"Out of the events' field"

"Being out of the events’ field for a week and having the media as the only source of information made me understand more why many people have a blurred vision about the situation in Iraq," writes Omar of Iraq the Model re being without internet access for the last week or so, working on Spirit of America's "Friends of America" project, blogged here:

I mean watching Al-Jazeera and the CNN for a relatively long time made Iraq -- at certain moments -- look like “hell on earth.” Fortunately I lived my whole life in Iraq, and when it comes to events taking place over there I can distinguish between the truth and the lies to a certain degree, but my concern is about people who have never been there because the media twist facts and exaggerate things in an unbelievable manner.

As a matter of fact, from the news I got from the media I expected to find Baghdad in a terrible condition when I return; no gasoline, no electricity, fighting at every corner and dead bodies everywhere, but of course I didn’t find it this way when I returned. Actually I haven’t seen any significant difference except for losing some hours of electricity!

Omar has Al-Jazeera, the BBC and CNN . . . we have the "big three" networks, BBC and CNN.  Whassa diff?  They're all out to undermine American credibility for their own self-justifying and self-aggrandizing purposes. As Scott Ott of ScrappleFace reports re Kevin Sites, the notoriety-seeking NBC photographer who sent Al-Jazeera that controversial video -- blogged here -- of a Marine shooting an apparently wounded terrorist in a mosque, "an Al-Jazeera spokesman said Mr. Sites and NBC have used their art to 'advance the cause of freedom in a fashion reminiscent of Michael Moore'":

"I'm no hero," Mr. Sites said. "The real heroes are the executives at NBC News who had the guts to show my video over and over, even after all the heat they took for refusing to show footage of terrorists beheading innocent American civilians. I think that speaks volumes about their character and professionalism."

We love Omar's expression for lack of internet access, "Being out of the events' field."  That's where dictators and thugs want to keep us. Power-crazed folks who aim to control our minds by promulgating only their version of "the truth" -- whether they be Iranian theocrats cracking down on reformist blogs or Arabian and western TV networks selectively showcasing possible US Marine misbehavior while dropping a veil of delicacy between their viewers and images of the cold-blooded terrorist murder of a blindfolded woman of mercy -- fear the free flow of information.  We say, open the floodgates.

Comments

[acjgoomp]

Your post shows that keeping the elites of our professional classes from sweeping us into a fascist dictatorship is a continual struggle. They have infiltrated our educational institutions and our media to a disturbing extent.