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Where did the "Road to Kabul" lead us?
Let me start with a quote from Noam Chomsky (American Linguist and US Media and Foreign Policy Critic)
"As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think that. … Since there's no way to get together with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay any attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl."
Despite the technological advances in the Arab world, the boom and boon of satellite television, and the growing access to the Internet, the Arab media still face many obstacles, the relation between the media and authorities still is not clear, the control or the desire to control is always there. Even the independent media [are] subject to this control.
Thomas Gorguissian, Washington correspondent for An-Nahar in Lebanon, told a conference (October 7 - "Uncovered: Arab Journalists Scrutinize Their Profession," hosted by Georgetown University in Washington) that in many cases important news still cannot come from some of the capitals of the Arab countries because "there is no free movement, no free access to the place of the event" or "the official is not ready to give access or even talk about what happened." In these cases, Arab media outlets have been forced to rely on news reports from the United States, Europe and sometimes even Israel.
What concern us here is not censoring the "Road to Kabul" as a series, but the contents and facts that it exposed to public. When you obstruct the Arab media in reporting from your country, when you say Al-Jazeera (with all my reservation on Al-Jazeera) cannot go into Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, you are pushing that Arab media to create views and not news. But even that is censored.
We all know that authorities in the M.E. use "carrots and sticks" (rewards and punishments) to keep media in line — more often the latter. Authorities often intimidate, harass and sanction media if they do not write as directed, sometimes detaining or imprisoning them.
In essence, Arab world reverse the FOX News motto, "We report, you decide," to "We decide, you report." But the "Road to Kabul" was unfortunate "late decide" to ban!
I have the greatest admiration for west propaganda. It is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world — in the field of ADVERTISING — and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency … Theirs are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious … I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. They tend to believe theirs … and we (are forced) tend to disbelieve ours.
So, where did the "Road to Kabul" lead us? Censorship by Execution!!!
{ 3 } Comments
Wondering, did you watch any of The Road to Kabul? If you did, what are your personal views on it?
I did watch few, and also formed a collective opinion from the comments I heard from friends and my family. The facts that I think struck the public that lead to stopping the show was the support of the U.S. to the Arab Mujahidin (then) and to the Islamic revolution against communism, plus the brain washing the Arab students gone through directly and indirectly by societies, universities, governments and of course the U.S.
I have witnessed this period myself when I was doing my Engineering in India mid eighties. We lost many student in that war. They were Brain washed by followers of Abdullah Azzam (what we see today as "Road to Kabul" was actually called then the "Road to Jerusalem").
But I think the timing was also a reason behind stopping the show. Remember the U.S. election is around the corner!!!
The series might have lead also the mass to confirm the "links" to the origin of "Islamic terrorism" (with all my reservation) formation and who stood behind it. This is of course not acceptable by present strategy and does not serve the issues of the moment.
Further, since we don't know the rest of the series story, I suspect that it might have shown what happened to those Arab Repels through the war, after the war, and even it might reach to conclusions of their present existence. Might have been positive or negative, but I can't jump into conclusions here.
Anyway, just a reminder. U.S. made "Stinger Missiles" (anti-aircrafts) were never used except by U.S., Israel and Afghan Repels. Does that spell anything?
Even in the "Land of the Free" (what a joke in itself), you will find censorship hidden beneath the blanket of false security. But what is interesting about that is that this type of censorship (in the US) is self-inflicted. We also have "one-sided" news programs that claim to show all sides to the story. That, too, is false information being handed out on a silver platter for those (too lazy to find out all of the facts) to lap up like dogs…and then beg for more. Here in the Middle East, I find it interesting that the "gossip mill" is more reliable, more up to date (quicker) and more truthful than the local papers.
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