FERRARA INTERNAZIONALE:  In Black and White                   

                   
           FERRARA, Italy – October 4, 2010 -   Journalists apparently see the world with far clearer eyes when they are NOT performing for their corporate bosses.
                            This could be the conclusion of the Ferrara Internazionale, the annual journalists’ jamboree where the ‘good guys’ last weekend blamed editors and publishers for changing their stories to conform to the exigencies of the establishment, their corporate clients and, of course, their own corporate media.
                           At the end of the three days of debates no one was left in doubt our news, just like our common wealth, has been usurped by private interests and our mass media daily spoon-feeds us with a version of the world - and who is good and who is bad - that has been prefabricated in corporate laboratories and is passed on to the public by lawmakers in the pay of corporate interests.
                           So what else is new?
                           Perhaps it was the erudite explanation by historian Brian Reynolds Myers that North Korea is not a Stalinist but racist regime that resembles more imperial Japan then the old Soviet Union. His argument illustrated once again how Western perceptions are carefully guided towards the desired image by Washington and it allies.
                          Basing his findings on South Korean archives he said the Japanese who occupied Korea between 1910 and 1945 taught Koreans they, together with the Japanese, were a superior race, a homogenous brotherhood not unlike that of the Nazis. For this reason slogans in North Korea today still proclaim: “We are too kind for this evil world” and leaders of the Kim dynasty are viewed as the nation’s mother figures -often pictured sitting on a white horse, white being the color of racial purity.
                           Danish film maker Mads Brueger who shot a rare documentary in North Korea after wriggling his way into the reclusive nation, argued that ordinary people venerate the nation’s founder Kim Il Sung with almost childish devotion, love his son and current leader Kim Yong Il and will surely be taught to love and cherish his son nominated this month as the heir-apparent – the third Kim in succession.
                         It appears that contrary to the image our western leaders and their mass media created, North Koreans may not refuse a better lifestyle but do revere their leader, have strong patriotic feelings, are ready to fight and certainly have no desire to be ‘liberated’ Gulf War style with bombs, guns and an armor-plated armada.
                          This being so it should be no surprise that North Korea, just like nations the U.S. has classified ‘rogues,’ sought and obtained nuclear weapons as a deterrent against attack by the U.S. and its allies.
                          Veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk reminded his audience that the western powers did not dissuade the Shah of Persia to halt his nuclear program. He was considered a friend. And that the Ayatollah Khomeini, once he came to power, suspended Iran’s nuclear program as ‘inhuman.’ But the Ayatollah was persuaded to rekindle the program once Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons (whose ingredients were provided by Western countries) in the Iraq-Iran war.
                          Fisk pointed out Middle East nations argue that Pakistan shelters most of Al Qaida and North Korea keeps improving its nuclear and missile capacity yet the United States has not attacked them – because both have ‘the bomb.’
                         No ‘unfriendly’ country wants to end up like Iraq and Afghanistan today, thus the current race for the acquisition of ‘the bomb’ and the desperate effort of Washington and its allies to prevent ‘nuclear proliferation’ which – if one is cynical – would also reduce the number of ‘bomb-able’ rogue nations. 
                         At Ferrara the three-day gathering could have been summed up thus: ‘The modern media rewrites old news or spices it with lies, half-truths and blatant inventions, a concoction beneficial to the corporate capitalist elite running global affairs with the help of paid lawmakers.
                          “Editors are in symbiosis with those in power who use terms like terror, progress, the road map, peace negotiations when we know there is no terror, no road map, no peace,…..” Fisk explained. He added: “Even Obama used the word ‘dislocation’ talking about the Palestinians when in fact 750,000 (Palestinians) were routed to make room for Israel…….We have become slaves of poor newspaper editorials, some of them are like political speeches.” 
                           In an Italy where tens of thousands of graduates dream of a career in journalism, a profession already overcrowded with opinion makers and party sycophants, Fisk gave a virtuoso 90-minute soliloquy to an audience of nearly a thousand, jammed into the splendid baroque Municipal Theater where the queues throughout the weekend were nearly a mile long.
                             He led the charge of criticism against a media that regurgitates political catch phrases like ‘terrorists’ and constantly publishes anonymous warnings of imminent terrorist attacks that never happen but keep a multi-billion dollar security industry ticking over. Our media fuels xenophobia to whip up patriotism and to serve as a safety valve for popular discontent. In turn the xenophobia creates rightwing organizations like the racist Tea Party in the U.S. or the Northern League (Lega) in Italy. Like fascism, Maoism and Soviet communism these parties thrive on outrageous lies – for example the insistence President Obama is really a Moslem; that he was not born in America and is a socialist - or the disastrous message in the past that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
                               In the global political game power has shifted from left to right over the last years.  During a debate entitled “The Black Heart of America” American historian and writer Thomas Frank argued: “Right-wing organizations can organize a protest at the drop of a hat while Liberals are uncomfortable with protest and discontent; they want to keep their nice life, they don’t understand the working class…….there is apathy among  Obama supporters.” At the same time he added: “The Democrats don’t want to take on anybody because they don’t want to offend the rich people because these rich people pay for their TV commercials.”
                             Perhaps that was the final message from the debates: As long as these rich people work on a formula of: ‘Profits first, information tailored to aid profits’ the reading and viewing public will have to find other means of information.

Uli Schmetzer was a foreign correspondent for thirty-seven years for Reuters and the Chicago Tribune.
He is the author of ‘Times of Terror’ (an autobiography) and ‘Gaza’ (a novel) both available on www.amazon.com