‘All the news …’

Following are excerpts from a Dec. 1 commentary.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

In the wake of this wretched war, we have more than enough reason to look, with jaundiced eye, at the American major media.

The adjectives that have been used to describe their performance, in the face
of fake ‘evidence’, scare tactics, and global state
terrorism against the poor and the weak; and their abject servitude to the centers of political and economic power, have been terms like supine, servile, and genuflective.

The corporate media became an instrument through which the White House worked its way upon the public, threatening dissidents, locking up innocents, threatening other countries, all in pursuance of madness.

The media, afraid of alienating its audiences, and more importantly, of upsetting government officials, opened its pages, its airwaves, and its microphones, serving only as amplifiers for the State.

Few mainstream papers have the heft and influence of the New York Times, yet, even there, their star reporter became little more than a stenographer for the neocons at the highest levels of power. They served, not the interest of their readers, nor their children, but of power.

Remember the spectacle of a vampirish Vice President Dick Cheney, citing the “Times”, of all sources, in support of his claims of WMDs?

Now, trapped by the very real threat of civil war, U.S. politicians find themselves pinned to the wall, like monarch butterflies, forced to support the unsupportable. Now, comes word of secret prisons, in the lands of the former Soviet Union, run by the CIA, where God knows what is being done to people, in the name of a nebulous ‘war on terror.’

Does anybody really believe that American forces aren’t engaged in torture? The new U.S. appointed regime in Iraq has learned well the lessons of its American paymasters. In the shadow of Abu Ghraib, dozens of Sunnis are tortured, and caged in secret prisons!

What, pray tell, are the Americans to say? “Don’t do as we do”?

We’ve virtually forgotten the case of the Chinese-American Muslim chaplain, James Yee. New Jersey-born, a West Point graduate, it was during his tour in Saudi Arabia that he learned about Islam, where he was intrigued by the cultural diversity.

For complaining about the treatment that he saw and heard at the Guantanamo Bay naval station { prison camp—WW} , he found himself labeled, and soon treated, as an “enemy combatant,” charged with espionage, and called a “known terrorist sympathizer.” He was put in the ‘three-piece suit’: shackled hands, feet, and belly. He was thrown into solitary confinement (See his book: “For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire”, by James Yee (with Aimee Molloy) (publ., Political Affairs).

He was in solitary for 76 days, before charges were dropped.

All of this comes back to the role of the press. It either serves the interests of freedom, or it serves the interests of Empire. It can’t serve both.

It is doing the reporting now that should’ve been done before the outbreak of war.

Most reporters knew that there was absolutely no link between 9/11 and Iraq. Most reporters knew, if they’d done their research, that there was absolutely no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Yet, through fear or the ingrained instinct to serve power, they allowed the Bush Regime to “let slip the dogs of war.”

Unless I miss my guess, it will be plenty of years before we really see the end of this adventure. That’s because it will be many years before things will even begin to quiet down in Iraq.

Perhaps 100,000 Iraqis have been killed, many by the U.S. Army and Air Forces. Over 2,000 Americans have died. Billions of dollars have been wasted, or ripped off by corrupt Iraqi politicians or American corporations. And Americans have done little more than stoke the fires of anti-American hatred throughout the region. Recently, the Muslim Brotherhood, a staunch opponent of the Mubarak Regime in Egypt, won more than five times its previous seats in Parliament. Islamicist parties are stronger than ever in the Muslim world, largely as a direct reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The media could’ve prevented much of this, if it only had done its job.