Manuel Valenzuela: In the Shadow of Wolves

Discomforting as it might seem for us to acknowledge, the corporate media is our enemy. In concert, the ABCNBCCBSCNNFOX hydra has declared open war against our right to truth and open democracy. Americans have been made ignorant to the world that encapsulates them thanks to the purposeful sequestering of information and open dissemination of propaganda by entities controlled by the great Corporate Leviathan.

In this age of corporatism – the entangled power of government and corporations dancing together – our right to know what our leaders are doing has been extinguished. Government accountability has in many ways become an oxymoron as corporate media whitewashes the chicanery and corruption transpiring at the highest levels of governance. Since this malfeasance involves the same spoon that feeds today’s media, hiding of truth becomes second nature. Corporate media, we must understand, is protecting its mother, the great Leviathan.

Once noble seekers of truth have been replaced by seekers of deception, censoring and cleansing any and all news seen as harmful to the government and Leviathan. Honor and integrity in journalism has disappeared, only to give rise to manipulation and conditioning. What was once an institution of American democracy has mutated into a compliant prostitute to the oligarchy. As a result, the US has been made blind to the evils done in our name and the crimes committed against us.

We are living in times where truth on the airwaves has ceased to exist. Realities are hidden, fictions are espoused and the indelible fogged mirror over our monitors continues to grow. With government/Leviathan entities controlling most every channel in the vast array of escapism we are inundated with on television it becomes a rather easy endeavor to control a population. One only needs to look at the enormous canyon separating the views of the world with those of Americans when it comes to the actions of the Pax Americana.

It has become apparent that the ignorance of most Americans is directly tied to the manipulation prevalent in the corporate media. Incurious and spineless journalists have become, selling out their integrity for fame and greed. How people of supposed intelligence can spew distortion and propaganda on such a massive scale and be able to live with themselves is beyond my scope of understanding. American media has become a farce, nothing more than a mouthpiece for government/Leviathan interests and a censor to truth and reality. From the mouths of journalists have been born the spurious sons and daughters of manipulated conditioning.

In the shadow of wolves we find ourselves living, trapped in caverns of distortion, seeking truth but finding only the sharp fangs of fiction. Reality has been hidden from our ever-curious eyes, buried deep in the lair of mouth-foaming beasts intent on making us subservient creatures of passivity. We see not what transpires but only what expires, filtered and washed, censored and distorted. The expiration of fact has yielded to the renunciation of truth.

The greatest victim of today’s corporate media has been the American people. We are being lied to, manipulated, conditioned and robbed of our democratic right to question authority and seek accountability. News has become a charade, an Orwellian mutation extending the tentacles of government and business into our homes and lives. It is used to control and pacify, numb and brainwash. The corporate media has become a tool to protect vital interests necessary for the continued existence of the oligarchy. What we don’t know won’t hurt us; what we are told to believe simply becomes history.

The debacle in Iraq has been transformed into a whitewashed version of “a bad week.” Except the bad weeks keep coming and coming, with no reasonable end in sight and no will or leadership apparent to help guide us out of the cesspool that has been engendered. The ruination of American forces, falling deeper and deeper into the abyss, has been hidden from the spectrum of American curiosity.

We are led to believe otherwise, however, as a censored and edited version of the “fight against evil” is rerun for tens of millions to feast on. We are battling terrorists, after all, waging a war of good versus evil, right versus wrong, freedom versus tyranny. Of course George Washington, Paul Revere and all American freedom fighters battling the British would take exception to being labeled “terrorists” or “insurgents” as today’s resistance fighters are.

Yet the corporate media lives to label and stereotype, casting this most ignoble battle as America bringing freedom and democracy to a beleaguered people in desperate need of our assistance. The screenplay is typical of Hollywood fantasy, pure bull manure designed to captivate a fiction-loving audience conditioned through years of escapist propaganda to seeing America playing the role of hero and liberator to the world.

Reality demands, however, that we look beyond the golden shores of our oceans and into the eyes of a world altogether different. It is the corporate media, that most innocent looking nebula that alters our definition of the planet, rendering us believers of mirages and charred truths. It is the corporate media that grants us the illusion of our leaders’ noble and altruistic intentions at the same time the world considers us a bigger threat than terrorism.

