In first decade of the 21st century we have witnessed the West’s embrace of the full spectrum of extremism in both domestic and foreign policy. Extremism is a common practice by self-styled conservatives, liberals and social-democrats. In the past, conservative implied preserving the status quo and, at most, tinkering with change at the margins. Today’s ‘conservatives’ demand the wholesale dismantling of entire social welfare systems and the elimination of traditional legal protection of workers and the environment. Liberals and social democrats, who in the past, occasionally, questioned colonial systems, are now in the forefront of prolonged multi-front colonial wars, which have killed and displaced millions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

Extremism, in terms of its methods, means and goals, has obliterated the distinctions between center left, center, and rightwing politicians. Moderates opposed to the current policies of subsidizing the major banks while impoverishing tens of millions of workers, are now labeled the ‘hard left,’ ‘extremists,’ or ‘radicals.’

In the wake of the government’s extremist policies, the respectable, prestigious print media have engaged in their own versions of extremism.¹ Colonial wars, devastating civil society and stable cultures while impoverishing millions in the colonized country, are justified, embellished and presented as lawful and humane advances in secular democratic values. Domestic wars on behalf of oligarchies and against wage and salaried workers, which concentrate wealth and deepen despair of the dispossessed, are described as rational, virtuous and necessary. The distinctions between the prudent, balanced, prestigious and serious media and the sensationalist, yellow press have disappeared. The fabrication of facts, blatant omissions and distortions of context are found in one just as well as the other.

To illustrate the reign of extremism in officialdom and among the prestigious press, we will examine two case studies. These involve US policies toward Colombia and Honduras and the Financial Times and New York Times coverage of the two nations.

Colombia: The “Oldest Democracy in Latin America” versus “The Death Squad Capital of the World”

Following the giddy eulogies of Colombia’s emergence as Latin America’s poster boy for democracy in an April issue of Time magazine, as well as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, the Financial Times ran a series of articles including a special insert on Colombia’s political and economic ‘miracle’ entitled, “Investing in Colombia.”² According to the FT’s leading Latin American journalist, John Paul Rathbone, Colombia is the ‘oldest democracy in the hemisphere.’³ Rathbone’s rapturous praise for Colombia’s President Santos extends from his role as an ‘emerging power broker’ for the South American continent, to making Colombia safe for foreign investors and ‘exciting the envy’ of other less successful regimes in the region. Rathbone gives prominence to one Colombia business leader who claims that Colombia’s second biggest city, Medellín, ‘is living through its best of times.’³ In line with the opinion of the foreign and business elite, the respectable print media describe Colombia as prosperous, peaceful, business friendly, charging the lowest mining royalty payments in the hemisphere, and a model of a stable democracy to be emulated by all forward-looking leaders.

Under President Santos, Colombia has signed a free trade agreement with President Obama, his closest ally in the hemisphere.⁴ During the term of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, trade unions, human rights and church groups, as well as the majority of Congressional Democrats, were successful in blocking any similar agreement because of Colombia’s sustained human rights violations. Any such opposition from the AFL-CIO and Democratic legislators evaporated, when President Obama embraced free trade, claiming a vast improvement in human rights and President Santos commitment to ending the murder of trade union leaders and activists.⁴

Colombia’s peace, security, and prosperity, praised by the oil, mining, banking, and agro-business elite, are based on the worst human rights record in Latin America. With regard to the murder of trade unionists, Colombia exceeds the entire world. From 1986-2011 over 60% of the all killings of trade unionists in the world took place in Colombia by combined military-police-paramilitary death squads, largely at the behest of foreign and domestic corporate leaders.⁵ The ‘peace’, so enthusiastically praised by Rathbone and his colleagues at the Financial Times, comes with a heavy price tag: Over 12,000 arrests, attacks, assassinations and disappearances of trade unionists occurred between January 1, 1986 and October 1, 2010.⁵ In that time span nearly 3,000 trade union leaders and activists were murdered, hundreds more disappeared and are assumed dead. The current Colombian President Santos was the Defense Minister under the previous President Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010). In those years, over 762 trade union officials and activists were murdered by state or allied paramilitary forces.⁵

Under both Presidents Uribe and Santos (2002-2012), over 4 million peasants and rural dwellers were driven into internal exile and their homes and lands were taken over by big landlords, speculators and narco-traffickers.⁶ The Colombian government’s counter-insurgency strategy serves a dual function of repressing dissent and accumulating wealth for its supporters. The Financial Times journalists gloss over this aspect of Colombia’s ‘resurgent growth’ as they applaud the results of death-squad ‘security’, including the over $6 billion dollars of large-scale foreign investment which flowed into mining and oil regions in 2012 – in areas ‘formerly troubled by unrest.’⁷

Some leading drug lords, clearly linked to the Uribe-Santos regime, were jailed and extradited to the US. They have testified how they financed and elected one-third of the Congress members affiliated with Uribe-Santos party – in what the Financial Times describes as Latin America’s ‘oldest democracy.’ Salvatore Mancuso, ex-chief of the 30,000-member United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC), described how he met with then-President Uribe in different regions of the country to give him money and logistical support for his re-election campaign of 2006. Mancuso, who led the largest paramilitary death squad army in Colombia (now fragmented but still active), also affirmed that national and multi-national corporations (MNC) financed the growth and expansion of the death squads.

What Rathbone and his fellow journalists at the FT celebrate as Colombia’s emergence as an investor’s paradise is writ large with the blood and torture of thousands of Colombian peasants, trade unionists and human rights activists. The brutal history of the Uribe/Santos reign of terror has been completely erased from the current account of Colombia’s ‘success story.’ Detailed records of the brutality of the killings and torture by Uribe/Santos sponsored death squads, describing the use of chain saws to mutilate peasants suspected of leftist sympathies are available to any journalist willing to consult Colombia’s leading human rights organizations.⁸

The death squads and military act in concert. The Colombian military is trained by over one thousand US Special Forces advisers. They wage counter-insurgency style war on the Colombian countryside, arriving in villages in waves of US-supplied helicopters, cordoning off targeted areas from the guerillas and then sending in the AUC and other death squads to destroy the villages, torturing and murdering peasant men, women and children suspected of being guerilla sympathizers and committing widespread rape. This state-sponsored terror campaign has driven millions of peasants out of the countryside allowing the generals and drug lords to seize their land.

Human rights advocates (HRA) are frequently targeted by the military and death squads. Presidents Uribe and Santos usually first accuse human rights workers of being active collaborators of the guerillas because of their work in exposing the regime’s crimes against humanity. Once labeled, the HRA became ‘legitimate targets’ for death squads and the military operating with complete impunity. From 2002-2011 there were 1,470 attacks against HRA, with a record number of 239 in 2011, including 49 killings under President Santos.⁹ Over half of the murdered human rights workers are Indian and Afro-Colombians.

State terrorism was and continues to be the main instrument of rule under Presidents Uribe and Santos. The Colombian ‘killing fields’, according to the Fiscalia General, include tens of thousands of homicides, 1,597 massacres and thousands of forced disappearances from 2005-2010.¹⁰

Courageous members of the Colombian press revealed a practice, known as ‘false positives’, numerous instances in which the military secretly kidnapped young peasants and poor urban males forcing them to dress as guerrillas, murdered them in cold blood and then displayed their bodies to the respectable Colombian and international press as ‘proof’ of Santos/Uribe’s combat successes against the guerrillas. There are 2,472 documented cases of military ‘false positive’ murders.¹¹

Honduras: New York Times and State Terrorism

The New York Times featured an article on Honduras, emphasizing the regime’s ‘co-operation’ with the US war on drugs.¹² The Times writer, Thom Shanker, describes a ‘partnership’ based on the expansion of three new US military bases and the stationing of US Special Forces in the country.¹²

Shanker reported on the successful operation of the Honduras Special Operations forces under the direction of US Special Forces trainers. In Shanker’s coverage, a US Congressional delegation praised the Honduran Special Operations forces ‘respect for human rights,’ quoting the US ambassador description of the Honduran regime as ‘eager and capable partners in this joint effort.’¹²

There are blatant parallels between the NY Times white-wash of the criminal extremist regime in Honduras and the Financial Times’ crude promotion of Colombia’s death squad democracy.

The current extremist Honduran regime, headed by ‘President’ Lobos, which invited the Pentagon to expand its military control over huge swathes of Honduran territory, is a product of the US-backed military coup that overthrew a democratically-elected liberal President on June 28, 2009, a recent historical point Shanker avoids in his coverage. Lobos, the predator president, retains control by killing, jailing and torturing his critics, including journalists, human rights advocates and lawyers, as well as now-landless peasants demanding a return of their properties after they were violently seized by Lobos’ big-landlord allies.

Following the military coup, thousands of Honduran pro-democracy demonstrators were killed, beaten and arrested. According to conservative estimates by Human Rights Watch, 20 pro-democracy dissidents were openly murdered by the military and police.¹³ From January 2010 to November 2011 at least 12 journalists, critical of the Lobos regime, were assassinated.

In the countryside, where NY Times reporter Shanker describes a love fest between the US Special Forces and their Honduran counterparts, 30 farm workers in northern Honduras Bajo Aguan valley were killed by death squads hired by Lobos powerful allies.¹⁴ Not one military, police or death squad assassin has been brought to justice. The original coup leader, Roberto Micheletti and his successor, President Lobos, repeatedly attacked pro-democracy demonstrations, particularly those led by school teachers, students and trade unionists. Hundreds of jailed political dissidents have been tortured. During the period of NY Times most euphoric articles on the cozy relations between the US and Honduras, the death toll among pro-democracy advocates rose precipitously: Eight journalists and a TV commentator were killed during the first 4 months of 2012.¹⁴ In late March and early April of 2012 nine farm workers and employees were murdered by pro-Lobos landlords.¹⁴ With impunity reigning in the Central American land of US military bases, no one has been arrest for these murders. The NY Times coverage of Honduras follows the Mafia rule of omega — silence and complicity.

Syria: How the Financial Times Absolves Al Qaeda Terrorists

As Western-backed Islamist terrorists savage the secular regime in Syria, the Western press, especially the Financial Times, continue to absolve the terrorists use of huge car bombs, which have killed and mutilated hundreds of Syrian citizens. With crude cynicism Western reporters shrug their shoulders and parrot the claims of the London-based anti-regime propagandists, that the Assad regime was destroying its own cities and killing its own citizens and security forces.¹⁵

Conclusion

As the Obama regime and its European allies publically embrace extremism, including state terror, targeted assassinations and the car bombings in crowded urban neighborhoods, the respectable press has joined in. Extremism takes many forms — from the refusal to report honestly about the use of mercenary force and violence to overthrow another anti-colonial regime to the blatant cover-up of the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the dispossession of millions of peasants and farmers. The ‘educated classes’, the respectable affluent reading public are being continuously indoctrinated by the respectable Western media to believe that the smiling and pragmatic President Santos in Colombia and elected President Lobos in Honduras have succeeded in establishing peace, market-based prosperity, mutually beneficial free trade agreements, and military base concessions with the US — even as these two regimes currently lead the world in the murder of trade unionists and journalists. On May 15, 2012 the US Hispanic Congressional caucus awarded Lobos a leadership in democracy award – the same day the Honduran press reported the murder of the news director of radio station, HMT, Alfredo Villatoro, the 25th critical journalist killed between January 27, 2010 and May 15, 2012.¹⁶

The respectable press’ embrace of extremism and its use of demonological and vitriolic language to describe critical regimes opposed to imperialism are matched by its euphoric and effusive praise of state and pro-western mercenary brutality. The systematic cover-up of crimes by extremist journalism goes far beyond the cases of Colombia and Honduras. Financial Times reporter Michael Peel ‘covered’ the assault on the Libyan government of Gaddaffi without mentioning the NATO-led bombing campaign that destroyed Africa’s most advanced welfare state. Peel presented the rise of armed gangs of fanatical tribal and Islamic terrorists as a victory for democracy over a “brutal dictatorship.”¹⁷ Peel’s mendacity and cant is evident in his outrageous claims that the destruction of the Libyan economy and the mass torture and racially motivated murders, which followed NATO’s war, was a victory for the Libyan people.

The totalitarian twist in the respectable press is a direct consequence of its long-term toadying to the extremist policies pursued by the western regimes. Since extremist measures, like the use of force, violence, assassination and torture, have become routine by the incumbent presidents and prime ministers, the reporters have no choice but to fabricate lies to render ‘respectable’ such crimes, to spit out a constant flow of highly charged adjectives in order to convert victims into executioners and executioners into victims. Extremism in defense of pro-US regimes has led to the most grotesque accounts imaginable: Colombia and Mexico’s Presidents are the leaders of the most thoroughly narcotized economies in the hemisphere yet they are praised for their war on drugs, while Venezuela, the most marginal producer of any drug, is stigmatized as a major narco- pipeline.¹⁸

Articles with no factual basis, which are worthless as sources of objective information, direct us to seek an underlying rationale: Colombia has signed a free trade agreement, which will benefit US exports over Colombian by over a two to one ratio.¹⁹ Mexico’s free trade policy has benefited US agro-business and giant retailers by a similar ratio.

All forms of extremism permeate Western regimes and find justification and rationalization through the respectable media whose job is to indoctrinate civil society and turn citizens into uncritical accomplices to extremism. By endlessly prefacing ‘reports’ on Russia’s President Putin as an authoritarian Soviet-era tyrant, the respectable media avoid any discussion of the doubling of the Russian standard of living and Putin’s over 60% electoral triumph. By magnifying an authoritarian past, the murdered Libyan President Gaddafi’s vast public works, social welfare programs and generous immigration and foreign aid programs to sub-Sahara Africa can be relegated to the oblivion. The respectable press’s praise of death squad Presidents Santos and Lobos is part of a large-scale, long-term systematic shift from the hypocritical pretence of pursuing the virtues of a democratic republic to the open embrace of a virulent, murderous empire. The new journalists’ code reads ‘extremism in defense of empire is no vice.’

1. There’s a general consensus that the respectable print media include the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
2. Financial Times (FT) 5/8/12; See also FT (5/4/12) “Colombia looks to consolidate gainsin country of complexities.”
3. FT 5/8/12 (p. 1).
4. BBC News, May 5, 2012.
5. Renan Vega Cantor, Sindicalicidio! (Un cuento poco imaginativo) de Terrorismo Laboral Bogotá, Feb. 25, 2012.
6. Inforrme CODHES Novembre 2010.
7. FT, 5/8/12 p. 4.
8. See the Annual Reports of CODHES, Reiniciar and Human Rights Watch.
9. Claroscuro Informe Aual 2011; Programa Somos Defensores Bogota 2012; Corporacion Colectivo de Abogados. Jan-March 2012.
10. Fiscalia General, Informe 2012.
11. Falsos Positivos Blogspot.
12. Thom Shanker, “Lessons of Iraq Help US Fight a Drug War in Honduras,” New York Times, May 6, 2012.
13. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2012.
14. Honduran Human Rights, May 12m, 2012.
15. The notorious cover-up of the car bombing is the handiwork of the FT’s star middle east journalists. See Michael Peel and Abigail Fielding-Smith, “At Least 55 Die in two Damascus Explosions: Responsibility for Blasts Disputed,” FT, 5/11/12.
16. Honduras Human Rights, April 24, 2012.
17. Michael Peel, “The Colonels Last Stand,” FT, 5/12-13/12.
18. One of Colombia’s most notorious paramilitary narco traffickers described the close financial and political ties between the Colombian United Self Defense terrorists and the Uribe-Santos regime. See La Jornada, 5/12/12.
19. BBC News, 5/15/12. According to the US International Trade Commission estimates the value of US exports to Colombia could rise by $1.1 billion while Colombia’s exports could grow by $487 million.

The Inquirer used to rake in Pulitzers, but serious reporting required a sustained investment of money, time and intellect, so when its then-owner, Knight Ridder, balked at this, the Philadelphia newspapers went into their death spiral. This is no local phenomenon, because the entire country is suffering from the dearth of hard-hitting news about anything that really matters: Wall Street and DC corruption; constant lying from our government; an endless war that’s bankrupting the nation and begging for blowbacks and, soon enough, riots; or the accelerating collapse of the economy, and thus, your way of life. In their stead, encyclopedic sports coverage and celebrity gossips, as purveyed by various moronic outfits. Today’s earthquaking burp from Yahoo!, “The prince says an unusual noise kept him awake the night before his nuptials.”

Divorced from local news and conversations, rootless and detached from what’s closest to them, most Americans are dragnetted into a national matrix as defined by cynical or sinister mind fuckers who care nothing about them or their individual communities. Yahoo! is run out of San Jose, long a cultural wasteland, but it was the home of Gary Webb, an American hero who broke the story about the CIA pushing crack cocaine to LA blacks to fund its covert war in Nicaragua. For being an excellent and ethical journalist, Webb was ran out of a job, then hounded into committing suicide, the official story, or simply killed. In any case, what happened to Webb is an apt parable for an America that punishes integrity and bravery, and rewards dishonesty and cowardice. In such a society, degradation is guaranteed.

Yesterday, I walked by the Daily News and Inquirer headquarters and saw, in its window, a blown-up cover about Chase Utley, an aging and often-injured second baseman. Like the country itself, the city is unraveling, but let’s fret over the Phillies, Sixers, Flyers and Eagles. Hey, how about dem Birds! Across the street, I spotted something unusual, however: an upside down 13-star flag in front of the Steak & Bagel Train, a diner in business since 1907. We’re due for another American Revolution, wouldn’t you say?

As I photographed this provocation, a security guard from the adjacent building marched over, “Hey, I didn’t even see that! Somebody is going to burn his place down. I’ve got to ask him tomorrow what’s up with that.” He also informed me that a flag cannot be up at night, unlit, and that he had a flag on his front porch, with a spot light shining on it.

“It’s freedom of speech,” I said to this security dude. “He probably thinks the country is in distress.”

“Yeah, but he’s playing with fire, buddy. Somebody is going to burn his place down.”

So for being a good enough citizen to rouse your compatriots from their slumber, you and yours may be torched, or, like Bradley Manning, held in solitary confinement and stripped naked each night.

Don’t rock the USS Full Spectrum Blowhard Righteous Recovery, you terrorist asshole, though this ship has neither fuel nor compass, nor even rats, not unless you count the Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet Members and Supreme Court Justices surrounding an oil-slick and blood splattered POTUS.

A block from the newspaper office, I saw a sign common in many distressed neighborhoods, “PROJECT FUNDED BY THE American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” I wasn’t sure what the project was, but the sign itself had been well tagged by graffiti, plus some clever guerilla art, a depiction of the Fountain of Youth.

Seen from the side, a hag, with cane and sagging breasts, enters a fountain, then emerges as a lovely young lady, proudly frontal in her nudity. The hag half is shadowed by a vulture and littered with thorny weeds, while the sexy chick half is serenaded by song birds and blooming with flowers. No spring chicken myself, I wouldn’t mind a personal recovery through a dip in some miraculous pool, but as with Juan Ponce de León and his dolorous dick, to believe in magic is to court disaster.

