08-01-2014, 11:23 AM
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A recent pollasked people in Britain howmany Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The answers they gavewere shocking. A majority said that fewer than 10,000 had been killed.Scientific studies report that up to a million Iraqi men, women and childrendied in an inferno lit by the British government and its ally in Washington. That's theequivalent of the genocide in Rwanda.And the carnage goes on. Relentlessly. What this reveals is how we in Britain havebeen misled by those whose job is to keep the record straight.
The Americanwriter and academic Edward Herman calls this "normalizing the unthinkable." Hedescribes two types of victims in the world of news -- "worthy victims" and"unworthy victims." The "worthy victims" are those who suffer at the hands of ourenemies: the likes of Assad, Qadaffi, Saddam Hussein. "Worthy victims" qualifyfor what we call "humanitarian intervention," whereas "unworthy victims" are those whoget in the way of our punitive might and that of the "good" dictators weemploy. Saddam Hussein was once a "good" dictator, but he got uppity anddisobedient and was relegated to "bad" dictator.
In Indonesia, General Suharto was a "good" dictator, regardless of his slaughter of perhaps a million people, aided bythe governments of Britainand America.He also wiped out a third of the population of East Timorwith the help of British fighter aircraft and British machine guns. Suharto waseven welcomed to Londonby the Queen and when he died peacefully in his bed, he was lauded asenlightened, a modernizer -- one of us. Unlike Saddam Hussein, he never gotuppity.
When Itravelled in Iraqin the 1990s, the two principal Moslem groups, the Shia and Sunni, had theirdifferences but they lived side by side, even inter-married and regardedthemselves with pride as Iraqis. There was no Al Qaida, there were nojihadists. We blew all that to bits in 2003 with "shock and awe." And todaySunni and Shia are fighting each other right across the Middle East. This mass murder is being funded by the regime in Saudi Arabiawhich beheads people and discriminates against women. Most of the 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
In 2010, Wikileaks released a cablesent to US embassies by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She wrote this:"Saudi Arabai remains a critical financial support for Al Qaeda, the Taliban,al Nusra and other terrorist groups ... worldwide."
And yet the Saudis are ourvalued allies. They're good dictators. The British royals visit them often. Wesell them all the weapons they want. I use the firstperson "we" and "our" in line with newsreaders and commentators who often say"we," preferring not to distinguish between the criminal power of ourgovernments and us, the public. We are all assumed to be part of a consensus:Tory and Labour, Obama's White House too.
When NelsonMandela died, the BBC went straight to David Cameron, then to Obama. Cameronwho went to South Africaduring Mandela's 25th was tantamount to support for the apartheid regime, and it was Obama who recently shed a tear in Mandela's cell on RobbenIsland -- he who presides over thecages of Guantanamo.
What were theyreally mourning about Mandela? Clearly not his extraordinary will to resist anoppressive system whose depravity the US and British governments backedyear after year. Rather they were grateful for the crucial role Mandela hadplayed in quelling an uprising in black South Africa against the injusticeof white political and economic power. This was surely the only reason he wasreleased. Today the same ruthless economic power is apartheid in another form, making South Africa the most unequal societyon earth. Some call this "reconciliation."
We all live inan information age -- or so we tell each other as we caress our smart phoneslike rosary beads, heads down, checking, monitoring, tweeting. We're wired;we're on message; and the dominant theme of the message is ourselves. Identityis the zeitgeist.
A lifetime agoin Brave New World, Aldous Huxleypredicted this as the ultimate means of social control because it wasvoluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom. Perhaps thetruth is that we live not in an information age but a media age. Like thememory of Mandela, the media's wondrous technology has been hijacked. From theBBC to CNN, the echo chamber is vast.
In hisacceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, Harold Pinter spoke abouta "manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universalgood, a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." But, saidPinter, "it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happeningit wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
Pinter wasreferring to the systematic crimes of the United States and to an undeclaredcensorship by omission -- that is leaving out crucial information that mighthelp us make sense of the world.
Today liberaldemocracy is being replaced by a system in which people are accountable to acorporate state and not the other way around as it should be. In Britain, theparliamentary parties are devoted to the same doctrine of care for the rich andstruggle for the poor. This denial of real democracy is an historic shift. It'swhy the courage of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is such athreat to the powerful and unaccountable. And it's an object lesson for thoseof us who are meant to keep the record straight.
The great reporter Claud Cockburnput it well: "Never believe anything until it's officially denied." Imagine ifthe lies of governments had been properly challenged and exposed as theysecretly prepared to invade Iraq-- perhaps a million people would be alive today.
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Is The Media Now Just Another Word For "Control"?
