...He's making sure you're fully absorbed."*
I don't have television. I generally don't read the national newspapers. As such, it's safe to say that most of the "news" I do read is on the Internet, and like all news sources, one must learn to take things with a grain of salt.
Now, more than ever, the integrity of a source is not something one can take for granted. The newspaper giants - once proud and powerful enough to take down a crooked presidency - can no longer be relied upon to live up to the journalistic equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, though maybe a hypocritical one.
My approach is to read as much as I can of what's out there, and divine the truth somewhere in the middle. I look for patterns and inconsistencies; double checking the "facts" for myself, before jumping on the witchhunt/bandwagon etc.
Believe it or not, this attitude started long ago with food not politics. I remember as a kid, hearing that peanut butter causes cancer. The news came along at a time when I was just coming to realize how many things allegedly caused cancer, as I noticed they seemed to change weekly. Does everything cause cancer my child self wondered?
I noticed that despite biblical protestations to the contrary, science revealed that bread was all we needed; this was followed by a proclamation that carbs are the enemy. We've been told since childhood that citrus is THE source for vitamin C only to later find in the ever present fine print, that broccoli is even better. Beef is a necessary source of iron but speaking of broccoli....We NEED eight glasses of water a day, but just the other day I heard an argument that this kind of forced drinking can actually cause harm.
These wild vacillations of information bred a healthy suspicion of information at an early age. I learned that the only reliable thing about the sources was that they would dramatically change their position sooner or later. I learned that the sources sources were the real information you had to look for. Who funded the study was more important than the data itself. As such, I had no choice but to learned only to trust my instincts. (Ok, and Julia Child).
Well, it has come to that same place with politics. I realize it has been this way forever, but I grew up with certain ideas about the righteousness of political coverage. I was actually sitting on a curb on Pennsylvania Ave when Nixon resigned because the powerful Washington Post exposed his corruption. At 8 years old, the event left a potent impression. But these days, everything tastes of propaganda, and to nearly comical effect. Comical that is, if you have a death wish.
Which brings us to the following article from the Associated Piss, which I am regarding with great suspicion:
"Ex-lawmaker charged in terror conspiracy"
WASHINGTON - A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.
In the indictment, the government alleges that IARA employed a man who had served as a fundraising aide to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks*
After the irresistible headline, the first thing I noticed was the photo which appears to be from this guy's high school yearbook. A fresh faced boy, not a Reagan era republican senator, peers at you smiling geekily as the headlines announce he's been indicted as a lobbyist for terrorists...and darn it! those terrorists are tricky and can fool even little Markie Siljander. Who's next? What's to be done about it?!
The entire thing stinks of a cover up. Citizens are becoming curiouser and curiouser about the "irrelevant" money trail related to the incidents leading up to and after September 11, 2001 and out of the blue we have senator-boy who was paid in laundered money from the government through a charity that supported Bin Laden himself. WHAT?!
I read somewhere that reading the news causes cancer.
XXKHT
*Chuck Palahniuk quotes (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)
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