Speaking of the paranormal, let’s walk a few blocks up Broad Street to check out the hulking ruins of the Father Divine Hotel. Few remember him now, but Father Divine was once nationally famous. Known as America’s first cult leader, and an inspiration to Jim Jones, Father Divine inspired his followers with the commonsensical, such as being self-reliant and debt-free; to the idealistic, such as being color blind, even to yourself; to the puritanical, such as abstaining from tobacco, alcohol and gambling; to the weirdly ascetic, such as total celibacy even among married couples. Though he declared himself a living god, and his second wife, four decades his junior, to be the reincarnation of his first wife, his followers believed everything their 5’2” leader said because he was supremely confident and a charismatic speaker, and when he died, many of his devotees even thought he would rise again. It is telling that Father Divine’s movement peaked during the Great Depression.

Now that we’re entering what promises to be an even greater period of material and spiritual despair, which Father Divine will rise up to save the desperate and gullible? Instead of preaching self-control, racial harmony and charity, what bitter impulses will they unleash? The magical Fountain of Recovery will likely gush blood.

This obviously has profound implications for media performance, as even the corporate media are sometimes willing to accept. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson notes in the Financial Times: ‘Behind their journalistic missions, most news organisations have always been commercial operations that sell audiences to advertisers.’¹

Media corporations are also typically owned by wealthy individuals or giant conglomerates, and are legally obliged to subordinate human and environmental welfare to maximised revenues for shareholders.²

The consequences for democracy are normally ignored. But again, the truth sometimes pops up. After giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry in April 2012, the owner of the Independent, Evgeny Lebedev, tweeted: ‘Forgot to tell #Leveson that it’s unreasonable to expect individuals to spend £millions on newspapers and not have access to politicians.’

Even a Guardian report had to note: ‘It was a funny and refreshingly honest message after all the recent humbug and hypocrisy from media magnates about not wanting to influence the political class.’

A less refreshingly honest morsel was served up by Brian Leveson himself when he said: ‘The majority of journalism is people doing their job honourably with dedication, fearlessly and entirely in the public interest.’ (our emphasis)

Imagine if Leveson had noted that the majority of journalism is fearlessly doing its job ‘in the corporate interest’. It would have elicited mayhem among the politico-media classes.

Perhaps we’re being a tad unfair to Leveson, given that he appeared to let slip that he supports media activism. He said that internet-based scrutiny is ‘leading to greater accountability for journalists. People will study them, and I think there’s no reporter — no decent reporter — in the land who would not welcome this extra scrutiny.’

Or so one would like to think. Alas, it is not quite our experience over the last eleven years of being blanked, blocked, abused and dumped beyond the pale of media ‘respectability’; even by people who very much like what we’re doing but who would rather not be tarred with the same brush.

The Thumb-Sucking 5-10 Per Cent Rule

The Leveson inquiry has exposed the profound influence of corporate owners on media reporting. The Guardian’s Nick Davies, whose reporting of the Milly Dowler phone-hacking scandal has been justly praised, claimed in his book, Flat Earth News, that the cumulative effect of owners and advertising was no more than 5-10 per cent:

‘Journalists with whom I have discussed this [i.e. what Davies calls “the retreat from truth-telling journalism”] agree that if you could quantify it, you could attribute only 5% or 10% of the problem to the total impact of these two forms of interference.’³

As we have pointed out, these numbers are contradicted even by the fact that so many aspects of the modern newspaper have evolved in response to the demands of advertisers and corporate owners.

Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist, has been keeping a beady eye on the Leveson inquiry evidence challenging Davies’ 5-10 per cent claim. For example, Harold Evans, a former Rupert Murdoch editor at the Sunday Times, described to Leveson how, in 1981, Murdoch rebuked him for reporting gloomy economic news and ‘not doing what he [Murdoch] wants, in political terms’. Evans says that Murdoch came to his home and the two ‘almost ended up in fisticuffs over a piece on the economy.’

Evans added:

Murdoch would also haul in senior staff for meetings to tell them to alter their coverage, including the editorial line of the leader columns and telling the foreign editor to “attack the Russians more”.

No wonder former Sun editor David Yelland described how editors ‘go on a journey where they end up agreeing with everything Murdoch says … “What would Rupert think about this?” is like a mantra inside your head’.

Cook also pointed out two articles ‘that as good as admit the obvious: that Murdoch decided what parties his papers would back in return, of course, for political support for his business interests.’

The first described how, in 2009, James Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer of News Corp, had told David Cameron, then Tory leader of the Opposition, that the Sun would switch its support in the upcoming general election from Labour to the Conservatives. This announcement was made shortly after Jeremy Hunt, then the Tory’s shadow culture secretary, had visited News Corp offices in the US.

A second article reported that Murdoch was ‘attracted by the idea’ of Scottish independence and thought that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, was a ‘nice guy’. Murdoch ‘cleared the way’ for the Scottish edition of the Sun to endorse Salmond’s Scottish National Party at the Scottish elections in spring 2011, ‘just as [Salmond] was promising to lobby for News Corporation to take control of BSkyB.’ The SNP won a landslide victory in the Scottish parliamentary elections on May 5. Salmond admitted that he had been ‘happy’ to make a direct call to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt to support Murdoch’s controversial attempt to take complete control of the satellite broadcaster.

But this wasn’t just a one-off; it was — and remains — a crucial part of the political process. As Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin told Leveson, News International bosses ‘could be very demanding’. Referring to then Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, charged last week with conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice: ‘If you are on the same side as her, you have to see her every week. This was how it worked.’

Letwin added: ‘The realpolitik is that you have to get on with people who run newspapers. Labour did the same.’

Indeed, in 1995, opposition leader Tony Blair flew halfway round the world to curry favour with Rupert Murdoch at the luxury Hayman Island resort in Queensland, Australia. Addressing senior News Corporation executives, the Labour leader pledged an end to the ‘rigid economic planning and state controls’ of the ‘Old Left’ and declared that ‘the battle between market and public sector is over.’ Two years later, after 18 years of supporting the Tories, Murdoch used the Sun to officially endorse Blair and New Labour who then won a landslide victory at the 1997 general election. In 2011, Blair even became godfather to Murdoch’s youngest child.

And Murdoch isn’t alone in casting a shadow over the political process. Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that ‘he and other politicians became too close to too many newspaper proprietors and executives.’ So politicians have been bending to the will of media owners, and media owners have been influencing, and even directing, what their own editors and journalists do.

Jonathan Cook told us why he believes it’s important to document examples of senior journalists revealing the extent of proprietorial interference:

‘Davies’ book [‘Flat Earth News’] was so influential, especially with other journalists, because it propped up the lie journalists like to tell themselves and others that the problem of the “profession” is essentially a lack of funding and proper care from media owners. They prefer that assessment for two obvious reasons: first, journalists want more money invested in their papers because they hope it means promotions and wage rises; and second, it helps to avert their gaze from the reality that editorial independence is, and always was, a myth.⁴

Cook also told us:

It’s really about time Davies retracted that bit of nonsense from his book. The problem is that, were he to do so, he could no longer justify his argument that media failure is the result chiefly of economic pressures rather than structural flaws.⁵

A Private Conversation Between Elite Groups

Peter Oborne, chief political commentator at the Daily Telegraph, is no raving leftie. But as a political conservative, he had some astute observations to make to Leveson on the corrupt state of politics and media in this country.

Oborne said that when he arrived on the political reporting ‘scene’ he was ‘staggered’ by the closeness of politicians and journalists:

It was ceasing to be a conversation between activists and politicians but between the media and the politicians. The News International annual party at the Tory and Labour conference was an extraordinary power event to which people were excluded. Unfortunately I never got in, but you got the entire cabinet and all the influence brokers and the senior members of the media class, and it was a very important statement I felt about how Britain was being governed.

He continued:

And then you got the astonishing business of the senior News International people sitting just behind the Cabinet. They were the VIPs in the chamber, I believe really important media types were there as well, they were brought into the inner sanctum. I felt this was a perversion of our democracy, it was starting to become a private conversation between elite groups rather than a proper popular engagement.

He described the politico-journalism collusion as a ‘conspiracy against their [newspapers’] readers’. When challenged by Leveson to justify such a blunt assertion, Oborne responded:

That’s exactly what was going on. [...] In order to report during that time you had to get close to the people who ran new Labour, there were very few of them. [...] People who tried to report objectively and fairly were bullied and victimised and not given access to information. People who were part of the circle were favoured and of course there was a price for that. Very hard to be an independent observer, to keep your integrity in those circumstances.

Political reporting, he said, had become ‘private deals, private arrangements, between media and politicians.’ Collusion between politicians and the media helped to explain why the public was so ‘grievously misinformed’ about Iraq in the run-up to war. And we would add that it also helps explain why the public has been grievously misinformed about the post-invasion death toll in Iraq which likely exceeds one million, with four million refugees, in a country that has been utterly devastated.

1. ‘News industry can survive in the digital age,’ Financial Times, March 21, 2012.
2. See Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Constable, 2004.
3. Flat Earth News, Chattus & Windus, 2008, p. 22.
4. Email, April 26, 2012.
5. Email, April 25, 2012.

The Secretary of State has recommended that the application [for the pipeline] be denied…I agree…This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but [on] the arbitrary nature of a deadline.

Obama even hinted at his future support of the pipeline: “[there may be] development of an oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico.” These deceptive words used by the President made me think:  Is the president heavily influenced by Big Oil or is the statement he made in the 2008 campaign, “I don’t take money from oil companies” true?

The election campaign of 2008 was a hard-fought campaign on all sides, mostly which involved lots of corporate sponsors since all the “frontrunners” were awash with money. Then-Senator Barack Obama raised $745 million dollars and spent $730 million dollars. $916,162 of those dollars came from the Oil and Gas industry according to OpenSecrets. A FactCheck.org post continued this message, nine months before the Presidential election was held, noting that Obama received over $66,000 dollars from employees at ExxonMobil, Hess, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and British Petroleum (BP). In addition, the post noted that “two oil industry executives…bundl[ed] money for Obama” one of which was a multi-billionaire. A Reuters article in May 2008 noted that BP contributed more to Obama’s campaign than it had contributed to federal candidates since the late 1980s. Even with these contributions, one may be unsure of Big Oil’s real impact on Barack Obama.

Steve Coll’s new book, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Empire, sheds light on part of that impact, especially on ExxonMobil’s role in the election. According to Coll, in the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama “spoke most pointedly about ExxonMobil…[and] offered none of the nuanced support he had voiced to Chad’s dictator Idriss Deby [in 2006]” about the inviolability of international oil contracts.  Even with this aggressive tact, he seemed to exploit the unpopularity of ExxonMobil for his own benefit. He pushed the idea of American ‘energy independence’ even though, according to Coll, it is “not achievable [or] desirable.” In addition, every time he used the word “ExxonMobil” it seemed to work in his favor. But, according to the Washington Independent, individual Exxon, Chevron and BP contributors preferred Barack Obama. At the same time, he boldly declared that “we must end the age of oil in our time.” Still, the Washington Post wrote in January 2008 that “one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers on the Middle East [Daniel Shapiro]… registered to lobby for several corporate clients…including…the American Petroleum Institute.” Also, three political aides on the Obama’s campaign payroll were lobbyists for corporations such as BP. Still, after his victory over John McCain in the Presidential election, ExxonMobil changed its approach to the political arena.

As Obama was entering the Presidency, Eric Foner, of The Nation Magazine, called him “Our Lincoln” and Time Magazine named him “Person of the Year.” Just like the online game, Oiligarchy, made by Mollenindustria, President Obama became “oiled,” and would work in the interest of Big Oil due to its campaign contributions to his presidential election campaign.

In May 2009, Obama appointed Steve Koonin, the former Chief Scientist of BP, to be second Undersecretary for Science in the Department of Energy (he was confirmed shortly after by the U.S. Senate). The next year, Koonin became a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.  Also, the former contact employee for Goldman Sachs, Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s Chief of Staff for 21 months, lived for five years in a “rent-free…D.C. apartment of…Rep. Rosa DeLauro…and her husband, Stanley Greenberg,” whose firm was the creator of “BP’s…green…slogan “Beyond Petroleum.”” At the same time, Goldman Sachs had a huge investment in BP, which it sold in early 2010 for an unknown reason, pocketing “slightly more than $266 million” according to Raw Story, an independent news site. Currently the company owns about 2% of BP’s stock.

This connection of Obama to Big Oil is not based around stocks, rather around policy that has been enacted or pushed. In the early days of his administration, a cap-and-trade bill failed in Congress. According to an online site about cap-and-trade this policy has its problems. Ralph Nader says it would cause a war “between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator[s].” The Institute of Energy Research states it will hurt jobs, “make Canadian oil more expensive than oil from the Middle East…[and] create…incentives to import more oil from the Middle East.” The political magazine, Corporate Knights continues this criticism. They remark that “the President has not stood up to the climate-denial machine” and has been increasingly silent on the issue of a changing climate. At the same time, they wonder why Obama is not doing “far more to defend the science” of global warming.

In November 2009 the pro-Big Oil policy was evident once again. According to AlterNet, Obama and “his administration [were]…vocal and active proponents” of an Iraqi law that permitted new oil contracts in the country, which are also called protection sharing agreements (PSAs). The law offered oil companies “a 75 percent stake” in oil development, “reduced the amount the foreign companies pay in taxes…allow[ed]…them to use private security forces to protect their facilities” and let foreign companies to “hire and train [non]Iraqi workers and…transfer…needed technology.” At the same time, the law made companies pay “reimbursement fees for capital and operational expenses…[and] den[ied foreign] companies [from]…book[ing] reserves.”  Under this agreement, different corporations were given the ability to drill in Iraqi oil fields: BP, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil Company got sweet deals in Iraq, drilling in areas with 4-18 billion barrels of oil. Other foreign oil companies won out as well, but these American companies were some the big bread winners and the Obama Administration’s support of the law is no coincidence.

The next year, the international environmental NGO, the Bellona Foundation, noted a Presidential decision that missed the headlines. President Obama, one month before the explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig reversed a “20 year moratorium…open[ed much of]… the Atlantic coast line, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling…[and] at the same time [he] reject[ed]…some sites that had been propose[d in]…Alaska, California and Oregon.” Then less than thirty days later, the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill began. The aftermath showed the collusion of policy with Big Oil. Even, Sarah Palin, roundly denounced by “liberals” for her seemingly crazy statements told a Fox News show, “I don’t know why the question isn’t asked…if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.” Recently, others have even suggested that “the Obama administration went easy on BP before the 2010 oil spill in return for a pledge to support cap-and-trade legislation.” Two years later, Black Agenda Report came out with an article attacking Obama’s inaction: “Barack Obama and his Democrats passed no new laws, promulgated no new executive decisions to regulate Big Oil…the damages recoverable from BP’s holdings [were restricted to]…its Gulf revenues [not revenues on other continents]… [which] ensur[ed]…BP’s reckless operations in the gulf of Mexico [would]…continue.”

After the spill occurred, President Obama and his administration quickly worked to clean up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. In that process, a dispersant named Corexit was poured into Gulf, 2 million gallons by mid-June 2011, with the green light from Obama and his administration. But everyone didn’t follow the administration line. According to Democracy Now!, “many lawmakers and advocacy groups sa[id]…the Obama administration [was]…not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants.” At the same time, residents on the Gulf Coast were outraged that Kenneth Feinburg’s “$20 billion government-administered claim fund [would]…subtract money cleanup workers earn by working for the cleanup effort.” Also this claim fund was seen as an “effort to limit the number of lawsuits against BP.” Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the time, boldly said the government was “sock puppets for BP in this cover-up…by hiding the amount of spill [which]…sav[ed] [BP] hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines.” In addition to this corruption, many numbers of EPA and OSHA Administrators said the chemical was safe, but it was not. Kaufman went even further saying that the company, BlackRock is run by Larry Fink who has connections to “Mr. Geithner, Mr. Summers and others in the administration.” He concluded that the go ahead to disperse Corexit was part of a cover-up to hide BP’s use of “the volume of oil that has been released” into the Gulf from the American public.

The string of pro-Big Oil policy continued despite the “biggest investment in stimulating a green economy in history,” the creation of more green jobs, tax credits for wind energy, money for environmental maintenance, and greening federal buildings in the stimulus bill according to TreeHugger. For one, no one in BP has been criminally charged for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. A community fund to pay victims of the spill was set up, but there was no real damage to BP’s profits. Even a prosecution has started against BP but the trial was delayed by Judge Barbier until January 14, 2013, conveniently after the November presidential elections. In mid-2011, when the debt-ceiling crisis was occurring, the “Obama administration gave $12.4 million in research grants to oil and gas companies…to help the industry improve the way it drills for oil and gas” according to Daily Beast Contributor Daniel Stone. At the same time, Democrats in Congress were decrying a deal which would not cut subsidies for oil companies (about a year later, Obama would support gutting those subsidies). As the year continued, his policy was still deeply connected to Big Oil despite what was said in the articles of “clean capitalist” magazines like Corporate Knights.

Earlier that year in March 2011, President Obama began a war in Libya. Officially its purpose  was to “assist an international effort authorized by the United Nations…Security Council…to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe…[and stop] all attacks against civilians…[by] target[ing]…air defense systems, command and control structures…of Gaddafi’s armed forces.” As a result, this war was advertised by the Obama Administration as a humanitarian war. But the real reason for war was not humanitarian reasons, it was oil. Antiwar.com lays it out clearly. In 2008, Gaddafi threatened the oil companies in Libya and then made an agreement that promised billions of barrels of oil with tough conditions to American oil companies. At the same time, the U.S. government plotted to stop the Russian oil company Gazprom from gaining Libyan oil. When the Libyan revolution began, Gaddafi refused to step down.  The 2008 agreement and the plot to stop the Russian oil company, connected to Vladimir Putin, was threatened. In addition, University of London Professor Gilbert Achar noted that a huge massacre in Libya would cause an “embargo on Libyan oil” which would hurt the volatile oil markets. This revealed the real reason for entering a war into Libya: Oil. Representative Ed Markey at the time also said the war was because of oil.

The connections of the war to oil are different depending on what source the information comes from. Black Star News in an April 2011 post echoed the positions of antiwar.com and Gilbert Achar. They argued that the war occurred because “America wants to control Africa’s oil supply…[and protect] U.S. oil companies and others are presently invested in Libya; these companies include Marathon, Hess, Conoco, Gulf, Occidental, British Petroleum (BP).” The post finally gets to the punch: “This [war] is about oil and power, not saving people.  It’s about maximizing profits.” Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation had a different analysis. He noted that “Libya’s new leaders…plan to favor their NATO backers [one of which is the United States] when handing out access to Libya’s oil.” Peter Dale Scott goes even farther, saying that the war was about protecting the declining “global petrodollar economy” which Gaddafi threatened just like Saddam Hussein did before the Iraq invasion in 2003. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the war was about oil (it cost over $1.1 billion dollars, according to Politifact) and was in Big Oil’s interest.

In the month of the Libya war beginning, March 2011, President Obama made a speech at Georgetown University officially about “America’s energy security.” In the speech, Obama touted the use of alternative energy, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and oil all together, later called the “all-of-the above” strategy. More importantly, he announced a goal to cut America’s dependence on oil by one-third through his “all-of-the above” energy plan. However, he noted that to achieve this plan, America’s oil supply would have to be increased through expediting drilling permits for oil companies. Yet again, the President was on the side of Big Oil. He remarked casually that after new supposedly “higher standards” had been put in place, the government had “approved 39 new shallow-water permits…seven deepwater permits…two permits last year for every new well that the industry started to drill” offshore. The influence of Big Oil in government was apparent once again as the discussion switched back to the aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill. In the speech, Obama revealed that Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was sent by him down to “the BP offices [where]…he essentially designed the cap” that supposedly stopped the oil from leaking into the Gulf. If this doesn’t sound like collusion between BP and the national government, I don’t know what is.

