BBC, NPR Ignore Egyptian Seizure of Aljazeera Journalists

The Egyptian military dictatorship arrested four more Aljazeera journalists. They've been arresting Aljazeera personnel regularly since the July coup that overthrew the first and only elected president in Egypt's 5,000 year history (Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, now branded a "terrorist" organization by the regime, its leaders imprisoned, assets seized, supporters killed and imprisoned).

You'd think the BBC and NPR, if they were actually journalists and not propagandists, would consider this newsworthy. The New York Times did, running an article in today's paper. (And posted to the Times website yesterday.) (So obviously the BBC and NPR are aware of the arrests.) The ludicrous charges are the usual: the journalists "damaged national security" (every tinpot tyrant has adopted the U.S.' "national security threat" bullshit) by publishing "false information," they met with Muslim Brotherhood members (consorting with "terrorists," see?) and they possessed dangerous material that causes "incitement," namely protesters' protest plans.
One of the arrested, Australian Peter Greste, actually worked for the BBC last year, and won a Peabody Award for his reporting for them from Somalia. Not that the BBC ingrates care. BBC is just British government propaganda, cleverly disguised.

Real journalists would make a stink when other journalists are persecuted. Much of the Western media only climbs on its high horse when an enemy or adversarial regime imprisons or kills journalists. So for example, despite the fact that Colombia, Mexico and Honduras are hellholes for journalists, there's nary a word of it on the BBC. NPR blacks out the anti-journalism holocausts in Colombia and Honduras.

When your selectivity is that extreme, propagandist is the correct name for you.

John Hockenberry Illustrates Lying By Omission

As I have previously discussed, one of the standard techniques in the propagandists' toolkit is lying by omission. By leaving out significant facts, a false picture of reality is created and implanted into the minds of the target audience. [See "Lying By Omission," July 8, 2013.]

I happened to turn on the radio yesterday and Harry Truman was reading his announcement of his annihilation by atomic bomb of Hiroshima, Japan (in August 1945, followed three days later by his wiping Nagasaki off the face of the earth with another a-bomb). [1]

“The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima,” he said. And then the audio cut to something else.

Interesting edit, right in the middle of his sentence. I happen to know what he said after the pause, “a military target.”

The quasi-U.S. government radio network NPR provides a platform for one John Hockenberry, where he has his very own show dealing with contemporary issues in a middle-brow fashion. This was his show, and he was running an introduction to an interview with Ian Buruma, who wrote a book about the year 1945. Hockenberry kicked off by mentioning “narratives.” That's a fancy media apparatchik way of saying competing versions of reality. [2]

Buruma knew enough not to point out the dishonest omission of the last part of Truman's sentence. After all, he doesn't want to be blackballed by the bourgeois media, especially in the middle of his book promotion tour, by being “controversial.”

Now, probably most people today don't think of Hiroshima as a “military target.” It was a defenseless city, and the victims were almost all civilians- especially women and children, as the men were off to war (or dead already in combat).

Hockenberry and his ilk know how important it is to prevent people from reaching their own conclusions, and thus “dangerous” information must be hidden from them.

So the American public must be protected from the knowledge that Truman was a smarmy liar and propagandist. Truman has been made into an iconic figure in the pantheon of U.S. political bosses, quite undeservedly, apart from his war crimes. There's the matter of his initiation of the purges and repression of the misnomered “McCarthy era,” which lasted from about 1947 until the early 1960s, when a new wave of repression aimed at the anti-war, black liberation, and other social and political movements was launched by the permanent institutions of the political police state. (Most important among those institutions are the FBI, the Department of “Justice,” the CIA, the military, and of course local and state police and governments, often directed and coordinated by the Federal government, especially the FBI.)

Another awful president made into an iconic figure is the virulent racist and father of the American political police state, Woodrow Wilson. And then there's another Official hero, the fascist butcher and backer of apartheid Ronald Reagan, the Godfather of the jihadist movement which grew out of the Afghan war of the 1980s. (Jimmy Carter actually started that one, and the contra terrorist campaign as well.)

[1] No, he wasn't returned from the dead. It was a recording, of course.

[2] Books about a single year is currently a publishing industry gimmick. Buruma isn't the only one cashing in on this silly exaggeration of one or another years as World Historic. The fact that what are now deemed significant events sometimes cluster together in a calendar year is more likely random mathematical coincidence (and a product of selection bias by authors looking for a thematic hook for their latest tome) than a matter of historical tectonic plates shifting all at once, as is the conceit of the authors. Next year they'll come up with a different gimmick, trust me. Publishing is more and more like the fashion industry, a matter of invented (and frivolous and pointless) novelty for novelty's sake, signifying nothing.

Chinese Media Parrot Egyptian Military Dictatorship's Line

The so-called “People's Daily,” a leading propaganda organ of the misnomered “Communist” Party of China, is echoing the Egyptian military regime's justifications for serial slaughters of supporters of the recently-overthrown by military coup president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Chinese propaganda spin is identical to the Egyptian military butchers, “Egypt Is Fighting Terrorism.”

