Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Necessary Illusions is a Noam Chomsky Massey Lecture from 1988, the same year as his groundbreaking text Manufacturing Consent was first published.

The lecture examines “the ways in which thought and understanding are shaped in the interest of domestic privilege” and a year later was developed into a book of the same name.

For more on this topic I’d recommend the two texts already mentioned along with with Chomsky’s Media Control and, for a UK perspective, A Century of Spin by David Miller and William Dinan.
necessary illusions

Necessary Illusions (53:58): MP3

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EU obligated to prosecute war crime suspects

An excellent article by Daniel Machover and Adri Nieuwhof on the failure of most EU member states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdication when suspected Israeli (and other) war criminals enter their territory, as called for by the 4th Geneva Convention. For more background info on EU-Israel and attempts by Israel to push for an ‘upgrade’ of existing relations, see this article by Pepijn van Houwelingen.

Over the past year, the European Union and Israel have deepened their relationship. The enhanced partnership that provides for closer political and mutually beneficial trade and investment relations as well as economic, social, financial, civil scientific, technological and cultural cooperation. The EU will pump 14 million euros ($18 million) of taxpayer money into the cooperation over the next seven years. However, talks to upgrade the current association agreement were suspended in January 2009 because of Israel’s 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip. On 23 April, EU commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement that “the EU deeply deplores the loss of life during this conflict, particularly the civilian casualties, and would follow closely investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law.” Ferrero-Waldner chastised Israel’s refusal to endorse a Palestinian state. Israel quickly responded, warning the EU to tone down its criticism.

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Rumsfeld’s roving band of executioners

Afghan villagers sift through the rubble of destroyed houses after the coalition air strikes in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province, Afghanistan
Afghan villagers sift through the rubble of destroyed houses after the coalition air strikes in the Bala Baluk district of Farah province, Afghanistan

The Independent reports that US Marines Corps’ Special Operations Command, or MarSOC, which was created three years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, was behind at least three of Afghanistan’s worst civilian casualty incidents, including the recent bombing in Bala Baluk, in Farah  which killed up to 147 people including more than 90 women and children. This news comes just days after the Special Forces Lieutenant-General Stanley McChrystal, who was himself involved in the coverup of the death of Pat Tillman, was named to take over as the top commander of US and Nato troops in Afghanistan. His has prompted speculation that commando counterinsurgency missions will increase in the battle against the Afghan resistance.

According to the paper MarSOC faces opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community with an article in the Marine Corps Times accusing the unit of bringing shame on the corps. The US Army commander in Nangahar likewise said he was “deeply ashamed” of the units behavior which is “a stain on our honour”. Apparently at the first sign of danger, these ‘special forces’ pansies panick and call in the airforce to bomb everything within sight. These are apparently the same skills that they are now imparting to the Pakistani military with, as we have noted, very similar consequences.

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Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

The Real News interviews Sut Jhally, director/producer of the film Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (watch it here), on the one sided nature of coverage of the conflict.

It was good to see that the excellent study conducted by the Glasgow University Media Group was mentioned.  The study had a number of interesting results including that, due to the absense of historical background given in news coverage, many people in the UK believe that the Palestinians are in fact occupying the Occupied Territories.

Lieberman’s party proposes ban on Arab Nakba

As Palestinians mark Nakba Day to recognise the catastrophe of 1948, yet more evidence emerged of the racist nature of Israeli foreign minister Avignor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party. In a clearly provocative act they now want to ban the some 1.5 million Arabs within Israel from celebrating this day and would threaten anyone doing so with jail terms. This is nothing new for Lieberman and his mob who have openly called for Arab Israelis to swear allegiance oaths to the state and even “voluntarily forfeit” their citizenship in exchange for land. Such policies are clearly aimed at “transfering” the remaining Arabs that reside within Israel’s borders and finishing the job that the Zionist project started. To announce proposals on such a day should be roundly condemned for the grotesque insensitivity that they represent.

In another article in Haaretz , Palestinian participation in this day is trivialised and reduced with a cheap dig at the division between the two main political factions in the Palestinian territories: Hamas and Fatah. “Only 2000 turn out….for March held by Hamas” reads the headline, while the top line refers to the “dispersal” of Palestinians during the so-called “War of Independence”. However, not mentioned (which is noted in the Lieberman article), is that many ceremonies were in fact held a day early because May 15 falls on Friday, the Muslim day of rest. Why let this get in the way of having a dig at Hamas while downplaying the anguish that 61 years of injustice has already caused eh? The description of “dispersal” is also particularly euphemistic, as if the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians merely faded-away or quietly scattered from their villages, rather than the terrorization and intimidation that they were subjected to by Irgun and Haganah thugs.

