Media Lens and Pilger: Western distortion and the fiction of 'democracy'

As another Iranian scientist is murdered by Israel, in flagrant violation of every international law on such matters, the latest excellent Media Lens alert charts the West's selective outrage and denunciations.

In a further timely piece, John Pilger delivers a landmark review of the West's relentless attack on democracy, including a reminder, in this presidential election year, of Obama's warmongering, corporate-serving record.

These lines from Pilger's piece brilliantly encapsulate the vast lie at the heart of our 'democracy', the economic injustice underlying it and the sham propaganda needed to reinforce the myth that we have serious 'political choices':

"America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a “market” extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognisable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says the Washington Post, will “feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy”. This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none."

Pilger and Media Lens, ever-inspiring.


John