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Michael Jackson Story Is A Plot

By Antonia Zerbisias


The Toronto Star
25 November , 2003

Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right after all.


Maybe they're just wrong about the particular conspiracy.

No, U.S. president George W. Bush and his posse of world dominators did not plot and plan the 9/11 attacks so that they could unleash their dogs of war — not to mention American carpetbaggers — on Iraq's oilfields.

But perhaps, along with their pals in the boardrooms of Big Media, they've hatched a scheme to dumb down the nation so that they can inflict their will upon the world while American voters are transfixed on "Bachelor Bob" burning the beef on the barbecue.

How else to explain last Thursday's orgy of Michael Jackson coverage on CNN — hours of choppercam shots of airport runways and police station parking lots — on the day that Bush was being trashed in effigy in London, 27 people were killed and 400 injured by truck bombs in Turkey, a U.S.-Canada task force report on the causes of August's massive blackout was released and who knows how many U.S. troops were becoming casualties in Iraq?

Was CNN merely pandering to the stupid for commercial reasons — or deliberately avoiding the news? Has last spring's "That's Mili-tainment!'' revue reverted to "That's Info-tainment!'' Have the networks run so far from serious reportage on domestic, economic and international affairs that they no longer know how to do anything but scandal? Or — and here comes my conspiracy theory — is there something else afoot, and people are too catatonic to recognize it?

Consider that, still, most Americans are convinced that Saddam's boys rammed those planes into the towers.

According to Sam Smith, founding editor of The Progressive Review (http://www.prorev.com), that misperception is just one of "the effects of living in a semio-sphere of erroneous, deliberately false or badly distorted information. For example, in the lead-up to the Iraqi invasion, the TV channels were inundated with `military experts,' despite the fact that making peace requires considerably more expertise than making war. But absent comparable time for `peace experts,' one can't expect the public to understand the arguments or even that there are any."

We, or at least those of us who look outside the shiny, happy bubble of American Big Media, now know just how ghastly, how gory, how grotesque the effects of the Anglo-American invasion were upon the people of Iraq.

Yes, they may be "liberated" and, true, better off in the long run. But at what a cost!

Not that you saw that terrible human toll on CNN which, like most other American news services, gave us G.I. Journalism from the "embeds'' — not to mention tribute walls of pin-ups of the kids fighting over there. (With them now returning in body bags — excuse me, "transfer tubes" — where are the photos today, hmmmm?) The networks decided that the sights, sounds and smells of death were just too much, even for viewers who happily watch make-believe murder and mayhem every night in primetime.

Which brings us to Deadline Iraq: Uncensored Stories Of The War, a one-hour ad-free documentary on CBC Newsworld tonight at 9 and on the main channel at 10. Dozens of journalists from all over the world spill their guts, so to speak, on seeing guts being spilled and not being able to depict it. NBC cameraman Craig White comes out and says that his network would not show a G.I. being shot.

Be warned: There are some disturbing images. And there is one revolting anecdote about young Ali Abbas, the orphaned boy who came to worldwide attention after he lost his arms and his family.

But that's the news biz.

It's also part of the biz to risk your life covering a war, as the doc's opening sequence reminds us. But the April 8 strike on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel and Al-Jazeera bureau by a round from a U.S. tank, an attack that left two journalists dead, still doesn't look like an accidental hazard of war.

In fact, last week, there were reports out of Iraq that "jumpy U.S. soldiers" are abusing the few journalists still there.

As for the White House, it recently honored four U.S. reporters, three of whom died in Iraq, plus Daniel Pearl, who was executed by abductors in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Bush gang ignored the five journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq. (Speaking of which, there's still no explanation from the Pentagon about the shelling of the Palestine Hotel.)

In the end, Deadline Iraq offers little news to the most addicted news junkies. At least not those in Canada. In the U.S., where the coverage was USA-all-the-way, it would be an eye-opener. But you can bet CNN viewers will never see anything like it.

Nor will they likely see Danny Schecter's WMD: Weapons Of Mass Deception, a film in progress. That's because, judging by the 20-minute preview he sent me, his film is a surgical strike on the mainstream media coverage of the conflict, much like his daily Web log (http://www.mediachannel.org). You can be sure no network would be interested in buying or airing it.

Hardly surprising really. Why would the networks 'fess up to hiding so much of the truth?

Which only helps prove that conspiracy theory of mine: Michael Jackson is a spook working for Dick Cheney.

 


 

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