A few months later in June 2011, President Obama made a rash decision. He decided to release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. One news outlet, the Cable News Network (CNN) considered this an “economic stimulus…[in a time of] a looming supply  shortage…a wake up call to OPEC…[or] a warning shot to speculators in the oil market.” Other times in his administration he has tapped the national reserve, especially in times of “crisis”. This reserve was about 695.9 million barrels as of February 2012, which is about 36 days of oil consumption. Even though this is true, the releasing of oil just keeps America’s addiction on oil, which doesn’t solve any problems. It just keeps things at the status quo.

In late 2011 the policy of helping Big Oil continued. The infamous Keystone XL pipeline was proposed by TransCanada. It would be a pipeline that would snake across the western United States and would consist of drilling in dirty tar sands and overtopping the largest aquifer in the world, the Ogallala Aquifer. Environmental activists and other politicians opposed the action while others stood their ground, saying the pipeline would create jobs. An opinion posted on the Qatari-based news service, Al Jaazera, by a Tar Sands activist Bill McKibben expresses his frustration with the Obama Administration four months before the project was rejected. In his opinion, there were numerous “indication[s] from this administration…that it is prepared to grant the necessary permission for [this] project…[even] the State Department, at the recommendation of Keystone XL pipeline builder TransCanada, hired a second company to carry out the environmental review [which]…considered itself a “major client” of TransCanada.” This collusion of business and government to McKibben was “simply corrupt [and] potentially the biggest scandal of the Obama years,” an ongoing crime that President Obama didn’t even try to stop.

The Keystone XL pipeline’s rejection seemed a lapse in pro-Big Oil policy. But the pipeline was not delayed in January 2012 because of environmental considerations, but due to “the arbitrary nature of the deadline.” Even though there was a review done, it occurred with the help of one of TransCanada’s major clients. However, this was not a powerful pro-Big Oil development.  The powerful move was the renewed support of the “All of the Above” energy policy which was touted back in March 2011. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama touted the same energy policy based in the nationalist idea of “energy independence.” In February 2012, Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, justified such a policy by numerous statistics one would expect under a Republican administration:

Since 2008, U.S. oil and natural gases production has increased each year…[and] imports of foreign oil have decreased…[and] the Obama Administration put in place..new standards that ensured that [oil] drilling continued [after] the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

These were not the only justifications for this new energy policy. After the BP oil spill in the Gulf, hundreds of drilling permits for the region were approved by the Obama Administration. These numbers were higher than what Obama spoke of in March 2011. 308 permits were approved for “deep water drilling activities…and…113 permits for shallow water wells in the Gulf of Mexico.” More evidence of government collusion with Big Oil is the permitting of oil drilling “at levels seen before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill” on land and in the water. This resulted in “more oil produced [in 2011] in this country…since 2003.” This was conveniently made possible because America has more “oil…rigs at work in the field than the rest of the world.” While this seems like an overstatement, this phenomenon led the government to another conclusion. Obama allowed the “further exploration in the Arctic” and he established “an interagency Alaska working group…[to] review…Shells proposed exploration…in the Arctic.” For many environmentalists, this may be a betrayal of the initiatives in his administration that have helped the planet (pushing solar, wind, biofuels a little bit). Arctic exploration is not the only place the President pledges his support. Obama has allowed the building of dozens of pipelines in his term of office and has pledged to work with “TransCanada…to expedite the necessary federal permits” for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The next month, those permits were expedited. Obama signed an Executive Order on March 22nd, 2012 titled “Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure Projects”. The Executive Order told all Federal Agencies and departments to “significantly reduce the…time required to make decisions [on]…permitting and review of [Federal government] infrastructure projects.” Also it mandated that all steps be taken “to execute Federal permitting and review processes with maximum efficiency and effectiveness, ensuring the health, safety, and security of communities and the environment while supporting vital economic growth.”  Even though there is talk of a safe community and the environment, this was meant to expedite the Keystone XL pipeline and future pipelines.

How can a full analysis occur if time is limited and “economic growth” is promoted? In the speeches he made the same day, March 22, his support of the pipeline is evident. He told a crowd, mostly of his supporters, in Maljamar, New Mexico that “we’ve announced our support for more [pipelines] including” the Keystone XL pipeline.  He repeated the same message at Ohio State University and in Cushing, Oklahoma. Cushing is where the President explained his justification for approving this leg of the pipeline, echoing the themes of his executive order:

There’s a bottleneck…here because we can’t get enough…oil to our refineries fast enough… TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline to speed more oil from Cushing to…refineries down on the Gulf Coast.  And today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape…and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done…So the southern leg of it [is] a [government] priority…The northern portion…[is] going to…[be] review[ed] properly…if [the government approves this pipeline]…we going to see jobs and growth…all across the country.

The following month, after the pro-pipeline speeches, Obama tried to act all tough against the oil and gas industry. According to an April 18th CNN Article, he required “drillers to capture emissions of certain air pollutants from new wells.” But under his direction, the Environmental Protection Agency allowed companies to “burn the pollutants [in question]…until the start of 2015” in a “nod to industry concerns [that the]…rules were being enacted too quickly.” This is not only a pro-Big Oil move, but it shows he weighs the concerns of the common American lower than that of Big Oil.

This month, the Obama Administration made what the independent blog site, Firedoglake, called “a deeply corrupt move.” Companies that used hydraulic fracturing (fracking) only needed to “disclose what chemicals they use after the well has been drilled.” This was giving in to Big Oil, thanks to meetings at the White House after the original rule was proposed three months earlier. Lobbyists representing those interests helped change the rule to their liking. As Firedoglake put it, the decision “to side with big oil over the American people and basic common sense” is pathetic. This decision is a further sign that Obama is an “oiled” president.

This corrupted nature comes back again when you look at Obama’s stance on speculation. His response has been weak-handed. He has said that should be investigated by Attorney General Eric Holder, “but nothing [really] has happened [because]… he seems to kind of accept the logic [that] we need to produce more domestic oil…and alternative energy sources” according to Paul Jay of the Real News Network.  In addition, Jay notes that Obama “doesn’t…talk…about the issue of speculation, about position limits [or about] the financialization [of oil].” Fidelity Investments continues this idea saying that “Obama would like to crack down…but he doesn’t talk about it often…or have enough friends in Congress [and that]…Obama’s attack on oil speculators…[is] doomed to join his legislative Wish List to Nowhere.” But this is not an issue isolated to Obama. The lack of action on these issues goes from the President to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and lack of a meeting of the CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, created by the Dodd-Frank Act, since 2009. Then Fidelity gets to the punch: “Obama can’t keep his eye on the crude [oil] bubble for very long.”

As a result of all of these connections to Big Oil, it wouldn’t be a surprise that the President gets money from them. Even though this is true, Republicans receive most of the money from them resulting in ThinkProgress’s derogatory name: the “Grand Oil Party.” But, the facts are undeniable: Big Oil has given to the Obama reelection campaign. The ExxonMobil Corporation has already given Obama $14,914 and Chevron Corporation has given him $9,750; still both corporations favor Mitt Romney for President in terms of money. In addition, Koch Industries, which is usually considered a Tea Party financier, is also an oil refining company, has given Obama a measly $1,000. Not surprisingly, after the administration’s response to the Gulf Oil Spill, BP favors Obama’s reelection. More money was given to him than contributions to Eric Cantor and John Boehner combined. Overall, OpenSecrets details that President Obama is the 12th biggest recipient of money, out of the top 20 recipients in the oil and gas industry.  He has received $181,957 in his campaign coffers. This comes at a time after Obama supposedly led the effort to end Big Oil’s big tax breaks, which was defeated in the Senate due to their influence. In recent times, however, especially in the past year, it has become evident that Obama is on the side of Big Oil, more than ever.

Big Oil (the “supermajors”) is the world’s five or sometimes six biggest publicly-owned oil & gas companies including American-based Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips Company British-based Royal Dutch Shell and BP and French-based Total S.A. Of the American companies, Obama seems to be on their side completely and overall on Big Oil’s side. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s eight years in office was much more on the side of the oil companies, but Obama still has a significant stake. What benefits the powerful oil corporations in America will, in turn, benefit the other world players. If such companies have headquarters in the United States like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, this is firmly the case. President Obama is on the side of Big Oil and is subsequently an “oiled” President. Until the President admits that he is more on the side of the world’s large oil corporations than the middle class, he will continue rhetoric that seems to speak for all Americans.

Three related phenomena largely account for this inflammatory incivility: a meretricious media, more desperate than ever to survive; irresponsible religious and political figures, willing to enunciate increasingly extreme and outrageous views for high-profile notoriety; and the nature of the internet itself, the most powerful and pervasive system of communication yet devised.

The internet connects everyone to everyone else, conjuring global intimacy. Thanks to cell phones and YouTube, we can all be “in the moment” when a woman lets fly a racist rant in the London underground or a mob storms a public square in Madrid or Cairo or Oakland or a crime occurs somewhere on the planet. Every place appears as near or far as any other, here on our screen.

Modern technology can summon up flash mobs or instant wads of cash to protest or abet incipient events. We can weigh in instantly to “like” or condemn what we see or hear, calling forth responses to our own responses, ad infinitum. Aided by the anonymity of user names, the level of interchange on comment threads trends downward over time, not up, producing more heat than light. Our sense of familiarity, however illusory, with events or newsmakers, breeds a primal contempt that tends to focus personal and political frustrations into immoderate attacks that in turn provoke others.

Irresponsible political heavyweights also demean our discourse. Mitch McConnell declared that the top priority of Congressional Republicans was to make sure Obama is a one-term president. That’s a pathetic partisan agenda for a so-called major party leader, considering the many challenges we face as a nation and a species. Of course, such a lame and limited ambition is far easier to accomplish than trying to restore employment, boost the economy, reduce military spending, promote environmental health, improve education, etc, etc. But McConnell and his ilk are not really out to better the lot of average Americans. Their goal is to serve their sponsors and masters, who enrich and enable them.

Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham rail against Muslims and homosexuals from pulpits they call “Christian,” though the blind hatred they flaunt contradicts the love and tolerance Jesus Christ actually espoused. Phony Christian bigots like Graham and Robertson – and the Westboro Baptist Church – poison our atmosphere and disinhibit their followers to commit acts of violence. These false prophets spew enmity and discord in the name of religion, like the killers of abortion doctors who consider themselves “pro life,” a murderous irony they have not the eyes to see.

Media feeds on conflict as much as the Pentagon does and, like the military, may sometimes provoke it for their own ends. To whip up interest in the “information” they peddle for (decreasing) profit, media amplify the divisive words of bigots, fools and scoundrels (with someone like Robertson, they get a three-fer) and then play up the predictably outraged responses.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Network and numerous publications give platforms to political zombies like Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, to rouse the faithful and enflame opponents. Murdoch resuscitated Gingrich after his well-deserved political demise, granting him an artificial afterlife.

Murdoch’s largesse enabled the foredoomed Gingrich campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The ethically impaired former House Speaker made over-the-top remarks that provided provocative headlines, enlivening the deadly primary process, feeding the Murdoch machine.

A recent British government report declared Murdoch unfit to lead a major corporation. But who will stop him? Murdoch is a major polluter who ought to be fined for degrading our atmosphere.

Like the irresponsible political and religious figures they interview, media “personalities” feel a need to top one another or themselves, to raise the decibel level to maintain their visibility. These talking heads give their fans permission to speak and behave outrageously. After he shot an unarmed black teenager to death, George Zimmerman sought out Fox stalwart Sean Hannity for counsel. Why?

The Trayvon Martin killing has become a flashpoint for issues from gun rights to racial profiling. Martin and Zimmerman turned into instant symbols and martyrs for different points of view. Some public figures donned hoodies in support of Martin, while one company does a brisk business marketing rifle targets with a hooded figure in their bull’s eye.

Events like the Trayvon Martin murder are difficult to discuss – or even to perceive – on their own terms, devoid of the biased context into which such incidents “fit.” Our preconceptions determine the meanings of everything that is said or done.

Most public “discussion” consists of one side lobbing insults at the other from across an unbridgeable divide. There is little genuine give and take. Thesis and antithesis rarely move toward any synthesis. They merely re-enforce entrenched beliefs. Media promote and thrive on this sort of futile noise and conflict, a circus that distracts from the decreasing abundance of bread, enabling business and politics to proceed as usual with minimum interference.

Our lack of civility has consequences. Bullying – including cyber-bullying – of school-aged children by their peers (and in some cases, the parents of those peers) causes terrible harm, including suicide and murder. This trickle-down meanness merely follows the examples set by public figures in media and politics who belittle others for their religious preferences or sexual orientation.

With fewer defenses, our children are more likely to suffer the sometimes fatal effects of our toxic emotional environment before the rest of us. Mentally unstable individuals like Jared Loughner, who killed six people and injured fourteen in Tucson in 2011, also absorb the free-floating anger around them without a clear sense of what it signifies or where to direct it.

Even adults in traditionally calm corners of this world, such as the fanatical anti-Muslim Norwegian who murdered 77 of his countrymen to avoid multi-cultural contamination, can be twisted by the overheated sentiments of foaming politicians, amplified by media.

Who will take responsibility for such consequences?

There is a high price to be paid for allowing violent, hateful speech to predominate over more rational forms of public discourse. I fear we have only begun to pay it.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised …
The revolution will be live.

— From the 1970 hit song by Gil Scott-Heron

Last week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year, and 64 schools by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of its current enrollment, and thousands of experienced, qualified teachers.

But corporate media in other cities made no mention of these massive school closings – nor of those in Chicago, Atlanta, or New York City. Even in the Philadelphia media, the voices of the parents, students and teachers who will suffer were omitted from most accounts.

It’s all about balancing the budgets of cities that have lost revenues from the economic downturn. Supposedly, there is simply no money for the luxury of providing an education for the people.

Where will those children find an education? Where will the teachers find work?  Almost certainly in an explosion of private sector “charter schools,” where the quality of education – from the curriculum to books to the food served at lunch — will be sacrificed to the lowest bidder, and teachers’ salaries and benefits will be sacrificed to the profits of the new private owners, who will also eat up many millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies.

Why does there always seem to be enough money for military expansion, prisons, bank bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy, but not enough for education—or for jobs, housing, health care, or old age pensions?  These are not “welfare” but are part of the social contract for which we pay taxes and make social security payments.

In an article reprinted on Truthout on May 10th titled “Why Isn’t Closing 40 Philadelphia Public Schools National News?,” Bruce Dixon posed this answer:

The city has a lot of poor and black children. Our ruling classes don’t want to invest in educating these young people, preferring instead to track into lifetimes of insecure, low-wage labor and/or prison. Our elites don’t need a populace educated in critical thinking. So low-cost holding tanks that deliver standardized lessons and tests, via computer if possible, operated by profit-making “educational entrepreneurs” are the way to go.

Lifetimes of insecure, low-wage labor or prison”—this is very close to the “indentured servitude” that was abolished along with slavery by the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865.  The freed slaves are being recaptured by debt, beginning with the debt of school loans, followed by credit card debt, mortgage debt, and health care costs.

As was cynically observed in a document called the Hazard Circular, allegedly circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts in July 1862:

[S]lavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. . . . It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that.  [Quoted in Charles Lindburgh, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, (Washington D.C.: National Capital Press, 1913), page 102.]

The quotation may be apocryphal, but it graphically conveys the fate of our burgeoning indentured class.  It also suggests the way out: we must recapture the control of our money and banking systems, including the issuance of debt-free money (“greenbacks”) by the government.

Meanwhile, in Other Unreported News . . .

That alternative vision was put before a conference in Philadelphia in late April that drew delegates from all over the United States.  The theme of the first Public Banking in America conference, held at the Quaker Friends Center on April 28-29, was that to fix the economy, we first need to take back the “money power”—the power to create currency and credit.

Led by keynote speakers Gar Alperovitz and Hazel Henderson and highlighted in an electric speech by twelve-year-old Victoria Grant, the conference was all about solutions.  As summarized by OpEdNews editor Josh Mitteldorf:

There were two visions expressed . . . . The first is the very practical idea that states and cities around America could be rescued from insolvency if they had their own banks, instead of relying on commercial banks to borrow money through bonds. Tax-exempt bond issues supply money to states and municipal governments typically at 5 or 6% interest, while banks these days are able to borrow from the Fed at 1/4% per year.

The second vision is . . . the radically-subversive idea that the system we have for introducing money into the economy is a boon for the banks, but perhaps a major drag on our economy. Perhaps a simple, direct system of money creation by the Treasury Dept instead of the Fed would put an end to cycles of recession, and create a foundation for long-term prosperity.

Banking is a huge leech on our economy. 40% of every dollar we spend on goods and services — 40% of all that we create and all we consume — is siphoned off the top as bank interest in one form or another. (Calculations of Margrit Kennedy). The US Government is in the absurd position of paying interest to a private bank for every dollar that is put into circulation. The Federal Reserve system has privatized the power to create money, which, according to the Constitution, ought to belong to Congress alone. Presently, interest on the national debt costs the Federal government $500 billion in 2011, and (because of structural deficit spending) it is the fastest-growing portion of the Federal budget.

Five hundred billion dollars could be saved annually just by refinancing the federal debt through our own central bank, interest-free.  This is not an off-the-wall idea but has actually been done, very successfully.  Among other instances, it was done in Canada from 1939 to 1974, as was detailed by the youngest and oldest speakers at the conference, 12-year-old Victoria Grant and former defense minister Paul Hellyer, founder of the Canadian Action Party.  Another Canadian at the conference, Toronto Councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, has proposed that the Toronto city council could improve its finances by forming its own bank.

The direct solution to the economic crisis, urged by veteran money reformer Bill Still, would be for the federal government to simply create the money it needs, as the American colonists did by printing paper scrip and Abraham Lincoln did by printing greenbacks.

But cities and states don’t need to wait for a deadlocked federal Congress to act.  As Wong-Tam has proposed for Toronto, they can divest their public revenues from the too-big-to-fail banks and put them in their own publicly-owned banks.  These banks could then do what all banks do: leverage capital, backed by deposits, into money in the form of bank credit.

This newly-created bank money would then be available for the use of the local government interest-free (since the government would own the bank and would get the interest back as dividends).  Among other possibilities, the money could be used to restore the schools.  This would not be an expenditure but an investment, as illustrated by the G.I. Bill, which provided education and low-interest loans for returning servicemen after World War II.  Economists have determined that for every 1944 dollar invested in the G.I. Bill, the country received approximately $7 in return, through increased economic productivity, consumer spending, and tax revenues.

Legislation for public banks has now been introduced in 18 U.S. states, on the model of the highly successful Bank of North Dakota (BND).  Elaborated on at the Public Banking conference by Ed Sather and Rozanne Junker, the BND is currently the country’s only state-owned bank and has been a major factor in allowing the state to escape the recent credit crisis.  North Dakota is the only state to boast a significant budget surplus every year since the economic downturn of 2008.

Ellen Brown noted that 40% of banks globally are also publicly-owned.  These are largely in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), which also escaped the credit crisis, largely because their public banks did not rely on derivatives and, unlike private banks, lent counter-cyclically to cushion their economies from the downturn.

Conference speaker Samuel Giles proposed that even public universities could set up their own banks, which could then leverage university monies for the university’s own use, rather than giving those assets away to Wall Street to be speculated with and lent back at much higher interest rates.

