Colin Todhunter: Living in Fear, Kept in the Dark!!

Earlier this year, I watched the BBC's main political debate program that allows an audience of members of the public to put questions to a panel of politicians and so called experts. Syria was on the agenda. A member of the panel referred to the Syrian rebels as freedom fighters. Within a few  minutes, all panel members and the audience were using this term to refer to the rebels. It led me to ponder why so many people were willing to accept at face value an agenda that portrayed the insurgents in such a wholly positive light. It also led me to conclude just how easy it is to manipulate ordinary people into backing imperialist ventures abroad, which are fought on behalf of rich interests. At a time of biting austerity and attacks on workers and the welfare state, well over a billion pounds of ordinary people's money was used to fund the illegal bombing of Libya. The justification sold to people for such militarism is that dictators are bad. The justification sold to people for attacking or destabilizing countries resulting in mas death is that democracy must therefore be forced through by the barrel of a gun. Isn't it terrible, the politicians and media say, that Assad is a brutal dictator who is preventing democracy by putting down the rebels. The Assad regime undoubtedly has its faults, but nothing is ever said about by the corporate media about the authoritarian ruling clique in Saudi Arabia, which has even given its name to the House of Saud. Nothing is ever said about a western backed dictator in Bahrain, who has been in power for 52 years. Nothing is ever revealed about the brutal ongoing crackdowns on protestors and dissenters in those countries. When Bahrain used Saudi troops to put down uprisings in 2011, the resultant death toll was proportionally much larger than was the loss of life in Egypt during the uprising there. In fact, if the death toll in Bahrain were taken as a proportion of the population, the equivalent death toll for Egypt would have been 12,000. Where was the outrage from the US and its client states? That's right, there was none. The King of Bahrain was even invited to attend Queen Elizabeth's Jubilee celebrations at Buckingham Palace.