Raw Story: Congressional leaders inadvertently expose Israeli lobbyists behind letter to Obama

Oops! The lobby leaves its imprint revealing inappropriate machinations in writing letters for members of Congress (for starters). Raw Story’s John Byrne has the story (thanks Christian):

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Click on thumbnail for full size or see appended below

GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) circulated a letter to colleagues this week urging President Obama to support Israel when moving forward with any Israeli peace process.

Trouble is, they forgot to delete the name of the lobbying group involved in the letter from the document.

Attached to the email message they circulated when seeking signatures from other members of Congress was the document, titled, “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

AIPAC stands for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a powerful bipartisan pro-Israel lobbying group. Recently, the group found itself in the news over allegations that two former staff members were involved in espionage — though the Justice Department recently dropped the case against them and no wrongdoing was alleged against the group itself.

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Chalmers Johnson on the Cost of Empire

book cover
"The Bases of Empire", By Catherine Lutz, NYU Press, 356 pages

Why does the U.S. government maintain over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories? How long can the American taxpayer support this far-flung force given the severely weakened economy? And why has there been no public discussion by the Obama administration over scaling back our imperial presence abroad? Chalmers Johnson seeks to explain.

In her foreword to “The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts,” an important collection of articles on United States militarism and imperialism, edited by Catherine Lutz, the prominent feminist writer Cynthia Enloe notes one of our most abject failures as a government and a democracy: “There is virtually no news coverage—no journalists’ or editors’ curiosity—about the pressures or lures at work when the U.S. government seeks to persuade officials of Romania, Aruba or Ecuador that providing U.S. military-basing access would be good for their countries.” The American public, if not the residents of the territories in question, is almost totally innocent of the huge costs involved, the crimes committed by our soldiers against women and children in the occupied territories, the environmental pollution, and the deep and abiding suspicions generated among people forced to live close to thousands of heavily armed, culturally myopic and dangerously indoctrinated American soldiers. This book is an antidote to such parochialism.

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Nakba remembered amid Gaza suffering

As ever Al Jazeera is one of the few media outlets which recognises that the narrative of the Jewish state began with an ethnic cleansing in 1948, which aimed to erase the history of an entire people and falsely create that of another. We hear how the Palestinian suffering caused during the Gaza war invokes memories of the first Nakba. “61 years and we are still waiting to return,” said one man displaced with his family in a makeshift tent. “Our grandfathers told us the stories about their catastrophe and sadly it is now our turn to tell our children and their children about our catastrophe.” One unfortunate note is that the journalist in the report refers to how hundreds of thousands of Palestinians “fled”, as opposed to being “expelled” by Israeli forces, as was ordered by the future Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Vodpod videos no longer available. 

Caught in the crossfire – the Swat valley’s fleeing families

Farhad Bibi survived the jet attack on her home, but her one-year-old daughter, Hassina, was one of 11 people killed (Declan Walsh)
Farhad Bibi survived the jet attack on her home, but her one-year-old daughter, Hassina, was one of 11 people killed (Declan Walsh)

Declan Walsh seeks out the refugees trapped in a brutal war between Pakistan’s army and the Taliban after an uneasy and short-lived truce.

Army footage shows laser-guided missiles slamming into mountain buildings that explode into a fountain of fragments. Warplanes blast away at Taliban targets in the Swat valley and ground troops push towards the main town, Mingora. When Pakistani forces kill the Taliban, few complain – this is a popular war, for now.

“We are progressing well,” a spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said.

Sometimes, though, they hit the wrong target. Jan Nawab, a slightly-built man with a scraggly beard, stood outside the house where he has taken refuge, and sobbed softly under the weight of the calamity that had befallen him.

Last Monday morning a fighter jet screamed over Matta, a Taliban-overrun district in the heart of Swat. Its first bomb landed on Jan Nawab’s home, where his wife, four children, his sister-in-law and two other children, were sheltering. All were killed.

The plane curled in the sky, two witnesses said, and turned for a second pass. The second explosion crushed his neighbour’s house, where a woman and two children were killed. “Eleven people in total,” he said, in a faltering voice, knotting his fingers. Continue reading “Caught in the crossfire – the Swat valley’s fleeing families”

Here’s a broom, Mr Speaker

‘The MPs’ expenses scandal has exposed the House of Commons as an Augean stable – and I mean to get it cleaned up’, writes Mark Thomas.

As some readers may be aware, I have been working on the destruction of international capitalism and bourgeois parliamentary democracy for some time. However, even I have been taken aback by my recent run of success. Had I factored in the self-destructive culture of greed, I could have spent considerably less time handing out leaflets and waving placards and spent considerably more time on the champagne aspect of the “champagne anarchist” life style.

Frankly, no one could have quite predicted the depths to which parliament has sunk. And each release of information, similar to the release of Police Academy films, gets progressively lower and more vile.

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