- If you checked the National News anywhere on Sunday,
you might not have known the largest antiwar protest occured Saturday,
the largest since before the war. Instead you saw endless footage of water
soaked Texas streets and the levees of New Orleans. War? What war; we have
standing water in the street!
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- If ever you doubted the collusion of the mainstream TV
media with the imperial designs of the state, Sunday's curious omission
of the Washington DC antiwar protest cemented the fact. The state, and
the state-saturated media, spins the news. Standing water in coastal streets?
Apparently, standing water carries far more importance than a quarter
million Americans actively protesting an illegal war.
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- I watched television through all of Sunday, while skipping
from one Internet news site to another. AOL.com featured NO top news stories
for Sunday, September 25, one day after the huge protest. Instead I found,
after searching for stories about the protest on AOL, headlines such as
"War Supporters to Follow Anti-War Rallies" and "Iraq Supporters
to Rebut Antiwar Rallies." And the news-shaking story "Cheney
Alert After Surgery."
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- Personally I hate AOL and don't subscribe but I spent
the weekend with a friend who does. By the way, Time-Warner owns AOL and
has always specialized in war-glorifying movies. Not surprisingly, Time
magazine supported the Iraq War.
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- Yahoo.com featured top stories like these...in this order of importance:
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- Perry: Rita damage not as bad as Katrina,
- Rita hampers New Orleans' plan to dry out,
- told U.S. needs post-disaster plan,
- clashes kill 18 people in Iraq,
- calls U.N. resolution 'illogical',
- African AIDS expert urges circumcision, Egyptian artist
creates Arab super heroes.
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- Gee, who knew that an Egyptian artist trumped a quarter
million Americans in the streets of Washington DC? If ever an indicator
existed that the state--and the state owned media--didn't give a damn about
the US citizens, Sunday's lack of news said it all.
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- Watching television--our own "National Disaster"--the
lack of news was just as depressing. Rita and Cheney. Standing water and
knee surgery. Who knew that downed powerlines and endless footage of uprooted
trees carried so much weight in the national scope of things. Depressing.
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- I channel surfed from MSNBC to CNN to FOX between 9AM
to 12 noon, watching, watching, watching. Nothing. Fox's news commentator
Jeff Goldblatt, from Baton Rouge stood before a mud puddle, pontificating
about the storm. I watched the thread for any news--even a single sentence
about a quarter million common people displaced by their government. No
mention of them. Back on MSNBC the thread slowly scrolled past new items--"Israel--Hamas--Suicide
bomber---" No mention of the quarter million Americans held hostage
by a suicidal (maniacal?) administration in Washington DC.
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- Back to CNN. Now CNN used to be a good cable news station,
a pioneer in the news industry. Maybe therein lies the problem. News had
become an industry. The CNN news thread informed me that "Texas Gov
Perry Takes Aerial Tour of Rita Damage." No report of an aerial tour
of the nearly quarter million antiwar protesters in the Washington and
LA. Instead a live feed from Houston Texas, with reporter Miles O' Brien,
spoke of pre-hurricane gridlock.
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- I channel surfed away from CNN after Wolf Blitzer came
on and lamented the devastation in the Gulf region. No mention of the devastation
that Blitzer favored in Iraq. No reports of the devastation that activists
were trying to prevent in the Middle East. Not significant, I guess. An
ounce of prevention--or in this case a quarter million ounces--were no
measure for a pound of cure. CNN, a shadow of its former self, as far as
news integrity.
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- Finally, just before noon, MSNBC mentioned the antiwar
protest in a 20 second report. But they prefaced the footage of the protest
with the mention that a counter-protest would occur in support of the Iraq
war. Not mentioned were the nearly quarter million who protested the war,
in Washington and LA, nor the several hundred people expected to support
it in counter-protests.
-
- War? What war? No word from the whorish, state-owned
media.
- Sex, Lies and Call Girls: Why the US Media Is a Whore
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- A conspiracy of silence? Evidentally so. When standing
water trumps a quarter million average people washing across the marbled
shores of our indifferent government. the news is not good. Perhaps what
we really need is a Category 5 hurricane sweeping ashore in Washington
before the media cares what happens there.
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- Douglas Herman writes regularly for Rense and is the
author of the controversial novel, The
Guns of Dallas
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