“We are controlled by an illusion of democracy based on rigged political parties and rigged elections. … We can vote for the Conservative party to attack ‘threatening’, but in fact defenceless, Third World countries, or we can vote for the Labour party to do the same. … We can buy the Guardian that respectfully hypes the ‘threat’ as defined by ‘official sources’, or we can buy The Times that does the same. … It may be cathartic to periodically reject Tweedledum in favour of Tweedledee, but they serve the same interests and are both fierce opponents of all attempts to break their shared monopoly.”
It takes little time and effort to see that the above ‘Tweedledum/Tweedlee analysis’ of our lives is real. One need only open up the following three website homepages:
The three homepages feature the same main stories, reported in the same way:
the British citizen who was recently executed by China;
Yemen’s ‘terror problem’;
Sheen, a man who murdered his wife;
Van Morrison becoming a father at age 64;
Iran’s arresting of activists;
the British ship seized by pirates;
and many others.
Why? We must ask, are the media organisations’ homepages so similar? Is it ‘natural’ for them to be so similar? If so, what are the causal forces?
I submit that they are so similar - nay, virtually identical in the most important ways - because they are all corporate media organisations, sustained by and perpetuators of the establishment, who serve and sustain the same interests, and are of the same ideology. They are part of the system which Mark Curtis calls the single-ideology totalitarian state.
For instance, regularly the mainstream media subordinates climate change stories to what newspapers editors clearly think are more important issues - these issues can range from ‘celebrity bullshit’ to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
A perfect, crude example of such a thing occurred today.
At 11am this morning, the BBC News front page appeared like this:
How, I asked myself, could anyone think that Barbara Windsor quitting EastEnders is as important as “Six foreign UN employees and three Afghans” being killed. How could anyone think that the EastEnders story is of the same calibre as that of a car bomb killing scores of people in Peshawar, Pakistan, and therefore put the two stories on the same page?
As Bruce Jones said on Famous, Rich & Homeless, “society is fucked up”. Clearly the BBC is quite ‘fucked up’ too.
Iraq vs. Iran
If I was to moralise the BBC News site’s front page, the first recommendation I might make is that they replace the EastEnders story with a story that The Guardian newspaper covered on its front page today: Iraq goes nuclear with plans for new reactor programme.
According to The Guardian, the news in brief is that Iraq has approached France, the UN, and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to obtain nuclear power. Why this is a notable story, of course, is that Iran is ‘not allowed’ to have nuclear power. Therefore, it will be interesting to see whether Iraq is or is not ‘allowed’ to have nuclear power. When I say ‘allowed to’, I don’t refer to IAEA rights or international agreements, nor do I refer to moral law or economic practicability, but I refer to Western elites’ comprehension of a just world order.
If Iraq ends up with nuclear power, then an overt, crude case of hypocrisy will have developed. If they do not end up being allowed to have nuclear power, it will be very interesting to hear the elite’s justification for denying Iraq’s right. After all, the puppet government of Iraq was instigated by the USA. Iraq clearly isn’t a threat to national security since thousands of American troops are still in Iraq, parked there in psuedo-permanent military bases.
I despair at the events that are happening regarding the ‘discovery’ that Iran has built a ’secret’ nuclear station. I first heard this ‘news’ a couple of days ago on BBC Radio 4.
[I don't have enough time to write about the issue of Iran in as much detail as I'd like, so I have written what I can. So, please, make the most of the articles/videos to which I have linked to on this page. I have *starred* 3 links below which I think are essential reading.]
The media and our government - entities which we are meant to believe are reputable or credible - have by in large brought shame upon our country in the last few days.
The situation I see makes me fearful on many accounts:
First, I have not heard the British media spouting propaganda in such a pure and crude way in such amounts for a long time - this is disturbing.
Secondly, how will this ‘event’ escalate in terms of international relations? - what will be the consequences for Iranians and peace.
Thirdly, how much further will the British people’s ‘understanding’ of the world be polluted by what they hear, read, and see. You need only watch to this video to see why I despair at how the media had had an affect on people:
The moral question
It’s really a very simple matter. How is it that Iran cannot develop nuclear power, but Britain, France, the USA, and Israel can already have nuclear power and condemn Iran for trying to get them? How is it that they can punish Iran for trying to have nuclear power (as if it was an evil thing) yet they themselves do nothing to reduce their ‘evil’ possession of this technology? Well, clearly, this moral hypocrisy is the crux.
You need only type in “IRAN” in a Google News search to see the lies and hypocrisy that are circulated about it. The first article that I found when I did that search was written by a journalist for the AFP based in Jeruslaem, entitled New plant proves Iran seeking nuclear weapons: Israel. It opens:
Israel on Saturday said the disclosure of a second nuclear enrichment facility in Iranproved the country was seeking nuclear weapons and demanded an “unequivocal” Western response.
Just to remind you that Israel is a terrorist state, *supported in every way (economically, politically, militarily, philosophically)* by the USA, and is the biggest threat to Iran. But the point is this: how is it possible that the main stream media has fallen to such a standard that it’s even possible to publish the sentence I quote above. Israel’s conclusion to the premise is absolutely absurd. I would offer to re-write the sentence for them:
Israel on Saturday said the disclosure of a second nuclear enrichment facility in Iran proved that the country was seeking nuclear power.
… because this is the only sensical conclusion one can draw from such a fact.
Iran is not alone
However, we must remember that it is not just Iran who is in the situation of wanting nuclear power and approaching having it as a reality. Other states too find themselves in the same situation - this is a point expressed in an interview with The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Who wants to have nuclear power? Ask a random British person. They will most likely say Iran, for they are told that Iran wants nuclear power and that it is a threat, but they don’t get told about the other states who also want the same thing.
Iran as the terrorist
Often The Independent or The Guardian make statements or take stances on issues that seems radical or abnormal relative to the norm in the mainstream media (MSM), and this allows for the image that we have an overall balanced MSM. I call this the false contention - for usually, the real dissenting opinion are never present, they are omitted, but instead, some weak or peripheral ideas are used and portrayed as radical to create the impression that dissenting opinion is present in our political system. An example of this is The Independent’s comment on recent events. The Independent’s comment was reported by the *BBC in an article* which tries to paint an image of the variety of opinion within the newspapers regarding recent events. The BBC says that The Independent believes ‘that by “ramping up the rhetoric”, the US and its allies might bring about “real international disaster”‘. ‘Gosh!’, we are meant to think.
The Independent asserts that rhetoric is a problem; but it’s not. The problem is that lies regarding Iran are pandemic.
For instance, ‘to quote the misquote, “Israel must be wiped off the map”. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made’. What was really said was: “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”. You can *read an explanation* of this lie which has been universal in the media.
I leave you with this video, hopefully it instils some hope, it’s a snapshot from an episode of the BBC’s Question Time:
P.S. note how the first speaker says ‘they’ and the tone in which he says it.
Harry Fear's ‘passionettes’ are politics, philosophy and the power of words. He aims to write about them in his online journal, The Advocating Creator. Read more...
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