It's easy to understand why the Chinese oligarchs would do this. Not for some esoteric foreign policy goal or out of an arcane geopolitical strategy calculation. Simply because the Chinese rulers are mass oppressors themselves, who when confronted with popular protest brutally repress it as a matter of course. (Not just Tiananmen Square either, but numerous smaller Tiananmen Squares.) Naturally, when confronted with the spectacle of a large group of protesters being slaughtered by a government, the instinct of the Chinese rulers is to side with the foreign government, not the protesters. How could it be otherwise? To side with the protesters would present too stark a contrast with their own treatment of citizens. And they wouldn't want to give Chinese people the “wrong” idea, that mass protest is tolerable, or that gunning down protesters is unacceptable in any way.

Since the U.S. declared “war on terrorism,” many oppressive nations, most of them aligned with the U.S., (not just Egypt, but Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and others) have availed themselves of this U.S.-created ideological justification for state crimes and repression by calling their victims “terrorists” and pretending they are in a “war” with “terrorism.” This is one of the most malign and lasting political results of the U.S. reaction to the jetliner attacks by Al-Qaeda on 9/11/01, attacks which the FBI and CIA were complicit in. For human rights not just in the U.S. but on the planet as a whole, this era will go down in history as a disaster, a huge setback in the centuries-long struggle to establish human rights against the oppressive power of rulers.  

What's Wrong with Aljazeera?

Lately I've been noticing more and more bad reporting by Aljazeera. (I'm speaking of the English language broadcasts here.) By “bad reporting,” I mean misleading or false. Factually false, or misleading such as by using the standard media technique of omitting key facts in order to present a false picture. Also too often they adopt the mendacious terminolog of U.S. propaganda, which is verbiage designed to brainwash. (“National security” is a perfect example.)

Here are two recent examples.

On July 10^th one of their American reporters, Kimberly Halken, presented a piece on the nomination hearings for the egregious secret police supervisor James Comey for FBI director (a gig with a ten year term in office- no longer lifetime as J. Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, had). She uses the officially-approved euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” at one point instead of the true word, torture. And the words “national security” roll off her tongue, that never-defined term that is magic, like “abracadabra” or “open sesame” or “war on terrorism” (or in the old days, “anti-communism”) that has special powers to fog men's minds and endow government gangsters who invoke it with superhuman powers. (Literally superhuman: the magic words give them power over us humans.) She also mouths the standard blather about striking a “delicate balance” between so-called anti-terrorism and “not infringing on rights.” Same thing Obama himself says every time he's caught erecting another piece of his police state, and what every other architect of repression (and their defenders) says when they're on the spot.

This is boilerplate propaganda. Halkin just bolted the chunks of mendacity in place.

Second example:

Kat Turner, another American, reported the first court appearance of surviving Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (The 19-year-old survived despite the efforts of the police to summarily execute him when his presence hiding under a tarp in a small boat in someone's backyard was reported by the homeowner. Initially, and even later, the media kept calling it a “shootout.” But it was soon admitted that Tsarnaev was unarmed.) Tsarnaev has been in captivity since mid-April. Turner claimed that “the only obvious sign of injury was a cast on his arm.” Well maybe she's just not very observant. Even the U.S. media described a disfigured jaw, and noted his constant touching of it. Even if she was too far back in the peanut gallery to notice, she could have gotten the information from numerous other media reports. In fact, how could Aljazeera miss it? On July 11^th Aljazeera ran her uncorrected report. A small point, perhaps, but not one that inspired confidence in Aljzeera's reliability.

Worse, however, she “reported” that Tsarnaev was “injured in a shootout.” No he wasn't, Kat. There was no “shootout,” because Tsarnaev WAS UNARMED. That fact has been known for months. [1]

Now, reactionary jackasses will think I'm being “pro-Tsarnaev.” Apparently they think I should lie and say Tsarnaev had a machine gun and was holding a baby at knife-point when he was shot, to make him look as bad as possible. (And not incidentally to justify the failed summary-execution attempt. by the police.) To think accuracy- that is, faithfulness to reality- matters, must mean that I “like” Tsarnaev.

Just to briefly respond to such a brain-dead, knee-jerk reaction: I'm not even sympathetic to Tsarnaev. I think he's an idiot, a puppet of his now-dead older brother (who apparently was one of these fanatical Chechen terrorist types) who had exceedingly poor judgment (an unfortunate and common pitfall of being 19). He helped kill three people who had nothing to do with Chechnya. Because they happen to live in the U.S., apparently that makes them guilty of “waging war on Muslims,” in his mind. A dozen or so people will also have to get on with their lives minus a limb or two. Nothing concrete is accomplished to end hostility towards Muslims by such an act. (Quite the contrary.) Nor does this in any way weaken the U.S. So without material value, there is only symbolic value left to consider as a possible gain for Tsarnaev's “cause.” (I get the impression he's as unclear as to what exactly his cause is as I am.)

I can think of innumerable better ways to make a symbolic point. I think the political “message” is lost on the victims and on the American public. All they see is some vicious violence. And if this is meant to inspire other Muslims to similar acts, a lá the Al-Qaeda strategy of provoking greater conflict, that of course means more of the same, making everything worse. The Chechens have pursued a strategy of more and more nihilistic violence in Russia, and so far the result has been the razing by Russian bombardment of Grozny and the installation of a sadistic terrorist as Chechen ruler as Russian client. I'd recommend trying something else.

The point here isn't about Tsarnaev; it is about reliable, honest reporting; the point is whether we can trust Aljazeera as an information source. It has nothing to do with one's attitude towards Tsarnaev, which in any case should not guide the reporting. That would not be objective reporting, it would be propagandistic.