We live in a fantasy world, America in Wonderland, where everything that is cannot possibly exist and where everything we see must therefore be. The alteration of reality for the continued existence of the Leviathan and oligarchs has made us creatures of conformism and ignorance. Lies about our greatness, manipulations about our atrocities, delusions about our place in history and charades over our role in leading the brotherhood of nations has permeated into our minds, making our existence the grandest Hollywood fantasy that ever existed.

The pulsating echo of reality is made to vanish like a bad dream while the hemorrhaging screams of falsity reigns supreme in the nightmare called corporate media. America has become the most incurious nation on Earth, easily believing its injurious government and absorbing the propaganda spawned by the mouths of the Leviathan. It is this grave imperfection, thrust upon the people of the world, that endangers our future and helps release the demons of man upon the globe.

An incurious and easily manipulated population, unwilling to question authority or the falsity of their beliefs has helped launch the brazen grip of terror the Bush administration has unleashed onto the world. Yet corporate media filters prevent us from seeing this most important of facts. Why? Because America’s government and corporate entities are today one and the same, BushCo, Inc. To have the citizenry controlled, believing the trash thrown into our living rooms, is to have the power to exploit and oppress at will, not only the world at large but the American people as well.

From the beginning of the Iraq war corporate media was spewing propaganda beneficial to the Bush administration and to the Leviathan. Rose petals awaited our triumphant soldiers, millions greeted us as liberators, we were made to believe tens of thousands toppled Saddam’s statue. Once again, however, the fictions promulgated and the realities concealed were mutually exclusive.

In the year since the invasion and subsequent occupation, the corporate media has ensnarled itself with the Bush administration, following the president like a lost little puppy. The crumbs thrown at the pack of wolves is quickly gobbled up and regurgitated back to us. The most incurious, deceptive and acquiescent media the US has ever known has helped transform democracy into plutocracy, a once questioning populace into an accepting one and the global corporate empire into a most malicious evil empire.

Journalists of honor still exist, espousing truth and ideology to make a difference in a troubled world. They are the exception rather than the rule, however. Many more have been washed away by the tide of patriotic fervor questioning dissenters and making traitors of seekers of truth. Many have sold out to the demons of the Leviathan, easily gobbled up and bought, transformed into loudspeakers seeking nothing but the lies and deceptions they are spoon-fed.

What has happened to American media? What has become of a once noble institution of change and accountability? What has happened to reporting truths and masking away the lies and propaganda the government gives birth to? Where is Walter Cronkite?

Today’s diluted versions of Cronkite have been corrupted by the system. They have fallen prey to greed and the evils of corporatist capitalism that serves them up as pawns in the game of power and control. They are used in order to wage war against the people, becoming nothing more than voices declaring what those in power want the populace to believe, and follow.

It is a sad day when we can no longer place trust in corporate media news or in the seemingly intelligent newscasters, reporters, pundits, talking heads and purveyors of information we once thought so highly of. Their words can no longer be trusted, their information no longer believed. Censoring so much truth, fabricating so much hogwash, questioning nothing but the viewers themselves and helping turn democracy into the illusion it has become is today the job of the corporate news.

I for one no longer blink an eye to the fallacies preached over the television set. I have stopped listening altogether, and the world has suddenly become a bastion of information readily available at the click of a mouse. Reality has returned, encaged I no longer am and the chains of enslavement making me captive to corporate media have disintegrated with the enlightenment the Internet has provided. The world and its truths are at my fingertips. I am no longer relegated to American propaganda and the festering crap that constitutes for news. Goodbye Wolf Blitzer.

Suddenly the horrors of depleted uranium have opened my mind to the nuclear war in Iraq. Why does the corporate media not cover DU, I wonder, even when American troops in both Gulf Wars have died and become sick in enormous numbers? Where is the coverage of their deformed and diseased newborns waking to the reality of depleted uranium? Why is there no mention of the voluminous number of tons of DU shells, munitions, bombs and missiles dropped in Iraq and Afghanistan, even when both nations have become a nuclear waste dump giving birth to cancers, birth mutations and disease that will last into perpetuity? Shame on you, corporate media!

