Submitted by Fred Elliott via Salina.com,
I recently read an article on rt.com written by Cynthia McKinney, the first black woman elected to the Georgia Legislature. The title of the article was “Why Does The U.S Media Lie So Much?” I’ll continue after a brief aside to talk about rt.com (which stands for Russia today).
Rt.com is a news outlet sponsored by the Russian government, much like British Broadcasting Corporation of Britain, CBC of Canada and ABC of Australia. A few months ago, I was in a discussion group and I mentioned rt.com, which I visit daily, and a young man (30-ish) interrupted me to inform me that rt.com was nothing but Russian propaganda.
I immediately thought of the quote attributed to everyone from Shakespeare to Mark Twain to Winston Churchill, “Never do battle of wits with an unarmed man.” Contributors to rt include economists Paul Craig Roberts, Richard Wolff, Michael Hudson, Noam Chomsky, Lee Camp, Gerald Celente, Max Keiser, Larry King, Thom Hartmann and other Americans. Also George Galloway, former member of parliament in Britain. Why would any of these people want to be part of Russian propaganda?
Anyway, back to McKinney’s article. Why does the U.S media lie so much? The simple answer is — and the courts have ruled — that they can and it’s legal. They claim that it is part of free speech and that the responsibility is on the public to be informed as to whether the information is true or not. Thomas Jefferson said basically the same thing.
Therein lies the problem.
The American public has been lulled into watching the evening news and thinking they are being informed. They aren’t. They’re being manipulated. If you question the reports you are given the handy label conspiracy theorist and dismissed. A study showed that Fox News told the truth 17 percent of the time. Critics have even divided the remaining 83 percent into partially true, mostly false and ‘pants on fire’.
Not only does the media lie, so does the government.
I have friends who are always posting pro-Democratic and Obama memes on Facebook. They don’t seem to realize that Democrats initiated our involvement in the three worst wars of the 20th century.
Bill Clinton did away with the Glass-Steagall Act that, since the 1930s, kept the banks from gambling with depositors’ money. Hence, the crash of ‘08 and the robbery that continues. Clinton also pushed for and succeeded in passing NAFTA, the most disastrous “Free Trade Agreement” ever (only to be outdone by TPP, which is NAFTA on steroids, which Obama is pushing).
The news nightly blabbers about the “recovery.” There is no recovery, folks. We are falling further and further behind every day. The economic reports are laughable. Retail sales were up in January; unemployment has decreased under Obama.
Yeah, right, retail sales are so good that Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, and unemployment is down? Oh really, what kind of jobs? Any $22-an-hour jobs with benefits? No! Mostly part-time, low-skill jobs at minimum wage with no benefits, no security. This is not a stable or sustainable economy.
The most laughable meme is that oil prices under Obama are drastically lower than under Bush. The president has no control over oil prices. If the president had that power, don’t you think that Jimmy Carter would have lowered the price back in the early ‘70s, when gas prices caused gas lines like soup lines in the ‘30s? Who falls for this nonsense? The current low price is because the Saudis lowered their price to hurt Iran, Russia and Venezuela, but mostly Iran. Three nations the U.S. hates because they won’t grovel and go along with our desire for complete world domination, as wouldn’t Iraq, Libya or Syria.
I hate to say this, but America has become the playground bully. If you don’t go along with our idea of world order or can’t be bribed or coerced into joining our — what Gerald Celente calls — coalition of the killing, you will have economic sanctions imposed on you, and if that doesn’t work, we will simply destroy you.
Today, America is an empire and the power elite love it. Any remotely close examination of empires shows two major things:
One: They all die, usually from internal collapse.
Two: The average person was destitute.
A view of the Russian Empire in 1913, and the following few years, graphically shows what empire collapse can look like.
At the end of World War II, it was obvious that the British Empire was collapsing. They had the choice: Do away with democracy or the empire. I think they made the smart decision. Will we?
Now that you’re all cheered up, I’ll let you think about that for a bit.