Orwellian Rhetoric

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the State brainwashes the public with slogans such as:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

To that, might we add the following lines:

HOPE IS DESPAIR
CHANGE IS MORE OF THE SAME?

The government apparatus is described in the novel in the following terms:

They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs.
- George Orwell, 1984, Part 1, Chap. 1

This is an example, in Orwell's novel, of how words are used to signify the opposite of what they mean in normal conversation. The words are redefined to mean their opposites. This is what I refer to as Orwellian rhetoric—the deceptive use of language to conceal the true agenda of those who speak the words.

In his essay Politics and the English Language, Orwell describes the current state of English prose, especially with reference to politics, as follows:

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Orwell goes on to talk about semantics as follows:

Many political words are similarly abused. The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM, FREEDOM, PATRIOTIC, REALISTIC, JUSTICE, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.
. . .
Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like [these] . . . are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: CLASS, TOTALITARIAN, SCIENCE, PROGRESSIVE, REACTIONARY BOURGEOIS, EQUALITY.
- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

To that list of words, I cannot help but tack on "HOPE" and "CHANGE"—the watchwords of the Obama administration.

The main reason that these words appeal to us is that they represent a departure from the disastrous policies of the Bush White House. But one has to wonder—are these words being used honestly? Are the definitions of these words in the public perception really equivalent to the private definitions determined by the Obama camp? Or are the words being used to conceal a private political agenda that, if disclosed to the public, might not be quite so agreeable as the words "HOPE" and "CHANGE" and the phrase "CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN"?

In short, when will the public demand that the Obama administration clearly define what they mean by the words "HOPE" and "CHANGE"? And when will it become apparent that the Obama administration's embrace of many of the policies of the Bush administration, such as government secrecy, federal surveillance, marginalization of dissent, etc., hardly qualifies as "HOPE" or "CHANGE" and really looks like "MORE OF THE SAME"?

Horizon Cybermedia is about embracing the truth in the medium of art and cinema. When we talk about "TRUTH," in no way do we intend it in the deceptive vein of Orwellian rhetoric. Rather, we mean it in the sense of the dictionary meaning of the word, namely:

1 a archaic : FIDELITY, CONSTANCY b : sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 a (1): the state of being the case : FACT (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts : ACTUALITY (3) often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b : a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true <truths of thermodynamics> c : the body of true statements and propositions
3 a : the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality b chiefly British : true 2 c : fidelity to an original or to a standard
4 capitalized Christian Science : GOD
— in truth : in accordance with fact : ACTUALLY
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

One of the quotations that inspires our operation is the following quote from John F. Kennedy:

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

Check out our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com and please feel free to invite your friends and family to check it out as well. The current episode explores the Wine Country region of Sonoma County, CA. Future episodes will take you to Calcutta, India; to Half Moon Bay, CA, and to many other fascinating destinations.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

A New Totalitarianism?

After 8 years of disastrous policy decisions effected by the near-totalitarian Bush administration—policy decisions that have resulted in such outrages as the delayed and incompetent federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the detention and torture of terror suspects in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, the collapse of Wall Street and the global economic system, etc.—what concerns me now is whether we are about to see, in the next 8 years, a replay of the exact same events—the left-wing, liberal version of the exact same disastrous policy decisions effected by the right-wing Bush administration.

Already, we are beginning to see subtle hints of the groundwork being laid by the Obama administration, which seem to suggest trends pertaining to the direction in which the nation is headed.

Like the Bush administration, specifically, as decreed by V.P. Dick Cheney, we are beginning to see the Obama administration adopt an elitist, cliquish, secretive mentality and attitude, in many ways like the operations of some secret society out of a Dan Brown novel. Obama already approves of government surveillance operations and even voted in favor of a federal surveillance law while still a senator. Furthermore, Obama's decision to withhold critical information from the public on numerous occasions echoes the secretive policies and practices of the Bush administration. Examples include the Obama administration's use of the Bush/Cheney states secrets doctrine and a new claim of sovereign immunity to protect the Bush administration from prosecution on charges of illegal surveillance operations on U.S. citizens.