But back to Aljazeera: Why the pandering to U.S. propaganda norms, and worse?

Perhaps the American reporters of Aljazeera are simply too brainwashed by their experience to be more objective.

Or perhaps Aljazeera, and the Emir of Qatar, have inferiority complexes. Perhaps they crave acceptance by the U.S. media and political establishment, which that imperialist power combine defines as “legitimacy.” Perhaps Aljazeera's bosses are brainwashed into feeling that legitimacy is controlled by the U.S. power system, to bestow or deny at their pleasure. (That certainly is a big problem in domestic U.S. politics. Prime examples: the pathetic sell-out U.S. labor unions, which have been slowly self-destructing for over 60 years now, and the “respectable” environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, which are lapdogs and pets of the corporate establishment.) The craving for acceptance from the U.S. power structure, (so-called “respectability”) is existential death to anyone who wants to follow a moral path in life.

The only possible value of Aljazeera, to an American or to ANY audience, is as an alternative to Western establishment propaganda. If all Aljazeera is going to do is echo and mimic that propaganda system, because it wants to “be part of the conversation,” i.e. to try to influence Western elites by saying Hey, we're one of you! Accept us!- in that case, no Westerner has any reason to tune in to or read Aljazeera online. If it's just going to present more of the same twisted worldview of Imperialist elites, it has no value. It's just an off-brand version of the brand name propaganda entities. And since the price is the same, why buy it?

Of course, given that Qatar functions as a well-remunerated oil spigot for “the West,” is it not intimately tied to the U.S. system? And who is the ultimate guarantor of the Emir's continued hold on power? Obviously the U.S. Hence we should expect Aljazeera, being a media operation of the Emir, to be basically in line with U.S. propaganda. Perhaps the only surprise is that it has displeased the U.S. as much as it has, mainly in its Arabic language broadcasting. [If it didn't tell the truth and report on people and events and conduct interviews of interest to Arab audiences, it would be as irrelevant as U.S. Arab-language propaganda ops are. The U.S. expects Aljazeera to parrot U.S. military propaganda, an absurd demand. Had Aljazeera functioned as the U.S. military and government wanted, and been a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and the horrors inflicted there, it would have totally and permanently discredited itself with Arab audiences and thus made itself irredemably irrelevant in its part of the world. The moronic “hearts and minds” mentality of the U.S. military is that their crude, cynical propaganda can actually change the attitudes of the people it bombs and maims and of those who can see plain facts. They think that if only ALL media would broadcast the same bullshit and lies as U.S. military propaganda ops, everyone would be fooled. Hey, these are the cretins who are convinced the U.S. media lost the Vietnam War!]

Qatar's ultimate dependency on the U.S. would explain Aljazeera's very muted responses to the repeated bombings of its facilities by the U.S., the murder of its employees, the kidnapping of at least one of them (imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay military gulag for six years) and lesser attacks.

In any event, the Emir just squandered $500,000,000 in oil money buying Al Gore's failed cable TV channel, in an attempt to force its way into the U.S. market, from which it has been banned by the U.S. corporations that control what Americans can see and hear. (This oligarchic media system is known as “the free press.” See what I mean about mendacious terminology?) Others have commented on the irony of global warming Cassandra Albert Gore Jr. making a personal killing of $100,000,000 from oil money. (Burning oil releases carbon dioxide, the increasing atmospheric concentration of which is raising the temperature of the planet.)

I'll bet the inhabitants of Qatar might have thought of other uses for that money. But in a Kingdom, even the oil in the ground is the personal property of the ruler.

On the other hand, Aljazeera must be doing something right in Egypt, because the military oligarchs there have so far arrested 28 Aljazeera employees since the coup of a few days ago. Meanwhile the Egyptian media is strenuously vying for the title of World's Worst Media. The horrible hacks who work for it (the opposition media has been expeditiously shut down by force by the military- but don't call it a coup!) not only have acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders for the military so far, but they shouted down and ejected an Aljazeera reporter from a press conference. Man, those vermin make the U.S. media look good by comparison! (But not very. See the loathsome David Gregory's attack on Glenn Greenwald on NBC.)

1] The U.S. media can be quite lousy too. Consider this example of exiguous, manipulative “reporting” by the CBS radio network (aired July 11^th at 6 am Eastern Standard Time). “Reporting” on Tsarnaev's court appearance, other than the fact that he was in court, there is literally no information. No mention of his injuries, no mention even of the plea entered, which was the main purpose of the hearing! (“Not guilty” was the plea, I can report, in case you relied on CBS for your info.) Instead, aside from the introductory sentence- that Tsarnaev was in court yesterday- the entirety of the CBS “report” was the opinion of the M.I.T. campus police chief (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), one of whose officers was shot and killed by the Tsarnaev brothers when they were on the lam after the bombing. The chief was in court to glare at Tsarnaev, and he opined: “He was a punk. [His emphasis.] He showed no remorse.” Not sure how Tsarnaev would “show remorse” in a preliminary hearing, but no matter. The chief hates him. I think we all could have figured that out without being told. It is rather like reporting “the sun rose in the East today.” No kidding. So there's literally no information here, nothing nobody doesn't already know or assume, but rather an attempt to generate public hostility toward Tsarnaev by feeding people the feelings and attitude of an understandably angry and contemptuous man. (Guess CBS figures the American public doesn't hate Tsarnaev enough.)

