I was surfing the cable universe recently when I encountered a vaguely familiar face interviewing Sayyid Nasrallah, the public face of Hezbollah—which is regarded as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other Western countries. Who was this? Then I remembered: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Wasn’t he arrested over a year ago on charges of sexual assault against two Swedish women? It seems that he was released on bail after supporters provided him with a legal address, while British courts mull over his extradition to Sweden. It seems that Assange is now hosting an independently-produced, “hard-hitting” interview program that allows various fringe figures on the world stage an opportunity to spout their anti-American propaganda. What network would air such a program?
Why, RT TV, that repository of anything and everything that makes the U.S. appear to be just as rife with every iniquity and injustice as befitting Soviet-era Cold War propaganda. This isn’t exactly news; I’ve already written about RT before here. The network used to be called Russia Today, but since most of its programming consists of digging-up every sordid story that propagates the portrayal of the U.S. as morally decrepit and weak in every imaginable way—whether political, environmental and socially—its intent seems to be to convince others around the world (or perhaps as “subtle” message to Russian immigrants) that the U.S. and the West in general are crumbling artifacts of history, while mighty Russia with its latest version of totalitarianism is a monument without cracks (or pigeon droppings). While one can acknowledge that the network allows voices that might otherwise not be heard, they are generally people who would be taken no more seriously than a street corner preacher or demented raver.
The “top news” of the day was something about how the U.S. was torture capital of the world because only 2 cases out of 100 that the Justice Department investigated were found to be criminal. To make certain the rest of the West received a black eye too, there were constant allusions to Norwegian mass murderer Anton Breivik present on the screen, even as the producers continued to display their lack of understanding of the involvement of political ideology. A story claiming that “liberals” have “hijacked” the Occupy Wall Street movement completely ignored the fact that its counterpart—the Tea Party “movement”—represents the opposite side of the coin.
People might wonder why a network that “reports” from Moscow spends very little of its programing “educating” Americans about the misperception that Vladimir Putin is closer to Stalin than George Washington. It is interesting to note that Russian anti-West foreign policy slant (especially in regard to Iran and Syria) has not been helpful in ingratiating the country with Americans, as has its unrelieved assaults on the American way of life. The fact that Russia has supposedly requested data concerning the downed drone in Iran shows that it still regards the U.S. and the West as “the enemy.” Stories such as this would tend to exacerbate rather than diminish distrust of Russia by American viewers—as if the RT’s programming doesn't do its best to do as much.
However, I need to give Assange some credit despite the questionable intentions of his sponsor. He refused to play the sounding board for Hezbollah. He pointed out that Hezbollah leaders seemed to have abandoned their supposed religious pieties and embraced materiel comforts of the extravagant kind. He repeatedly attempted to force Nasrallah to explain Hezbollah’s support for Syria’s repressive regime, and Nasrallah increasingly discredited himself and his cause by refusing to give a straight answer. Twice Assange challenged him to provide a limit to Hezbollah’s support of Assad’s regime; how many people would have to die at the hands of Syrian security forces? 100,000? One million? Nasrallah refused to answer the question, repeatedly falling back on “dialogue” and the fact that the Syrian regime has been Hezbollah’s “friend,” forgetting to mention that Syria has used Hezbollah first as an ally during its occupation of the country, and to serve as a destabilizing organ in the always tenuous Christian/Muslim political and social dynamic.
It is, admittedly, hard to disengage one’s sensibilities from even media that you normally agree with ideologically, if you are overly cynical of the media like I am. I am not, of course, referring to Fox News, because people who are enamored with its line have no discernible sensibility. Democracy Now, on the other hand, has massive credibility with those on the progressive left; a story exposing the Tea Party-controlled House of Representatives effort to cut $33 billion from food assistance over the next 10 years—when poverty levels remain high and more and more new jobs are low wage—is something the “mainstream” news media fails to address on a regular basis. With millions of Americans facing increasing food prices and stagnant wages while their bosses continue to be well-compensated, if more people were exposed to such stories the Republicans wouldn’t stand a chance in the 2012 elections.
