reality check

America’s nightmare
Arab dream
Reporting live
Brutal facts
Human warfare
Outfoxing America
Over-rating nationalism
Ben Laden’s mouthpiece
Rumsfeld’s wrecker of peace
Playing with images
While some others play with lives
Distorting information
While others create misinformation
Spreading rumors
While others spread democracy
Threat to America
Pride of Arabia
Welcome to Al-Jazeera
…You’ve got two minutes
And your time starts now…
Democratize or we’ll nuke you
Liberalize or we’ll dupe you
Polarize is what we do
Wars are what we deal in
Everyday affair
Propaganda is real
Rest all is unfair
Marketing democracy
Brokering peace
As long as you’re with us
You can’t afford to be against us
Welcome to America Inc.
…You’ve got two minutes
And your time starts now…
Granted objectivity is relative
But let’s maintain its semblance
True, no war’s without media
But professionalism lets not reject
Agreed rationality is over-rated
But let’s not surrender freedom
Accepted America rules the world
But whoever said we should
Let ourselves be ambushed
Forget the nightmare
Give up the dream
Welcome to Reality
…Life is too short
And we want to live.


i have just returned from having watched the documentary, ‘Control Room’, which looks at the role of the news channel Al-Jazeera in providing an alternative version of the ‘truth’ in the Iraq war. so i'm just putting down thoughts still spinning in my head. i think it's a very very interesting documentary. it not only shows the biases and games played by Bush's government but also the colored reporting of Al-Jazeera itself, in the interviews with its reporters.

this documentary coupled with another controversial documentary "Outfoxed", which examines the truth behind Fox News's claim to be a "fair and balanced"news provider, advancing a compelling account of how Fox leverages its immense size and coverage to engineer public discourse, opinion and what we consider to be news - are brilliant material for looking into politics of media, power, and human lives. well, they worked for me. any thoughts on this, david?