In other words, this was pure propaganda, an attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than provide information- as I pointed out, even the most basic facts of the court appearance were omitted by CBS. So they did worse than Aljazeera. Hey, maybe we do need Aljazeera after all!

Lying By Omission

One of the tricks the U.S. media uses to dupe people into believing the false picture of the world, of reality, that the propaganda system promotes is the omission of key facts. Instead of giving false information (which they also do quite a lot), important information is suppressed which results in the creation of  false impressions and a false image of the world that blots out the real world, like a permanent solar eclipse of the mind. The advantage of this mendacious method of misrepresentation and misleading is that technically the propagandists aren't “lying” in the sense the word is usually understood. But that's a con artist's rationalization. The technique is intended to fool the target by misrepresentation and deception. There may be an argument about whether it is “lying.” There can be no argument that it is dishonest and designed to dupe and mislead people, and therefore is reprehensible. This is an awful and destructive state of affairs that has the consequence of causing tremendous, avoidable human suffering and death.

Adding an extra twist to the sleazy and unethical nature of the scam is the fact that the establishment media presents itself as a reliable (indeed the only reliable) source of information, and is allegedly objective and unbiased to boot. (Yeah, I know, that's pretty brazenly cynical of them.) As hundreds of millions of people rely on these propagandists for grasping reality and understanding the world, this is an awful state of affairs. These propagandists literally promote mass false consciousness, trapping the minds of millions in a web of illusion.

Here are some examples of the phenomenon of lying by omission.

“Iranian hostage crisis.” They're still milking this one, and they won't stop until they overthrow the mullahs ruling Iran. Then when they've installed a client regime as they did in 1953, or a satrapy, Iran will be “our friend” again and the U.S. can let bygones be bygones. Hollywood creepoid Ben Stiller just mined that particular propaganda pit for a movie that is being hailed, predictably, by the corporate media. ("Argo." It concerns the CIA “rescue” of some U.S. “hostages.” I'm waiting for Hollywood to make a movie about the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup, the horrible reign of the Shah, during which he killed a quarter of a million Iranians, the CIA-spawned and nurtured Iranian secret police, the SAVAK, and so on. Unfortunately for the Iranian people, the overthrow of the Shah created an opening for the only remaining organized political force in Iran to seize power, the mullahs. Unless Oliver Stone, say, makes it, I think I'm in for a very long wait.)

A telling omission- besides the entire history I just mentioned: Western propagandists never mention WHY the U.S. embassy was seized. It was in reaction to the U.S. letting the Shah into the United States. You'd think that would be an important fact. It was the CAUSE (justified or not) for the seizure.

Another fact assiduously omitted from the periodic harping on the “Iranian hostage crisis” is that the U.S. immediately stole all Iran's money (in the billions of dollars) from the banks under U.S. financial control, and used the money to pay off businesses that had (unfulfilled) contracts with the dictator Shah.

Here's another example of how the U.S. and other media distort people's impression of the Middle East:

“Rockets raining down on Israel from Gaza.” You hear that a lot. Well, there's plenty they omit here. The most important thing they always omit here is that Israel consistently provokes the rocket fire by murdering Palestinians. Whenever there's a unilateral truce by Hamas, Israel raids Gaza to murder some Palestinian “militants.” This pattern began under Ariel Sharon, and has continued under his successors. U.S. media always glosses over this and pretends that the resulting rocket fire is unprovoked, vicious terrorism aimed at civilians. (By the way, all the Palestinians Israel kills, and there have been thousands and thousands over the years, are by definition civilians, since the Palestinians have no army. And “militant” can mean anything- someone who throws a rock, someone who hates Israeli occupation and repression, whatever. But the specific assassinations are probably aimed at members of “militant” organizations. Since the U.S. and Israel brands these organizations “terrorists,” anyone connected to them is automatically a “terrorist.” “Terrorist” is a political curse word, like “communist,” which has the same meaning as “Jew” in Nazi lexicon- an evil subhuman scumbag worthy of nothing but death, in fact killing them is an imperative.)

I'm not making an argument about whether Palestinian retaliation for the murders and kidnappings of activists and others is justified or not. The point is the media reverses cause and effect, and removes the source of provocation from Israel and transfers it to the evil Palestinians. This allows the media (and Israel) to put Israel on a high moral plane and paint the Palestinians as immoral. (Even though Israel has killed over the decades about 100 Palestinians for every Israeli killed by Palestinians- and most of those Palestinians were "civilians," i.e. not operatives of armed factions- aka "terrorists.")

Here's a third example of chronic distortion by the corporate propaganda system (aka “the media”):

“CIA agents.” Most “CIA agents” are in fact foreign traitors. They aren't employed by the CIA, although they may be paid by the CIA for providing info or doing dirty deeds on the CIA's behalf, like overthrowing the democratic government of Iran in 1953, the one in Guatemala in 1954, murdering General Rene Schneider in Chile in 1970, organizing strikes and sabotage and mayhem there and elsewhere, and etc. (I know the CIA and its media protectors like to pretend all the CIA does is “gather information,” that it's a “spy” agency, not an international terror and subversion agency that trains torturers, organizes death squads, and provides lists of people to be tortured and murdered, but that is heinously dishonest. Yes, it does spy too, mostly not to “protect America,” and certainly not to advance “freedom and democracy,” but to harm others using the information it gets. As has been thoroughly documented over the decades, this is ultimately to advance U.S. corporate interests, abbreviated as “U.S. interests,” a term that is never defined or explained, despite being used daily by the U.S. media and politicians, an interesting omission in itself.)