Innovative Solutions for Pennsylvania

Speakers Michael Sauvante and Mike Krauss noted that efforts are underway in several Pennsylvania and Ohio municipalities to create public banks.  One possibility is for public banks to take an aggressive role in ending the foreclosure crisis by acquiring abandoned and foreclosed homes by eminent domain.  These homes could be added to the asset base of the bank, which could extend credit to restore them and then sell or rent them at reasonable rates.

Krauss noted that Philadelphia already has a strong effort underway to create a “land bank”—a bank to acquire, rehabilitate and create productive uses for the city’s more than 40,000 vacant properties—and legislation (HB 1682) has been introduced in the state legislature to enable this effort.  But the land bank proposed is not designed to function as a depository bank that leverages funds into credit.  Rather, it would simply work with appropriated funds or bond revenue. This is a positive step toward addressing a real need, but it could be enhanced by turning the land bank into a public bank—a chartered bank having the power to create money as credit on its books.

The efforts for developing public banks in Pennsylvania are being led by the Pennsylvania Project, which was a co-sponsor of the Philadelphia conference and is supported in its work by the Public Banking Institute and the Center for State Innovation.  The Pennsylvania Project is creating partnerships with other Pennsylvania public policy organizations to introduce legislation for a state Bank of Pennsylvania in 2013, after elections are held and a strong foundation of support has been laid.

Revolution Without Bloodshed or War

We live under a tyranny today that is just as intolerable and unjust as that in 1776, but violent revolution is no longer an option.  Our oppressors own the military and the media, and their FEMA camps are waiting for us.

If change is to come, it must be peaceful and legal, beginning with a revolution in the minds and hearts of the people.  The message of the Public Banking in America Conference was that we can throw off the yoke of the financial elite by making money and credit a public utility; and the most feasible place to start is at the local level, with publicly-owned banks.

For videos of some of the speakers see here.  More to come.  The Victoria Grant video has gone viral, approaching half a million hits, including copies.

The Federation of American Scientists estimates that India has a stockpile of 80-100 nuclear weapons while North Korea has less than ten. North Korea originally signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty on nuclear weapons (NPT) but withdrew in 2003.

Like Israel and Pakistan, also nuclear powers, India has never signed the NPT. Despite this, the US has supported the development of nuclear weapons in all three countries – India receiving particular support from George W. Bush and Obama. The 2008 India Civilian Nuclear Agreement — an agreement of cooperation between India, the US, and other providers of nuclear technology — is linked with plans to build dozens of nuclear plants in India, a country that exploded five nuclear devices at its Pokhran test site in 1998. Environmental journalist Gar Smith writes:

While this scheme will generate a lot of global cash-flow for the nuclear marketers and their government boosters, it could deal a death blow to nonproliferation hopes by allowing India to become the first country to buy nuclear materials without being a party to the NPT. In April 2010, Washington signed off on a deal that permits India to reprocess its own nuclear fuel. The arrangement, however, has raised fears in neighboring Pakistan, which is now expected to embark on a ‘significant nuclear military buildup’.

Meanwhile, the US government regularly lambasts North Korea for its nuclear weapons programme and, of course, Iran for an alleged nuclear weapons programme that, according to the 16 US intelligence agencies, does not exist.

As Noam Chomsky comments:

Small wonder that outside the West few can take the US charges against Iran very seriously…¹

The headline for the BBC article on India was neutral enough:

India test launches Agni-V long-range missile.

The headline for the article on North Korea struck a different tone:

UN “deplores” North Korea botched rocket launch.

The introduction to the Korean piece continued with the same emphasis:

The UN Security Council has deplored the launch by North Korea of a rocket which broke up shortly after take-off.

A statement issued after closed-door talks said the launch was in breach of two Security Council resolutions…’

The introduction to the India piece was positive, even celebratory:

India has successfully launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile able to carry a nuclear warhead, officials say…

India said the launch was “flawless” and the missile had reached its target…

With this, India joins an elite nuclear club of China, Russia, France, the US and UK which already have long-range missiles, although with a much greater range. Israel is also thought to possess them.

‘It was a perfect launch. It met all the test parameters and hit its pre-determined target’, SP Das, director of the test range, told the BBC. He confirmed the missile had flown more than 5,000km before reaching the target.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh congratulated the scientists for the “successful launch” of the missile.

If anyone on Planet Earth had anything negative to say about the launch, the BBC was unable to find them.

The primary source for views on the Indian launch were Indian. By contrast, North Korean opinion was buried in the last of five sections in the article. Perhaps no humanising comments from named North Korean officials or experts were available – the BBC provided only two bland, anonymous sentences from ‘North Korea’s state news agency KCN.’

Ask A World Policeman

The article on North Korea presented the missile launch as a threat eliciting punishment:

Earlier, Washington accused the communist state of threatening regional security. It said North Korea had isolated itself still further from the outside world.

The US has also cancelled a proposed food aid deal with Pyongyang.

A US National Security Council spokesman said they would look at additional sanctions if Pyongyang continued its ‘provocations’.

As for the Indian launch:

The BBC’s Andrew North in Delhi says Indian officials deny it, but everyone believes the missile is mainly aimed at deterring China…

The North Korean missile, then, was portrayed as a threat; the Indian missile as a deterrent. Additionally, the BBC commented: “Many outside the country saw the launch as an illegal test of long-range missile technology.” The sentence could apply to either launch – we will leave readers to guess in which article it appeared.

The article on North Korea repeatedly referenced US sources: “US ambassador Susan Rice”, “Washington”, “A US National Security Council spokesman”, “Washington” (again), and finally “White House spokesman Jay Carney”. When media discussion centres on global “Bad Guys” it is   US opinion that matters. This not so subtly portrays the US as the actual and rightful World Policeman. One might reasonably wonder what on earth events on the Korean peninsula ever had to do with the United States.

The North Korea piece lined up the denunciations, here White House spokesman Jay Carney:

North Korea is only further isolating itself by engaging in provocative acts, and is wasting its money on weapons and propaganda displays while the North Korean people go hungry.

Nothing along these lines appeared in the article on India, a country with 57 billionaires and one-third of the world’s poor. In January, India’s Premier Manmohan Singh called malnutrition in the country “a national shame” as he released a major survey that found 42 per cent of children under five were underweight. One of the NGOs that produced the report commented that, measured by the prevalence of malnutrition, India is “doing worse than sub-Saharan Africa”.

To round off the criticism, the BBC article on North Korea cited South Korea, the North’s main enemy:

South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan accused the North of a ‘clear breach of the UN resolution that prohibits any launch using ballistic missile technology’.

No mention was made of the Pakistani view of India’s launch. There was also no word at all on the view from “Washington” or the US more generally.

The silence is understandable. As discussed, while preaching against nuclear proliferation to countries like North Korea and Iran, the US and Britain have been working hard to arm both India and Pakistan.

In September 2003, Britain’s BAE Systems announced the sale of 66 Hawk jets to India in a £1 billion package. This constituted 10 times the value of annual UK development aid to India. In July 2010, a further 57 aircraft were sold in a deal worth £700,000,000 described by The Times of India as ‘a quantum jump for Indo-British military ties’.

The Hawks, which can also be used as ground-attack aircraft, are used to train Indian pilots to fly more powerful jets, including 139 BAE Systems Jaguar bombers built under licence. The Ministry of Defence accepts that Jaguars could deliver India’s nuclear weapons. The Indian government receiving these jets has fought three wars with Pakistan in the last 70 years.

In 2003, the Guardian provided the sensible emphasis in a piece entitled:  “5,000 jobs safe as India buys Hawks”.

Similarly, in March 2005, the press reported that the United States had agreed to sell two dozen F-16 nuclear-capable jet fighters to Pakistan. US Senator Larry Pressler commented in The New York Times:

Pakistan… is a corrupt, absolute dictatorship. It has a horrendous record on human rights and religious tolerance.²

It could be coincidence that, with important arms contracts and strategic alliances at stake, the BBC should fail to muster a single criticism of Indian nuclear missile technology. It could also be coincidence that the BBC demonises and lambasts an enemy of the same state-corporate interests. But, in truth, the pattern is so obvious, so consistent, over years and decades. We can debate the precise mechanisms corrupting BBC performance – the fact that senior managers and trustees are Establishment grandees selected by the government of the day. Or we can focus on the role of the entire corporate media system in furthering state-corporate power – system-wide corruption that generates industrial strength pressure to conform on the less overtly corporate BBC. Whatever the reasons, there is no question that the BBC heavily promotes the interests of power at the expense of honesty, critical thought and compassion.

1. Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, Hamish Hamilton, 2010, p.220
2. Pressler, “Dissing Democracy in Asia”, The New York Times, March 21, 2005

Three former intelligence officials with experience on Near East and South Asia told IPS they regard Treasury’s claim of a secret agreement between Iran and Al-Qaeda as false and misleading.

That claim was presented in a way that suggested it was supported by intelligence. It now appears, however, to have been merely a propaganda line designed to support the Barack Obama administration’s strategy of diplomatic coercion on Iran.

Under Secretary of Treasury David S. Cohen announced last July that the department was “exposing Iran’s secret deal with Al-Qaeda allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory.” The charge was introduced in connection with the designation of an Al-Qaeda official named Yasin al-Suri as a terrorist subject to financial sanctions.

The Treasury claim has been embraced by the right-wing Weekly Standard and others aligned with hardline Israeli views on Iran, as primary source evidence of an alliance between Iran and Al-Qaeda.

But Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for Near East and South Asia, told IPS the allegation of a “secret deal” between Iran and Al-Qaeda “has never been backed up by any evidence that would justify such a term” and that it is “a highly misleading characterisation of interaction between Iran and Al-Qaeda….”

Pillar said the recently released bin Laden documents “not only do not demonstrate any agreement in which Iran condoned or facilitated operations by Al-Qaeda, they contradict the notion that there was any such agreement.”

“I’ve never seen anything that suggests that happened,” said another former intelligence official, referring to an Iran-Al Qaeda agreement. “I’m very sceptical about that.”

A third former intelligence official said Treasury’s “secret deal” claim “doesn’t pass the BS test” and noted that it is perfectly aligned with the Obama administration’s policy of pressure on Iran.

The official said the Treasury Department’s push for its “secret deal” line is emblematic of a larger split in the intelligence community between those for whom intelligence is secondary to their role in “counterterrorism” policy and the rest of the community.

“The counterterrorism types are like used car salesmen,” the former official told IPS. “They are always overselling something. They have to show that they are doing important work.”

The actual text of the July 28, 2011 “designation” of Yasin al-Suri suggests that the claim of such a “secret deal” is merely a political spin on the fact that Iran dealt with al-Suri on the release of prisoners.

It says that Yasin al Suri is an Al-Qaeda facilitator “living and operating in Iran under agreement between Al-Qaeda and the Iranian government”. Iranian authorities, it said, “maintain a relationship with (al-Suri) and have permitted him to operate within Iran’s borders since 2005″.

The designation offers no other evidence of an “agreement” except for the fact that Iran dealt with al-Suri in arranging the releases of Al-Qaeda prisoners from Iranian detention and their transfer to Pakistan.

The official notice of a 10-million-dollar reward for al-Suri on the website of the “Rewards for Justice” programme under the Diplomatic Security office of the State Department also indicates that the only “agreement” between Iran and Al-Qaeda has been to exchange prisoners.

“Working with the Iranian government,” it said, “al-Suri arranges the release of al Qaeda personnel from Iranian prisons. When al Qaeda operatives are released, the Iranian government transfers them to al- Suri, who then facilitates their travel to Pakistan.”

Neither the Treasury Department nor the State Department, which joined the February 2012 press briefing on the reward for finding al- Suri, referred to the fact that Iran had been forced to deal with al- Suri and to release Al-Qaeda detainees in order to obtain the release of the Iranian diplomat kidnapped by Pakistani allies of Al-Qaeda in Peshawar, Pakistan in November 2008.

In one of the documents taken from the Abbottabad compound and published by West Point’s Counter-Terrorism Center last week, a senior Al Qaeda official wrote:

We believe that our efforts, which included escalating a political and media campaign, the threats we made, the kidnapping of their friend the commercial counselor in the Iranian Consulate in Peshawar, and other reasons that scared them based on what they saw (we are capable of), to be among the reasons that led them to expedite (the release of these prisoners).

In response to the IPS request for clarification of the “secret agreement” claim, John Sullivan, a spokesman for the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, declined to answer any questions on the subject or to allow IPS to interview Eytan Fisch, the assistant director of the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence office.

In briefing journalists on al-Suri last February, Fisch had again invoked the alleged Iran-Al Qaeda “secret agreement” last February.

Sullivan defended the Treasury Department’s position on the issue, however, against criticism based on the publication of the bin Laden documents. “We based our action on Yasin al-Suri on a broad array of information that far exceeds what was recently made public,” Sullivan said in an e-mail to IPS.

Asked about the hint by the Treasury spokesman that department officials used still-classified material as the basis for the claim of a “secret agreement”, former national intelligence officer Pillar called it “disingenuous”.

The origins of the Treasury Department’s “secret deal” claim indicate that it was intended to generate press stories that would increase political and government support for pressure on Iran through economic sanctions and military threats.

The designation of Yasin al-Suri as a terrorist subject to financial sanctions July 28, 2011 did not have any impact on Al-Qaeda funding. The objective was to allow Treasury to generate press coverage of its charge of a secret Iran-Al Qaeda agreement. The timing of the move coincided with a shift in Obama administration strategy from diplomatic engagement to maximising pressure on Iran.

During the period when neoconservatives were pushing for an explicit policy of support for regime change in Iran during the first George W. Bush administration, U.S. officials frequently talked as though any Al-Qaeda presence in Iran was evidence of Iran’s cooperation with the terrorist organisation.

But as ABC News reported on May 29, 2008, Bush administration officials were acknowledging privately that they were not complaining about Iranian policy toward Al-Qaeda operatives in Iran, because Iran had “kept these al Qaeda operatives under control since 2003, limiting their ability to travel and communicate”.

One official said Al-Qaeda officials under Iranian control, “some of whom are quite important,” were “essentially on ice”.

Israel has continued, however, to use its relations with friendly news media, especially in the UK, to generate disinformation about alleged joint Iranian-Al Qaeda planning for terrorist actions.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News carried a story February 15, 2012 citing “intelligence sources” from an unnamed state as suggesting that Iran had been supplying Al-Qaeda with “training in the use of advanced explosives” as well as some funding and a safe haven “as part of a deal first worked out in 2009….”

The report quoted the intelligence sources as saying that Iran wanted to use the threat of Al-Qaeda retaliation against Western targets as “revenge for any military strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities”.

And now, there will be surveillance drones. Congress recently passed a bill that opens the gates to widespread use of surveillance drones on US soil. There has been relatively little coverage of this alarming development: drones, so far associated with our illegal war in Pakistan and Yemen, are soon to become a domestic mainstay. On our shores, they will be used for law enforcement and border protection, but also commercially, for real estate, entertainment and journalistic purposes, for example. One prominent drone showcased on the internet is a hummingbird drone. As the name suggests, it’s tiny, quick and highly mobile. A popular video shows the hummingbird drone entering a building and flying down a corridor, transmitting everything it sees. Imagine the possibilities.

What is the effect of all this lost privacy? How does it change our behavior? Because surely it does; we are apt to behave differently when we feel we are alone or watched. What will our personal lives be like as so much more of them is made public?

The French philosopher Michel Foucault argues that constant surveillance has a devastating effect. It’s a subtle form of oppression. When we feel we are being watched, we are more self-conscious of our behavior, more likely to watch what we do and conform to what we think the surveyors want or expect. The hawks among us say this is a good thing: if you’re doing nothing wrong, what do you have to fear from a hummingbird drone? But it’s not as simple as that.

Constant surveillance, Foucault maintained, can be a kind of torture—a revelation implemented by 19th century prison architects. It’s also ideal for authoritarian government in that it’s a highly efficient form of power: authority doesn’t need to coerce individuals physically to behave a certain way; surveillance inserts authority’s eye inside the individual, and he monitors himself. Surveillance enables power to be anonymous, Foucault says, which is especially devastating. You don’t know exactly why you are being watched, or exactly what’s expected of you, and ultimately cultivates a kind of inbred paranoia where you are unsure and timid about everything you do.

Further, Foucault suggests, surveillance that is widely established in society softens the ground for overt political oppression, because it makes us less resistant to breaches of our rights.

This thought occurred to me following the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision to uphold the right of prison officials to strip-search anyone entering a prison facility, no matter how minor the offense. In the case in question, a man was strip-searched after being arrested for an unpaid fine; his arrest was mistaken—he had already paid the fine. The Supreme Court defended the right to strip-search him anyway. Clearly this would seem to undermine our cherished notion of presumed innocence, and it grievously offends our personal dignity. But such galling invasions of privacy, and disregard for personal dignity, become increasingly acceptable when we are already accustomed to them more broadly—all the time, in subtle ways.

The political problem with all this surveillance is obvious, if we’d care to admit it. The political authorities have so much more access to the details of our lives, and in the wrong hands, could do real harm. The only thing protecting us is the character of those in power who collect all this information—and swear they will do nothing objectionable with it. Regarding the new National Defense Authorization Act, which sanctions the president’s power to detain indefinitely or even assassinate US citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist organizations, Obama tried to allay fears by arguing that his administration will use discretion and judgment in exercising this power. What about subsequent administrations? Our founding fathers were highly concerned to design a government that was impervious to corruption by the character flaws of individual office holders. The War on Terror has steadily rendered us vulnerable to just that.

What is perhaps most remarkable in all this is how we are largely unperturbed by the growing surveillance state. Indeed, we jump headlong into these new technologies that allow us to be watched. The ACLU is like a voice in the wilderness screaming about civil rights threats, but we’re too busy shopping online, sharing intimate personal details on Facebook, and Tweeting our most mundane revelations.

When I raise these concerns with my students, some consider them overly alarmist. Most are unfazed. I pressed them on this recently, and one student pointed out that they were 10 years old when the Patriot Act was implemented following the 9-11 attacks. They have also spent half their lives with the internet, email, and smartphones, and so, have known nothing else. In short, surveillance is their norm.

And they have known only benevolent, or at least innocuous, surveillance to date. Does this mean they trust the powers that know so much about them, and could do so much with that knowledge? When I ask that question, the response is almost universally negative. They have very little confidence in the ruling parties—and that’s a view shared by populations across the spectrum. So what’s going on? Why are we giving so much information—and ultimately power—to authorities we have such little confidence in?

There are a variety of factors at work here. On one hand, you might say, we’re just lazy, or too enamored with new technologies, to worry about who is watching us and why. Alternately, as Boston College sociologist Juliet Schor has argued, we are a society increasingly suffering from ‘time poverty’: we work long hours, commute long distances, ferry our kids to and from countless activities, and in our frenzy, have come to rely on the multiple conveniences offered by the new technology that helps us get through our frantic schedules. In general, these new media are so fully integrated into our lives that we simply can’t imagine living without them. They have gotten us accustomed to levels of convenience such as we’ve never known before—a convenience directly proportionate to the amount personal information we surrender.

Underlying all of this, however, is something I have thought about for a while. As a society, we have lost sight of the significance of privacy, and that it is essential to freedom—and democracy. We willingly give up our privacy in the belief that our freedom remains untouched through it all. Indeed, in a War on Terror, forgoing our privacy seems like an easy sacrifice, especially when you get the wondrous conveniences of all the new media in return. But freedom without privacy, Foucault points out, is no freedom at all.