I am now able to see the deaths of American soldiers, the atrocities of American bombs, the blown to bits Iraqi children and the inherent absurdity of war. I see the damage done by cluster bombs, carpet bombing and oppressive occupation. Eyewitness accounts of Fallujah collective punishment and Baghdad war crimes have sickened me to my stomach. The reality of war has manifested itself to me, and trust me, we are not the good guys nor the heroes nor the gods of honor. Where is the corporate media to report to us the truths of this most heinous and immoral of wars? Shame on you, corporate media!

I know more about the neocons than I care to admit, discovering their ideology and fascination with Israel. Where is the corporate media coverage of this slithering group of vipers that falsely led us to war in Iraq and manipulated government in order to achieve its goals? This conniving cabal of corrosiveness has made us less safe by their delusional foray into the Middle East that has only served to heat up the conveyor belt of hatred and resentment against the US. Why are they not held to accountability? Shame on you, corporate media!

I have become outraged at the dehumanization being committed to the Palestinian people in the name of the Star of David. I can see myself walking along a horridly indigent, waste infested, overpopulated and encaged refuge camp in the West Bank, ducking for cover as IDF soldiers shoot indiscriminately while their tanks and bulldozers demolish lives, homes and orchards. I become Palestinian, living in an utter state of apartheid, humiliated at every turn, enslaved, encaged and enraged. Now I comprehend what makes a suicide bomber turn himself or herself into a guided missile, similar to those used by the IDF on Palestinian populated areas.

Yet the corporate media fails to lift a hair to report these truths, deciding instead to turn its attention to protecting the interests of Israel. Where is the objectivity? Where is the fair and balanced approach to truthful reporting? It isn’t found in the corporate media – that much is certain. Why are Palestinians stereotyped, vilified, smeared and condemned while the occupiers/oppressors are protected, cherished, honored, and elevated on a pedestal? Shame on you, corporate media!

I have been made aware of the corruption within the Bush administration, of the sheer malfeasant leadership we have in Washington. John Kerry was not wrong when he labeled this cabal crooks and liars. If the constant stream of emerging patterns is any indication, an elected George W. Bush could mean the implosion of America. Where is the corporate media on this issue? For three years it has allowed Bush to trample on the Constitution and on the American people without raising an eyebrow. It has allowed the chicanery and the sleaze to continue. When the sole beneficiary of the pillaging of America is the hand that feeds it, however, only lip service is paid lest the people be informed to what is in effect their enslavement and exploitation. Shame on you, corporate media!

Now, more than ever, I have become aware of the coming decimation caused by global warming, itself a creation of man. We are destroying ourselves and our progeny by our continued use of carbon in our lives. The reality of global warming is upon us, so much so that the Pentagon is worried. The planet is reeling, changing and will soon purge the plague of locusts devouring it from its surface. Is there any concerted effort by the corporate media to report this most dangerous threat to the American people? Absolutely not, even when experts have stated that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. Shame on you, corporate media!

In the shadow of wolves we find ourselves in, trapped in their den, unable to see light emanating from outside. In the shadow of wolves our reality exists, altering our perception of what truly is. War has been declared against us and truth, fact and reality. In battle we have yet to win, being brainwashed to accept sin. America in Wonderland is what we are, seeing the world change from so very far.

Corporate Media is turning us into obedient drones that allow the Leviathan carte blanche to exploit, suffocate, exterminate and obliterate both minds and lives. Numb creatures of ignorance we are meticulously being turned into, unable, unwilling and uninspired to question the authority that technically answers to us. The corporate media has turned its back on the American people. It now acts as a tool of dominance and control.

The age of the Internet is upon us, however, revolutionary as the printing press and as informative as the world’s best libraries, combined. Throw away your remote and pick up your mouse, evade the feces thrown at you by ABCNBCCBSCNNFOX, and become witness to a world of truth, fact and reality. The chains of bondage gripping you will cease to exist just as the shadow of the wolves dissolves into the dark light of a full moon burning bright.

Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, activist, writer and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel to be published in Spring of 2004. His articles appear weekly on axisoflogic.com where he is also contributing editor. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net Read Other Articles By Manuel Valenzuela: Manuel Valenzuela Archive

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