Another trend appears to be the subtle resurgence of a new nationalism and an appeal to mass paranoia, xenophobia and hysteria in order to justify the policies and positions of the state on the part of the Obama administration. While it is hard to pinpoint any specific examples of this trend, it seems to be an attitude bubbling underneath the surface of several policy decisions adopted by the Obama administration. It is an attitude that seems to be reflected in the kinds of things that Obama supporters say on occasion and the way they say it—subtle hints that are impossible to pinpoint in the light of day. Again, these are echoes of the nationalism, xenophobia and mass hysteria broadly exploited by the Bush administration—but they might well be the vestigial remains of eight years of Bush ultra-nationalism rather than the hints of a new Obama ultra-nationalism. It is hard to say. However, it should be noted that V.P. Joe Biden already has a history of making ethnically insensitive comments.

A third trend appears to be the Obama administration's subtle marginalization and intolerance of dissent and criticism. Recent comments by V.P. Joe Biden to silence opposition criticism, which seemed to include a subtle hint that any criticism of the Obama administration is un-American, lend themselves to the interpretation that they are faint echoes of the Bush administration's attitude of "You are either with us or against us." Let's keep in mind that questioning the government and questioning authority are what democracy is all about—the very basis and fabric of democratic society lies in the opposition's right to question government policies. Attempts at silencing the opposition—especially when the administration enjoys sizable majorities in both houses of Congress as well as executive power in the Presidency—sounds a bit like the totalitarian policies adopted by the Bush administration when they enjoyed the same sort of advantage in terms of executive power and parliamentary majority.

So while it may still be way too early to tell, it concerns me that the next eight years will turn out to be a left-wing, liberal replay of the last eight years—that, at the end of eight years of the Obama administration, we might end up with the same sort of scandals that we have witnessed in the Bush administration—scandals such as an illegal federal surveillance program; the silencing and marginalization of dissent and criticism; the scapegoating of foreign nations along with preemptive, invasive military operations; a highly secretive, behind-the-scenes government operation (similar to Cheney's shadow government), and, ultimately, more economic disaster for the American people at large resulting from an overbearing public sector and the complete dissolution of the private sector, especially of small businesses. In short, the hallmarks of an Orwellian dystopia.

These are the trends that appear to be surfacing, gradually, in the Obama administration today. Granted, this is a worst case scenario, but, nevertheless, it is a real possibility and remains a viable concern of mine. I love America for its freedom and its opportunity and it concerns me that in a few years, America might have neither freedom nor opportunity.

Horizon Cybermedia is committed to celebrating the values of freedom and opportunity—especially the freedom and opportunity to express oneself artistically and to travel the world and witness amazing sights. We encourage asking tough questions about the circumstances we find ourselves in and never taking the status quo for granted.

Check out our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com and stay tuned for more fresh, exciting media content to come in the near future.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Brain-Dead Authoritarians: Why Questioning Authority is a Good Thing

If there is anything that the last 8 years of the Bush administration might have taught us, it is that in order for our society to function as the healthy democracy envisioned by the Founding Fathers, we need more people to question authority and fewer people blindly to obey authority.

Let me say, first and foremost, that in no way is this an advocacy for any form of violent or illegal activity that might cause harm to innocent lives or the destruction of public or private property.

What I am suggesting is that conscientious members of society need to be driven by their conscience and good sense into questioning the actions and motivations of public officials and holding them publicly accountable. That is the basis and crux of any functioning democracy and is necessary for our society to remain free and equal, as opposed to allowing our civil liberties to be compromised or unscrupulous opportunists to amass wealth and power at the expense of the naïve public who fail to call their actions and agendas into question.

Public officials—even the President of the United States—are not kings or dictators or gods. They are politicians elected to office by the will of the electorate. As such, they are obligated and accountable to the public. Which means that they must never be blindly obeyed, as they would be in some authoritarian regime under martial law, as, for example, in the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il. Rather, they must be questioned and held accountable, especially when they appeal to public paranoia or mass hysteria or xenophobia to further their political agendas, as we have seen during the Bush administration and as we increasingly appear to be seeing in the current Obama administration, in subtle, but unmistakable ways.