The actual CIA employees, who are always Americans, are called “officers” or “case officers,” not “agents,” except in the popular media, which seems to want to deliberately confuse people. Further adding to the confusion (obfuscation), FBI agents are indeed card-carrying members of the FBI, with badges and guns and arrest powers. (The CIA has no legal arrest powers, so it just kidnaps people- or simply murders them. Despicably, 54 foreign nations have recently been identified as helping them do this since 2001, when "the world changed," because- boo-hoo! the U.S. was attacked. The Guardian has the list of “rendition program” aiders and abettors. [guardian.co.uk] So much for “rule of law,” much beloved rhetorically by U.S. blowhards and propagandists.) 

The outsiders the FBI relies on for spying and subversion are called “informants” (i.e. informers), a word coined by J. Edgar Hoover to try and avoid the taint of “informer.” It's a distinction without a difference. Hoover articulated a specious distinction between the two words, to ennoble his police state spies. But there isn't any difference. Except some of these so-called “informants” are actually agents provocateur. The media always obfuscates this fact too.

In the case of CIA officer (employee) Aldrich Ames, who was caught selling information to Russia on CIA operations there, including the identities of Russian traitors working for the CIA, “the media” said over and over that Ames“sold the names of American agents to Russia, which executed them.” So the propaganda system converted Russian traitors into American agents, leaving the false and inflammatory impression that Ames caused the deaths of fellow Americans. This is not a defense of Ames, or a judgment on Russians spying for the CIA and thus betraying their own country and committing treason. It is just a statement of FACT. There is no moral judgment required of us concerning Ames or of Russian CIA spies (traitors by any definition, and you can apply your own attitude to treason here, that is not the point of this essay) to see that the U.S. media's completely dishonest and misleading mislabeling of Russian traitors as “American agents” is designed to dupe the American public about the facts of the matter. Yes, these Russian turncoats were “American agents,” but refusing to explain the details prominently, and consistently blaring with emphasis the “American agents” mislabeling, obviously obfuscates reality for the targets of this propaganda.

In this example, the U.S. media isn't just lying by omission, but is also using tendentious and tricky nomenclature designed to deceive (another common trick they employ). Thus we were told over and over (and are still occasionally reminded) that Aldrich Ames' “treachery” “led to the death of numerous American agents.” Most people reading or hearing the words “American agents” would naturally think that Americans were killed as a result of Ames' “treason.” But in fact only Russians were killed, Russian traitors that is. As Russian citizens, their duty of loyalty (if you believe in such things) was to Russia, and they committed the capital crime of treason, for which they were duly tried and executed. By the way, treason is a capital crime in the U.S. too.

The CIA's “American agents” weren't Americans, but Russians who spied for the CIA, giving away Russia's secrets. By persistently calling them “American agents,” the U.S. media knowingly tricked people into believing that Americans were killed because of Ames, and that these victims were noble heroes, not traitors to their own country.

Not that I care. Russia, America, indeed nation states mean nothing to me. I believe that nations are antithetical to having a human race. And like Ames, the Russian “traitors” were likely doing it for the money, at least in some cases. Given the glorification of materialism in America, indeed the very word “success” is usually a euphemism for “making a lot of money,” I think Ames deserved to be cut some slack. But anyone who joins the CIA, an evil, criminal organization, deserves whatever he gets, except in the case of reformed whistle-blowers like the heroic Philip Agee, and others. Some of those Russian traitors aka "American agents" were perhaps ideologically deluded by resentment of their own oppressive system into falling for American propaganda about the "land of the free and the home of the brave" "we love democracy so much" and blah blah blah. If so, they were fools who paid a heavy price for their foolishness. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Might be a temporary ally of convenience in some cases. (Like, say, oh, I don't know, the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. in World War II? Might that be a good example, hmmm?)

But then, the U.S. media's definition of “patriotism” is loyalty to the U.S. Everyone in the world is supposed to pay fealty to the U.S. Other nations don't have patriots, or patriotism. They have “nationalists” and “nationalism.”

Isn't language fun? You can do so many things with it!

There are undoubtedly thousands upon thousands of additional examples of American corporate media mendacity employing the technique of lying by omission. I know I come across such examples constantly, and have for decades. Find your own! Collect them! Trade them with your friends!

{“Oh man!” readers of this site constantly moan. “You post new essays so infrequently to propagandaanalysis! I have to check every hour on the hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, setting my alarm during the night to wake myself up hourly to check! Can't you write more stuff?”

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“But we need to read your trenchant analyses of the propaganda system!” my readers whine when I tell them this.

Ah, my friends (I purr soothingly) I have great compassion for your plight. And that is why I am offering you a solution. Notice that the side bar at the top also contains ways to follow this site so you will be informed of new additions without having to lift a finger. You can choose to be notified by email too, if you prefer.

