“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.
Yesterday’s The Times newspaper featured this article on its front-page, entitled Iran could make an atom bomb. I urge you to read it while bearing the following in mind:
Israel has one of the largest armies in the world, already has nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and routinely breaks international law. In fact, the USA gives Israel many of its nuclear weapons. Why is Israel’s neighbour, Iran not allowed even to have nuclear power? Is it because it is the only resource-rich Muslim state not in US control left in the world?
The whole article has been prompted into existence by a leaked intelligence report. Do you not think that this is ridiculous? This is the same sort of ‘intelligence’ that was actually believed by some people and indeed led to the illegal occupation of Iraq and the death of 1 million Iraqis and thousands of Western soldiers.
How is it that The Times can just perpetuate the paradigm that Iran is not worthy of nuclear power but others like Israel are? It devotes no words to a debate on whether Iran ’should’ ‘get away with’ having nuclear power.
Israel has nuclear weapons that can reach any part of the world. Yet, regarding the range of different nuclear weapons, all we hear is how “Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a nuclear payload to be delivered by the Shahab 3, a medium-range missile capable of hitting Israel and parts of southern Europe”.
Why does the article feature many quotations from people like Obama’s National Security Advisor, but there is only one quotation from an Iranian person? The only quotation from an Iranian person is from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader who apparently said in 1984 that “a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God’s soldiers”. The article attacks Iran and villanizes it. Yet the only quotation from an Iranian person is not from a politician, it is from 1984 and features the word ‘God’. If you don’t believe that Iran is our new target, in part, because it is a Muslim state, think seriously about the significance of this being the only quotation carried from an Iranian person in the entire article, and that it features a religious point.
If you want something to counter the mainstream warmongering, try getting your news from somewhere like The Real News Network.
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.
“Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.”
This sounds more like an Orwellification in police tactics, not a benign “modernisation”.
“The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services.”
The article gives enough information to believe that the new plan is exactly the same as the “plans for a database”, only that the information will be “organised” in a different way, a way in which they cannot attribute “database” to its title.
“The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites.”
A system which tracks data in such a way, requires a database, at some point, to store the information - that is obvious. The fact the the BBC has just eaten up and regurgitate the Press releases from the Home Office in such a crude way is, of course, appalling.
“The Home Office will instead ask communications companies - from internet service providers to mobile phone networks - to extend the range of information they currently hold on their subscribers and organise it so that it can be better used by the police, MI5 and other public bodies investigating crime and terrorism.”
“Ministers say they estimate the project will cost £2bn to set up, which includes some compensation to the communications industry for the work it may be asked to do.”
“Security services could then seek to examine this data along with information which links it to specific devices, such as a mobile phone, home computer or other device, as part of investigations into criminal suspects.”
Yet the head of Italy’s National Geophysics Institute dismisses the possibility of earthquake predictions:
“Every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it,” he said. “As far as I know nobody predicted this earthquake with precision. It is not possible to predict earthquakes.”
“An Italian scientist predicted a major earthquake around L’Aquila weeks before disaster struck the city on Monday, killing dozens of people.
“Italy’s Civil Protection agency held a meeting of the Major Risks Committee [MRC], grouping scientists charged with assessing such risks, in L’Aquila on March 31 to reassure the townspeople.
“Giuliani, who based his forecast on concentrations of radon gas around seismically active areas, was reported to police for “spreading alarm” and was forced to remove his findings from the Internet.”
The head of the MRC said, “every time there is an earthquake there are people who claim to have predicted it” (Reuters). He infers there are many people like Giluliani then. Perhaps there were many other (qualified scientists) like Giluliani (who made such claims then)? Well, it appears not: there has been no mention of other qualified scientists’ claims.It seems that Giuliani is somewhat alone in his position.
On a moral level, it seems that if there was any chance that Giuliani could have been right, the authorities should have deeply investigated it - to rule out doubt, at least. Moreover, the fact that the authorities actually instigated self-censorship by Giuliani is morally terrible. They should have been collaborating with him, not censoring him.
On a political level one can see why the MRC may want to picture Guiluliani as small, attention-seeking, and an outsider: to minimise the possibility of the main-stream world media saying, ‘could the government have done anything to stop this earthquake’s tragic consequences?’, i.e. a “cover your ass” politic.
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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