Reviews for Encyclopedia Of Media and Politics

The average rating for Encyclopedia Of Media and Politics based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-16 00:00:00 Vladimir Stefanovic This is not a feel-good book. As the title implies, the book details many of the times that government officials have lied to the American people in order to gain support for their war plans. It isn't pleasant to think that our leaders lie to us--it seems like something that only happens in other countries--but it is an ugly truth that we should know about. We already know about many of the lies surrounding the Vietnam war and the recent Iraq war, but the book also details lies surrounding the invasions of Granada and Panama, the bombing of Yugoslavia, and even the Spanish-American War. It outlines a consistent pattern in each of these conflicts. Unfortunately the media and the public fail to learn from past wars and so the pattern continues. This is not a conspiracy theory book. The book doesn't make any new claims or report anything that hasn't already been reported in the mainstream media. However, because most of the lies were uncovered years after the fact they aren't well-known. The book gives historical perspective to the lies and pays them the attention they deserve. If we truly strive to be a peaceful nation we need to raise the bar for what constitutes a necessary war. In the past fifty years we have helped overthrow dozens of governments, funded countless terrorist organizations, invaded several countries, and killed thousands or perhaps millions of civilians. We have troops stationed in over 100 countries, are the leading arms dealer in the world, and have a military budget roughly equal to the rest of the world combined. I say "we" but what I should say is "our government." I truly believe that we are a peace-loving people, but unfortunately our government isn't carrying out our wishes and we are mostly ignorant to it. This book will not entertain you, but I still recommend it because it will open your eyes to the fact that you are being lied to and the media is mostly ignoring it.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-10-12 00:00:00 Nolan Kea Some books are unpleasant to read, and this is one. It's about war and violent death and deceit carried on at levels of inhumanity almost inconceivable and of course you should make yourself aware of this. When America goes to war, as it frequently does for extended periods of time, the politicians and generals go into high gear with words like 'patriotism' and phrases like 'supporting our veterans'. But is it either when the reasons behind going to war in the first place are often deceptive and just wrong, as when Bush invaded Iraq with false claims of finding weapons of mass destruction? Yet such phrases stifle free opinions and speech over and over. I do think this book is anti-war (or pro-peace) and the author sometimes overstates his case, but overall it's impossible to fault his extensive experience and research into the history and rhetoric that have made and continue to make heinous wars palatable to Americans. He also makes the point that war is kept at arms length from us even though we see pictures of it over our tv sets. Deaths shown there are as unreal as they are in tv shows; we never feel the anguish of a soldier from some other country who has come as his patriotic duty and killed a child or parent or other loved one right in front of us, then left us to deal with the grief. "If we really knew war, what war does to minds and bodies, it would be harder to wage." Therefore, it is often the PR job of the White House to keep that awareness away from the public, with the media's complicity since they very frequently accept the generals' and government's statements as factual. (Even though this has been repeatedly proven not to have been true.) Our tax money is now being used to support our huge military machine, which is very profitable by the way, at the rate of 1 billion dollars A DAY....and this is in service of an organization whose methods are primarily the destruction of property and people. This book broke its chapters down by various false aspects of wars waged by America, and in each chapter multiple examples were drawn from Vietnam, Kuwait, Panama, Iraq and so forth. It was a bit difficult to see-saw back and forth like that, but he made his points convincingly. It's a tough book to read, but it should be.