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Wall Street Journal Plants Crosshairs On Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras

Notice I said "expose," not "leak." This wasn't a leak, some anonymous transfer of info to the public by an insider. This was an expose by a courageous, principled, and in terms of his personal fate, unfortunately foolish or self-sacrificing, depending on how you view it, person in a position to reveal scary police state surveillance.

In the Saturday June 29 edition of the Wall Street Journal, the leading U.S. paper of high finance and a consistently utterly reactionary editorial line, Obama is attacked for not "demanding" and "forcing" the Chinese and Russians to hand over Snowden. (Snowden has been in the Moscow airport arrival lounge for several days now.) They excoriate Obama for not picking up the phone and reading the riot act to Putin (and the Chinese boss too).

Even more sinister, there's an op-ed by known CIA operative Edward J. Epstein, who played a role in Nixon's overthrow (set up by the CIA) and in the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald for the JFK assassination. His op-ed darkly insists that Snowden "penetrated" Booz Allen Hamilton (and thus the NSA) according to an advance "plan" to infiltrate and "steal" "secrets." He accuses Glenn Greenwald and the documentarian Laura Poitras of possible involvement in a conspiracy to "steal" "national security secrets" namely "communications intelligence." This is very threatening to all three.

Already, deranged U.S. House Representative Peter King on TV has called for Greenwald's prosecution and slandered him by falsely claiming Greenwald threatened to reveal CIA officers' identities. Greenwald responded by pointing out that that's a flat falsehood- I would say probably a lie, that is, King probably knew it was false. King certainly hasn't corrected the public record or issued a retraction.

Poitras already is subject to fairly severe persecution by the U.S. Government, and has been for several years, for making documentaries on such subjects as Iraqi and Yemeni suffering at the hands of the U.S. Agree or disagree, she SHOULD have the right to pursue those topics, and the U.S. establishment PRETENDS she does, in fact they claim her right to do so is "guaranteed" by their Holy Constitution. Too bad their oaths to "defend and uphold it" are so much empty prattle. It really reveals the cynicism of their constant invocation of "legality" and "rule of law" and justifying their police state by saying it's "lawful." Their Blessed Constitution is supposed to be foundational law. And yet the parts that get in the way of their exercise of repressive power is trampled by their goons and enforcers daily. [The details on Poitras' persecution by U.S. police state goons are in her interviews at democracynow.org and elsewhere. Do a search.]

See more on the Snowden matter at Taboo Truths by Jason Zenith. Click the link in the sidebar at right. [And while you're at it, sign up for email alerts to this site, OK? Why not? What's it gonna hurt? I'm not gonna come to your house, you know! You probably don't think I'm good enough to come to your house, do you! What's that? Sure you do? Oh OK, I'll drop in sometime!]

Aljazeera Joins Attack on NSA Leaker

Aljazeera has joined the assault on Edward Snowden, the cashiered Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation computer systems administrator who exposed a couple of the “National Security” Agency's hidden, massive surveillance programs that surreptitiously seize the phone and Internet records of the American public en masse.

Their Washington correspondent, Kimberly Dozier, joining the U.S. media offensive against Snowden, piled on, calling him a “liar,” because some U.S. politician says so. The story was headlined by Aljazeera calling Snowden a “liar.” (There's no substance to the smear.)

Yet Alajzeera doesn't call obvious, proven liars, like James Clapper Jr, U.S. “Director of National Intelligence,” liars. Clapper lied in Congressional testimony in March when Senator Ron Wyden asked him directly if the NSA was collecting data of Americans. Clapper said no. Then nervously added “not advertently,” another lie. (Now that he was caught lying, although the establishment media is too polite to point out the blatant lie, Clapper says his lie was the “least untruthful” thing he could have said, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. When the true answer is “yes” and you say “no,” that is the MOST untruthful thing you can say. It is the exact opposite of the truth.)

People like Clapper, and every head of the NSA, ever, lie every time they speak. Their counterparts at the major national and international secret police agencies, the FBI and CIA, also chronically lie. Right now, the FBI boss, Robert S. Mueller, III, is lying, claiming terrible damage to U.S. “security” has been done, which is obvious nonsense. [1]

Aljazeera is owned by the monarchy of Qatar, a U.S. ally. Nice of them to join the U.S. government side in this, especially considering how the U.S. treats Aljazeera, bombing their offices, kidnapping their employees, and much else. Ironically, the NSA is part of the Pentagon, it's a military agency, always headed by a general, and it's the U.S. military that keeps bombing Aljazeera, in Kabul and Baghdad, and almost in Doha, Qatar- Tony Blair managed to talk George Bush the Younger out of doing that. The U.S. also reviles Aljazeera as terrorist propaganda, and U.S. corporations have bent over backward to keep Aljazeera television out of the U.S. But not out of Washington, D.C. Apparently the U.S. Imperialist elite, including past Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rely on it for information!

Kind of like if Heinrich Himmler had kept a secret copy of the Torah for reference.

1] Mueller was also boss of the FBI when the Al-Qaeda airliner kamikaze attacks of 9/11/01 occurred, so most likely he was part of the conspiracy that was watching the hijackers and deliberately allowed the attacks to occur, to enable the subsequent power grab by the secret police agencies. To mention just a few of the many facts that make this conclusion inescapable: Zacarias Moussaoui, the “20^th hijacker,” was arrested before 9/11. French intelligence had told the U.S. he was a “terrorist.” The Minnesota FBI asked FBI headquarters in Washington for a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. HQ said getting a warrant would be impossible. WHAT?! The FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court virtually never says no to warrant requests. In its history (1979-2012 data) it has granted almost 34,000 warrants and refused- hang on- eleven. That's right, less than one out of every 3,000 get turned down.

