The tale of two leaders

Hameed Abdul Karim

Prof. Ismail Faruqi had a simple yardstick to judge third world leaders. He said if the Western media, an extension of Western imperialism, said that such and such third world leader was a good man then it would mean he is a stooge of the West and if they said he was baddie he was indeed a good man, a man and a leader who has chosen to work for the betterment of his people.

In the context of this simple truism one has only to look at President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, and find in him a goodie-goodie guy who never fails to please his Western masters. “You would find Western leaders calling on him on and off and praising him sky high for ‘laudable efforts in bringing in democracy to his people.’

One example of this laudable effort was the last Presidential Election. He rigged this election to his hearts content and proclaimed himself the leader. Western leaders sent in their congratulations praising his virtues sky high!

Never mind the fact that a UN official observing the election had said that Karzai had stuffed the ballot boxes like nobody’s business.

For his troubles he was asked to resign. That’s how ‘democracy’ is to function. To add to all this nonsense, it was revealed that Karzai’s brother had received money from the CIA, which makes him more of ‘our boy’.

As a consequence of the occupation the Afghans took to arms to defend their country against foreign occupation forces and for their troubles they are called terrorists.

Matthew Hoh an American diplomat in Afghanistan who quit his post in September in protest over his nations’ policies had said ‘I have observed that the bulk of the insurgency fights not for the white banner of the Taliban, but rather against the presence of foreign soldiers and taxes imposed by an unpresentative government in Kabul.’ But never mind what Hoh says. Let’s call them terrorists anyway. It suits ‘our’ well-oiled propaganda machinery.

On the other side of the spectrum we had the elections in Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a landslide victory as predicted by certain Western media sources.

No surprise there. But whoa! Hold your horses. Don’t send in your congratulation notes.

He’s with his people and ever so keen to develop his country, so he’s a baddie. And it didn’t take long for the Opposition to take to the streets claiming the elections were rigged. And lo and behold the entire Western hemisphere came out in support of the ‘protesters’, with Barack Hussein Obama calling on Iran ‘to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.’

As expected the Western media, which now stands exposed as an extension of the Empire, threw in their lot with the ‘Opposition protestors’.

The West’s ‘free media’ didn’t see it fit to cover the huge protests against the Georgian or the Egyptian President. The reason for that is because both these two ‘worthies’ enjoy a reputation of being stooges of the West.

In Iran we had the ‘protesters’ burning public property and clashing with the police. Despite the violence the West chose to call them ‘protesters’ or ‘demonstrators.’ But excuse me weren’t these ‘protestors actually rioters?

But, hey, hang on a minute. Remember there were huge numbers of protestors at Seattle in the US demonstrating against the cartel that called itself G-8 Countries.

Then there were similar demonstrations against the same cartel in Switzerland where one of the demonstrators was killed in the clashes with the police.

How did the Western media react to these demonstrations? What did they call these good people who had gathered in support of people in the ‘third world?’ Not ‘demonstrators’ not ‘protestors’, but rather ‘nihilists’, ‘anarchists’, ‘communists’, ‘rednecks’, ‘skinheads’ or any other derogatory term that has been grilled into the sub conscious minds of people by a media that is controlled and manipulated by big corporations much to the detrement of their people.

In short Hamid Karzai is a goodie because he’s ‘our boy.’ Ahmadinejad is a baddie because he’s not.

So there you are that’s how the media operates. And Prof Ismail Faruqi could not have uttered a truer word when he said what he said.