Om_Mohammed
10-06-2001, 07:58
Assalaamu alaikum.
Although the american government has nothing to do with islamic laws, I have found the following article strangely pertinent to posting here, because of the american's quick reaction in trying to lay the blame upon muslims, in the bombing of the government building in Oklahoma.
Om Mohammed.
************************************************** ***********
Executing McVeigh: The Media Rites of Retribution
http://www.iviews.com
Published Friday May 11, 2001
By Norman Solomon
For half a century, we've been watching rituals of retribution.
Countless entertainment shows on TV have presented certain vengeance
as dramatic justice. In time for the last commercial, the designated
bad guys got what was coming to them.
These days, news coverage -- or what passes for it -- tends to edge
out fictional concoctions. The surfaces of pathos, anguish and
suffering are readily available without scripts, actors or set
designers. Around the country, local news programs air plenty of
crime sensations with yellow police tape in the background. Cable
channels strive to offer the latest shootings in progress. And trials
can't miss: Inside a courtroom, everyone makes a perfect cameo
appearance.
A week before the scheduled execution of Timothy McVeigh, the major
cable networks -- CNN, Fox and MSNBC -- could hardly tear themselves
away from the spectacle of a 14-year-old boy as he testified about
what happened when he shot a teacher, taking an adult's life and
shattering his own. The camera work and sound quality were crystal
clear.
McVeigh's crime, we're told, was the deadliest act of terrorism ever
on U.S. soil. Among the 168 people he killed were 19 young children.
From prison, he insisted on describing the kids he murdered as
"collateral damage." It's a phrase that disturbed some media
consumers a decade ago, during the Gulf War, when it was the
euphemism of choice for top Pentagon officials and many American
reporters.
In a statement to a Fox News Channel correspondent, McVeigh said:
"Collateral damage? As an American news junkie, a military man, and a
Gulf War veteran, where do they think I learned that?"
Unrepentant and preferring to undergo capital punishment sooner
rather than later, McVeigh declined to appeal his death sentence, a
move that would have delayed his execution for years. He expressed no
remorse about setting off a bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma
City. Explaining his motives to the authors of a new biography,
McVeigh commented: "I did it for the larger good." With more
diplomatic language, that's the sort of remark that U.S. officials
frequently made during the Gulf War.
If McVeigh were black or brown instead of white -- and if he had
grown accustomed to the idea of inflicting lethal violence as a
member of a gang instead of as a member of the U.S. Army -- it's a
safe bet that news media would have flooded us with feature reports,
analysis and commentaries about the inner-city culture of violence
and pathology that produced him. But in McVeigh's case, we're made to
understand that he was a bad apple in a wholesome barrel overseen by
Uncle Sam. The good apples, the ones we can all be proud of,
understood that killing is laudable only when authorized.
It was authorized in Terre Haute. During the days before his
execution in that Indiana city, T-shirts with his face on them were
selling briskly. A simple message was printed on those souvenir
shirts: "Die, die, die."
Long ago, Bertrand Russell observed: "The reformative effect of
punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly, I think, because it
is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses."
The slaying of Tim McVeigh promised to be an unprecedented pageant of
capital punishment. Advance stories predicted that 2,000 journalists
would descend on Terre Haute for the festivities.
In Newsweek's words, the execution "will be shown on closed-circuit
television to several hundred victims of the Oklahoma City
bombing and their families -- the biggest crowd to watch an execution
since the 1930s." In theory, the audience would be limited. But some
of the viewers were sure to go on national TV, describing what they
saw. Bootlegged videos were likely to find their way to a wider
audience.
If "we," ostensibly represented by the state, are going to kill with
premeditated executions, then we may as well see the grisly results.
But why stop there?
A lot of babies perish due to social conditions that could be
prevented by a shift in government priorities. For the first time in
a quarter-century, the latest annual figures tell us, infant
mortality rates have not dropped in the United States -- remaining at
7.2 infants per 1,000 births. Meanwhile, the Children's Defense Fund
says, 10.8 million of the nation's children are lacking health
insurance.
Unfortunately, there's no media frenzy to cover what happens when the
state, in effect, routinely kills many Americans simply by inaction
-- not enforcing workplace-safety rules, or not reducing air
pollution that menaces people chronically short of breath, or not
providing health care for the uninsured.
With the corporate-dominated state functioning as a serial killer
every day, news outlets should shine a bright light on its innocent
victims.
