See this page for links to articles on OpEdNEws that articulate both sides on the issues in the middle east. It is the goal of OpEdNews to air opinions from both sides to stretch the envelope of discussion and communication. Hate statements are not accepted. Discussions of issues and new ideas for solutions are encouraged. .
Islamophobia is a mental and spiritual affliction. And our Western ruling elites bear the responsibility for inflicting it upon the psyches of the masses.
Now that the Stalinist/Maoist regimes have collapsed or evolved toward capitalism and no fascist states with imperial ambitions exist (besides the United States and its few allies), the American Empire needed to find a new "enemy" to replace Stalinists and Nazis. Much of the soft power employed by the leaders of America's "top down democracy" stems from psychological manipulation of "the mob". Mobilization of the masses against a common enemy "threatening the very existence of the American Way" has long been a staple in the United States' ruling elites' ongoing push to monopolize the world's wealth, power, and prestige.
And whether one believes that 9/11 was a false flag operation perpetrated by the US government or the work of radical Islamic Fundamentalists, the members of the Bush Regime obviously shed their crocodile tears publicly while privately celebrating the event as their Pearl Harbor. 3,000 civilian deaths and the demolition of a powerful symbol of the Western "value" of avaricious Capitalism whipped the American public into a furor against the "evil Muslims" who "hate our freedoms".
Never mind the fact that the United States and Israel have undertaken a nearly unparalleled program of military aggression and ethnic cleansing throughout the Middle East since the formation of the illegitimate colonial nation in Palestine. Given the premises for founding Israel, someone needs to remind Great Britain and the United States that it is incumbent upon them to create a homeland for homosexuals and Romani people. After all, they were also Holocaust victims and are people without a nation. And like the Palestinians, the other inhabitants of the Middle East are more akin to animals than human beings. So why not establish two more colonies on their land?
On August 13, Sixty Minutes aired a segment that revealed a great deal about Islamophobia and the role the corporate media plays in its proliferation.
In his recent (1)Open Letter to Mike Wallace, Michael K. Smith declared:
"Your interview with Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejad was a disgrace to the journalistic profession. You began with the condescending manner of a school principal lecturing the class clown for immature behavior and squandered the entire interview on hypocritically accusatory questions. If gall were an Olympic sport, you'd take the Gold Medal."
Michael made some fine points throughout his letter. However, I opine that he was too generous when he called Wallace's vituperative verbal assault an interview. What I witnessed was Mike Wallace, the Ugly American. Brimming with contempt, impatience, hubris, and belligerence, he more closely resembled the Grand Inquisitor than a journalist.
Did Wallace truly fail to grasp that he was acting as an apologist and cheerleader for bellicose, heartless, and ruthless perpetrators of war crimes on behalf of Israel, and thus is a Zionist (as Ahmadinejad suggested)? Through its grossly biased coverage of the "War on Terrorism" and mindless perpetuation of the inane myth that Israel has the right to annihilate an unlimited number of civilians to protect its "right to exist", CBS News has joined the squad of corporate media cheerleaders which has been shamelessly complicit in the Empire's egregious crimes against humanity. I submit that one can be a Zionist and a journalist. Mike Wallace is living proof.
Yet in spite of Wallace's tenacious efforts, the "devil incarnate", Ahmadinejad, remained composed. At times Ahmadinejad seemed to thoroughly enjoy Wallace's obvious "flustration" in attacking him from what has become an absurdly untenable position, both morally and logically. For those of us who don't believe the Western media fairy tale that the United States is a force for good engaged in a noble struggle in its bid to rid the world of the evil of Islam and defend Israel's "right to exist", Wallace's ill-fated attempt to expose the malevolence of the "enemy" was quite entertaining.
Just as Wallace scrambled madly in a hopeless attempt to prevail intellectually in his interrogation of Ahmadinejad, the debt-ridden, aging American Empire and its allies are flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to claim military victory in the Middle East. And like Ahmadinejad, those who comprise the resistance to occupation and exploitation in the Middle East are facing down their occupiers with a deft persistence, filled with a confidence born from the knowledge that recent history has not been kind to imperial invaders facing a people determined to expel them (i.e. Vietnam, Lebanon, and Iraq).
In the perverse worldview of the Neocons, Israel, and AIPAC, Iran is considered to be a part of the "Axis of Evil". Since Wallace championed the cause of the "benevolent" United States in his Sixty Minutes interrogation of the leader of one of the members of the "Axis", it is instructive to consider the "evils" Iran and resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have perpetrated.
While various resistance groups in the Middle East have certainly committed war crimes by killing civilians, the "leader of the free world" and its counterpart in Palestine have annihilated hundreds of thousands more civilians than have the so-called "terrorists".
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