Following the 9/11 attacks, it is a matter of historical record and indisputable fact that the Bush administration pretty blatantly exploited public paranoia and mass hysteria associated with the potential for future terrorist attacks to further a political agenda that has since been exposed as shockingly immoral and depraved—an agenda that included such policies as preemptive military invasion, detention and incarceration of terrorist suspects without charges or a trial, torture and warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens—the quintessence of what might well be described as a reign of terror of Orwellian dimensions.

However, the simple fact remains that the only reason that the Bush administration was able to get away with what they did so blatantly, leaving the rest of us, retrospectively, to gnash our teeth in futility, was that no one in the opposition had the guts or spine to question the authority of the Bush White House. Everyone was scared into submission. In spite of street protests against the Iraq War, which appear to have had limited impact on the Bush administration's policy-making other than to justify their authoritarian stance even further, no one in the corridors of power or the press or media had the guts to question authority at the appropriate time.

Of course, now the press and media are full of scandalous exposés concerning the corruption of the Bush administration, but what good is that, after the damage has already been done and countless lives have been destroyed? It's too late and is of little consequence in retrospect. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it appears that foresight is completely lacking. All that we have is the delayed response of a gutless oppostion.

And what is the solution that the electorate apparently prescribes to the errors and excesses of the near-totalitarian Bush administration? To bestow totalitarian-like powers of unquestioned power and authority to the Obama administration, thereby repeating the cycle of unquestioned authoritarianism resulting from unchecked political power, followed by the teeth-gnashing and recriminations that are invariably too late.

What is required, rather, is for tough, conscientious individuals to question authority at the right time and not to wait until after the deed has been done. Public officials should be held accountable for their policies as an ongoing part of the democratic process rather than after they have abused their unchecked, unquestioned powers to such a degree that the only option appears to be popular revolt or widespread insurrection, as in Iran recently. Rather, when conscientious individuals question authority as a part of the democratic process, that precludes the possibility of mass insurrection, because authority is always kept in check and held accountable.

Let's keep in mind that the number one excuse cited by Nazi war criminals indicted during the Nuremberg trials was that they were blindly following orders—obeying the authorities without question. One wonders, if enough members of Hitler's National Socialist Party had the cojones to question authority by following their conscience, whether Nazism might have been as successful as it was in its path to conquest and genocide.

The bottom line is that questioning authority is not only a good thing for the body politic and for the health of the democracy, it is good for the mind and soul of those who regularly question authority—because it means both following the promptings of one's conscience as well as actively thinking creatively and out-of-the-box. The other option, essentially, is to succumb to the brain-dead, vegetative state of blind obedience to authority—to turn into a soulless, brainless permanent fixture of the establishment like so many of the gutless, soulless, spineless elected officials who fail to act when action is called for and whom the rest of us—the average citizenry—can thank for such recent catastrophes as Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of Wall Street and the economy and the scandals of the Bush White House.

Horizon Cybermedia is about encouraging one to think creatively and out-of-the-box through the medium of art and cinema. While in no way do we seek to promote or encourage any sort of violent or illegal activity, we do believe that questioning authority is both healthy and necessary for a functioning democratic society to flourish and grow, as opposed to stagnate and die through blind submission to the often-erroneous decrees of elected public officials. We believe that it is important to penetrate the Orwellian rhetoric of political opportunists and to question the agendas of politicians in order to keep society free and alive and to enable the individual to stay quick-witted and sharp-minded.

Do check out our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar, at our website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com, which is continually updated with exciting, fresh media content. Currently showing is a film on my recent excursion to the Wine Country—Sonoma County, CA—and coming soon is a film about the intriguing city of Calcutta, India.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Democracy and Simple Minds

If you ask people, “What is the number one threat to democracy today?” some might answer “the Taliban” or “Al Quaeda” or “Osama bin Laden” while others might suggest it's the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the Kim Jong-Il regime in North Korea. But while all of these are profoundly evil and threats to democracy in their own right, I have a slightly different opinion.

