{"id":121613,"date":"2014-03-14T00:02:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-13T18:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=121613"},"modified":"2014-03-22T13:39:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T08:09:21","slug":"whose-narrative-would-you-purchase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/whose-narrative-would-you-purchase\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Narrative Would You Purchase?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Malinda+Seneviratne&amp;x=13&amp;y=5\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/span>\u00a0&#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_105560\" style=\"width: 140px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105560\" alt=\"Malinda Seneviratne\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" width=\"130\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Are there wars without witnesses?\u00a0 Technically, no.\u00a0 Some witnesses die with the knowledge.\u00a0 Some, i.e. those who for whatever reason escape \u2018liberation\u2019 from bomb and bullet, napalm and whatnot, live on.\u00a0 Some tell their stories, so do not.\u00a0 Some told-stories are dismissed and some are heard, half-believed or believed but swept over by the overwhelming nature of narratives privileged by victor.<\/p>\n<p>This is the 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century, although people like US Secretary of State <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=John+Kerry&amp;x=11&amp;y=3\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">John Kerry<\/span><\/a> confuses it often with the 19<sup>th<\/sup> (he famously chided Russia for \u2018Invading Ukraine on trumped-up pretext\u2019, forgetting the \u2018pretext\u2019 is the watchword of the compulsive invader that his country has been and forgetting unforgivably that a few years ago the USA invaded Iraq telling the world that Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction even though the President of the time knew very well it was a lie).\u00a0 In the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century, given surveillance and communications technology one can\u2019t fight a war in secret.<\/p>\n<p>What can be done is to manufacture the reading of the nitty-gritty pertaining to these not-so-secret wars.\u00a0 Consider the invasion of Iraq for example.\u00a0 Think about how the world got to know about it and how the world perceived what was happening on the ground.\u00a0 What were the sources of information?<\/p>\n<p>We got it all from CNN, Reuters, BBC, ABC and other West-based media houses.\u00a0 There was enough on-the-ground reportage.\u00a0 There were \u2018experts\u2019 commentating on an hour-to-hour basis. It was basically about how the operation was proceeding.\u00a0 The viewers were made to ask themselves \u2018When will Saddam be captured?\u2019\u00a0 There was a lot of spectacle.\u00a0 Suppressed were the horrendous crimes against humanity committed by the invading armies.\u00a0 The grandmasters of spectacle-broadcast named above did not once question the legitimacy of the invasion.\u00a0 They purchased, happily, the \u2018weapons of mass destruction\u2019 fib offered by George W Bush.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq was bombed into the Middle Ages.\u00a0 Access to oil was secured. Anarchy was promoted. The fact that millions of civilians died while combatants were massacred in cold blood did not raise any media eyebrows.\u00a0 Human rights advocates \u2018went along\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s the magic of \u2018media freedom\u2019.\u00a0 The veneer of freedom accords regimes which play media puppeteer can, when necessary, do an effective ventriloquist number.\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of the day the world was left holding just one though, for the most part: \u2018It had to be done and it was done\u2019.\u00a0 None of the media houses named above showed any remorse when the truth came out finally (with British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg confessing the invasion was illegal).\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter though.\u00a0 Iraq was secured.\u00a0 The dead were, well, dead.\u00a0 There were witnesses but few were ready to listen to alternative narratives, not least of all because it was \u2018too late anyway\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Today, in the year 2014, we hear of Ukraine.\u00a0 The same media houses are cleverly and deliberately painting a picture of that crisis.\u00a0 Which websites are we visiting for \u2018news\u2019 of Ukraine? Do we ask ourselves \u2018why do we visit those sites and not others?\u2019\u00a0 That\u2019s the extent to which our minds have been played with, one might argue.\u00a0 Do we check out what the Russians are saying about the crisis or are we happy checking out the \u2018balancing\u2019 Russian quotes embedded in a Washington-scripted narrative regurgitated by CNN, BBC et al so we can tell ourselves, \u2018I have heard both sides of the story\u2019?<\/p>\n<p>Would you take the trouble to check out Russia Today, RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS?\u00a0 Would you check out Chinese sources such as Xinhua and CCTV?\u00a0 If you want alternative takes on things, how about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\">www.globalresearch.ca<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\">www.commondreams.org<\/a> and Democracy Now?<\/p>\n<p>Would we rather go along with the versions scripted by the biggest aggressor the world has known in recent times, the United States of America?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s our call.\u00a0 Will we make it?<\/p>\n<p><em>*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/malindawords.blogspot.co.uk\/\">www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Whose Narrative Would You Purchase? 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