The Broadcasting Media in India – Willing captains to Bush Apologists?

Bush Apologists have found a new offensive ally amongst the Anchors of Indian Media. The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit was where George W Bush received a standing ovation from the Indian media.

CNNIBN's Sagarika Ghose thinks Bush is “charming” and can break the ice with his humour. I do not think that the people of “Eyeraq” share this “charming” opinion of George W Bush. Could we please stop dancing on the graves of the civilians killed in Bush’s wars?

We have an entire audience giving Bush a standing ovation. I did not listen to his speech. I will admit that I did see updates from Indian Media’s twitteratti. In my opinion, the most important part of his speech (irrespective of what he said or did not say) was that he got a standing ovation and it was led by the English broadcasting media.

The people who stood shoulder-to-shoulder and clapped for Bush are the very same people who are glorifying a Home Minister who is about to launch an armed offensive in his country. An offensive that ignores the vast amounts of grey in between the black and white of a Corporatist Policy and the armed ideology of the Naxals. These apologists for Bush are quick to paint a Medha Patkar as anti-democratic. Bush the hero and Patkar the enemy. This endorsement of corporatist policy that has aggression as its foundation is worrying. 

The apologists (in Indian Broadcasting media) are more than happy to share a glass of wine and a laugh with the worst terrorist to have graced this earth since Adolf Hitler. Bush sold his nation’s soul to the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons. Are we supposed to give him a standing ovation and excuse his tyranny? Are we to empathize with him because he could not construct a sentence in his own mother tongue? Are we supposed to laugh at the fact that Americans consider him illiterate? Is that a charming joke?


The questions, as one journalist (thankfully) pointed out, were soft. I would like to be more honest and blunt. The hand-picked questions were intended to establish that George W Bush was the best thing that happened to India.Nobody has the courage to pin George W Bush for his genocide in Iraq.

There is no shock and no awe. What little credibility the English Broadcasting media had left in my books has now been flushed down the toilet.

9/11, it's aftermath, and the failed war on terror

In two days the papers, airwaves and twitter will be filled with memories of 9/11. We will be told again and again of how innocent Americans fell victim to the greatest war crime in the history of terrorism.

Let me place on record the following

A) Areas where I categorically agree

• Many innocent people died in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center (and the other attacks on the same day).
  
• Acts of violence whether subjective or objective are inexcusable
• Nobody and I mean nobody deserves to die at the hands of another human being. (Whether he be a commuter on Mumbai suburban or a resident of Manhattan)
  

B) Why I disagree with a whole lot of other issues

• 9/11 was no excuse to attack Afghanistan
  
• Fear mongering is no way to justify a war against any country. In fact there is no rational reason for a war.
  
• Supporting genocide in Palestine is wrong, wrong wrong!
  
• American intelligence agencies and the American government are not what one could describe as innocent sheep. They knew that they had proliferated enough terror, know-how, hate, weapons and fear to guarantee a counter-attack on American soil (it was "when" and not "if").
  
• America has refused to learn it's lesson. If you (read Govt of USofA) spread terror through military oppression there are people as evil as you who will not hesitate to strike back.
  
• American has killed 100,000 civilians in Iraq, stood by in silence as Gaza was stormed and continued to drop bombs on NWFP in Paksitan, and have "built-up" troops on Afghanistan's soil. I hate to say this, and it is an unfair reality but these will eventually come back and bite them. America too will lose innocent civilians through terror as direct result of it's action post 9/11.
  
• An environment of terror prevails in many parts of the world. This environment of terror has been created partly by the neo-liberal capitalists of the world, partly by right-wing religious fundamentalists (across all religions) , partly by the media who profiteer through fear, partly by gullible citizens who very easily believe that the sky will fall on their heads, and partly by the chaos of having all these players interact one-way or another.
  
• As I write this piece, news channels will be selling ad-space for 9/11 memorials. Suicide bombers will be in training for another bombing, the US will continue to use drones in remote AfPak regions, children in Gaza will not have access to food, clothing and shelter, defense budgets will continue to expand and 800 million farmers in India will continue to live on less that a dollar a day.