearest protester. And what did police charge Watters with? Not attempted murder. Instead, he was charged with "aggravated menacing, inducing panic and reckless operation." Monday, police in Oakland, Calif., opened fire with tear gas grenades, bean bags, rubber bullets and wooden projectiles on hundreds of peaceful antiwar demonstrations gathered at the city's docks, alienating longshoremen who had not yet been won over to the antiwar movement. Writer and activist Don Paul reported that angry longshoreman said, "The Oakland police are out of control," and "You people weren't disciplined. You people weren't doing anything wrong." He quoted one longshoreman as saying, "They've got us pissed-off now, and longshoremen don't back down." An Iowa woman was fired by her employer, the not-for-profit educational testing and research company ACT, last week for refusing to remove an antiwar button. The company claims to prohibit political statements about the "war" on Iraq, yet allows the display of American flags. A University of Arkansas student was arrested last Saturday for criminal trespass when he and other members of the university's student group, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with antiwar slogans, attempted to enter the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville. Welcome to America! Does It Get More Mindless than This? The amusing hate mail these days goes from the simple F-you to rambling pages telling yours truly how "unpatriotic" I am for publishing all that "garbage" in opposition to Bush's criminal attack on Iraq. One, though, was heads and shoulders above the others in its mindlessness and it came from someone purporting to hold a doctorate degree. Have our universities become that bad? This poor soul wrote, "American seems to be agreeing more with me than with you and the wholesale propaganda of your journal and its far-left wing Hollywood friends. It appears that as the war ends, the rebuilding occurs, and the promises of the Bush administration become evident to all, then the Democrats will take an even bigger beating than in the off year elections. The pendulum has swung and if the liberal democrats want to be relevant again they need to swing with it. Even your liberal press has left you behind!" Let's see, justification for war: most Americans support it. That makes it okay, right? If most Americans supported killing Jews, blacks, homosexuals, and let us not leave out the French for not jumping on the war bandwagon, that would be okay, too? Gee, I didn't know Online Journal had Hollywood friends, far left-wing ones or otherwise. Of course, one never knows who is reading us. I used to have a cyber-relationship with Michael Moore, but that went up in smoke over his adamant support for Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election. (His Oscar acceptance speech indicates the "cold shower" Nader said Americans needed has awakened Mike to the fact we have a "fictitious president." So maybe there is hope for Mike and me again, eh?) Hollywood friends, please make yourselves known and a little financial support would help, too. This hapless writer, who followed his name with PhD, apparently is stuck in 2000. The "off year elections," as the writer called them were held in November 2002. As for the Democrats, if they want to become relevant again, they had better find the spine to stand up to the criminal regime now in control, work to open the eyes of those Americans who have been lured into wrapping themselves in the flag, and rid us of voting equipment that leaves no trail of criminal rigging. If they fail to do the latter, why bother voting in 2004? We already know who the "winners" will be: Bush and the Republicans. As for the "liberal" press, the writer must be referring to the phony progressive press controlled by the self-appointed gatekeepers of the left and funded by front foundations that get their money from the same sources that fund the right-wingers. With what is going on throughout the corporate-controlled US media, it is evident how easy it is to coax or coerce people into whatever unthinking behavior the ruling regime desires. Among the many thousands of examples of corporate media manipulations was this one from New York Times reporter R.W. Apple, Jr., who Tuesday wrote: Military victory begets political strength. Mr. Bush has carried the country with him, and most of the second-guessers among Washington's policy experts are keeping their voices down these days. Many Americans, including many influential in the artistic and academic worlds, continue to denounce the president's policies, and an antiwar demonstration in Oakland, Calif., on Monday turned nasty when the police opened fire with rubber bullets. But the antiwar forces, who have had to contend from the start with the widespread belief that their position is unpatriotic and unsupportive of American troops engaged in deadly combat, must now bear the additional burden of arguing with success. American losses are relatively small: 96 dead to date, compared with 200 a day at the height of the Vietnam War. Arguing with success? What success? Killing untold thousands of innocent Iraqis and devastating their country is success? Oops, I keep forgetting Iraqi lives don't count; it's only American lives that count. Since Apple didn't mention British deaths, which are agonizingly high in comparison to the number of troops Tony Blair criminally committed to Bush's killing spree, apparently Brits don't count, either, in the eyes of Americans. It is the blind hatred in this country for anyone who doesn't support the evil that comes so prettily wrapped in the flag that is unpatriotic—nay, it's worse than that; it is nationalism that goes beyond what Einstein called "an infantile disease, the measles of mankind." As Jefferson said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." A Nuclear Disaster Waiting to Happen? According to a report yesterday in Pravda, there is a large nuclear waste burial ground in the town of El-Tuweis, 17 km southeast of Baghdad. "International ecology organizations say the depository contains 670 tons of natural uranium. About 500 tons of the total amount are enriched uranium, 109 tons are other uranium oxides (they are 1,8 tons of uranium with the concentration rate of 12.6 percent in the form of U02 powder and 6 tons of depleted uranium). There are also low-level industrial wastes," Pravda said. If a US bomb or missile should go off course and the "nuclear depository is destroyed, emission of 50 percent of its contents into the atmosphere at the wind speed of 10 meters per second will contaminate the area of about 130 square kilometers." Pravda noted, "Specialists say, it is impossible to forecast consequences of the radioactive contamination because of the region's weather conditions: because of sandstorms, the isothermal character of the vertical air stability and the direction of air movement in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The only thing that can be predicted already now is the growth in number of cancer diseases, increase in the death rate among the local population, mutations of flora and fauna. Ecologists stress that radioactive contamination won't be local and nonrecurring. Its consequences may have an effect not only upon the Mideast region, but also South Europe, the Caucasus region and Central Asia." Profiting from Fear In the weeks since the Bushistas began committing war crimes in Iraq, in among the spam trying to sell me "support our troops" T-shirts, buttons, banner and posters, plus gas masks and chemical suits (adult, child, toddler and infant), was an offer for a 14-ton, stand alone, "impenetrable" bunker. You read that right: a 14-ton, stand alone, "impenetrable" bunker. A bunker alleged to be impervious to WMD. Moreover, it can be customized to provide all the comforts of home while madness and mayhem rain on the outside. Should you wish to amuse yourself by engaging in a little target practice—from the safety of the interior, of course—the manufacturer will, for a few thousand bucks more, even outfit your bunker with a gun turret. The sickest of all came from an investment guru, with the subject line: How to Profit from Armageddon. The pitch: security company stocks are hot. And you thought it was only the likes of Bush-Cheney's favorite corporations that were going to clean up on rebuilding Iraq, stealing its oil and supplying the weapons to be used on the country next targeted for destruction.
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