Hypocrisy Of Free Speech: By The Powerful, For The Powerful, Against The Powerless

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It is crucial that we maintain some principles such as the freedom of expression, since the right is, by any means, essential to every individual. As much as we disagree with one another, this fundamental right should be upheld.

The problem however arises when this right is abused and the powerless minorities in an already toxic environment are affected by it. Charlie Hebdo was stigmatising Muslims and, in the West today, there is an apparent normalisation and standardisation of this discourse. In fact, political parties, in particular far right groups, are ‘Islamising’ every issue.

After the tragic events, we saw some of the hypocritical world leaders march for the same free speech which they often oppress. The King of Jordan, who sentenced a Palestinian Journalist to 15 years in prison last year; Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose forces killed 17 journalists in Gaza last year; Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Shoukry, who detained Al Jazeera staff as well as detaining Journalist Shawkan. Surely, if the UK government was any better and truly upholds absolute free speech it would not have forced the Guardian to destroy the hard disk containing the Snowden files either.

Did Russia Commit The Sony Hack & Frame North Korea?

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Warning: pure speculation to follow.

It’s obvious that North Korea is behind the attack on Sony in retaliation for making “The Interview” … In fact it is so obvious that it makes me suspicious.

The North Koreans say they didn’t do it … I believe them.

I think they have been set up for the fall by a much more sophisticated attacker, one who doesn’t want to take “credit” for the attack. There are two prime suspects in that case: China and Russia. In my opinion it was the Russians. Here is a recent report of their work:

Israeli Cease Fire Violations and Media Propaganda

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The role of U.S. mass media – and Western media in general — as a tool for disseminating propaganda was first argued by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their landmark 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.” Their analysis reveals a media propaganda system based not on “formal censorship” but rather “by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion.”

Although it does not consciously and overtly do so, Western corporate media serve the critical function of protecting the financial and business interests of institutional power.

“A propaganda model suggests that the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state,” the authors write. “The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.”

More than 25 years later, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the BBC keep churning out work that continues to validate Herman and Chomsky’s argument in “Manufacturing Consent.” In no foreign policy story is this more apparent than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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