An open letter to the US corporate-owned media

An open letter to the US corporate-owned media

By Teresa Simón-Noble
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/031505Simon-Noble/031505simon-noble.html

March 15, 2005—Has a priest ever admitted to abusing any of his victims? Does a sexual predator ever admit to his crime? Did O. J. Simpson ever admit to killing Nicole? Do criminals, with rare exceptions, perhaps, ever admit to their crimes?

Does George Walker Bush ever admit to being wrong? Has his father ever lied? Did Clinton ever have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky? Did the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo ever happen? Did the neocons deny it until it could no longer be denied? Is torture a crime despite Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Boy trying to rationalize it? Did Hitler ever admit to being criminal or committing crimes? Did he prefer to be taken out, or take himself out, before the Allies, and therefore, a court of justice got to him back when America may have been honorable?

Why is it, that you deem it necessary to call the statements made by an Italian, non-embedded, journalist, who writes for Il Manifesto, is identified by some journalists, such as you, as "a known communist," and by other journalists seemingly capable of deeper thought and knowledge of the human soul, as a "compassionate humanitarian striving to tell the horrors going on in this world," an idiotic charge because she works for a communist newspaper? Why must you discount her version of the fact that she was held a prisoner by unknown kidnappers in Iraq? Why is it that you must discount the fact that she was freed by an agent of Italy's version of the CIA or of our Homeland Security; that on the road to the Baghdad Airport they were shot at by our American boys, who, killed her rescuer and wounded her along with others who were traveling in the car? Why do you dismiss her statements so lightly?

Hasn't Giuliana Sgrena proven with her blood that she is a true and honorable journalist who should and might be the envy of some of you who sit in your soft chairs mouthing praises to an out of control cowboy? Why does she have to be someone who is lying because she is a communist, anti-American, or otherwise? Why does she have to be considered a non-reputable journalist as some of you have suggested?

That sounds so much like what so many sexual abusers say of their victims. "She is just lying," when they know perfectly well that those victims are not lying—that they are telling the truth about the abuser, but that to the outside world the victims are in a position of powerlessness in reference to the abusers—and so it seems that in the minds of your highnesses, Giuliana Sgrena is equally in a position of powerlessness, lying to the world about a heinous incident which almost cost her life and killed Nicola Calipari, simply because she does not have breakfast at the capitalist's table, or, worse yet, because she does not sing the praises of George Walker Bush and his rogue cowboy army.

Many a parent is horrified to learn that a step-parent, or even the other parent, or an aunt, or an uncle, has been abusing their child. Then they are filled with regret that they didn't listen or did nothing to stop the abuse much earlier.

Sometimes this deaf ear to the claims of abuse comes from the fact that if they were to listen to the child who is claiming to be abused, much of what they believe about the person abusing the child would have to change and with it a rebalancing of the family structure . . . and sometimes not a very favorable restructuring of the family—so it is more comfortable to lend a deaf ear and a blind eye to the claims of abuse by a child and to keep the balance of family power ,such as it is, while an innocent victim continues to suffer.

Are your highnesses afraid of looking into the possibility that our American boys are misbehaving in Baghdad? That under orders from the Commander-in-Crime and his equally criminal attorney general, our Honorable Army has indeed turned into a rogue cowboy army?

Were you to find out that Giuliana Sgrena is telling the truth, that the embedded journalists who report to you are either prevented from seeing the truth, or threatened that if they tell the truth, they will suffer a fate similar to Calipari's, would you choose to continue your stance with which the Commander-in-Crime is buying your silence?

Would you choose to continue making yourselves blind to the truths of Iraq, the Commander-in-Crime and his crimes? Would you continue calling the Giuliana Sgrena incident and many others "idiotic statements"?

Most importantly, would you be afraid for your own lives?

Would you be less American if your were to look for and stand on the side of truth, rather than sitting in your corporate thrones, mouthing baseless nonsense to protect whatever wrongful idea it is that you have about what being an American is all about and about what the Commander in Crime is doing?

But maybe you are right.

Maybe being an American is about lying, and committing crimes, and torture, whether at Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo, or in our Southern backyards. Maybe it is about killing innocent people on the roads in Baghdad. Maybe it is about who can be the strongest of the species, or the biggest liar in the pack . . .

Maybe that is the answer to your shallowly asked question, "Why do they hate us?"

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Media/031505Simon-Noble/031505simon-noble.html

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