Personally, I think that the biggest threat faced by all democratically elected governments the world over is the pervasive culture of dumbing down and simplifying political discourse to a level that is readily understood by the simplest of minds. Namely, reducing complex political ideas into slogans, buzzwords and labels just so that they can appeal to the average electorate, the majority of which may well be untutored in the niceties of social and political issues.

By dumbing down complex ideas, one creates the illusion of being comfortable and secure in one's political choices without having to perform the difficult tasks of questioning the political rhetoric or digging deeper into the political agendas and ideas of our elected officials—which are vital and critical elements of any functioning democracy. Instead, we are encouraged not to think for ourselves and to let politicians do the thinking for us while they feed us a steady stream of meaningless Orwellian doublespeak that numbs the brain into a catatonic stupor, while they do pretty much whatever they like, unburdened by such trifles as public accountability.

The media is probably the biggest purveyor of this culture of simplified political rhetoric. While force-feeding their invariably skewed and simplified version of current events down our throats on a daily basis, they have no qualms about marginalizing any genuine political discourse when they fail to comprehend the issues and ideas that they are confronted with. And because the media holds the biggest megaphone in our culture, their dumbed-down version of reality usually ends up being the most influential.

If this principle applies to the media, then it applies even more so to political advertising, which thrives on this very process of dumbing down and simplifying ideas to make them palatable and comprehensible to the public. Take the case of the 2004 Presidential elections, the results of which were the direct result of the culture of simplified and dumbed-down political discourse. The most obvious example of this principle is the “swiftboating” of John Kerry by the Bush Presidential campaign—in which a decorated Vietnam War veteran was systematically publicly defamed by a dishonest ad campaign, while the public, apparently, lacked the necessary sophistication to see through this shameful display of political chicanery.

Anyone who takes a look at the history of democratic institutions worldwide has to come to the conclusion that democracy has everything to do with highly sophisticated, complex ideas and modes of thinking. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are themselves the products of the “Western Enlightenment” and are inspired by the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as John Locke and Thomas Paine. And going even further back in history to the origins of Western democratic thought—it is no coincidence that democratic ideas were conceived in Athens, Greece, which was, at the time, the foremost center of Classical learning, producing such minds as Socrates, Plato (though he expressed profound disillusionment with Athenian democracy in his works) and Aristotle.

The foundation of any functional democracy is the exchange of complex ideas. Communication at a sophisticated level is directly at odds with tyranny or dictatorship, which is rooted in state-enforced dogma or dictates that go unquestioned and unreasoned. Without a functional political discourse in society, involving the sophisticated exchange of ideas, what inevitably follows is a scenario where you have political power concentrated in the hands of a few, namely, oligarchy or totalitarianism, while the media tells you how and what to think because you are discouraged from thinking for yourself. This leads directly to a scenario where advertising wins elections—the campaign with the most advertising dollars inevitably wins through sheer brute force, as opposed to intelligent political debate or discourse. What that means is that political offices are for sale to the highest bidder.

If one cannot think for oneself, then one cannot ask the difficult questions—which is the core of the democratic process. One unquestioningly accepts the status quo and the undisclosed agendas of political appointees and elected officials.

For example, if one cannot think for oneself, one cannot ask such tough questions as:

• Who really funded the Obama Presidential campaign?


• Why does President Obama go out of his way to pander to the Islamic world?


• Is there a connection?

When President Bush was captured on camera holding hands with and kissing King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the media had a field day. After all, Saudi Arabia boasts one of the worst human rights records in the world, besides the fact that Osama bin Laden as well as the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi origin.

But when President Obama goes out of his way to bow to the Saudi King, one has to wonder, has any US Head-of-State ever bent over so low to appease a foreign dignitary?

But that is a tough question that one can only truly consider in a genuinely democratic society, in which one has the freedom to express oneself without the threat of political reprisals.

