Topic 7- Media Imperialism

The video "The Power of Nightmares (Part 3 - Shadow in the Cave)" by Adam Curtis shows an example of media imperialism. This BBC documentary invoke fear in the people after 9/11 event by making false statements and accounts of empty harmless caves in arab to be arabian's underground fortress, innocent teenager's recording in Disneyland as a video to find spots for bomb-planting, and etc. The influential force fabricated the news to achieve certain motives for their own advantage, instead of giving truth to the fearful public. This video raised questions about who is the real terrorist after the 9/11 incident. Main forces control over media causes people to be fed with fake information. The worst thing is, people tend to rely on the news at crucial times like that, as they were more cautious. The public have fear inside them all the time, even when walking along the street, fearing their own safety and also of their loved ones. Media imperialism is all about how people's thoughts and culture is dominated by influential people as they control output of media.


These are a few posts about the truth behind the Iraqi war

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

The president said that while the administration never "said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated" with Iraqi help, "we did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," Bush said.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bush made stronger statements alleging cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda.

In a October 2002 speech he said, "Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/18/russia.warning/index.html