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Ok
campers, surf's up (again)! Now we're going to have
to learn to ride these waves of wartime propaganda,
or drown. The first swell up today is from one of
the usual wave making machines also known as The Boston
Sunday Globe, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of
The New York Times, so draw your own conclusions:
JERUSULUM
--- Israeli helicopters swooped down on a Gaza Strip
neighborhood early yesterday and fired a salvo of
rockets at a car carrying a top leader of the militant
Islamic group Hammas killing him and his three body
guards. *
Now
for sake of discussion only, put aside any moral judgements
you may have about this as the act of war that it
is, and ask yourselves why the USA and its paramilitary
(the CIA) has not done same with Sadam Hussein?
Cue
bureaucratic computer voice: wouldn't this kind of
singular executive action with extreme prejudice be
preferable to launching a full scale regionally destabilizing
war? Affirmative, if Sadam Hussein is as dangerous
as Augusto Pinochet or Winston Churchill was, then
have at him. That will compute.
Could
it be though that Sadam Hussein really isn't the reason
for George Jr. Bush and Company wanting to go to war
with Iraq? After all, if Sadam were to be taken out
like the Palestinian Hammas Military Leader Ibrahim
Makadmeh was as described above, what bogey man fig
leaf would Shrub (little bush) have left but the denuded
obvious --- oil.
No
wonder Russia, France & Germany are concerned.
They plainly prefer the devil they know. But I digress.
Oops, here comes another wave:
Israel
security sources said Makadmeh was a key link to Hammas's
military planning and execution, and was considered
one of the organization's most extreme leaders. Intelligence
officials said Makadmeh had masterminded many attacks
against Israelis, including one on an Israeli tank
Feb. 15 outside a Jewish settlement in the northern
Gaza Strip that killed the tank's four-man crew. **
Let's
face it, Makademeh was one effective Nationalist freedom
fighter. So he had to go. Sort of like the Vikings
having to kill a Celtic Chieftain from Drumcondra
for scuttling their illegally docked long boat on
the River Liffey. The gall some native people have.
They actually think they can fight back against the
(ahem) new reality. Will these aboriginal people never
learn? Why can't they just get with the global programme
and whatever form of subjugation it takes? After all,
only foolish romantics loathe foreign occupation and
rule.
Poor
Ibrahim Makadmeh! He probably could never see the
wisdom of Israelis defending Palestine from the Palestinians
anymore than a lot of people couldn't see the wisdom
of the USA defending Vietnam from the Vietnamese or
Britain defending Ireland from the Irish. And Boston
Globe correspondents Mitnick & Ghazali (the article's
Authors) possibly didn't realize the service they
were providing the Israeli Government of Ariel Sharon
when they uncritically reported that blurb without
any analysis or context.
Ah
sure, they're just reporting the facts as mere mechanics
in the wave making machine that they are. Leave opinion
pieces for the Editorial page. Everything has its
place. But fat chance seeing an editorial or commentary
in The Boston Globe or The New York Times asking what
an Israeli tank was doing in someone else's country
guarding an illegal occupation of Jewish settlers.
This would be an act of war anywhere else except maybe
in Russia's occupation of Chechnya, Turkey's occupation
of Northern Cyprus, and thanks to the Belfast Agreement
of 1998, Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland.
Fatter
chance still of seeing an article or editorial in
the Globe or Times asking why there are any illegal
occupations of Jewish settlements at all in Gaza or
the West Bank? And it will be life in a fantasyland
before we ever see either of these two somehow esteemed
rags support sanctions against Israel for violating
multiple UN Resolutions for the past 30 years. Now
do the math, that is 18 more years than Sadam Hussein
has been violating UN Resolutions. And that's according
to Colin Powell, the USA's Negro up front, who keeps
repeating for anyone who will listen that Sadam has
been violating UN sanctions now for the last 12 years.
Of
course that dove Colin Powell always neglects to ever
mention his own fire bombing of Panama City in 1989,
wherein at the behest of Bush One he collaterally
damaged to death over 2,000 civilians as they slept.
All in an effort to extradite the previously installed
CIA thug Manuel Noriega on drug charges from which
he'll eventually be paroled. Go figure, but with talons
like that who needs olive branches?
Moreover,
Powell conveniently overlooks Israel's attacks and
invasions of Palestine and the fact that Sadam Hussein
has never attacked the USS Liberty or hired the spy
Jonathan Pollard. Yet, I could have sworn that George
Sr. Bush entered the first Gulf War in 1991 because
Sadam Hussein had attacked and invaded Kuwait.