Horizon Cybermedia is about trying to raise the level of public awareness through art and cinema. We are unapologetic in our attempts to try to encourage people to think for themselves and to ask tough questions. Check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for continually updating content with fresh, new and interesting ideas.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Conflicting Value Systems: The Paradox at the Heart of the American Dream

We in the United States pride ourselves in being a society that is able to assimilate and include people of every ethnic group, cultural or religious background, belief or value system. The reason being that the Founding Fathers of this great nation had a profound, inspired vision—a vision of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inclusion—a vision of all of mankind working together for a brighter future, free from the bonds of political tyranny or religious persecution or ethnic discrimination.

However, the important thing to keep in mind is that the vision of the Founding Fathers—a vision that gives us the remarkable documents that are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States—was a vision that was rooted in a specific value sysem that they shared and agreed upon. Namely, a value system that values freedom, inclusion, religious tolerance, multiculturalism—i.e. the "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and, as stated in the Pledge of Allegiance, "with liberty and justice for all."

The assumption here is that other people—the people whom we want to assimilate into the union—share in this vision and this value system.

But what if they don't? What if the people who seek to be assimilated or included believe in some form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism that seeks to deny the rights and freedoms of others while imposing their own value system on them? What if they happen to be, for arguments' sake, religious authoritarians or bigots or anarchists or proponents of totalitarianism or believers in chaos and mob rule? What if they engage in discriminatory practices or political witch-hunts? What if they practice cannibalism, human sacrifice or other criminal activities?

Surely, by including such people into our union, we undermine the vision of the Founding Fathers? By including authoritarians or bigots into our society, we contribute to making our society a little more authoritarian and bigoted. By inviting tyrants or anarchists into our midst, we contribute to making our society a little more tyrannical or chaotic, as the case may be. By giving credence to those who do not share our values, we undermine the value system at the core of the U.S. Constitution—the vision of the Founding Fathers—namely the vision of equality, life, liberty and justice for all.

However, what is the cost of excluding such people from our union? By excluding those whom we deem to be unfit for inclusion—those whom we deem not to share in our vision or our value system—are we, in effect, guilty of undermining our own vision of universal inclusion and liberty from within? Do we become authoritarians and bigots ourselves when we seek to protect our vision of inclusion and liberty from other authoritarians and bigots (or, rather, those we deem to be authoritarians and bigots)? Are we imposing our value system on others when we seek to protect our values of inclusion and acceptance from those who seek to impose their value system on us?

This scenario recurs only too often in U.S. history—all the way from the Salem witch-hunts of the 1690's, in pre-Revolutionary America, when over a hundred innocents were accused and detained, and several of them, executed, on the grounds of suspicion resulting from mass hysteria over witchcraft; to the Red Scare and the McCarthy trials of the 1940's and '50's, when thousands of American citizens were black-listed, detained and executed on the unproven, and often unfounded, suspicion of being Communist-sympathizers; all the way down to the Bush administration's post-9/11 hard-line policies, when the administration felt itself compelled to resort to such policies as preemptive military invasion, preemptive detention and incarceration and even torture and warrantless wiretapping, all on the grounds of national security—the watchword in such cases presumably being, "better safe than sorry."

But before we condemn those whose actions we find disagreeable, we must honestly consider whether, given the same circumstances, any of us would have acted any differently. How many of us are truly that noble and self-sacrificing that we would place national interest and the values and vision of the Founding Fathers above personal interest and expedience or the furthering of our own careers, even at the expense of the lives of others?

I guess that is the basic paradox at the heart of the American Dream—sometimes the cost of defending that dream from those who would seek to undermine or destroy it is so great that we end up undermining and destroying the dream ourselves. But perhaps it is better to have a vision, even if one fails to live up to it, than not to have any vision at all.

