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War
changes everything
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the view
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by Tarek Atia |
Our own role
April 20, 2003
| There’s only one thing
I can conclude from watching TV -- the world’s priorities have
gone absolutely wacko.
We’re being brainwashed
into arguing about trivialities like whether or not the footage of
Saddam Hussein in the midst of a cheering crowd in Baghdad -- at the
exact moment the Americans were taking over on April 9th no less --
is real or not.
 It
could be a Hollywood stunt double in a studio in Burbank for all I
care, because the whole thing is just one big charade. Why? Because
something much larger than an American occupation of a formerly
sovereign nation has just taken place; what we are seeing on our TV
screens today is merely the formal announcement of an already bygone
conclusion.
The game is up. The US –
and the way it does business – has already taken over the world.
Warning cries about impending imperialism are funny, when you think
about it -- at least if they’re spoken in the context, or with the
intention, of aiming to stop something that still hasn’t happened.
Wake up my dear misguided vigilantes – we were already smack in
the heart of the American empire.
It’s just that the gloves
are coming off now. And anybody who didn’t see it before was
either blind, or merely pretending to be.
Just look at the new Arabic
satellite news channels that are popping up everywhere in an attempt
to provide an alternative to the American viewpoint – they all
seem to be using a template straight out of CNN…. although the
words used by the presenters are in a different language and may
reflect different politics, the whole experience owes its entire
existence to CNN…from the way the presenters are dressed, to their
mannerisms, to the music, the set etc.
While surfing the channels in
search of a little respite from all the hard news, I also saw
another little hint of how pervasive this US domination is.
On a new Arabic entertainment
channel modeled after MTV, I caught a video called Dirty by pop star
Christine Aguilera, where muscle-bound men surround the scantily
clad singer as she writhes and wiggles to the beat. A few minutes
later, on yet another new Arabic entertainment channel modeled after
MTV, I saw a video by Nancy Agram where muscle-bound men surround
the scantily clad Arabic pop singer, as she writhes and wriggles to
the beat. As I saw that scene, I felt fairly certain that wherever
else I went, there would be a new entertainment channel modeled
after MTV, where muscle-bound men surround a scantily clad
Asian/Indian/Brazilian/Australian/Polish/etc pop singer as she also
writhed and wriggled to the beat.
Sometimes, if you pressed
mute, it might be hard to tell whether what you were watching was
foreign or American. (Remember, a great many of al-Jazeera’s
female presenters are blond).
But what does this have to do
with war? Everything. The message – in the music videos, in the
silly debate over the Saddam footage, and on all the cookie-cutter
news channels -- is the same. The world is already hooked to the
medium – the American way of doing business.
The only question now is what
happens next? And the answer: most likely more of the same, at least
for the time being. Just surfing the channels is an admission of
defeat, a pure and unadulterated act of surrender that even those of
us who claim to be against the idea of an American empire go through
every single night, when we switch on the TV.
The point may be -- that if
you’re aiming to change things, you had better consider exactly
what you’re up against – and especially our own role in that
struggle.
Send
your comments to Tarek
Atia
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