BEHIND THE SCENES OF POWER

How the American Press is Silenced

By Zeit-Fragen

[This book review of: Kristina Borjesson, Zensur USA (Censorship in the US), originally published in: Zeit-Fragen, July 12, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.zeit-fragen.ch/ARCHIV/ZF_1196/INDEX.HTM.]

Whoever claims to bring democracy to other countries like the US, “the only superpower”, must ask whether democracy exists in his own country.

An anthology of different background reports of highly respected journalists gives clear answers to this question. There is no free media nay more in the showplace country of western values. If it exists at all, it is only marginalized and then controlled as in a fine spider’s web. The octopus of censorship, intimidation, manipulation, and the smear campaigns against unpopular discoverers of truth has seized all areas of the media in the US.

What the 14 journalists led by the courageous Kristina Borjesson bring to light is breath-taking. Even the hard-boiled critical US reader always learns something new: perhaps the censorship in publishing hardly noticeable for outsiders, the real ringleaders of the drug trade – which is officially combated in the US and brings drug deaths according to the shocking reports of thousands of Americans about the collaboration of the government or the alarming story of vote-rigging or electoral fraud for the current president.

The 14 brave journalists often paid bitterly for their research: with the loss of their jobs, their good reputations, their assets or their existence. This happens in a country that spends billions for outer space (military) research while offering no health insurance to 40 million citizens. All this was indifferent to them. Truth, justice and the humanity trampled behind the scenes by the military-secret service machine were central to the daring newspaper people and television journalists.

Whoever out of breath puts aside this important book for all friends of democracy gets an oppressive feeling. This “democratic” world power now wages world wars, stages them and binds oth4er nations with their ignorant and unsuspecting populations in the cruel inhuman plans.

Neutral independent countries are brought under gentle pressure to the crooked path with the massive propaganda of authorities and synchronized editors. This ideology against the will of citizens is accompanied by an “information waltz” that doesn’t allow any room for real criticism any more. Terms like neutrality are reinterpreted or thrown on the waste heap of history. Who could have imagined a few years ago that our neutral Swiss civil defense army unique in the world could be dissolved and redesigned within years in favor of adventurous coalitions with former colonial powers and the “only superpower” (Army XXI” and so forth)?

The resistance that characterizes all courageous journalists and cannot be praised enough is necessary in Switzerland where life still seems better than across the Atlantic. Sincere discoverers of truth deserve our great respect and admiration. That Pendo publishers in economic trouble had the courage to offer a German translation is wondrous. Let us respect those marginalized again and again by the vast majority of “public opinion”. Kristen Borjesson who moderates today the “Expert Witness Radio Show” of an independent New York radio station warns:

“This is another gigantic problem for you, average citizen, who wants to be well-informed from the newspaper or television news broadcast. Perhaps the pliable flexible nature of truth did not occur to you before you read these lines. Perhaps you did not know that what is often reported today is true until the official side changes the report. The new truth can be the exact opposite of what was earlier reported. This new truth is proclaimed. Questioning is then cancelled. Earlier reports are forgotten or no longer valid because this is what the official authorities, the servants of truth in our nation, say. Open up an old book, George Orwell’s “1984”, and read it. You will have goose bumps.”