Horizon Cybermedia is dedicated to a vision of freedom and artistic self-expression that is rooted in truth and the highest of values and standards. We aspire to live up to and fulfill that vision and we look forward to your support in enabling us to do so. Do check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com and spread the word about us by inviting your friends and neighbors to check out our website as well.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Radical Islam Threatened by Hollywood

Not long ago, I ran across an article on the web—an Associated Press release—that included the following passage (quoted verbatim):

Elsewhere in the northwest, a car bomb exploded close to a movie theater in the city of Peshawar [in Pakistan], killing at least six people and wounding 80 others, witnesses and police officer Saleem Khan said. Authorities blamed militants that have targeted theaters before in the region, believing them to be un-Islamic.

The article, entitled U.N. seeks $543 million for Pakistan refugees, was originally published at this link. It has since been updated by the Associated Press and no longer includes the passage cited above. The same news story, Bomb at Pakistan movie house kills 6, may also be found at this link, which also contains a similar passage as follows:

Militants have targeted movie theaters in the region in the past, charging that the businesses violate the tenets of Islam. Pakistan's Dawn News television channel reported that some theaters in the area have recently received threats from the Taliban, and that a few theater owners have shut down.

I find these passages to be particularly eye-opening as they clarify and put into sharp relief what radical Islam and, for that matter, any sort of religious extremism, represents to the world of culture and the arts—which naturally includes cinema. Religious extremists are invariably threatened by the arts because the arts represent freedom of expression and a representation of the truth. Religious extremists, like the Taliban and other repressive theocracies of the world, which base their very existence on propaganda and authoritarian dogma, invariably find themselves at odds with artists and artistes of all kinds.

Islamic radicalism has always been about repression—the suppression of individual freedoms and the violation of human rights. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the same fanatical theocracies that have no qualms about resorting to outright brutality to protect and further their social, political and religious agendas—a fact that the world is witnessing only too clearly with recent events in Iran—would feel threatened by culture, the arts and, most recently, by Western cinema, as evidenced by the recent bombings of movie theaters in Pakistan orchestrated by the Taliban.

From the earliest of times, Islamic culture has been characterized by a particularly intense hostility towards imagery or rendering. Some of this fanaticism may be justified by Islamic apologists as an attempt to assert the peculiar brand of monotheism that Muslims adhere to. And, of course, there is no denying the cultural achievements of the past, in such Islamic cultural centers as Beirut, Lebanon and Baghdad, Iraq. However, it cannot be denied that the radical Islamic movement of recent times, as epitomized by the likes of the Taliban and Al Quaeda, have displayed a pretty ruthless hostility towards all forms of artistic representation. And this destructiveness has been felt only too keenly in such Islamic cultural centers as Beirut and Baghdad, which are now wastelands thanks to decades of sectarian violence and brutality.

In March 2001, in fact, the Taliban ordered the destruction of two gigantic, ancient statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan—an act of ruthless vandalism against art and culture—against historical artifacts of immense archaeological importance and cultural value—an act that many believe was an ominous precursor to the destruction, only six months following, of another pair of monoliths of immense socio-cultural importance, namely the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the great Western cultural center of New York City. Arguably, the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 is an undeniable expression of a deep-seated hostility for Western art, culture and, in this case, architecture, on the part of radical Islamic factions.

After all, if Islamic radicals like the Taliban, Al Quaeda and the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran have no problem with murdering thousands of innocent civilians (by sponsoring terrorism) or engaging in brutal misogynistic practices or controlling their populations with an iron fist through religious dogma, can it be at all surprising that they would find Western cinema threatening? One has to wonder: how many Hollywood movie stars would feel the least bit comfortable having any dealings with the likes of the Taliban or Al-Quaeda or the Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? And, furthermore, how agreeable would Hollywood or Las Vegas, with their culture of over-the-top extravagance, be to the average Islamic radical?

I have no doubt that when the likes of Osama bin Laden condemn Western and, in particular, American culture as inimical to the tenets of radical Islam, what they have in mind are such cultural centers as Hollywood and Las Vegas—cities whose culture has always been about extravagance and excess of every kind. For a religion that enforces draconian dietary regulations and forbids the consumption of alcoholic beverages, Hollywood would have to be a profound anathema!

