Terrorism Industries Inc.

Unless you spent Christmas in a cave you’d have heard about this incident aboard a plane heading for Detroit airport. A Nigerian man attempted to blow up himself and the plane.

Cable news went into full on stupid mode, covering nothing else but this incident with the usual self appointed “terrorism experts” crawling out of the woodwork for their 20 minutes of face time. Face time essential to the promotion of their grubby little security consultancies set up in the wave of opportunism that followed 9/11. Bush said go shopping and these parasites did – for a new name with words like American and strategic and initiative and security in it, and some new albeit expensive stationary. Some of course, went even further.

CNN dusted off and spruced up their terror graphic collection and their holiday bobble heads put on their serious expressions because they are the most trusted name in news, or at least that’s what they keep telling us and they are a news organization so they must be telling the truth.

The terror industry is worth billions of dollars and it is an industry. The self appointed experts and their sleazy little consultancies are just the tip of the iceberg. The media are the pointy end, functioning as the PR arm of usually huge conglomerates often with national security or direct military interests. This is aside from the bump in viewers and subsequent advertising revenue that they always welcome.

The ramping up of the fear level by the media provides a much easier landscape for the defense industry to operate in. If people are worried about there security they are much less likely to query things like obscene Pentagon budgets and all the money that swills around the defense subcontracting industry. Where would we be without the likes of Blackwater to use foreigners, and sometimes Americans as target practice on our behalf.

So, the media hypes an incident, the terrorism industry has cash, enough for it’s immediate needs and enough left over to buy into the political process, whether by the direct means of donations or less directly, providing funding for think tanks and lobbyists. The politicians and operatives now appear on so called news programming free of charge which gives the media extremely cheap content and allows for the terror industry to push it’s own agenda through the 24/7 news cycle.

This post questions the information that we get from our media . Some interesting comments as well. I suspect there will be some serious push back to the media’s uncritical coverage of these types of events. Eventually the news outlets will have to make a decision as to whether they maintain what little credibility they have left as objective news delivery services or whether they completely jump the shark and become propaganda wings of various organizations without the pretense of being anything else.

One final note: I am not intending to make light of the distress that people on the Detriot flight must have gone through or the bravery of the Dutch film maker who tackled the potential bomber.