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[URL="http://www.opednews.com/author/author72413.html"]![[Image: johnsphoto-20111007-501.png]](http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploaded/johnsphoto-20111007-501.png)
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A recent pollasked people in Britain howmany Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The answers they gavewere shocking. A majority said that fewer than 10,000 had been killed.Scientific studies report that up to a million Iraqi men, women and childrendied in an inferno lit by the British government and its ally in Washington. That's theequivalent of the genocide in Rwanda.And the carnage goes on. Relentlessly. What this reveals is how we in Britain havebeen misled by those whose job is to keep the record straight.
The Americanwriter and academic Edward Herman calls this "normalizing the unthinkable." Hedescribes two types of victims in the world of news -- "worthy victims" and"unworthy victims." The "worthy victims" are those who suffer at the hands of ourenemies: the likes of Assad, Qadaffi, Saddam Hussein. "Worthy victims" qualifyfor what we call "humanitarian intervention," whereas "unworthy victims" are those whoget in the way of our punitive might and that of the "good" dictators weemploy. Saddam Hussein was once a "good" dictator, but he got uppity anddisobedient and was relegated to "bad" dictator.
In Indonesia, General Suharto was a "good" dictator, regardless of his slaughter of perhaps a million people, aided bythe governments of Britainand America.He also wiped out a third of the population of East Timorwith the help of British fighter aircraft and British machine guns. Suharto waseven welcomed to Londonby the Queen and when he died peacefully in his bed, he was lauded asenlightened, a modernizer -- one of us. Unlike Saddam Hussein, he never gotuppity.
When Itravelled in Iraqin the 1990s, the two principal Moslem groups, the Shia and Sunni, had theirdifferences but they lived side by side, even inter-married and regardedthemselves with pride as Iraqis. There was no Al Qaida, there were nojihadists. We blew all that to bits in 2003 with "shock and awe." And todaySunni and Shia are fighting each other right across the Middle East. This mass murder is being funded by the regime in Saudi Arabiawhich beheads people and discriminates against women. Most of the 9/11hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
In 2010, Wikileaks released a cablesent to US embassies by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She wrote this:"Saudi Arabai remains a critical financial support for Al Qaeda, the Taliban,al Nusra and other terrorist groups ... worldwide."
And yet the Saudis are ourvalued allies. They're good dictators. The British royals visit them often. Wesell them all the weapons they want. I use the firstperson "we" and "our" in line with newsreaders and commentators who often say"we," preferring not to distinguish between the criminal power of ourgovernments and us, the public. We are all assumed to be part of a consensus:Tory and Labour, Obama's White House too.
When NelsonMandela died, the BBC went straight to David Cameron, then to Obama. Cameronwho went to South Africaduring Mandela's 25th was tantamount to support for the apartheid regime, and it was Obama who recently shed a tear in Mandela's cell on RobbenIsland -- he who presides over thecages of Guantanamo.
What were theyreally mourning about Mandela? Clearly not his extraordinary will to resist anoppressive system whose depravity the US and British governments backedyear after year. Rather they were grateful for the crucial role Mandela hadplayed in quelling an uprising in black South Africa against the injusticeof white political and economic power. This was surely the only reason he wasreleased. Today the same ruthless economic power is apartheid in another form, making South Africa the most unequal societyon earth. Some call this "reconciliation."
We all live inan information age -- or so we tell each other as we caress our smart phoneslike rosary beads, heads down, checking, monitoring, tweeting. We're wired;we're on message; and the dominant theme of the message is ourselves. Identityis the zeitgeist.
A lifetime agoin Brave New World, Aldous Huxleypredicted this as the ultimate means of social control because it wasvoluntary, addictive and shrouded in illusions of personal freedom. Perhaps thetruth is that we live not in an information age but a media age. Like thememory of Mandela, the media's wondrous technology has been hijacked. From theBBC to CNN, the echo chamber is vast.
In hisacceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, Harold Pinter spoke abouta "manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universalgood, a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." But, saidPinter, "it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happeningit wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
Pinter wasreferring to the systematic crimes of the United States and to an undeclaredcensorship by omission -- that is leaving out crucial information that mighthelp us make sense of the world.
Today liberaldemocracy is being replaced by a system in which people are accountable to acorporate state and not the other way around as it should be. In Britain, theparliamentary parties are devoted to the same doctrine of care for the rich andstruggle for the poor. This denial of real democracy is an historic shift. It'swhy the courage of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange is such athreat to the powerful and unaccountable. And it's an object lesson for thoseof us who are meant to keep the record straight.
The great reporter Claud Cockburnput it well: "Never believe anything until it's officially denied." Imagine ifthe lies of governments had been properly challenged and exposed as theysecretly prepared to invade Iraq-- perhaps a million people would be alive today.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