The more we are watched, he argues, we come to feel less free to be unique, quirky, sometimes eccentric individuals. Surveillance exerts a covert pressure. Under constant surveillance, we are more prone to conform, less liable to ask vexing social questions that might draw attention to ourselves and upset someone—who? We are less inclined to develop our own ideas and opinions, work them out in our thoughts and words, test them in public venues—and stick to them. We become more careful, less likely to take chances and engage in risky behavior. But democracy requires creative, independent, fearless individualism.

There is no halting the progress of technology, a progress that has become frighteningly quick in the digital age. However, this in itself is no excuse to accept a looming profusion of hummingbird drones on our streets and in our neighborhoods. The surveillance drones will come, to be sure, but we must watch them in turn—and the watchers. It starts when we recall that privacy is an essential good, an inalienable and non-negotiable right, as the authors of our Constitution—in an age very far removed from our technologies—once understood very well.

How times have changed since then with media monopolies lobotomizing news, the centralizing of newspaper and broadcast reporting which has created a corporate-protectorate, the looming death of independent publishers and book sellers, thanks partly to Amazon, and the evisceration of US mail delivery service, thanks to spineless Democrats, treasonous Libertarians and reckless Republicans.

In fact, much of the ugliness in the media associated with Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, Beck and Murdoch and mainstream corporate press shills is just back to the future in this country’s media history.

Let’s flip back 400 years when the first rags, newspapers, called for the murder of the land’s aborigines, inciting the white aliens to take land, burn villages and crucify the “sculking” and “barbarous” Indigenous peoples and “rebellious Negroes.”

A new book, sort of a first-of-its-kind, takes the reader on that journey to end up here in today’s day and age of a democratic crisis largely created by who controls the media, how people access news and information, and what narratives our citizens are actually “consuming” and why those narratives are slanted, misrepresented or scrubbed altogether by the SCLM – so-called liberal media.
“It is our contention that newspapers, radio, and television played a pivotal role in perpetuating racist views among the general population,” write Juan Gonzales and Jose Torres in their new well researched and necessary book, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (Verso, 2011).

What do Torres and Gonzales find out? The history of alternative presses – run by Indigenous peoples, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians – has all but vanished, even from the halls of journalism schools. The dig up this amazing history how the vile racism of Manifest Destiny and Empire building, and the supremacist beliefs of lawmakers, thinkers, clergy, and, of course, the editors of the white press did not always go unchallenged in a White-dominated society.

The stories are haunting, and our American history is replete with editors calling for the lynching of abolitionists, the burning and wrecking of alternative presses, and much of the motivation was embedded hatred toward Indigenous peoples, Latinos, and Blacks.

However, it’s clear early on in this book that the two Latino authors know history has repeated itself, constantly, when it comes to media and the Press: “Descriptions of ‘Sculking’ or ‘barbarous’ Indians were commonplace then, much as today’s news media use terms such as ‘wolf packs,’ ‘drug gangs,’ and ‘super-predators’ as monikers for non-white criminals…. Those early accounts thus establish a voluminous and entirely one-sided newspaper narrative: Native Americans were depicted as cunning, barbaric, and evil – and certainly undeserving of the vast lands coveted by the European settlers.”

There are so many magnificent stories in Torres and Gonzalez’ book, about brave editors trying to stop slavery through the pen and bully pulpit facing mobs, thugs, corrupt police and judges, and broken presidents.

This book is an essential read not only for journalists, students of media or those at the forefront of the Occupy Movement. This is our country’s history, scrubbed in many cases, of how people of color did fight the white color line with varying degrees of success.

It’s telling that many of the book’s jacket blurbs attest to News for All the People‘s groundbreaking resonance: “The historic inability of marginalized communities to control their own images has been devastating. News for All the People illustrates that this lack of control hasn’t been by accident. It’s a part of a greater story of media control and ownership that traces back to the creation of the United States. An essential read,” writes James Rucker, founder of ColorOfChange.org.

If it’s not already obvious to Real Change News readers, the point today is how those stories of the marginalized get into print or film or on TV or over the radio or Internet? Who controls the media? Books like People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, or anything written by Studs Terkel, or the work of Barbara Ehrenreich, in Nickle and Dimed, or the huge trilogy, Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano, that covers the entire history of the Americas, give voice to people of color, poor people, labor activists, civil society, slaves and those that revolted against tyranny of many types.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where media may have monopolistic might through the few corporations controlling what most Americans watch or hear to get their news:

• Disney (market value: $72.8 billion)
• AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90.7 billion)
• Viacom (market value: $53.9 billion)
• General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390.6 billion)
• News Corporation (market value: $56.7 billion)
• Yahoo! (market value: $40.1 billion)
• Microsoft (market value: $306.8 billion)
• Google (market value: $154.6 billion)

Gonzales and Torres go four centuries back to the present, making a clear case on how these marginalized people of color literally fought to get the funds and show the mettle to publish their papers. There were amongst them contradictions, to be sure. Many Indigenous editors held slaves. Some of the white Hispanic editors were proponents of “Indian Removal.” Some elegant cases, though, are part of that story Torres and Gonzalez give us. People like escaped slave Frederick Douglass not only employed black male writers at his newspapers, he was a feminist who employed dozens of female writers.

The authors give us the case of the Cherokee, John Rollin Ridge, a writer and novelist, who wrote a novel about Joaquín Murieta, the California so-called bandit, but who moved to California and founded the Sacramento Bee. Here is that paper’s first editor and publisher, an Indigenous person, who has virtually disappeared from history. He sold the paper to James McClatchy, one of his employees. McClatchy developed the Sacramento Bee into the flagship newspaper of the McClatchy newspaper chain.

Now this is what’s so superb about Torres and Gonzalez’ work – they find on the McClatchy website, their official history, no mention that a Cherokee was the founder of their flagship paper. “They make it seem like James McClatchy actually started the Bee. But it’s this kind of expunging of the actual history of African Americans and Latinos and Native Americans in the development of the American press that is what really—another major theme of our book is to resurrect that history and have a more inclusive history of how our press developed, that there were all kinds of folks who have played pivotal roles, and actually heroic roles, in the development of a free press in America that have been expunged from the official histories,” Gonzales said recently in an interview on Democracy Now.

Gonzalez co-founded Democracy Now in 1996; currently, this daily news show – The War and Peace Report – is on more than 950 TV and radio stations. Here’s Democracy Now‘s vision statement: “For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information.” This ties into the under girder of the Torres/Gonzalez book.

As one of Democracy Now‘s founders, Gonzalez has codified his own 30 years working in corporate media and 15 years with Democracy Now into this seven-year book project with Torres, a journalist, a former National Association of Hispanic Journalists deputy director, and adviser for the media reform organization, Free Press.

To reiterate: News for All the People is a tribute to the powerful independence of Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Asian people in attempting to bring to their communities news and perspectives counter to the white supremacist, expansionist, and war-mongering system that stole hundreds of millions of acres of land from Indigenous peoples, Mexicans, and Tejanos. It is a criticism of supremacist editors who aided and abetted the lynchings and murders of not only Blacks, but Mexicans and Asians, and not just in some backwater on the Delta, but in the center of Los Angeles.

Gonzalez synthesizes why this project was galvanized in the first place during an interview on his own show, Democracy Now, speaking with Amy Goodman: “I never was able to clearly understand why our media system is the way it is. The American people love to hate the media, in terms of their constant frustration with how newspapers and television and radio don’t provide accurate coverage. But it’s especially true among people of color. African Americans and Latinos and Native Americans and Asians have always felt denigrated and somehow misrepresented, deeply, by the American media system.”

What is it to be an American? That question has been wrested away from all the “other” races and ethnicities and from those of the female gender, as well as all the people deemed “The Other,” who are not part of the white race, or part of the one percent, or part of the monied elite with the ears of judges, politicians and CEOs glued to their every word.

In many ways, this book, also traces with aplomb the history of newspapers in this country, vaunting the lives, struggles and voices of publishers and editors who stuck their necks out. Key to this book’s foundation and keen story telling is a deep look at the evolution of newspapers and the press in this country’s history before, during and after the country’s founding.

The very first newspaper on this continent was Publick Occurrences, founded in 1690 in Boston. This was a three-page sheet, the first newspaper, which was was suppressed by the Massachusetts Council after one issue, “because it had some provocative articles in it,” Gonzales said.

“And all of the articles were about the threats of Native Americans, except there was one positive article. And that was about how some Christianized Indians in Plymouth were giving thanks to God on Thanksgiving. But generally—and so, Publick Occurrences set the prototype for how race would be covered in America, because every newspaper subsequent to that, throughout the colonial period, a huge portion of the content of newspapers was for the settlers to know what the Indians were up to.”

This book is replete with the stories that have not just been printed on the back pages of history books, but in some cases disregarded – scrubbed – completely. Those people of color running and writing for the Press were in many cases also anti-war and anti-imperialist. Frederick Douglass was the editor of several African-American newspapers throughout his lifetime and the most vocal opponent of the U.S. war against Mexico (1846-48).

In his papers, Douglass was railing against this war on Mexico. Here’s a quote from one of his articles that appeared 18 months into the Mexican-American War: “We have seen for eighteen months, the work of mutilation, crime and death go on, each advancing step sunk deeper in human gore. By every mail has come some new deed of violence. Cities have been attacked, and the cry of helpless women and children has risen, amid the shrieks and agony of death and dishonor. The living have gone forth, and dead corpses encased in lead have returned. Thousands of widows and orphans have sent up to the heavens their pitiful wail… And yet all is quiet as under the most perfect despotism. There is no united appeal, which would make the rulers tremble; no thronging voices of petition, no indignant rebuke, no prayer, ‘Lord, how long?’”

Finally, News for All the People takes us into the modern era of Latinos, Asian, Indigenous peoples, and Blacks fighting for their own voices in media. They get into the debates about how free and open the Internet will stay, if it ever was free/open in the first place. Both authors are clear about the need for an alternative press and more debate and discussion of the news for and by the corporate war state.

“One of the things that we’ve uncovered is that this fundamental debate that is constantly occurring is: does our nation need a centralized system of news and information, or does it need a decentralized, autonomous system? And which serves democracy best?” González said. “It turns out that in those periods of time when the government has opted for a decentralized or autonomous system, democracy has had a better opportunity to flourish, racial minorities have been able to be heard more often and to establish their own press. In those periods of the nation’s history when policies have fostered centralized news and information, that’s when dissident voices, racial minorities, marginalized groups in society are excluded from the media system.”

This book will help contextualize how bastardized, propagandized and mean media outlets like Fox News or Clear Channel have become, how the limited number of publishers controlling a majority of printed materials is bad for democracy, and what gave rise to those pugnacious independent writers and alternative periodicals fighting to expose the government-corporate role in stifling debate.

In These Times, the Texas Observer, Mother Jones, ProPublica, The Nation, Truthout, Yes Magazine, Orion Magazine and Democracy Now, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Truthdig, et al. give us some hope that an alternative press – hence mainstream – will gain favor over the profit-driven drivel and war-promoting yammering going on in the white media.

Barrister Robert Jay, QC, the pondering lead counsel for the inquiry into press ethics has been praised for his diverging questioning into the machinations of the Murdoch clan.  One of his bright moments against the mogul was to have happened when Jay probed the decision of The Sun in 1997 to back Tony Blair in the elections.  Suddenly, it seemed, the shock jock rag had turned its hand away from the Tories and placed it firmly on the shoulders of New Labour.  The spin doctor love affair thereby became a marriage.

Jay had his impressive moments but to what end?  Martin Kettle strikes an optimistic note, claiming that the appearance of the Murdochs before the Levenson inquiry and the Commons media select committee in 2011 ‘mark the first time that the Murdoch dynasty has ever been compelled to account for itself to the system of democratic government that it does so much to influence’ (Guardian, Apr 25).  Kettle ignores the ingratiating political forces that allow such a lack of accountability to thrive in the first place.

Murdoch remains a grand vizier, pulling the strings and being the ventriloquist of political puppets, a figure who exerts a control over public opinion that is always hard, if not impossible, to gauge yet all too apparent.  Media analysts claim otherwise, seeing the Murdoch dynasts as dinosaurs awaiting their gradual extinction.  In the fractious, nebulous world of online media, such paper gods are not so much going to be shredded as bypassed, becoming museum pieces in high-tech environs.

Murdoch, quite rightly, disagrees.  As he made it clear in the third Boyer lecture delivered in 2008, newspapers will continue to exist.  Obsolescence will only come to ‘the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers’.

That bond has been a fetid one.  Press ethics, at least through the eyes of such media moguls, tends to be viewed through a municipal sewerage system, and Murdoch hardly let on that there was any ‘influence’ to speak of.  “I want to say, Mr Jay, that I, in 10 years of his power, never asked Mr. Blair for anything.  Nor indeed did I receive any favours.  If you want to check that, I think you should call him.”  Let us ignore, of course, Blair’s incorporation into the Murdoch family by becoming godfather to Rupert’s daughter Grace, or the more recent courtship of the current British Prime Minister, who visited Murdoch on his daughter Elizabeth’s yacht in 2008.

When Jay began pressing Murdoch on the ‘subtlety’ inherent in the alleged Blair-Murdoch interactions, the reply was blunt. “I’m afraid I don’t have much subtlety about me.”  That should have been evident in the Cameron government’s dealings with News Corp over its efforts to increase its stake in British pay operator BSkyB.  Culture minister Jeremy Hunt is the latest victim of the dynastic family’s influence, given allegations that he allowed the family a back channel to ‘influence’ the bid.  “This”, he fumed, “is categorically not the case”. (First Post, April 25). Such is the nature of rage born of impotence.

Son James, ever in the shadow of his father, has adopted the same line.  The Sun was not in the business of backing different horses based on quid pro quos.  What Jay did do was to simply allow the Murdochs to reveal and expand upon their influence over their paper empire and the political forces they chose to influence.  News Corporation, at the end of the day, had only one person to answer to, and one family to pay homage to.

As Martin Dunn in The Guardian (April 25) noted, Murdoch has over the years managed to make the manipulation of power “seem as dull as chartered accountancy.”  The pregnant pause is his metier, and this was used against his inquisitors with effect.  Amidst the struggles before the committee, the patriarch remains in command, slightly blunted by the phone hacking scandal, but still uncompromising.  He has bonds to maintain, and levers to pull.

Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone …

— Maya Angelou, 1928 – Present

If destabilization, duplicity, insurgency and mass murder could surprise yet again, with the blame of the victim adding to the “shock and awe”, after Libya, Syria would certainly be a case in point.

America’s decades long plan  for another puppet government and quasi client state status for the country is well underway. Any observer of the shenanigans within the US Embassy in Damascus would be forgiven for mistaking it for a covert operations centre rather that a seat of diplomacy.

Michel Chossudovsky gives graphic life to Ambassador Ford’s – surely coincidentally – eminently pertinent and relevant qualifications.

Of course, no plan for a country’s ruination is complete without the help of the UN. Think Libya and Resolution 1973, the green light for a “humanitarian” blizkrieg, regime change, razed towns, murder from air and ground on an industrial scale, including most of the country’s leading family, its small grandchildren, and the butchering of Colonel Gaddafi, the country’s sovereign leader, whose body is still unaccounted for.

Lynch-law ruled under UN mandate.

Who then, better to be appointed “Peace Envoy” to Syria than Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General (1997-2006) who silently acquiesced to the deaths on average of 6,000 children a month in Iraq from “embargo-related causes”, throughout the 119 months of his tenure, bowing to the US-UK driven UN embargo?

Inevitably, for his silence, the man who one diplomat described as “like Pontius Pilate, he washes his hands”, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, jointly with the UN for, amongst other delusional rubbish, his “emphasizing its obligations as with regard to human rights.”

Presumably this “emphasis” also applied to his deafening muteness as America and Britain illegally bombed Iraq for his entire tenure, often daily, routinely re-destroying vital infrastructure and erasing lives in uncounted numbers.

The UN’s Baghdad cabal, with its fine restaurant and barbecue parties, ensconced at the Canal Hotel at Iraq’s expense were in a perfect position to visit these sites, record and account. They never bothered.

That was yesterday. Apart from Annan, the UN has another weapon for Syria — UN diplomats’ wives.

The wives of the German and British Ambassadors to the UN, Frau Huberta Voss-Wittig and Lady Sheila Lyall Grant, have released a video appeal and an online petition to President Assad’s wife, Syria’s First Lady, Asma al Assad. A performance of skin crawling, patronizing, head patting, treacled trash, which reflects nothing but the UN’s duplicity and its representatives privileged, reality- removed lives in its ivory tower.

The “initiative”, the pampered pair stress, is entirely independent, theirs alone, and nothing to do with their husbands.

Of course, ladies.

Frau Voss-Wittig’s involvement, it might be surmised, lies in “The German ‘no’ to the US about Iraq”, in 2002.  “Historically this was the deepest ever division between the White House and any post-cold-war German Chancellor.”

Additionally, in August 2002, Germany and France agreed on the “Declaration of Schwerin”, named for the German town where their representatives had a working dinner, resolving that they “had to oppose the war … and that they had to do it in public and as forcefully as possible.” An overt collision course with the US and UK.

Only when Angela Merkel took office were links tentatively repaired formally, but “shock-waves” remained. Two wives have clearly taken delivery of bricks and tools and set about erecting bridges, never mind demolishing those of others.

Sheila Lyall Grant is the wife of Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former political Director General of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a post with wide responsibilities including for Iraq, 2007-2009, and also line manager of post-invasion UK Ambassadors to Iraq.

He was senior policy adviser to the Foreign Secretary on various strategic Foreign Office priorities regarding Iraq, in which capacity he attended major European, G8, UN, OSCE and NATO meetings.

Sir Mark clearly went through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s rigorous and scrupulous selection process as to suitability for key posts:  “I was not an Arabist. I haven’t been posted in the Middle East”, he told the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq on January 20, 2010.

However, he added,  “It naturally fell to the Foreign Office to look at where Britain’s long-term strategic interests were in Iraq and in the wider region …”

The Iraq priority for Sir Mark had been “a strong economy”.

Whilst an  “abidance of human rights and better social conditions, better social delivery to the people (were) highly desirable, I don’t say it is absolutely essential in the near future”, he told the Inquiry. (Emphasis mine.) “Let them rot” comes to mind.

Given that Nuri al Maliki’s Iraq is now firmly allied with Iran, and a disaster on every level, with economy, health, malnutrition and social conditions worse than the embargo years, it might be thought that the Foreign Office and Sir Mark would think twice before stepping aside, as his “independent” wife became another regional unguided missile.

The wives petition, which is pretty much the same as their toe-curling video reads, in part:

Dear Asma,

Some women care for style and some women care for their people. Some women struggle for their image and some women struggle for their survival. Some women have forgotten what they preached about peace and some women can only pray for their dead.

Hundreds of Syrian children have already been killed or injured. One day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed. What will your answer be, Asma? That you, Asma had no choice?

Every single child had a name and a family. Their lives will never be the same again. Asma, when you kiss your own children goodnight, another mother will find the place next to her empty.

These children could all be your children. They are your children. Stand up for peace, Asma. Speak out now. Stop being a bystander. No one cares about your image. We care about your action. Right now.

Lady Lyall Grant, has been a diplomat since 1980. Her most recent post was Head of VIP Visits at the Protocol Directorate in the heart of government, Whitehall.