Two of the hijackers were living in California. Their landlord was an FBI informer. After 9/11, Congress asked the FBI to present the informer and his FBI handler for questioning. The FBI flatly refused. Congress slinked off with its tail between its legs. Obviously the FBI had a lot to hide. The incident also proves that the secret police are more powerful than the national legislature. That's one definition of a police state. (The FBI has always been more powerful than Congress. Historically, part of that has been due J. Edgar Hoover's practice of assembling blackmail dossiers on politicians. Another factor is the repressive laws that Congress passes, and the way the FBI si allowed to ride roughshod over alleged “Constitutional rights.”)

Mueller just came out with a stunningly cynical and dishonest statement. Testifying to Congress on June 13^th, he invoked the 9/11/01 attacks, claiming that if the just revealed NSA spy programs had been in effect then, they might have stopped the attacks. He admitted that “intelligence agencies” (in the description of the New York Times) was tracking one of the hijackers [i.e.one of the ones living in the FBI informer-landlord's place] and also looking at an Al-Qaeda safehouse in Yemen, and if only they could have connected the two by seizing the phone records of everyone in the U.S., they could have made the connection. How's that for brazenness! First of all, the NSA has ALWAYS spied on all overseas communications as that is their official mission. So any phones in that “safehouse” would have been automatically covered. And since the FBI had set up the San Diego hijackers in their informers pad, their phones no doubt were tapped, and probably the house was bugged too. Of course, the U.S. media won't mention any of this.

And Mueller knows that, which is what gives him the confidence to display such breathtaking chutzpah. [The NY Times pretty much hid what happened in the committee hearing Mueller appeared at. They buried the details in a long article about NSA boss Alexander allegedly promising more openness. There is no hint in the NYT's version of Mueller's appearance of conflict at the hearing between Mueller and the Congressmen. I had to go to foreign media to find that out- namely the Guardian. See “FBI chief Mueller says spy tactics could have stopped 9/11 attacks, June 13^th.]

Genteel New York Times Turns Up Nose At Hoi Polloi Rabble Spoiling the Hamptons

The New York Times is nothing if not bourgeois to the core. (Check out its “Styles” and “Home” sections, where it's most obvious.)

Page One of the Sunday print edition is the most prominent and important slot in the Times universe. So it is reserved not just for what they consider the most important breaking stories of the prior 24 hours, but also more general news that they consider of particular significance and worthy of maximum attention.

So here's a story from page one, Sunday May 26, 2013, which I think lets us see a bit too much of the NYT's class bias beneath its facade of “objectivity,” rather like a glimpse of petticoat momentarily exposed beneath a lady's long skirt by a careless movement of her leg: “As Boozy Invaders Hit Beach, Hamptons Sound a Snooki Alert.” The dateline is Amagansett, NY. (Published online a day earlier, as with most NYT articles these days.) [1]

The article take up another half page inside, although that includes a large photo and a smaller one (p.17). It's not worth reading, I can attest. I'll just point out the prominent aspects of it, which is sufficient to make my point about NY Times snobbery. [2]

The headline on the continuation inside adds a word and deletes an “a:” “As Boozy Invaders Hit Beach, Hamptons' Residents Sound Snooki Alert.” So it's basically the same.

Apparently the “Snooki” connection is the purely hypothetical possibility that the TV show on which “Snooki” appears might shoot an episode in the Hamptons, based on the fact that they've gone to beaches in the state of New Jersey. In fact,“Snooki” is only mentioned in passing until the last two paragraphs of a 28 paragraph story, which is mainly about angst over crowds in summer. (WOW! Beaches have crowds in summer! Who knew? Stop the presses!!) Each of those paragraphs consists of a single sentence. The upshot is apparently that MTV has no plans to shoot in the Hamptons, but they don't rule it out. So the headlines took a bit of pure speculation as an excuse to use “Snooki” as a hook for the story. Hey, that's just good editing! Shows how topical and relevant and with it the NY T'imes is. I mean, just because the paper is run by sycophantic apple-polishing dweebs, the kind of people who were teachers' pets in school, doesn't mean it isn't hip to pop culture. It knows how to go after the “youth demographic.” Yeah, “Jersey Shore” watchers are sitting around in their bathrobes on Sunday, sipping their home-made cappuccinos, reading the NY Times, I'm sure. (To see what I mean about the kind of people who run the NYT, check out their pictures online. I think some can even be found at nytimes.com) [3]

Then there's a subhead on p.17: “A wealthy haven cringes at potential visitors from Jersey Shore.” The besieged rich people are cringing at the invasion of their haven. So it's Big News that some rich superparasites are in a tizzy about some unwashed masses spoiling their exclusive retreat by their mere presence on the beach. Apparently the ocean is properly reserved for the sole enjoyment of billionaires like NY City mayor Michael Billionaire Bloomberg and various multimillionaires. Wouldn't want someone of a lower class spoiling the view.

