Americans being kept in ignorance by their media

Discussion in 'Middle East' started by Anders Hoveland, Jul 17, 2011.

  1. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Americans actually wonder why the people of the Middle East hate the USA. Americans are being kept in complete ignorance by their media, which is highly centralized and almost completely dominated by a small number of large corporations pushing their political agendas. The media in the USA gives scant attention to the wars currently being waged by United States forces in Latin America. The coverage in the middle east is almost completely one-sided, manipulating public opinion to whatever is convenient for the large American corporations. While the USA is currently cooperating with several brutal dictators, the media demonized the dictators that have fallen out of favor. Less than two years ago, the USA was sending captured prisoners to be tortured and interrogated in Syria.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
    In Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the USA, six women were beheaded for the crime no greater than driving a car in defiance of the country's ban against women driving. The country is not a democracy, and women are literally stoned to death for adultery. Christian churches are banned, and there are severe penalties to tourists that try to bring a bible into the country. Yet the USA continues to sell guns and military aircraft to the country.

    It is all about oil. The West needs Afghanistan to build and control an oil pipeline from oil-rich "stans", which are situated in the center of the Asian continent. The USA does not want Russia to have complete control over the export of this oil, as Russia already uses its gas pipelines to Europe to exert political influence, sometimes shutting off the gas supply to disobedient eastern european nations.
    This link goes into more detail and has a map showing the location of the "stans" and the oil pipelines:
    http://www.heartson.com/Politics/background.html

    Turkmenistan ranks fourth in the world (behind Russia, Iran, and Qatar) in natural gas reserves. Construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline has begun at a cost of nearly one and a half billion US dollars. Turkmenistan and Afghanistan signed an agreement in August 2010 on construction of the Trans-Afghanistan (TAPI) gas pipeline for the transfer of Turkmen gas through Afghanistan. The project secured strong support from the USA after the American offensive ended the Taliban’s five-year rule over Afghanistan in 2001. Turkmenistan had previously estimated the cost of the project at $3.3 billion. Natural gas to fill the pipeline could be drawn from the massive South Yolotan deposit and the Dovletabad field.The planned pipeline would have initial capacity for 33 billion cubic metres a year and would run for nearly 2,000 km (1,250 miles), including 735 km across Afghanistan and another 800 km through Pakistan. The pipeline, which must go through conflict torn-Helmand and Kandahar in Afghanistan and Quetta in Pakistan, has been held up by security problems.

    Before the occupation of Afghanistan, president Bush visited the dictator of Uzbekistan to discuss an oil trade deal, despite the leader having just previously boiled his political opponents alive in the capital!
    Our Presidents New Best Friend Boils People Alive:

    Kazakhstan has "the largest oil and gas reserves in the Caspian Sea basin, and is producing 1.5 million barrels of oil a day."

    Did you know the USA already has a large base in Kyrgyzstan?
    neweurasia.net » American Military base in Kyrgyzstan. Afterthoughts
    You have to ask yourself why the USA would want a base far away out in the middle of nowhere, unless it is to protect the potential oil reserves from encroachment by China.
     
  2. SiliconMagician

    SiliconMagician Banned

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    Of course we worry about vital natural resources falling into the hands of unfriendly people.

    Part of our role as protectors of the international economy is to ensure free access to natural resources to ALL nations.

    Allowing one nation(China, or anyone else) to monopolize a large chunk the world's oil would be counter to that role.

    Stop acting like America should just sit back and allow every other nation on earth to choke off it's energy supplies.
     
  3. cassandrabandra

    cassandrabandra New Member

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    those resources do not belong to you.

    Allowing one nation(the US, or anyone else) to monopolize a large chunk the world's oil distorts markets and creates conflicts.

    America should just learn to live within its means - and not behave as if it has the god given right to use most of the world's oil - supporting despots - and worse - to ensure its oil supplies.
     
  4. Caeia Iulia Regilia

    Caeia Iulia Regilia New Member

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    I was aware of that actually. What I think happens in our media is that they're kinda like monkeys -- looking for the latest shiney -- and they don't go in depth on much of anything. When we go to war, rather than try to explain the whole situation. We get little graphs of troop deaths per month, but very little context (what types of missions, for example) or the broader picture of what is going on with the people.

    Afghans probably don't like us much due to poppy irradication programs. We go into a peasent farmer's field, rip up and burn his crops (and in many parts of Afghanistan, poppies are the ony way to make enough money to live) -- and give him very little in return. Of course people love you when you make it hard to feed their families. We are doing other things as well, building roads and schools and the like.

    As for the torture thing, yes, it happens, but I think it would be nieve in the extreme to suggest that America and only America is doing those things. It's also nieve to remove the context of those choices -- I defy you to google the images of what terrorism does to the children and women affected. I've seen pictures of a 10-year-old girl with her leg literally hanging by a thread (actually the leg bone), kids blinded for life, you name it. The moral imperetive for me is stop the roadside bombs and the attacks on civilians. And it's very unfortunate that it probably won't happen without torture to find out who and where before another attack happens. I don't cheer torture -- there are some on the right that seem to delight in it -- but I think it's better than allowing civilians to get mangled rather than do something I find distasteful. It's a rough world, but given the options between torturing a terrorist and watching a kid get her legs blown off -- I'll take the torture.
     