Clearly her induction course in protocol did not include instructions on how to address the wife of a Head of  State.

Incidentally, Sir Mark apparently cares as little about the UN as he did Iraq. Asked at the Inquiry about the current role of UN in Iraq, he replied that they were no longer there after the bombing of their building in, he hesitated, then said,“2005, was it?”

The bombing of the Canal Hotel, which killed seventeen, including the Head of Mission, Sergio de Mello, and injured scores, was on August 19, 2003.

Corrected by the Chairman, Sir Mark responded,  “2003, was it? I apologise”, apparently as sanguine about his colleagues being blown to bits as in assessing that basic provisions to sustain Iraqi lives were not “absolutely essential.”

Now, for Syria, in a  crisis so clearly manipulated from without, as Kofi Annan ratchets up the number of “UN Observers” from ten to three hundred – surely as with Iraq, many will be meddlers, spies and worse — Sheila Lyall Grant writes,  “One day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed.”  Every child “had a family and a name.”

The child victims of Afghanistan, decimated by the invasion, also had names – but the Taliban was blamed. As did their small counterparts in Iraq since that illegal takeover, the 4.5 million orphans, 600.000 of whom live on the streets, are still somehow the fault of Saddam Hussein, and their traumatized little global siblings in Libya are still somehow the fault of Colonel Gaddafi, who brought the country the best welfare and highest living standard in Africa.

Perhaps the diplomatic duo have not noticed that Syria, generous host country to two million Iraqis fleeing their “liberation” now have their own nationals fleeing in fear over the border to Jordan; Syrians now joining the near similar number of Iraqis there, refugees themselves. Iraqis in Syria have nowhere to run.

The ladies have seemingly also missed the media coverage of senior, experienced Al Jazeera journalists, who have walked away from their livelihood in protest and disgust at the media distortion and manipulation of Syria’s plight, the portrayal, of course, that all blame lies with President al Assad.

Further, “Peace Envoy” Kofi Annan has already let slip that both he and the “truce monitors should help pave the way for much needed political process”.  Presumably he means with those insurgents with foreign passports. Read “regime change”.

And no planned destruction, overthrow, and general catastrophe would be complete without hidden weaponry and hardware with which the leader “oppresses his own people.” Syria, say – as ever – unnamed “activists” is hiding tanks and weapons in government compounds.

The media faithfully repeats the mantra. None seem to have mentioned that one of the “Peace Envoy’s” stipulations, to which Bashar al Assad agreed, was to take tanks and weapons off the streets. Where rebel violence is such that government troops are not forced to respond, they have been withdrawn — back to government compounds. Mr. Annan seemingly has not thought to point this out.

China’s Ambassador, Li Baodong, appears to be watching more closely than most. He expressed the hope that “the Supervision Mission will fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and dignity, act in strict accordance with the authorization of the Security Council, adhere to the principles of neutrality and impartiality …”   Quite!

If Lady Lyall Grant cares about children, which could equally be “her” children, she should ponder on, and tell her humanity-deficient husband of just one, which represents the trauma of every child, in every street, in every country targeted by an unholy Western alliance – and the UN.

It is an Iraqi boy of about five in an orphanage asleep. He has drawn a huge picture, depicting his mother on the floor, her arms outstretched. He is curled up on it. Every night he goes to sleep the same way — on the floor between her arms.

Well past time for the powerful to grow the hell up. Those children could be your children.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Asres of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) rules Ethiopia with a heavy hand of control, restricting free assembly — a right written into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) — inhibiting the freedom of the media and denying the people freedom of expression in manifold ways.

Media freedom is a basic pillar of any democratic society. Freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press are essential elements of a democracy. Whilst media independence throughout the world is contentious at best, autonomy from direct State ownership and influence is a crucial element in establishing an independent media.

In Ethiopia not only are television and radio owned and controlled by the state but also access to information, as is made clear by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in its report “One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure: Violations of Freedom of Expression and Association in Ethiopia,” which states:

The independent media has struggled to establish itself in the face of constant government hostility and an inability to access information from government officials.

The report continues:

Since the 2005 elections in Ethiopia the government has systematically introduced tighter and tighter methods of control.  Over the past five years the Ethiopian government has restricted political space for the opposition, stifled independent civil society, and intensified control of the media.

Owning Information

Since the end of Ethiopia’s civil war in 1991, privately owned newspapers and magazines have been appearing, and despite heavy regulation by the Meles government, this area of Ethiopian media is expanding. The print media, however, is of little significance due to the low literacy of the adult population (48%). With high levels of poverty and poor infrastructure making distribution difficult, newspapers are not widely circulated or read; consequently, the main source of information for the majority of people is the state-owned television and radio, which serve as little more than a mouthpiece of propaganda for the EPRDF.

Internet media is also restricted, with access to the web the lowest in Africa. Research & Markets found:

Ethiopia has the lowest overall teledensity in Africa. The population is approaching 90 million, but there are less than 1 million fixed lines in service, and a little more than 3.3 million mobile subscribers. The number of internet users is dismal — below 500,000 at the end of 2009.

The World Bank puts the figure a little higher at 7.5%.

In another demonstration of democratic duplicity, the EPRDF controls all telecommunications. Internet and telephone systems must run through the State-owned Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation.  A World Bank Report, released in 2011  states that  82.40 percent of Ethiopians in 2010 live in rural areas and have no access at all to the world wide web.

By maintaining monopoly control of telecommunications, the Ethiopian Government is denying most of the population access to another key area of mass information. This is an additional infringement of basic democratic principles of diversity and social participation, as Noam Chomsky wrote:

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

The EPRDF regime is, in fact, a dictatorship wherein its citizens are unable to speak freely, organize political activities, and challenge their government’s policies through peaceful protest, voting, or publishing their views without fear of reprisal.

Law Breakers

Freedom of thought, of expression, and of information are basic requirements under the UDHR.

Article 19 states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Although the UDHR is not, in itself, a legally binding document, it provides moral guidance for states and offers a clear indication of what we, as a world community, have agreed are the basic requirements of correct governance and civilized living.

As stated in the preamble:

It is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.

However, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a sister document to the UDHR, provides such legal protection and is indeed legally binding. There we find Article 19, paragraph 1:

Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

And paragraph 2:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

Ethiopia ratified this international treatise on June 11, 1993, and is therefore legally bound by its articles. By imposing tight regulatory controls on media inside and indeed outside of Ethiopia — the case of ESAT TV based in Holland, whose satellite signal is repeatedly [illegally} blocked by the EPRDF -- the government is in violation of international law.  Furthermore, by restricting the freedom of the media and inhibiting any hint of dissent, the regime is also in contradiction of its own constitution. Article 29, entitled rather optimistically “Right of Thought, Opinion and Expression” states:

1. Everyone has the right to hold opinions without interference;

2. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression without any interference. This right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any media of his choice;

3.  Freedom of the press and other mass media and freedom of artistic creativity is guaranteed. Freedom of the press shall specifically include the following elements: (a) Prohibition of any form of censorship. (b) Access to information of public interest.

Clear and noble words, indeed democratic in content and tone; however, words that sit filed neatly upon the shelf of neglect and indifference that serve only as a mask of convenience and deceit allowing the betrayal of the many to continue. Human Rights Watch states:

The 1995 constitution incorporates a wide range of human rights standards, and government officials frequently voice the state’s commitment to meeting its human rights obligations. But these steps while important, have not ensured that Ethiopia’s citizens are able to enjoy their fundamental rights.

State Suppression

In 2009 the EPRDF passed two inhibiting pieces of legislation that embody some of the worst aspects of the government’s descent towards greater repression and political intolerance. The controversial CSO law is, according to HRW, one of the most restrictive of its kind, and its provisions will make most independent human rights work impossible.

A “counterterrorism” law was introduced at the same time; this second piece of repressive legislation allows the government and security forces to prosecute political protesters and non-violent expressions of dissent as terrorism. Since the introduction of these internationally criticised laws, the UN Jubilee Campaign in its report “Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review Ethiopia” recommends the adoption of this law [emphasis mine] be repealed.”  The umbrella term “terrorist”, meaning anyone who disagrees with the party/state line, continues to be used and manipulated as justification for all manner of human rights violations and methods of suppression and control.

What defines a terrorist or an act of terrorism remains vague and ambiguous, enabling the Meles regime to construct definitions that suit them at any given time. Amongst other travesties of justice, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that the legislation, “permits a clamp down on political dissent, including political demonstrations and public criticisms of government policy, it also deprives defendants of the right to be presumed innocent.“

A primary function of the media in a democratic society is to examine and criticise the government and provide a public platform for debate and participation. This law denies such interaction and freedom of expression, is in violation of the ICCPR, and contravenes the much-championed Ethiopian constitution — idealised images of goodness remaining stillborn.

The anti-terror law is a pseudonym for a law of repression and control, made and enforced by a paranoid regime, determined to use all means in its armoury to quash any dissent and maintain a system of disinformation and duplicity. Media organisations that disagree with the EPRDF party line run the risk of being branded “terrorists” under this law, arrested and imprisoned.

Dawit Kebede, editor-in-chief of Awramba Times, says:

The law provides a pretext for the government to intimidate and even arrest journalists who fall afoul of its wording. Kebede said the regulations were a government campaign to oppress all forms of dissident activity.

This new law inhibits the ability of the media to report anything that is deemed critical of the current government. All opposing voices to policy are stifled; journalists are frightened, and the facility to expose and criticize the many serious violations of human rights, and provide a balanced view of the issues facing the country, are denied. The rights to freedom of expression and association are restricted, all independent voices have been virtually silenced and freedom of speech and opinion are denied. Human Rights Watch makes clear its concern over the past five years that the Ethiopian government has restricted political space for the opposition, stifled independent civil society, and intensified control of the media.

Control flows from fear.  The greater the dishonesty, corruption and greed, the more extreme the controls become. Under the EPRDF governance, Ethiopians are subjected to a range of human rights abuses and violations.  Political opposition has been unofficially banned, making this democracy sitting in the Horn of Africa a single party dictatorship. The UN, in its human rights report, finds “resistance to opposition has become the primary source of concern regarding the future of human rights in Ethiopia” and confirms the view of HRW that “The CSO law directly inhibits rights to association, assembly and free expression.”

The Meles regime seeks, as all isolated corrupt dictatorships do, to centralize power, deny dissent and freedom of expression and suppress the people by intimidation, violence and fear, creating an atmosphere of apprehension, extinguishing all hope of justice, true human development and freedom from tyranny. Disempowerment is the aim.  The means, crude and unimaginative, are well known: keep the people uneducated, deny them access to information, restrict their freedom of association and expression and keep them entrapped.

Demanding justice

The people of Ethiopia, without an effective media, have no voice. The controls that deny media freedom, and the people the freedom of association and expression, guaranteed under the Ethiopian constitution and international law, must be repealed, and the will of the people must be done for justice and the rule of law underlies their demands for freedom, peace and the observation of their basic human rights.

Seasoned U.S. analysts seem to agree with the Iranian assessment. Stephen M Walt writes in Foreign Policy, “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the Obama administration is thinking about Iran… I’m puzzled.” Gary Sick, writing for CNN, predicts dire consequences of an attack on Iran and seems to question its wisdom. So why is Obama being so confrontational? So irrational?

The president as usual tries to position himself in the middle, chiding Republican opponents for “loose talk” about war while assuring Israeli prime minister Netanyahu that the U.S. will move in “lock step” with Israel. But what is the logic of offering Iran a “last chance” to stop doing what it is legally entitled to do? The only logic I can see here–and it is a perverse form–resides in the assumption that as the bombs start to fall Washington will be able to say, “We were patient, we went that last mile, and gave them their opportunity, but they defied the international community and so we (or Israel) had to attack.” It is 2003 all over again.

Recall that Obama was elected in large part due to his opposition to the war in Iraq. In a 2002 speech he declared that he opposed “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” But he never really denounced the campaign of lies, or expressed moral indignation at the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, the uprooting of millions, the spread of ethnic and sectarian conflicts following the U.S. attack Rather, he saw the war as a “strategic blunder.” Still, he was widely regarded as the “anti-war” candidate.

Once elected, however, he proved to be a virtual Bush clone in foreign affairs. He chose hawkish Hilary Clinton (who had strongly supported the attack on Iraq and defended her position until late in her campaign) as Secretary of State, to the applause of the neocons who correctly anticipated that she would provide continuity with their own regime-change policies. He ordered U.S. troops out of Iraq, but he can’t take credit for the withdrawal. It occurred in accordance with the agreement between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government worked out in 2008. (Indeed Obama attempted to renegotiate the agreement to allow for the continued presence of U.S. troops and bases but was thwarted by the Iraqis who detested the occupation. In other words: it is despite not because of Obama that the U.S. has pulled its troops out of Iraq.)

On Iran, Obama made it clear from his very first post-election press conference that he would maintain a policy of confrontation. Asked about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s message congratulating him on his election, he sidestepped the question but sternly (and obviously according to a script) declared that “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon” is “unacceptable.” And ever since his administration has promoted the assumption that Iran has a secret, active military nuclear program which must be stopped by any means necessary.

(This is the case even when, as in recent days, the White House agrees that there is no hard evidence for the existence of a nuclear weapons program! The more or less open discussion with the Israelis involves the establishment of the “red line” that would justify military action. What seems to really be “unacceptable” is the mere knowledge and ability to produce nuclear weapons. But you can’t say that too often in public. You can’t say, “We will deny Iran the right to reach the technological level that many other countries have done, legally and without our objection–because we don’t like Iran!)

Exactly like George W. Bush, Obama has repeatedly stated that he leaves “no options off the table” including military force.

How have we reached this “last chance” interval? The irrationality is in fact mind-boggling. How is it that while the entire U.S. intelligence community has on the basis of exhaustive research and analysis concluded–twice–that Iran terminated its (incipient) program of research in 2003 and does not have a nuclear weapons program; and while the Joint Chiefs of Staff is firmly opposed to an attack on Iran; and while the IAEA has repeatedly reported no evidence for diversion of enriched uranium for military purposes–Obama can still treat Iran’s civilian program as an imminent danger? And threaten war?

Since 9/11 we have seen how powerful campaigns of misinformation can shape public opinion. Hermann Goering’s observation (that if you tell people they’re under attack you can always drag the people along to support a military response) has been repeatedly confirmed. To justify the attack on Iraq, Madison Avenue techniques were used: coordinated talking-points made in televised interviews (“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud over New York City); leaking of dubious “intelligence products” through cooperative journalists like Judith Miller and Jeffrey Goldberg; proliferating charges of “drones of death” carrying biological and chemical weapons, al-Qaeda training camps, meetings between al-Qaeda figures and Baathist officials including Saddam himself, mobile biological weapons factories, etc.

All lies! When no evidence of weapons of mass production or al-Qaeda ties surfaced, the administration brushed it off as the result of “faulty intelligence” and urged people to look forward, not backward.

This is what Obama said too, as he took office. He was urged by some to have the Justice Department prosecute those responsible for the criminal war based on lies. “We need to look forward, not backwards,” he replied. He then moved forward to accelerate the Afghan War, increasing U.S. troops from around 10,000 to over 90,000. He moved on to bomb Pakistan and Yemen with drones, to bomb Libya to achieve regime change, and is now threatening Syria. The current administration is as bloody as the last one.

Preparations for an attack on Iran have been made, like those for the Iraq War, through a media campaign involving terrifying phrases and accusations. “Mushroom cloud over New York” has been replaced with “existential threat,” “nuclear holocaust,” “threats to wipe Israel off the map,” “calls for the destruction of Israel.” This is fear-mongering with a twist. Few are suggesting that Iran constitutes a major threat to the U.S.; instead the focus is on the putative threat to Israel.

Many have pointed out that key architects of the Iraq War (including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser) authored a report under Perle’s leadership in 1996 for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. (They did so presumably in their capacity as U.S.-Israeli dual nationals.) The paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advocated pre-emptive strikes against Iran and Syria, regime change in Iraq, and the abandonment of “land for peace” negotiations with Palestinians. In fact, the Israeli government was delighted with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a supporter of militant Palestinian groups. But the war propagandists said little about Israel’s interests in regime change. They surely didn’t want to encourage the perception that this would be a “war for Israel.”

This time is different. Obama might tell Jeffrey Goldberg–as he did in an interview last week–that the U.S. would “still be a profound national-security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon” even if “Israel weren’t in the picture.” But Israel’s plainly at the center of the political discourse on Iran in this country.

Norman Podhoretz, the “father of neoconservativism,” begged the Bush administration to bomb Iran in 2007, arguing that the world was at a crossroads such as 1938, and that appeasement was likely to produce another holocaust. We’ve been hearing this shrill rhetoric for years. It is illogical. Ahmadinejad is not a Hitler. He has limited powers under the Iranian system, and does not control foreign policy. If he was inclined to annihilate Jews, you’d think he’d begin with the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran, but he distinguishes them from Zionists and says he respects their rights.

Let’s dissect some of the sensationalistic language underlying the (joint U.S.-Israeli) drive for confrontation.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If you do a Google search, you’ll find tens of thousands of journalistic references to this concept as though it were a fact. I have not seen a poll showing how many people in this country truly assume that such a program exists, but I’d wager most do. So the Big Lie has been effective.

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• The Iranians have consistently stated that they do not have or want a nuclear weapons program. They want to enrich uranium for nuclear medicine and for electrical power. They are not necessarily doing anything other than what Brazil, Argentina, Japan and other countries have done under IAEA investigation, and as signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they are absolutely entitled to do so. (The language of the treaty is clear: signatory nations have the “inalienable right” to develop civilian Nuclear programs.)

• The chief decision-maker in Iran is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. His religious edicts (fatwa) are considered binding law by Shiite Muslims. In 2005 he issued a fatwa banning the production, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.

• The entire U.S. intelligence community (CIA, FBI, military intelligence, etc.) in two National Intelligence Estimates (in 2007 and 2010) concluded with a high degree of confidence that Iran does not have an active nuclear program.

• Israeli intelligence has concluded the same thing.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never found any evidence for a nuclear weapons program. It has found some evidence for concealment of information, and complained of some lack of cooperation. But due to political manipulation, and the appointment of Yukiya Amano as director in 2009, the agency has become increasingly critical of Iran, packaging dated and dubious data to put pressure on Tehran. (A U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by the Guardian states that while campaigning for the appointment to replace the independent, respected scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei “Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” The 2005 IAEA resolution leading to UNSC sanctions against Iran was determined by politics, not science. 22 of 35 then-member nations of the Agency voted to declare Iran in “non-compliance” with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It was basically a matter of NATO nations voting as a bloc, with Algeria, Brazil, China, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russian Federation, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen opposed or abstaining.)

• The most recent IAEA report, widely reported as damning, really just repeats old charges. The principle one involves the design of a nuclear warhead found on a laptop computer allegedly stolen from a dead Iranian nuclear scientist and presented to the U.S. in 2004. It’s thought to have been provided through the Mujahaddin Khalq (MEK), a militant organization of Iranian exiles (which fought on behalf of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran War, when the U.S. was supporting Saddam’s invasion of the neighboring Country, and which happens to be listed by the State Department as a “terrorist” organization) or by Israeli intelligence. In 2005 after the U.S. shared the find with the IAEA, the New York Times quoted a “senior European diplomat” as stating, “I can fabricate that data”; the material, he said, “is open to doubt.” Iran has stated that the laptop evidence is fake. It does not seem to have caused U.S. intelligence agencies to alter their assessment that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program.

