Cheryl Seal's opinion.

*Note by Me: I don't agree with her on some issues, but this is her views.


Cheryl Seal
America's REAL Terrorists: The Mainstream Media
Thu Apr 13, 2006 13:57
205.188.116.9


America's Real Terrorists: The US MediaBy Cheryl Seal

http://cherylsealreports.com

One of the most intelligent women I know, while despising Bush and wanting to see him and his corrupt regime ousted, has also, in the past four years, become terrified of Muslims. Why? Because of the relentless fearmongering and propaganda pushing of the US media. This progressive and well-informed woman (well-informed in that she regularly reads major newspapers and follows the radio and television news carefully) now actually believes that "most if not all Muslims" are half-crazed, violence-addicted fanatics with no respect for life. And she actually believes that it is "inevitable" that a crazed Muslim somewhere, be it the head of Iran or the "infamous al-Zarqawi" (whom the media presents as a satanic all-powerful "evildoer" responsible for every major outburst of Iraq-related violence) will drop nukes on her and her loved ones at some point. She is especially terrified of Iran, because she, like most Americans, has been fed a steady diet of news stories promoting the idea that Iran is the "biggest threat to global security on the planet." Even a master's degree has not armed her against the power of propaganda. Simple logic alone (always disempowered by irrational propaganda) would make the “Iran as biggest threat” claim questionable to say the least. Afterall, North Korea, a non-Muslim nation, is much closer to having a viable bomb than Iran and is headed by a man who is just, if not more, belligerent and wacked out than Iran's president!

Not only has the media succeeded in constantly and methodically misinforming the US public on the most critical matters of national security, including the reasons for war in Iraq and abuses of power by Bush (remember how the “New York Times” sat on the NSA wiretapping story until AFTER the election of 2004?), it has created such a fear and loathing of Muslims that it has helped set the stage for an even more disastrous war than Iraq. A new poll by the “Los Angeles Times” and Bloomberg shows that an astounding 48% of Americans support military action against Iran if it "continues pursuing nuclear technology." This is despite the fact that most of these same 48% now realize that both Afghanistan and Iraq are disasters and support a withdrawal Even though these same people know that Bush cannot be trusted (another question in the poll even confirms this! ).

How can so many people be so blind? Easy! FEAR. A fear that has been systematically cultivated. A fear that comes of being steeped day after day in wholesale, Cold War era-like propaganda. It is this blind fear that makes otherwise intelligent people willing to rush off to attack whomever they perceive as a threatening enemy, to blindly repeat cycles of violence over again and again with the same pointless outcome. It is the same fear that turns people into cruel cowards: the “Los Angeles Times” poll shows that most respondants said they supported air strikes against Iran as a military action, while only one in four supported ground troops.

In other words, it is OK to drop bombs on people if you are 7,000 miles away and don’t have to see the blood.The media does not just use systematic fearmongering to promote the Bush agenda, it uses systematic deception.The “Lost Angeles Times” poll reveals the success of this deception. 61% of respondants said they believed that Iran would eventually have nuclear weapons. This conviction, like the conviction that there was a link between 9/11 and Saddam, has been systematically cultivated by the media. The recurring undercurrent of coverage is “inevitability.” Iran nukes are “inevitable.” And from this pretext what follows of course is “War is inevitable.” Of course, this is the same media that fails to give even a fraction of such focus to North Korea. And the SAME DAY that the “Times” Bloomberg poll was released, Bloomberg ran a completely false statement by a US State Department “official” (anonymous of course) claiming that Iran could produce a nuke in just 16 days. THE SAME bullshit the media fed us all last time around (remember the “Iraq could deploy a WMD in just 45 minutes!” threat?

But what makes the Bloomberg report particularly odious is how it manipulatively paired the release of this phony threat to the release of its poll that shows substantial US support for a strike on Iran. Collusion and manipulation is just part of the media’s daily routine these days. In any case, the line between peaceful and military nuclear technology is being intentionally blurred - just as it is in more than 80% of all mainstream media reports on Iran. Some reports have actually misquoted or twisted comments made by Iranian officials so that they appear to be asserting that Iran has a "right to nuclear bombs" when what was said was "Iran has a right to nuclear energy." And while every effort made by Iran, Russia, China, or any other country to try to attempt diplomatic solutions is ignored or downplayed or ridiculed by the media, every vague threat made by Iran, every accusation against Iran made by the Bush administration, is hyped to the hilt. So the media has succeeded in cultivating in the American public what dictators throughout time have viewed as a "winning combination": ignorance and fear. This is the same lethal combination that gives rise to a mob mentality. The same combination that gave rise to the KKK, to Nazism, to pogroms and all forms blind aggression.

Strangely enough, I cannot place most of the blame on Bush for this state of affairs, because without the media's complicity, Bush would never have been able to achieve a fraction of his destructive agenda. A functional media would have presented to the public the evidence that we "lowly bloggers" saw and reported on FOR FREE back in 2002 and 2003 - the phoniness of the Nigerian uranium buy by Saddam, the dishonesty of linking Saddam to Osama, etc. Accurate information has been there all along and completely accessible to any newsperson. But the information went unreported, or reported way after the fact. This failure was not, as the media folk now try to claim, due to well-meaning but misguided ignorance of the truth. Instead, choices were made. Consciences were knowingly put on indefinite hold. Mortgage and SUV payments came before God and country. In short, the cowardly media folk knew they were being pressured to lie and mislead but still did nothing. We've heard all of their lame excuses and tearful apologies. My response: Tell it to the nearly 100,000 dead and 200,000 maimed men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tell it to the tens of thousands of dead yet to come because even after all that has occurred, these same cowardly newsfolk are still cowards.

They are still promoting fear and ignorance. They are still more worried about the almighty buck than the Almighty, as my mamma would say. The journalists - and that includes publishers, editors, reporters, and columnists - who have, brick by brick, constructed this suffocating prison of fear and ignorance are a disgrace to the ideals of journalism and of America itself. The men and women of the mainstream media participating in the Bush game are the true terrorists - which, by definition, is one who works to undermine national security and promote an agenda through the systematic use of fear. Even this week, while the death count of US soldiers in Iraq climbed, every mainstream news source, be it network TV or AOL, used as a lead story, trumping all else, lurid 9/11 images (using the Moussaoui trial as the pretext)." Hear doomed passengers plead for their lives!" etc.

All designed to keep the fear going, of course, right when the the media is also working hardest to villify the Evil Muslims of Iran. You will recall that 9/11 images were dredged up and heavily used in the run up to the war in Iraq, too. So despite all those vows of the media that it is sadder and wiser and will do better now, despite the brief glimpse of a functioning media after Katrina, it is back to business as usual. Another year, another war. It is all so predictable.And oh, so tragic for America.