I
can still remember watching the news one night back
then seeing reporters and cameramen following the
then Bush down Massachusetts Avenue by Harvard University
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They pestered him with
questions about why the US should be going to war
with Iraq over Kuwait, and he answered: " Well,
for the right of the people of Kuwait to live free
of the tyranny of Sadam Hussein and why
yes of course for oil."
And
within a half hour of that foot in mouth, the placards
appeared in Harvard Square shouting no blood for oil
and hell no we won't fight for Texaco. The White House
quickly issued a press release saying the President
had misspoken, even though he hadn't, but that was
enough for all the wave machines to start cranking
the cover stories out just like they are now. Only
now, they don't seem to be as effective as they were
then in whipping up a war fever. That's because they
have a tougher sell.
Sadam
Hussein is weaker now then he was 12 years ago because
containment works. So how does Dubya justify Sadam
as a looming threat to the US when Iraq doesn't have
their tanks and attack helicopters in anyone else's
country? Answer: keep repeating the same old lies
without any meaningful context or analysis and at
all times avoid & deny embarrassing comparisons
no matter how obvious.
What's
the antidote? Reference for starters the written works
by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky on propaganda in
free market democracies. Their two seminal works on
this subject are The Manufacture of Consent (1988)
and Necessary Illusions (1989). Both books cover at
great length and depth the political economy of the
mass media.
Herman
& Chomsky's major observation is that the media
serves to mobilize support for the special interests
that dominate the state and private activity. And
for them, one of the most appropriate ways to test
their propaganda model or how the media function is
by close comparison of paired examples. "Of course,
history does not provide perfect examples, but there
are many cases that are close enough to permit an
instructive test." (Chomsky 1989, 151).
For
instance, why did many newspapers like The New York
Times correctly make a big deal about Poland's Communist
Government crackdown on Polish labour unions in the
1980's, but never mentioned anything about Turkey's
crack down on their own labour unions? Why did the
Times correctly report extensively on the killing
fields of Cambodia during the 1975 - 1979 years of
Pol Pot, but hardly ever reported on the Indonesian
killing fields of East Timor during the same time
period? And why did the Times support the US invasion
of Vietnam in the 1960's (refusing to even report
it as an invasion), but was very critical of the then
USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in 1980?
Such
comparisons can only be beyond the comprehension of
the severely deluded. Kind of like Dow Chemical Company
employees during the Vietnam War who manufactured
(among other things) napalm and white phosphorous
bombs all the while thinking (because they were so
encouraged by management) that their work brings
freedom. Sound familiar? Well, it was a lie in
the original German too.
Like
these employees, we all have to learn how to snap
out of it because the wave making machines will work
incessantly (as they have been) bombarding us with
lie after lie in service to power. And the elementary
logic behind being so alarmed about all of this can
be found in Political Science 101: "The corporate
class control the government and the media for their
own purposeful ends." And in Economics 101: "Monopolies
and Oligopolies are price makers because they can
restrict or expand the supply of their production
at a whim thus increasing or decreasing the price
of their goods or services in the marketplace."
Let
us now go forth and really denude the obvious: both
Bush & Blair are front men for the American and
British corporate classes whom are at present looking
to control at least half the world's oil supply. No
conspiracy either, just a coincidence of elite international
business interests that are not likely to include
your own or an estimated 500,000 Iraqi lives.
So
either we help stop this killing train or we will
just end up humming unthinking mantras like: "This
war with Iraq is not about oil." All the while
ignoring a number of other obvious items like Israeli
tanks guarding illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine.
And Israeli's nuclear arsenal whose weapons of mass
destruction are truth be told the real reason behind
why other Middle Eastern states are seeking to go
nuclear with the they got 'em so we need 'em too rationale.
The end is nigh.
Dare
to question this dominant blind eye ethos at your
own risk. But unlike Ibrahim Makadmeh, you are not
likely to be shot at dawn as a result. At worst you'll
most probably just suffer the typical slings and arrows
of the usual mass media wave makers and their chicken
hawk minions like Dick Cheney, Richard Pearl and Paul
Wolfowitz. All of who, like Shrub, dodged the draft
during the Vietnam War like two dick billy goats at
a freak dance.
So
you see Oscar Wilde was right: "Patriotism is
the last refuge of scoundrels." And if you still
don't think so, then go read Herr Goering above one
more time. And then let us commit to stop living like
the frightened villagers near Dr. Frankenstein's Castle
or else we will always be called upon to slay his
monsters whenever they predictably run amok. Better
we just defrock the Doctor now and put an end to these
present day perverse practices.
Footnotes:
*
Mitnick, Josh & Sa'id Ghazali, Israel Assassinates
top Hammas military leader in
Gaza, BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE, March 9, 2003, page A3.
**
Ibid, page A3 (emphasis added).
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