• Last month the IAEA delegation to Iran was denied admission to the Parchin military Base. The IAEA mandate does not include demanding spot checks on military bases, and the Iranians claim that the request last month was inappropriate. Amano depicted this as a matter of serious concern, stoking suspicion of nuclear activity. However Iran consented to thorough examination of base sites by the IAEA in 2004, 2005 (twice) and 2006, and the agency found nothing suspicious.

Iran has called for the destruction of Israel. How many times have we heard that? But what are the specific quotes? The Iranian leadership, along with many and varied forces in the world (including some Israeli Jewish historians), believe that the state of Israel was established through savage violence at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. They believe the refugee problem was due to Zionist terrorism–which is in fact not a terribly controversial thesis on this planet. (There seems little question that between April 9, 1948 when the terror began and May 15 when Arab armies “invaded” on Palestinians’ behalf over 300,000 had fled for their lives, while the Israeli Haganeh forces systematically wiped 170 Palestinian towns and villages off the map.) Iranians like many people around the world do not like the concept of a “Jewish state” established at others’ expense and feel a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Some Iranian leaders address gatherings where the people shout, “Death to Israel!” just as they shout, “Death to America!” But how does the rhetoric translate into action?

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• In the spring of 2003, the Iranian government of President Mohamed Khatami (usually depicted as a “moderate” and advocate of “the dialogue of civilizations”) sent a letter to the U.S. State Department via the Swiss ambassador to Tehran (who handles U.S.-Iranian relations). The letter proposed normalization of U.S.-Iranian relations, and acknowledged the need to discuss Iranian support for groups the U.S. lists as “terrorist” and also its nuclear program. It indicated that Iran would support the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by the Arab League. (This entails support for a two-state solution and recognition of Israel.) Vice President Cheney was infuriated, insisted that the administration ignore the letter, and berated the Swiss diplomat for even passing it on.

Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”. You even see: “…has repeatedly” called for this. It’s not true.

(Keep in mind that the mainstream media has been inclined to circulate disinformation about him Ahmadinejad from the day he was elected in June 2005. He was falsely identified as one of the students who took U.S. embassy personnel hostage during the 1979-81 Hostage Crisis, and President Bush publicly referred to “his involvement” in it. The CIA subsequently quietly concluded that he hadn’t been involved.)

The key statement was made at a conference in Tehran October 2005. Numerous translators have questioned this rendering of his comments, some arguing that there is no such expression as “wipe off the map” in Persian (Farsi). The statement by Ahmadinejad is actually a paraphrase of a statement by the Ayatollah Khomeni (d. 1989), who declared that Israel would go the way of the Shah of Iran’s regime, and that of the Soviet Union.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle East history fluent in Farsi, smelled “the whiff of war propaganda” in the widely reproduced quotation. His own translation runs as follows: “the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shaved).”

The vigorously pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the phrase as “this regime” must be “eliminated from the pages of history.” The word for “page” can also e translated as “stage.” The Khomeini statement seems a prediction, rather than a call for specific action. (And is it not entirely thinkable that demographics, settlement, and culture might produce within the next hundred years a multicultural, multi-ethnic, non-religious state in what is now Israel/Palestine? Even some prominent Israeli Jews have suggested this.)

In any case the Iranian Foreign Ministry responded to the furor with a clarification. In February 2006 the Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, answered a question at a news conference about Ahmadinejad’s statement. “How is it possible to remove a country from the map?” he asked. “[Ahmadinejad] is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime.”

Ahmadinejad himself has repeatedly said that his remark was misinterpreted. In January 2006, complaining about the “hue and cry” over his statement, he said “Let the Palestinians participate in free elections and they will say what they want.” In July 2008 he told a meeting of the D-8 nations (Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) that his country would never initiate military action but that the Israeli regime would eventually collapse on its own.

Later that year he was asked by a journalist: “If the Palestinian leaders agree to a two-state solution, could Iran live with an Israeli state?” His response: “If [the Palestinians] want to keep the Zionists, they can stay … Whatever the people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums.”

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• Iranian government officials have repeatedly stated that they will defer to the Palestinians in deciding the their future, and expressed openness to the Saudi two-state solution endorsed by the Arab League.

Existential threat. Israeli politicians echoed by U.S. columnists continually refer to the Iranian nuclear program as a threat to the very existence of the state of Israel. But intelligence experts, like Ephraim Halevy, who headed Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad from 1998 to 2002, disagree. “The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,” he told journalists last November. He added: “[Iran is] far from posing an existential threat to Israel” and warned, “An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.” He even declared that Jewish extremism within Israel was a greater problem than Iran: “The growing Haredi radicalization poses a bigger risk than Ahmadinejad.”

Those raising the fear of an existential threat meet with the logical reply: “Given that Israel is armed with (undeclared) nuclear weapons, and could respond many times over to an Iranian attack, why would rational people in Iran ever bomb Israel?” The fear-mongers’ reply is simple: “We’re not dealing with rational people.”

The Iranian leaders, they argue, are Islamist fanatics, eager to court martyrdom and unconcerned about their people’s well-being. They are so driven by anti-Semitism that they would sacrifice millions of Iranians just to wipe out the Jews as Hitler failed to do. The key quote summoned in support of this argument is from former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2001: “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonization would face a stalemate because the application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damage in the Muslim world.”

This statement (in a Friday sermon) noted the obvious. At present, Israel enjoys a regional nuclear monopoly (although we should note that Pakistan, a country in “the world of Islam,” already had nuclear weapons at the time Rafsanjani spoke.) If nearby Muslim countries had nuclear weapons, Israel’s freedom of action (“strategy of colonization”) would be limited. The statement, while ambiguous, does not threaten Israel but implies that given its size an relatively small population Israel would fare far worse in a nuclear exchange than a country like Iran—if Iran were to emulate Israel and acquire nukes.

I have seen this quotation reproduced with the significant section “…the strategy of colonization would face a stalemate because…” omitted, making the statement seem more ominous than it is. It has been used too often as “evidence” that the Iranian leadership positively looks forward to incurring damage to Iran so long as it can bomb Israel, leaving nothing.

This of course requires one to believe that the Iranians are not only eager to annihilate Israeli Jews but indifferent to the lives of Palestinians (about 20% of the Israeli total) and the approximately five percent of Israelis who are neither Jews nor Arabs. Rafsanjani is generally considered a “moderate” and political foe of Ahmadinejad. This interpretation of his statement is (once again) fear-mongering.

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• Iran has not attacked another country in several hundred years. It has no territorial claims on its neighbors and enjoys good relations with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iraq. It spends less than two percent of its GDP on military spending, as compared to Israel’s over six percent, and just about half as much in dollar terms as Israel. Iran spends $89 per capita per year on military spending, as opposed to $1,882 in Israel and $2,141 in the U.S. (the highest in the world).

• U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence officials agree that the Iranian leadership is rational and not reckless. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, recently told CNN that “the Iranian regime is a rational actor.” Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief (Halevy’s successor, from 2002 to 2009), recently told CBS, “The regime in Iran is a very rational regime… No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.” Dagan meanwhile calls an Israeli attack on Iran “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Finally: Nuclear holocaust. A brilliant propaganda expression, combining the terrifying imagery of the mushroom cloud with the memory of systematic round-ups and genocide.

But if the Iranian leadership seeks to imitate the Nazis and effect a “final solution” to the Jewish question, why did Ayatollah Khomeini issue a fatwa in 1979, when he returned to Iran, Requiring respect for the rights of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians? Why does Iran have a community of some 25,000 Jews (the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel)? Why does the Iranian constitution specify (Art. 64), that out of the 270 members of the legislature “the Zoroastrians and Jews will each elect one representative; Assyrian and Chaldean Christians will jointly elect one representative; and Armenian Christians in the north and those in the south of the country will each elect one representative”?

These are surely inconvenient truths to some, who want to exaggerate to oppression of Jews in Iran to support their apocalyptic Chicken Little scenarios. One finds a classic example in two pieces published in the National Post of Canada in May 2006 alleging that the Iranian parliament hadpassed laws requiring “special insignia” for Jews and other religious minorities. Written by the extreme rightwing journalist Amir Taheri, an Iranian expatriate who had firmly supported the Shah, and Chris Wattie, a Canadian journalist who’d been embedded with Canadian forces in Afghanistan and glorified their mission, it was picked up by UPI.

It was published in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Jerusalem Post. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was asked about it in a press briefing. “Despicable,” he raged, just like “Germany under Hitler.” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, readily accepted the report. “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,” he stated. “”Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.” But it was 100% disinformation! It was quickly refuted by (among others) by the Iranian ambassador to Canada and the indignant Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. The paper retracted the story and apologized, but some damage had been done–as was surely the intention.

Also in 2006, Netanyahu offered this splendid historical analogy: “In 1938,” he averred, “Hitler didn’t say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren’t even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide.” Outgoing US UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with “inciting genocide.” “It’s time to take action,” he told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations symposium. “We’re being given early warning, unambiguously, on what his intentions are.” A mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv!

What if mainstream journalists made it a point to constantly reiterate the following?

• There are over 30 operating synagogues in Iran, kosher stores and restaurants and Hebrew schools.

• While by law there is one member of parliament elected per 150,000 people, the Jewish community of 25,000 is guaranteed one seat.

• While life is oppressive for everyone in Iran, an Islamist theocracy, Jews hold jobs in government ministries and state-owned firms. Their lot may be unhappy, like the lot of most Iranians. But it hardly resembles the lot of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

“The stupidest idea I ever heard,” says the former Mossad chief. Still, the U.S. government headed by “hope” and “change” candidate Obama is telling Iran to submit to U.S. diktat while it has the chance, or get bombed.

It is all, as the Iranian diplomats observe, irrational.

I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students’ eyes began focusing upon her rather than me.

“Yes?” I asked. Just “yes.” Nothing more.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper.

“Ma’am,” I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn’t reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately.

It took less than a minute.

The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, unannounced but highly planned. My assignment was for the students to quickly write down everything they could about the incident. What happened. What was said. What she looked like. What she was wearing. Just the facts. Nothing more.

Everyone got some of the information right, but no one got all the facts, even the ones they were absolutely positively sure they saw or heard correctly. And, most interestingly, the “gun” the visitor used and which the students either couldn’t identify or misidentified was in reality a . . . banana; a painted black banana, but a banana nevertheless. The actual gun shot was on tape broadcast by a hidden recorder I activated.

It was a lesson in observation and truth. Witnesses often get the facts wrong, unable to distinguish events happening on top of each other. Sometimes they even want to “help” the reporter and say what they think the reporter wants to hear.

Reporters are society’s witnesses who record history by interviewing other witnesses, and they all make mistakes not because they want to but because everyone’s experiences and perceptions fog reality.

Of the infinite number of facts and observations that occur during a meeting, reporters must select a few, and then place them in whatever order they think is most important. Which few they select, which thousands they don’t select — and, more important — which facts they don’t even know exist–all make up a news story, usually written under deadline pressure. Thus, it isn’t unusual for readers to wonder how reporters could have been in the same meeting as they were since the published stories didn’t seem to reflect the reality of the meeting.

But there are some facts that are verifiable. We know that a South American country is spelled “Colombia,” not “Columbia.” We know that Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. And we know that the current World Series champions are the St. Louis Cardinals not, regrettably, the San Diego Padres.

But, for far too many in my profession, facts and the truth are subverted by a process that has become he said/she said journalism. We take notes at meetings, recording who said what. If there are conflicting statements, we try to quote all the opinions, even the dumb ones, believing we are being “fair and balanced.” If  a news source says the world is flat, we write that, and then see if we can find someone who will say that it is round—or maybe square.

When we write features and personality profiles, we tend to take what we are told, craft it into snappy paragraphs, and hope the readers don’t fall asleep. If someone shyly tells us he earned a Silver Star for heroism during the Vietnam War, we don’t demand to see the certificate—or question how a 50 year old, who was wasn’t even in his teens when the war ended, could actually have served during the Vietnam war.

At the local level, although we’re trained to be cynical, we aren’t. If a mayor or police chief tells us something, we attribute the quote, figuring we did our duty. Maybe we ask a couple of questions, but we tend not to pursue them—we have far too many stories to write and far too little time. Besides, if the facts are wrong, we believe we’re “protected,” since it’s not we who said it but someone else. Legally, of course, we’re still responsible for factual error even if someone else said it and we accurately quote that person, but we don’t worry about the technicalities.

Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers. We just have to find the right sources, dig out the facts, and verify them.

And now comes another presidential election, and we continue to perpetuate lies by not challenging those who spout them. Rick Santorum says California’s public colleges don’t teach American history—and we write down his lie. Mitt Romney claims he never said the Massachusetts health care plan was a model for the entire country, that Barack Obama never mentioned the deficit during his state of the union or that the President is constantly apologizing for America, and we write that without challenge. Newt Gingrich, like most Republican candidates for president and Congress, wants us to believe he’s an “outsider” and a fiscal conservative, and we go along with the fiction. Barack Obama said he’d be a leader for defending Constitutional rights, yet willingly signed an extension of the PATRIOT Act, which curtails civil liberties.

Pick a candidate—any candidate, any party—and we think we’re “fair” because we record what he or she said, even of it’s a lie, a half-truth, an exaggeration, a distortion, or a misconception. Perhaps American politicians have internalized the wisdom of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Quoting people isn’t journalism—it’s clerking. We’re merely taking words, transcribing them, and publishing them. Journalism demands we challenge our sources and find the truth. As one grizzled city editor said in the late 19th century, if your mother claims to be your mother, demand a birth certificate. It was good advice then; it is even better advice now.

Quite predictably, the U.S. propaganda machine has rushed to lay blame for the abortive ceasefire solely at the feet of the Syrian government.  As a New York Times headline averred Monday: “Cease-fire in Doubt as Syria Demands New Conditions.”  These “new” conditions, the article detailed, include “‘written guarantees’ that rebels would stop fighting before it pulled back its troops under the cease-fire plan.”

Of course, the six-point peace initiative proposed by joint United Nations and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan, which has already been agreed upon by the Syrian government, explicitly calls for the “cessation of violence in all its forms by all parties to protect civilians and stabilize the country.”

In service to propaganda, however, the U.S. media has largely sidestepped such matters in propagating a narrative of one-sided Syrian governmental intransigence.  Thus, the maneuvering over the weekend by the armed Syrian opposition to undermine the Tuesday ceasefire was largely ignored.  Yet as Reuters reported Saturday, “Rebel Free Syrian Army commander Colonel Riad al-Asaad said his men would cease fire, provided ‘the regime … withdraws from the cities and returns to its original barracks.’”  Reuters went on to admit, “Annan’s plan does not stipulate a complete army withdrawal to barracks or mention police.”

Still, the concerted move to undo the Annan peace initiative did not begin this past weekend.  Rather, it began a full week prior.

Imperial “Friends”

In their April 1 meeting in Turkey, the so-called “Friends of Syria” proudly announced their plans to increase foreign aid to the armed Syrian opposition.  At the summit of some 70 nations, Arab states Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (all such bastions of democracy) pledged a total of $100 million to pay the individual salaries of those in the rebel “Free Syrian Army.” As Al Jazeera reported, “One delegate described the fund as a ‘pot of gold’ to undermine Assad’s army.”

Lest one forgets, the armed Syrian opposition, which the self-proclaimed “friends” of the Syrian people so readily laud and seek to now shower with cash, was publicly chided a mere two weeks ago by Human Rights Watch for committing myriad human-rights abuses against the Syrian people.  According to Human Rights Watch, armed opposition groups have been implicated in the “kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha.”

Unmoved by such reports, Washington, too, decided at the April Fools “Friends” summit to offer up its own gold.  In total, the U.S. pledged $12 million for “non-lethal” and “humanitarian” aid to the Syrian rebels.  For good measure, London pitched in an additional $800,000 in “practical non-lethal support.”  But as the New York Times reported, this “non-lethal” support will not only include satellite communications equipment, but night-vision goggles as well.

It ought to be quite clear, then, that despite the official claims to the contrary, such “non-lethal” aid will ultimately be put to lethal use.  Moreover, such equipment will undoubtedly help enhance the coordination between the Syrian rebels and their NATO military advisers, the latter whom are already on the ground inside Syria, according to multiple reports.

Such a torpedoing of the Annan proposed ceasefire and peace plan, though, is the direct aim of the imperial minded “Friends of Syria.”

Orchestrating Continued Violence

By sustaining the rebel fighters, the international imperial alliance forged between NATO and its Arab client states seeks the perpetuation of violence within Syria.  For by maintaining the violence, the calls for the forcible removal of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad will predictably come to reverberate ever-louder throughout the Western press.  The purpose here, we shall see, being to build the necessary momentum for a new U.N. Security Council resolution approving a NATO intervention akin to that which ousted Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

Indeed, for as British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC:

We’re working on coordinating our sanctions together and sending a clear message that there isn’t an unlimited period of time for this, for the Kofi Annan process to work before many of the nations here want us to go back to the U.N. Security Council,

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has added much the same.  As the Washington Post reported:

Once Annan determines that “we’re not getting any results…we would go back to the Security Council,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday in an interview with CBS News. “Now, what would Russia and China say?

Annan, Clinton said, “has gone to Moscow, he’s gone to Beijing, he’s met with them. They support his plan. They have urged publicly that Assad follow the plan.

So, if we have to go back to the Security Council to get authority” for more assistance to the Syrian opposition, she said, “I think we’ll be in a stronger position than we would if [Annan] hadn’t had a chance to go and try to negotiate.

Setting the Table for a Protracted Proxy War

Whether Russia and China shall feel pressured to capitulate to a NATO sponsored “regime change” resolution in the Security Council analogous to the one they vetoed back in February remains doubtful.  For even as some Western news outlets, like the Associated Press, eagerly report that Russia has begun to soften its alliance with Damascus, Moscow is unlikely to abandon its lone Arab ally.

In fact, as Reuters reported, on April 4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov bluntly warned:

It is clear as day that even if the opposition is armed to the teeth, it will not defeat the Syrian army, and there will simply be slaughter and mutual destruction for long, long years,

Instead then, the maneuvering of the international “Friends of Syria” shall likely bring the specter of a protracted proxy war nearer.  As the New York Times cautions:

The offer to provide salaries and communications equipment to rebel fighters known as the Free Syrian Army — with the hopes that the money might encourage government soldiers to defect, officials said — is bringing the loose Friends of Syria coalition to the edge of a proxy war against Mr. Assad’s government and its international supporters, principally Iran and Russia.

And it is Iran, of course, that colors the NATO and Arab League interest in Syria.  For ousting Assad will no doubt deliver a strategic blow to Tehran: the long favored nemesis of NATO and its Arab clients.  And with a weakened and further isolated Iran, the opportunity will develop for the furtherance of NATO aggression in the Middle East under the auspices of combating the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program.

For the imperialist self-proclaimed “Friends of Syria,” we see ordinary Syrians are merely pawns to be exploited for imperial gains.

Therefore, for those truly seeking to aid the struggle of the Syrian people, work must hasten in building popular resistance to the NATO agenda.  For let there be no doubt: no revolution can proceed under an imperialist military intervention of any sort

A couple of clarifications:  60 Minutes is not a news show.  It’s a glib, slickly produced entertainment package disguised as a news show.  With the time allotted for lead-ins, promos, commercials, and the late Andy Rooney’s wry commentary, each story is/was given barely 16 minutes of air time, not very long even for a frivolous topic (such as a profile of an actor or athlete), and a ludicrously short amount of time for the serious, complicated topics the show pretends to cover.

