The Media and Power
The Media and Power
Money, Migration and Power in the Global Community
Virgil Grandfield reflects on his life and career working for the international Red Cross, an organization with a truly global personality. He speaks of his job as a Red Cross media liason officer during disasters such as the Asian tsunami in 2004-2005. He then describes his efforts to call attention to the human rights violations visited on millions of undocumented migrants who move across the border between Mexico and the United States . This movement of people has been deeply affected by the NAFTA Treaty on intercontinental trade in North America. Beginning with their armed uprising on January 1, 1994 the Mexican Zapatistas developed one of the most important critiques of this neoliberal approach to the governance of commercial relations. The NAFTA approach facilitates the mobility of capital but not labor. Virgil relates details of his education, his creation of a company in Mexico and his encounter with the ideology of personalism. He describes his efforts to persuade Red Cross authorities to recognize the dilemmas faced by undocumented migrants and workers as issues of legitimate concern for the world’s most famous humanitarian body. He describes the effect of his publication in the international magazine of the Red Cross on the process of advancing recognition that issues involving undocumented migrants and works are human rights issues; that remedies for the abuses taking place need to be developed in the arena of both national and international law.
Is the War on Terror a War on Truth?
Placing the Deceit and Media Cover Ups of the Cheney-Bush Regime
in the Context of History and Contemporary Politics
Weapons of Mass Destruction may have been finally discovered in Iraq. The recorded image of a brilliant nighttime flash briefly lighting up Baghdad’s entire urban landscape has set some districts of the internet’s digital blogosphere abuzz with rumors and theories. The flash was one element of a raging inferno that developed after the major US weapons arsenal in Iraq was hit by hostile fire. In my opinion the lack of high-profile analysis and commentary about the significance of this devastating attack signals bad news concerning the deep involvement of the commercial media in the culture of lies and deceit that has seemingly become synonymous with the so-called War on Terror. The attack on the arsenal began on the night of October 10th. The anti-US strike effectively set a torch to the cornucopia of high-tech weaponry and combat vehicles stored at the core of Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad. FOB Falcon is known to the local Iraqi population as Al-Saqr.