No wonder that the Taliban and other Islamic radicals feel compelled to bomb movie theaters in Peshawar, Pakistan!

Horizon Cybermedia, on the other hand, is about preserving art and culture in the face of brutal religious extremism. We are about championing the cause of freedom, especially in the venue of artistic self-expression. For us, the worst possible of all scenarios would be to be subjected to an Islamic theocracy that denies us our basic freedoms and human rights—freedoms such as those that enable us to produce art, culture and cinema!

Check us out at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com, which features our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar, a travelogue documenting our sojourns to remarkable venues the world over.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Credible News Sources

Recently, Keith Olbermann, on his MSNBC news show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, cited Fox News as the "worst persons in the world." He claimed that the Fox News Channel is blatant right-wing propaganda. He also noted that President Obama, in a recent TV interview (the same interview, incidentally, as the now-notorious fly-swatting incident, in which, according to news reports on MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN and elsewhere, the President demonstrates his "remarkable fly-swatting skills") claimed that there was at least one news channel dedicated to undermining his administration at all costs. Olbermann suggests that the President was referring to Fox News.

Back in the day when the Republicans controlled both houses as well as the Presidency, a period that might well go down in history as a modern-day Dark Ages or Reign of Terror, the Fox News channel was considered to be the bastion of credible news. So much so that all other news agencies were too afraid even to question their authority.

Fox News, owned by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., had started on the premise that conventional news sources like CNN and network news operated on a principle of a subtle left-wing cultural bias resulting from the educational and social milieu of their journalists. The solution that Fox News apparently proposed was to dedicate a news channel to supposedly "fair and balanced" news coverage. "Fair and balanced" became their watchword, but it soon proved to be ironic. Over time, their supposedly objective news coverage has been exposed as right-wing propaganda that was pretty blatantly pandering to the Bush administration while they were in power.

This brings us to MSNBC's news lineup. MSNBC is a news channel that is produced as a joint venture, as the name suggests, between Microsoft (the monolithic software giant founded by Bill Gates) and NBC. Their lineup of news shows supposedly offers us the alternative to Fox News, but, as implied by Keith Olbermann, what they are really offering us is left-wing propaganda that panders to the Obama administration.

The tragic consequence of all this government pandering and institutional propaganda is that the number-one casualty in mainstream news coverage is credibility. Where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins of today, with their stunning exposés of corruption in high places? Definitely not at either Fox News or MSNBC.

Perhaps the answer to where we can find credible news sources lies with CNN—still bland and presenting the façade of objectivity while concealing a subtle left-wing bias—who now, apparently, resorts to blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to supplement their on-site correspondent reports. CNN even encourages you to submit amateur videos via the "iReport" section on their website, which allows them to feature the videos on their news shows after a process of vetting and verification. In fact, in the ongoing Iranian uprisings, where mainstream journalists are being banned and extradited by the authoritarian Iranian regime, western news sources are having to rely on Twitter feeds, blog posts and amateur video from Iranian citizens as their news sources.

This brings us to the argument that mainstream news organizations have recently been making against the Blogsphere, especially in the wake of such recent films as State of Play, directed by Kevin Macdonald, namely that the Blogsphere is composed primarily of amateurs who are out of their depth, whereas if you are looking for cutting-edge Woodward-and-Bernstein style in-depth reporting, you will find it only at the major news organizations who have the skills and resources at their disposal to support that kind of news coverage.

The reality—at least two of the so-called major news organizations are dedicated to producing partisan propaganda that pretty shamelessly panders to politicians while the third is increasingly resorting to the Blogsphere to provide its news sources. As for Woodward and Bernstein, they are both retired and writing books for a living.

The moral of the story appears to be, therefore, that if you are looking for cutting-edge journalism, skip the news networks and, instead, check out the Blogsphere!

Horizon Cybermedia, meanwhile, is dedicated to producing fresh, insightful media content and to participating in the ongoing new media revolution! Check out the latest episodes in our film series Exploration with Uday Gunjikar at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com and stay tuned for much more to come!

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.