The Indian elections of this year have solicited a small
amount of coverage from the US news media. If the election is mentioned at all,
it is a minor miracle. When I Googled “Indian election results” I got mostly
foreign news articles. I did get a Time article and the Christian Science Monitor as well. They
gave a lot of the same information that most news agencies gave us, such as Time:
Voter turnout over the
nine-phase vote hit a record high of over 66%. Analysts have said a high
turnout may not bode well for Congress, with voters weary of a government
beleaguered by a weak economy and allegations of corruption. The previous
highest voter turnout was registered in the 1984-1985 general elections, when
some 64% of eligible voters showed up to the polls after former prime minister
Indira Gandhi was assassinated.
One thing that is not in the Time article is any mention of the Maoist insurgency and the Red Corridor in India. The large (nearly one third) area of
land that the Maoists guerrillas control seems to be a big secret in the US
press.
That insurgency does show up in foreign news medias. For
example the BBC News, in reporting on
the Indian election added:
And finally, seven
policemen have died in an attack carried out by Maoist rebels in the western
state of Maharashtra, The
Indian Express reports.
"The blast
happened between 9 and 10 am (local time) on Monday in Gadchiroli district when
a police vehicle was hit by a powerful IED (improvised explosive device)
explosion," the paper quotes a senior police official as saying.
So why does the media in the US go to such great lengths to
hide a Maoist insurgency? Many Americans know nothing about this. A democratic
socialist I know told me he thought Maoism was irrelevant today and played no
role in world politics. He had not heard of the Red Corridor. Is this because
the press and our corporate masters want to keep up the myth that Marxism and
socialism are now in the dust bins of history? Do they plan something devious,
such as Pres. Richard Nixon did with Cambodia?[1] And why does our news media lie to us anyway? Why can’t the largest and most powerful democratic empire (similar to ancient Athens, only Athens might have been more democratic), in the US, have a free and independent press that actually acts like a free and independent press?
[1]
Nixon operated an invasion of Cambodia and kept
it a secret from the US public and press. When it finally came out in the news
that he had done this, there was outrage.
Most of us bloggers know that the government and its presses lie—but do we really don’t know why?
That is what this blogger wants to know. Just recently PBS showed Frontline; “The United States of Secrets” which highlighted the spying and lying of our government that was revealed from the Edward Snowden leak.
One thing I think is important is that our own Kansas Congressman, Mike Pompeo, has defended the government’s attempts to silence this and to try Snowden as a traitor to the US government.
-សតិវ អតុ
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