________________________________________________
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive
Media." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
Although the american government has nothing to do with islamic laws, I have found the following article strangely pertinent to posting here, because of the american's quick reaction in trying to lay the blame upon muslims, in the bombing of the government building in Oklahoma.
Om Mohammed.
************************************************** ***********
Executing McVeigh: The Media Rites of Retribution
http://www.iviews.com
Published Friday May 11, 2001
By Norman Solomon
For half a century, we've been watching rituals of retribution.
Countless entertainment shows on TV have presented certain vengeance
as dramatic justice. In time for the last commercial, the designated
bad guys got what was coming to them.
These days, news coverage -- or what passes for it -- tends to edge
out fictional concoctions. The surfaces of pathos, anguish and
suffering are readily available without scripts, actors or set
designers. Around the country, local news programs air plenty of
crime sensations with yellow police tape in the background. Cable
channels strive to offer the latest shootings in progress. And trials
can't miss: Inside a courtroom, everyone makes a perfect cameo
appearance.
A week before the scheduled execution of Timothy McVeigh, the major
cable networks -- CNN, Fox and MSNBC -- could hardly tear themselves
away from the spectacle of a 14-year-old boy as he testified about
what happened when he shot a teacher, taking an adult's life and
shattering his own. The camera work and sound quality were crystal
clear.
McVeigh's crime, we're told, was the deadliest act of terrorism ever
on U.S. soil. Among the 168 people he killed were 19 young children.
From prison, he insisted on describing the kids he murdered as
"collateral damage." It's a phrase that disturbed some media
consumers a decade ago, during the Gulf War, when it was the
euphemism of choice for top Pentagon officials and many American
reporters.
In a statement to a Fox News Channel correspondent, McVeigh said:
"Collateral damage? As an American news junkie, a military man, and a
Gulf War veteran, where do they think I learned that?"
Unrepentant and preferring to undergo capital punishment sooner
rather than later, McVeigh declined to appeal his death sentence, a
move that would have delayed his execution for years. He expressed no
remorse about setting off a bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma
City. Explaining his motives to the authors of a new biography,
McVeigh commented: "I did it for the larger good." With more
diplomatic language, that's the sort of remark that U.S. officials
frequently made during the Gulf War.
If McVeigh were black or brown instead of white -- and if he had
grown accustomed to the idea of inflicting lethal violence as a
member of a gang instead of as a member of the U.S. Army -- it's a
safe bet that news media would have flooded us with feature reports,
analysis and commentaries about the inner-city culture of violence
and pathology that produced him. But in McVeigh's case, we're made to
understand that he was a bad apple in a wholesome barrel overseen by
Uncle Sam. The good apples, the ones we can all be proud of,
understood that killing is laudable only when authorized.
It was authorized in Terre Haute. During the days before his
execution in that Indiana city, T-shirts with his face on them were
selling briskly. A simple message was printed on those souvenir
shirts: "Die, die, die."
Long ago, Bertrand Russell observed: "The reformative effect of
punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly, I think, because it
is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses."
The slaying of Tim McVeigh promised to be an unprecedented pageant of
capital punishment. Advance stories predicted that 2,000 journalists
would descend on Terre Haute for the festivities.
In Newsweek's words, the execution "will be shown on closed-circuit
television to several hundred victims of the Oklahoma City
bombing and their families -- the biggest crowd to watch an execution
since the 1930s." In theory, the audience would be limited. But some
of the viewers were sure to go on national TV, describing what they
saw. Bootlegged videos were likely to find their way to a wider
audience.
If "we," ostensibly represented by the state, are going to kill with
premeditated executions, then we may as well see the grisly results.
But why stop there?
A lot of babies perish due to social conditions that could be
prevented by a shift in government priorities. For the first time in
a quarter-century, the latest annual figures tell us, infant
mortality rates have not dropped in the United States -- remaining at
7.2 infants per 1,000 births. Meanwhile, the Children's Defense Fund
says, 10.8 million of the nation's children are lacking health
insurance.
Unfortunately, there's no media frenzy to cover what happens when the
state, in effect, routinely kills many Americans simply by inaction
-- not enforcing workplace-safety rules, or not reducing air
pollution that menaces people chronically short of breath, or not
providing health care for the uninsured.
With the corporate-dominated state functioning as a serial killer
every day, news outlets should shine a bright light on its innocent
victims.
________________________________________________
Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive
Media." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.