Douglas Todd is a Spirituality and Ethics Columnist
Communities.Canada.com/VancouverSun/blogs
Journalists often help create today’s culture of fear — the way we push hard on stories about crime, tragedy and warnings of how badly things could go wrong; from political corruption and terrorism to cancer-causing foods and global warming.
But journalists also have the power to help allay unnecessary fears — by offering reality checks and broader perspectives. Journalists, I think, have a duty to counter leaders who promote fear to control and manipulate the public. Those leaders could be politicians, advertisers or religious prelates. … To check out my attempt to help readers remain centred while so many leaders are trying to make them afraid, you can go here.
I conclude in the column: “In a culture of fear, staying calm amounts to a political act.” What I’m saying is we can resist fearmongers by staying centred. This has spiritual overtones. People who meditate or do yoga are practising being grounded; a possible positive side-effect is they become less easily controlled by those who wield fear. In the same vein, people who trust in some sort of Higher Power are often also finding ways to combat inner panic. Their spiritual convictions help them transcend their fears; real, imagined, and especially manufactured.
Test Yourself: Practice staying calm and centered while watching this video Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran
John Pilger lecture video
John Pilger, a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker recently gave a guest lecture at the University of Kent, Rutherford College, Department of Politics and International Relations – Conflict Analysis Research Centre, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, 2-29-2008.
John Pilger says we live in a critical and contradictory time, never a more dangerous time, and that includes the Cold War, which itself was presented in a way that was not really true. It was an assault on a large number of people in the developing world for strategic position, economic gain, for their resources – all the things that lead into the War on Terror. There was a desperate search to replace the coming down of the Berlin Wall during the time when people were looking for a peace dividend – that the great world arms trade would go away, or begin to go, so that we could all relax. People were looking for a time when real interaction between society would take over from Manufactured Fear. But at the same time, there was a search taking place to see what would work as Fear: War on Drugs-No, Foreign Demons-it needed context, Somali Warlords-didn’t catch, Axis of Evil – War on Terror-that succeeded in the media though it is a journalist’s job to be a critic of his own craft. Information is Power. But lots of information we get in our media is False–as it has Other Agendas. It is created for a certain political class, largely of media. National Intelligence got tired of being the patsy any longer for false information. It made a mockery for an attack on Iran which came through very powerful newspapers, both liberal and conservative. Fortunately, Charles Lewis broke rank by breaking the silence on the buildup of the Iraq War. There had been a turning point in journalism where instead of challenging and investigating outright deceptions and lies, the media (academia had responsibility too) amplified and echoed all these justification for a rapacious (taking by force or plundering, subsisting off of live prey) attack on a defenseless country.
Speaking of the Axis of Evil – Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb IranPropaganda
10 March 2008
Is there reason to believe events and news items are manufactured by the U.S. government to create fear as a tool of propaganda to manipulate the American public into supporting military intervention? Does evidence exist to support the theory that crises such as 9/11 and the War on Terror was manufactured by the U.S. Government? Here are two amazing videos that I recommend.
Evidence study #1 Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran
An open source video compilation, Propaganda offers a critical look at mainstream media, featuring interviews and lectures by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Amy Goodman and much more.