Ask anyone who’s ever been closely associated with a subject 60 Minutes covered, and they’ll tell you they were flabbergasted at how shallow and misleading it was. The reason the show succeeds is because the overwhelming majority of its topics are ones we know little or nothing about.  If you return from, say, a trip to Iceland, you can pretty much tell everyone anything you like about Iceland, and they’ll believe you.  until you run into somebody who lived there.

Further proof of the show’s lightweight credentials is its high ratings.  Take a peek at which television shows regularly lead the pack week after week, and you’ll find talent shows, singing shows, dancing shows, cop shows, sitcoms and major sports events.  There’s not a “hard news” show anywhere to be found.  That’s because hard news doesn’t get high ratings.

As articulate and tenacious as Mike Wallace was (and, personally, I liked his rugged looks and confrontational style), he was, above all, a performer.  Just as Charlie Sheen’s shtick (on Two and a Half Men) was raunchy, dead-pan comedy, and Simon Cowell’s shtick (on American Idol) was abrasive criticism, Mike Wallace’s shtick on 60 Minutes was penetrating, come-to-Jesus interrogation.  But make no mistake….it was shtick, plain and simple.

In fact, many will recall that Wallace’s persona got him and his network in hot water some years ago.  It’s common practice in TV to use “inserts,” where the interviewer is re-filmed asking the same questions.  This is done long after the subject has left the room.  The goal is to get a flattering shot of the interviewer. While the guest’s answers remain unaltered, the questions have been juiced up, and the new footage is inserted into the televised interview.  It’s pure show business.

60 Minutes once used a Wallace insert in an interview with the Shah of Iran, where Mike aggressively pointed his finger in the Shah’s direction and demanded to know about SAVAK, Iran’s notorious secret police.  Although the Shah adroitly deflected the question, the audience got the point CBS was trying to make—that this Mike Wallace cat was a fearless interrogator, and that we must continue to tune in on Sunday nights.

It was all a sham, of course. Had Wallace used this same tone and manner while the Shah was still in the room (instead of in his limo, halfway to his hotel), the Shah would have stood up, removed his mic, and walked out.  After all, the man was King of a country; he wasn’t going to let some network shill grandstand at his expense. Alas, the Shah’s people found out about the ruse and raised a stink.  William Paley, then-president of CBS, apologized, pleaded ignorance, and vowed to eliminate the use of inserts.

Inserts are still being used by TV interviewers (i.e., actors and actresses posing as journalists). Why?  Because television is all about allusion and image, and inserts have been proven to be effective.  It’s show biz, folks, plain and simple.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
– Henry David Thoreau

The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.
– E.F. Schumacher

Since March 27 the Fukushima region has experienced three medium sized earthquakes not to mention a typhoon to boot.¹ This is important because a Japanese engineer recently admitted that the situation at the Fukushima No. 1 power station is still dangerous and the unit four fuel pool is vulnerable to earthquakes.² Due to unit four’s fragile condition–the building is said to be leaning to one side–Tokyo Power Company (Tepco) is “working to fortify the crumpled outer shell of the building” in order to prevent collapse.³ After the most recent earthquake Tepco announced there was no problem, but the “Fukuichi live camera” which records activity at the site was shifted slightly to the left by the tremor.⁴

An accident to the fuel pool could set off a chain of events involving “a total of 1760 metric tons of fresh and used nuclear fuel” among the six reactors at the disaster site.⁵ According to Takao Yamada, Expert Senior Writer at the Mainichi Daily News, Tepco dismissed the idea of injecting extra concrete to reinforce the unit four building just after 3/11.

Former Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Sumio Mabuchi, who was appointed to the post of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s advisor on the nuclear disaster immediately after its outbreak, proposed the injection of concrete from below the No. 4 reactor to the bottom of the storage pool, Chernobyl-style. An inspection of the pool floor, however, led TEPCO to conclude that the pool was strong enough without additional concrete. The plans were scrapped, and antiseismic reinforcements were made to the reactor building instead.

‘Because sea water was being pumped into the reactor, the soundness of the structure (concrete corrosion and deterioration) was questionable. There also were doubts about the calculations made on earthquake resistance as well,’ said one government source familiar with what took place at the time. ‘It’s been suggested that the building would be reinforced, and spent fuel rods would be removed from the pool under those conditions. But fuel rod removal will take three years. Will the structure remain standing for that long? Burying the reactor in a concrete grave is like building a dam, and therefore expensive. I think that it was because TEPCO’s general shareholders’ meeting was coming up (in June 2011) that the company tried to keep expenses low.’⁶

Let’s get this straight: because of an upcoming share holders meeting Tepco could not be bothered to go the extra five yards and spend necessary money to solidify the building with a stoop from below (excluding the idea of the sarcophagus)? What kind of blunder is this (and it continues), putting the inane greed of money junkies in their boardrooms over the welfare of millions of people and the environment? Life on Earth will be permanently affected or destroyed if the Fukushima power station goes up in a radiological blaze, potentially setting fire to 1760 tons of fuel. This could result in tens of times more radiation than was released in 1986 in the Ukraine.

Thus we have Tepco, the limited liability corporation par excellence– privatize profits and externalize costs. But nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson noted that “the clean up is going to cost around a half a trillion dollars.”⁷ This will wipe out any savings that came from using nuclear energy in the first place.

This news comes on the heels of learning of revised estimates of the initial Fukushima disaster which put the amount of cesium released into the air and water as high as 90% of Chernobyl releases. This is a far cry from original assessments by the Japanese government that radiation was just 10 or 15% as much.

“Table S2. Estimated 137Cs releases and inventories…. Total air deposition 36 Far field air deposition and air transport model Stohl et al…. Total direct release to ocean 27 by July 18 (22 by April 8) Assessment of ocean 137Cs within 30 km of shore Bailly du Bois et al.”

• Highest estimates by foreign researchers: Fukushima 63 quadrillion becquerals;
• Japanese government highest estimate: 40 quadrillion bq;
• Chernobyl estimate after two decades of study: 70 quadrillion bq⁸

* (Special thanks to enenews.com for bringing technical literature on the Fukushima disaster to public attention.)

Nuclear Fission Fueled By Political Corruption and Financial Terrorism

Yamada offers this blistering critique of Japan’s profoundly dysfunctional political system:

The government continues to take regressive steps in spite of the torrent of criticism it has received and the lessons that should have been learned since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster.
This is evidenced in the fact that starting this week, which marks the beginning of a new fiscal year, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan (NSC) have no budget. The new nuclear regulatory agency that was supposed to begin operations on April 1 in NISA’s stead is now floundering amid resistance in the Diet from opposition parties. In other words, government agencies overseeing nuclear power now have an even more diminished presence….The situation doesn’t do much for morale, however. Back-scratching relationships between government ministries, the indecision of both the ruling and opposition parties, and the unchanging fact that much of the current crisis is still left in the hands of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) remains the same.⁹

The stockholders won’t pay, they get bailed out by taxpayers. We will all pay through the sweat of our brows and loss of life and health from the radioactive fallout. The financial terrorists in London, New York, and Tel Aviv don’t care who loses as long as the Global Debt Slavery System (GDSS) keeps filling their bank accounts at the expense of humanity and the environment. As a curious aside, it is worth noting that the infamous Rothschilds dynasty is alleged to be a major player in uranium mining and the promotion of nuclear power, not to mention having their hands in much of the world’s wealth.¹⁰

Arnie Gunderson Reports

For the first time our top nuclear expert, the intrepid Arnie Gunderson, has publicly acknowledged that at least some of the destruction at Fukushima was caused by the earthquake, and not the tsunami as is so often reported by the mainstream media. This fact was first enumerated by Jake Adelstein and David McNeil in the Atlantic Wire.¹¹ Gunderson believes the core is still inside the No. 2 reactor and not causing a China Syndrome, and says it will be another five years before the Fukushima reactor cores cool down to the point where they can be dealt with.

The volume and insightfulness of his analysis is worth extensively reviewing. Despite my hearing from someone in the mainstream science community derisively refer to Arnie as an outlier, if I had the chance to buy Gunny a cup of coffee I surely would. While it would be better to have a wider array of experts who can speak in laymen’s terms in order to compare and contrast their views, most scientists are bought and paid for by their employers in the University and Military research world. I have not read of any serious refutation of Gunderson’s Fukushima analysis.

I’ve quoted and paraphrased the following points he made in two recent interviews¹²:

• “It’s pretty clear that unit one at Fukushima Daiichi was in trouble before the tsunami hit…. It was the first one to meltdown, the first one to explode, first one to run out of water. So, something happened in unit one before the tsunami hit, I don’t know what it is but obviously its seismically induced. So that throws a monkey wrench into the industry’s seismic analysis. These plants were designed to withstand the earthquake that hit that site… on land a 7.9. The plant was designed to withstand something that severe, and yet unit one failed and that should be a major concern.”
• “All of the people of the planet have a deep debt to the thousand or two thousand men who risked their lives” to tackle meltdowns at both Fukushima power stations No. 1 and No. 2. These brave men and women were exposed to high levels of radiation in order to prevent the situation from worsening, while Tepco and the government just stood by and downplayed the dangers.
• There are institutional problems in the nuclear industry to keep reactors that have safety issues running despite the dangers. “Tepco has actually created this problem by trying to minimize the problem” whereas in fact “this is a fifty year battle.” From now until 2062 it is “going to cost a lot of radiation exposure to workers” as well as a half a trillion dollars.
• The reactors will require five more years of “throwing water on them” until they physically cool down; cost to dismantle will be 15 billion dollars per reactor.
• In Unit 2 they were expecting to find water in the container at 5 meters but did not find “any water until until they got to 60 centimeters (2 feet)… in the bottom of the containment…. The core is in the bottom of the reactor and containment which definitely indicates a meltdown.” Tepco is pouring 5-10 tons of water per day into unit two but the water is disappearing out of the containment vessel and leaking into the other buildings. This is due to damage in the suppression pool from the explosion that occurred after the earthquake. Without the 5 meters of water for shielding “it will be very difficult to remove any nuclear fuel.” With such high radiation levels, over 70 sieverts per hour, electronic systems that control devices such as robots that could remove the fuel, are destroyed by the radiation.
• The unit 3 fuel pool is just as bad as unit 4 but because of radiation “no one has ever gotten near it yet…. The biggest problem that I see is the seismic risk because we’ve got fuel pools in Units 4 and 3 and 2 and 1 that are exposed to the atmosphere now and if there is a major seismic event — especially in Units 3 and 4 — if those fuel pools crack, we… risk destroying the nation of Japan.”
• Gunderson measured noble gases from Fukushima three times greater than Chernobyl; he is unsure of cesium but it is definitely higher than government estimate of 4 petabecquerals and may be up to three times higher than Chernobyl.
• 78% of the radiation from Fukushima “wound up in the Pacific Ocean” and the rest on Japan; biomagnification of seafood will lead to radioactive salmon and tuna in a few years; 2% of Fukushima radiation went to North America, namely the American and Canadian Cascade Range on the West Coast.
• 7,000 becquerals per sq kg of soil from Tokyo was measured in five samples by Gunderson. This exceeds 5,000 which is Japan’s limit for agriculture. However, “a lot of the land crops over time will gradually decrease in concentration [of radioactivity].”
• Japanese are treating radioactive waste by diluting it with clean waste, thereby sweeping the problem under the rug as if the radioactivity is not significant. What would be treated like radioactive waste in the US is being diluted and treated as normal waste in Japan, and being spread all over the country for incineration. This practice may lead to biomagnification in the food supply–wild “rabbits are already radioactive! … The Japanese ‘solution’ is to raise the radioactive standard so high that the standard is effectively meaningless.”

What Goes Around Comes Around

In Japan there is a media blackout on the topic of burning the 25 million tons of radioactive debris from the northeast tsunami zone.¹³ I’ll bet if you walked around Tokyo and asked people whether they thought the debris should be burned in public facilities, and that the government does not publish data on effluent toxicity, they would not agree to the policy. But since most people “know nothing” it is no problem. People no longer read newspapers and TV news is superficial, not to mention that most people don’t watch the news because it’s considered too “boring.”

However, Japan’s decision to ship radioactive debris around the country in order to share the burden of the disaster has met with some resistance. In Kyoto there have been vocal protests against receiving the debris. Maybe lack of data on effluent contamination explains why the government does not want to tell residents whether they will burn debris or not.¹⁴ I put the question to Iori Mochizuki of the Fukushima Diary:

Q: How can we find out about the effluent from chimneys that will occur from burning of radioactive waste?

A: “That’s now everyone’s question. MEXT says they can filter it out 100% but there is no data, even no official [data]. Only insiders of those filter makers [have leaked information that] the filters don’t work at all. Now we are all trying to find out the source.”¹⁵

In other words, although the government reassures the public that no radioactive effluents will escape incinerator chimneys, there is no data published to verify this. Rumors that the filters do not block radiation add to doubts. Even if the filters do block most of the radiation, considering the huge tonnage being burned, the amount of radiation will add up. The apparent fact that there is no published data is a logical fallacy that proves either the government is lying or that they deem the citizenry to be little more than troublesome cockroaches.

In the past Junichi Sato of Greenpeace Japan told me that incinerators were 90% more efficient than older models in blocking toxic effluents.¹⁶ But even this means there is a ten percent margin of error on effluents that can escape, relative to less efficient incinerators. I assume the government feels this is such a small amount that it is nothing to worry about, but given municipal incinerators were built for household waste and not radioactive debris, it is worrying.

When I called the Greenpeace Japan office they referred me to their website, but I could not find any stories on the incinerator issue. I asked the person over the phone about it, and they said that while they don’t entirely trust the government they have no plans to monitor the incinerators. I sent an email with questions on this matter but have not yet received a response.

1. Mar 2012 Iwate-ken Oki M6.4; 30 Mar 2012 Fukushima-ken Oki Magnitude 5.0 Intensity: 3; Magnitude 5.8 – EASTERN HONSHU, JAPAN 2012 April 01; Japan Meteorological Agency’s Highly Unusual Storm Warning on TV: “Don’t Go Outside.”
2. The Fukushima Lie.
3. Fukushima…radiation so high – even robots not safe and Japan Nuclear Plant May Be Worse Off Than Thought.
4. Fukushima live camera moved.
5. How Much Fuel Is at Risk at Fukushima?
6. In light of further nuclear risks, economic growth should not be priority.
7. Russia Today: Gundersen: One Year Anniversary of Fukushima Daiichi.
8. Fukushima-derived radionuclides in the ocean and biota off Japan; Scientists: Far more cesium released than previously believed; Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impact — 2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On.
9. Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impact — 2002 Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On.
10. Reasons why the Rothschild Controlled Governments and Media Lie about the Japanese Nuke Crisis; Rothschild Bank International, Leading the Push for “New Nuclear”; Rothschild World Domination Plan Via Private Nuclear Weapons; How the Rothschild Dynasty Operates.
11. Meltdown: What Really Happened at Fukushima?
12. Interview: Arnie Gunderson, Nuclear Engineer and Podcast with Arnie Gunderson
13. Tokyo Starts to Burn Onagawa Debris in Earnest at Incineration Plants for Regular Household Garbage in 23 Special Wards and Disaster Debris Is Radioactive, Ministry of the Environment’s Own Data Shows.
14. Intense protest against sharing radioactive debris policy in Kyoto and Governor of Kyoto on Disaster Debris: “We May Not Tell Residents.”
15. 50,000 tones of radioactive wastes are over 8000 Bq/Kg.
16. The Ecology of Hope.

The case in point is the death of Trayvon Martin, the teenager killed with a gun by a vigilante posing as a ‘citizen patrol’ in a gated community in Florida. The event has triggered a firestorm of protests, as well it should.

We tend to think we have no responsibility for the George Zimmermans of the world – broken humans who feel their hatred is justified and grants them the right to all sorts of abominable behavior. We know that it’s crazy. But do we see how every time we allow ‘little’ racist remarks to go unchecked, whether from a friend or co-worker, a TV show or article, we contribute to horrific situations such as Trayvon must have faced in that Florida gated ‘community’.

George Zimmerman typifies many emotionally-wounded Americans who are off-kilter, over-influenced by Fox News, the NRA and even our government(s), which creates laws like ‘Stand Your Ground’ at the behest of the gun lobby and other extremists. I suspect that Mr. Zimmerman also has trouble with a black president, social services and evolution. The pattern is pretty common among hard-line fundamentalists, even as they name themselves Christians..

It’s worth noting that in spite of a past assault charge on a police officer, Mr. Zimmerman seems extra cozy with his local law enforcement officials. Without that coziness, he likely doesn’t commit this egregious crime. Their little hater’s club allowed his racism to be considered okay, maybe even cool. We know there was some level of tolerance for his actions, as he was not charged with a crime at the scene. [And as of this writing has not been charged yet.]

But how many of us find ourselves in similar, if not so obviously racist, situations at times? Most all of us. And how do we react to such comments and behaviors? Sadly, most of us have been too afraid of confrontation or too disinterested in civil society to take action. If this were not the case, racism would have been long since abandoned by even the most raging haters. We’ve not stood up to it in the past. Now that we’re awakening, it’s time for a change.

We do not need to be aggressive or hostile to racists – they have plenty of that already. Our methodology needs to be one of gentleness, of peace and of love. “Wow, George, it kind of surprises me to hear you say that. He seems like a fine/pretty average/typical kid to me.” or perhaps “You know George, except for an accident of birth you could be him and he could be you. Funny.” or again “George, remarks like that are unacceptable. We are all children under God’s light, and such talk is not at all Christian.” This last version is a little more challenging, but cast in the context of Christianity we can perhaps be a bit more firm.

No matter how peacefully we approach our ‘George,’ the possibility exists that they will react against you. It may be abusive, perhaps even violent. That potential outcome doesn’t relieve us of our personal responsibility to end racism. If the situation is too flammable, we may not be able to express ourselves fully. But most of all, we cannot let such situations continue due to our indifference. We owe it to each other as brothers and sisters, here together in Life on Earth to take a stand against racism.

As we know, racism and the hater mentality are not aimed solely toward those of African descent. Such vindictiveness can be hurled at other races and other creed-holders as well. Other minority communities have felt the unjustified wrath, the violence and the bullets. Muslims and the LGBT community know the feeling. The citizens of Haiti, Darfur and Palestine – they know that feeling. We must be vigilant for them as well.

The simple truth is that Mr. Zimmerman and those of a similar ilk, in a healthy society, are controlled by ethical systems and the vast majority of citizens who are healthy. Of course, in a healthy society, we do not have endless war, food and energy systems controlled by corporations, too big to fail banks, or an utterly dysfunctional federal government.

Nor do we have a gun lobby with no respect for human life. A justice system with no respect for justice. A police system in Florida where a violent attacker is not tested for drugs or placed in jail to await trial. There might be another hoodie who suffers the ultimate injustice.

In this broken and dysfunctional society of America, 2012 – we clearly need substantial change. We need a new cultural operating system based on ethics – principles like peace and love – instead of this broken system of globalization built by and for the 1%. Fortunately, such an idea already exists. It’s called World 5.0. It reminds us how a new, ethical system is critical. But like any other system, it will only be as effective as the people who are engaged within it.