Yet too often Democracy Now supports positions that disturbs those with even a tiny sliver of critical thinking, particularly in foreign policy. People who have listened to the program are well aware of its anti-Israeli stance. It is easy to say that if Israeli only agreed to “negotiate” with the Palestinians that everything would turn out “right.” The problem is that Israel has been talking for over 60 years, and the Arab world’s response was war and violence. As late as 2000 a peace deal seemed on the verge, yet at the last moment Yasser Arafat decided to revert back from “statesman” to petty thug. With the Palestinian Authority and Hamas nowhere near a consensus on how to approach a peace process, how can Israel trust either party? This past weekend I heard some ridiculous discussion concerning what Iranian president Ahmadinejad said or did not say in a speeches critical of Israel; between the splitting of hairs is Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both entities who want to do what Ahmadinejad may or may not have said in regard to Israel.
I also find remarkable Democracy Now’s pie in the sky view of “democracy” in the Arab world. Bahrain’s majority Shiites are no more interested in the subtleties of “democracy” than Iran, where an “Islamic Republic” was declared by Ayatollah Khomeini that remains a de facto dictatorship behind the scenes. Shiite clergy eliminated any taint of liberal, intellectual and secular ideology from the ruling elite following the 1979 revolution; as I wrote about last week, we are seeing this same shift from “democratic principles” to Islamic dictatorship with an anti-West flavor in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. News media like Democracy Now are simply showing themselves to be naïve in this regard, opening themselves-up to charges of turning a blind eye to legitimate American interests.
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Since the subject of Anton Breivik came-up, it might be useful to examine his justifications for his bloody actions. During his trial testimony, he claimed that he was really a “good guy,” and repeatedly insisted that the “real” murderers were liberal politicians and the left-wing media, which he blamed for culture-assassinating “multiculturalism,” a reference to Muslims. Yet when Breivik proclaimed that in murdering fellow Norwegians—most of them teenagers--"I have had a dehumanisation strategy towards those that I consider to be a legitimate target” it is clear that he is in truth politically-motivated, not necessarily culturally motivated. He simply hated “liberals.” His hatred is such that he ignores a few facts. These facts include the reality that most of the new immigrants to Norway, which has the fourth highest GDP per-capita in the world and hardly qualifies it as a hotbed of extremism, are Europeans, especially from Poland and Germany. In fact, Muslim immigration has barely been noticed. Foreign Policy Magazine has declared Norway the “world’s most well-functioning and stable” country, and with the help of substantial oil and gas reserves should “remain among the richest countries in the world for the foreseeable future.” What’s the problem except the evil in one man’s mind?
Breivik’s motivation can only be assumed to be neo-Nazi racism and fascist nationalism. We have some inkling of this kind of thought in this country, such as the “enlightenment” provided us by Pat Buchanan. The lesson here is that we should not be so sanguine as deny that we don’t have Breiviks in the making—such as the shooter of Gabrielle Giffords and six who died, Jared Loughner. Loughner was an anti-government fanatic for whom Marxism and the white supremacist ideology of the American Renaissance were two peas in a pod; yet the national media has since tried to transform him into a sympathetic nutcase. The most recent news concerning his case is the report that his attorneys failed to convince the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the medication given to him, for fear that they might make him psychologically fit to stand trial. Tough break for a six-time killer. Why have we become “soft” on such people? After all, Charles Manson is clearly insane, and despite the fact he didn’t actually kill anyone with his own hand, he won’t leaving prison any time soon.
Interestingly, one of Norway’s leading tabloid newspapers called on Norwegians of prejudicial bent to look to the U.S. for guidance on how a country can grow “peacefully” into a racially diverse society (ha-ha). People in this country are being conned into believing the “future” will be either “Star Trek” or “The Hunger Games,” but what I see it as more like a de facto Apartheid closer to the Antebellum South, where there are no white “heroes” or “victims,” but a land where the U.S. Constitution is viewed as an “anachronism” and must be changed or “reinterpreted” to “protect” their “rights” and “privileges.”
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