  5. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    My complaint is not so much that these things are happening, but rather, as it says in the thread title, that the American media is not telling people what is actually going on. Most Americans know absolutely nothing about the importance of the oil pipeline in Afghanistan, which is actually the primary reason for the occupation. (There are plenty of other countries without any effective government that harbor terrorism with but the USA did not occupy Somalia or Yemen) It is as if the media is trying to manipulate public opinion by selectively showing the people certain things, while giving little to no coverage about other things. The media is trying to convince Americans to support war, while pretending to show a "balanced" counterargument against war. Notice how the American media is highly critical of non-democracies. This is a common tactic used by many repressive regimes, to depict other countries with different systems of government as repressive, a form of propaganda demonizing alternative forms of government to maintain the current state. The truth is that many democracies in the world are much more brutal than China. How many people in America even know about the Armenian genocide, perpetrated by the Turkish democracy, which has been a close ally of the United States for several decades. The Turkish government still denies that a genocide ever happened, and still oppresses the Armenian population in the east of the country. Only very recently have the Armenians in Turkey been allowed to have a political party.
    Of course, the American media only tells of atrocities in countries considered enemies of the United States. A good indicator that war is imminent is when the media suddenly begins to demonize another country. There are plenty of atrocities going on in the world, but the media only really gives any attention to the countries standing in the way of American foreign policy.
     
  6. Margot

    Margot Account closed, not banned

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    "In Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the USA, six women were beheaded for the crime no greater than driving a car in defiance of the country's ban against women driving. The country is not a democracy, and women are literally stoned to death for adultery. Christian churches are banned, and there are severe penalties to tourists that try to bring a bible into the country. Yet the USA continues to sell guns and military aircraft to the country."

    What a HUGE and stupid lie..

    The women were detained for an hour and released.. except for one activist who was caught twice in one week and was detained for a few days before she was released.

    Where do you people come up with such crap?

    I have taken many Bibles in and out of Saudi Arabia.

    Christian churches are NOT banned.. There are NO church buildings.
     
  7. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    I am aware of the six recent women that were merely detained.
    But several years ago someone who had lived in Saudi Arabia for several years (he was in charge of logistics for the american military presence there) told me that a group of women were beheaded for driving (their main crime was supposedly organizing together to intentionally defy religious law, and the religious minister wanted to make an example out of them). I cannot find any news article about this, but this is what he told me. Perhaps this was merely a rumor, or perhaps the incident never made it into the Western media. Saudi Arabia is becoming more lenient now, and beheadings much less common.

    As for religious freedom:
    http://www.bloggernews.net/16261
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Saudi_Arabia
     
  8. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Wow, what a mess. Here, let me straighten you out in a few things though.

    For one, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan are not Middle Eastern countries. Both are Asian nations. Their people are not even Arabic, they are Caucasian.

    Also, the pipeline has not even been started yet. The project has been kicking around for over 16 years, and has still never gone beyond the concept phase. The number of backers in this has changed over many times.

    And while you talk about the cost in US dollars (giving the impression it is a US project), the actual sole backer at this time is the Asian Development Bank, of the Philippines.

    You talk about the project getting "Strong US Support". Then why did the only US Corporation involved in the pipeline, UNOCAL, pull out back in 1998? The project at that time was continued by a consortium of companies from Japan, South Korea, and Russia. Not an American company in the bunch.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentGas

    How about doing a little fact-checking, instead of throwing out a bunch of junk. Maybe this should be moved to the conspiracy section.
     
  9. Margot

    Margot Account closed, not banned

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    I lived in Arabia two decades.. your "friend" was gaslighting you.
     
  10. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Then it is not true. Finding articles of people being beheaded in Saudi Arabia is not hard. But I also could not find a single one that was not beheaded for anything other then serious crimes in that culture (murder, drug trafficking, sexual abuse).

    I can tell somebody almost anything I want, that does not make it real.
     
  11. gamewell45

    gamewell45 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I got some news for you; the American media, both print and broadcasting, with the exception of NPR and CPB are in business to make money; these stories you mentioned won't generate sufficient ratings to generate suffcient advertising revenue and as such get left to internet news sources to report on. Most Americans could either care less or are so desensitized that it has little or no interest to them with the exception of some small groups.

    Its just how the news is reported in a captialistic society.
     
  12. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    Why did the American media never find time to mention this?
    Surely it was of emense importance?

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5-Gz_OG4qY&feature=related"]The REAL Reason the U.S. Wants to Attack Iran - YouTube[/ame]

    http://www.wikileaks-forum.com/index.php?topic=6372.0
     
  13. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    That seems like it belongs more in the "Conspiracy Theory" area.

    The Afghanistan Pipeline has been dead for well over a decade, for many reasons. The main reasons why the proposal was eventually scrapped was the terrain of the country, and the political instability.

    Even if Afghanistan became totally stable, I do not see this pipeline ever being built. The main reason for it to go through Afghanistan in the first place was that Pakistan and Iran had strained relations at the time it was initially proposed. And that is no longer the case, so there is no reason to not go directly instead of through a third country.
     

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