Finally the caption description of the large photo claims that it depicts “a rowdy crowd began showing up [last year] at Indian Wells Beach in East Hampton, adding to the crowds and transportation bedlam.” Bedlam! Look up “bedlam” and see what it means. It's a fancy synonym for chaos, with the added implication of madness. I guess there were some traffic snarls, maybe even traffic jams. Don't have a fainting spell, NYT! [4]

Well here's that photo. I can see what the NYT means.

See how “rowdy” they are? Look at all those people lying there! And sitting! And even standing!!

And as if that weren't bad enough, it looks like a couple of guys are actually walking!!! Motion!
That's kinetic activity! Man, they're out of control! Call in the National Guard!

Hey NYT, bible of the bourgeoisie- we live on this planet too. Get used to it.

1] A little background for my non-American and other readers who may be unfamiliar with some of these terms. “Snooki” is the nickname of a “reality TV” “star,” one Nicole Polizzi, on a show called “Jersey Shore” on MTV, which presents a mixed gender group of young people who are stereotypical New Jersey Italian-Americans, and by stereotypical I mean gross caricatures of people who are derogatorily called “guineas” in common parlance. (“Wops” is an even more derogatory term.) The cast has the exaggerated mannerisms, speech patterns and behavior of crude caricatures. “Snooki” is a short, big-breasted character/cast member. Naturally these aren't refined or sophisticated portrayals.

By the way, the only thing actually Italian about most Italian Americans is their ancestry. The Italian-American is really a type of person unique to the U.S. that evolved here, same as Irish-American. They don't even speak their ancestral languages. It's the same with African-Americans. These are all varieties of Americans, with no more than vestigial commonalities with the inhabitants of the lands of their mostly distant ancestors. Thus they are pseudo-ethnic “identities.” Yet their tribalism and conflicts between the groups are real. Like religious conflict, which is similarly based on nothing- there are no “gods,” and religious dogmas are virtually entirely myths from start to finish. Thus is real economic and political competition masked in both cases by bullshit. [Which is not at all to deny the grotesque racist oppression black Americans have been subjected to, and their current imprisonment in the socio-economic cellar of American society.]

“The Hamptons” is a series of seaside towns on Long Island, New York, east of New York City, where wealthy elitists congregate in the summers. (Amagansett, the dateline on the story, is one of these towns.) The homes there cost many millions of dollars, and summer rentals of those homes go for hundreds of thousands a dollar per month.

These rich people are mostly based in Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City that includes the financial district at the lower end of the borough (“Wall Street,” which is an actual street) where the New York Stock Exchange and New York Federal Reserve are located, along with various financial firms. The rich themselves mostly live on the “upper east side,” an area that is really more midtown geographically, and is basically the area to the east of Central Park over to Lexington Avenue, running north and south between about E. 60^th and E. 90^th Streets. (The south and west sides of Central Park are also areas of rich people. In fact more and more of Manhattan is being colonized by the upper classes, including many non-citizens who buy residences, helping squeeze out the “lower” classes, who cannot afford multimillion dollar apartments or exorbitant rents.)

2]  The NYT is what's called a “broadsheet,” as opposed to “tabloid” newspapers, which have a smaller format. A half-page of the NYT is about 12 x 11 inches, a relatively large acreage when on your lap.

3]  To be “fair,” obviously this story will be of gossipy interest to rich people, an important part of the NYT's constituency. It's influence with such people accounts for much of the NYT's power and influence. But with a Sunday circulation of around a million (that's for the physical print edition, the actual newspaper) most of the readers are obviously not rich. They're just standing outside the charmed realm of the bourgeois elite, with their noses pressed to the glass, voyeuristically gazing at the imaginary perpetual dinner party inside.

4]  A day earlier, the web edition used the word "log jam" instead of bedlam. So they amped it up for Sunday print publication.

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None Dare Call It Terrorism

None in the U.S. media, that is. (And not just the U.S. media.)

There have been constant bombings of civilian targets for the past few weeks in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Today's news:

Multiple car bombs in Baghdad and Basra. 34 killed. Crowded markets, a restaurant, a bus stop targeted- i.e. random civilians are the targets of this terrorism. Labeled “sectarian violence” by U.S. and some other Western establishment media. They “have taken Iraq back to the worst days' of the recent past, says the BBC. “A horrific morning here in Baghdad.” Eight explosions in Shiite areas, seven car bombs. Four targeted markets. Bodies of ten people found, were kidnapped in Anbar province. And policemen murdered at checkpoint. BBC puts the two week death toll at 200. “T” word not uttered however.

Another suicide bombing in Afghanistan, this one killing a politician. A couple of days earlier another bombing killed about a dozen. NPR affiliate WNYC says “a provincial politician was killed after violence erupted.” [5/20/13 morning.] That's how they describe a terrorist bombing- and using passive verbs! No one killed or murdered anyone, rather the victim was killed. No one was violent- violence erupted, like sunspots I suppose. And there certainly aren't any terrorists.

“The” media feels to need to explain why some bombings that kill civilians in public places are “terrorism” and others that usually slaughter even greater numbers are not. The only pattern I can discern is that the victims have to be “white.” It's not by location: of the numerous bombings in Indonesia by Islamofascists there, the only “terrorist” bombing was the one that killed Australian tourists. It's not by perpetrator: again, see Indonesia. It's not by the death toll: only 3 were killed in Boston last month, and none were killed by the goony “underwear bomber” or the “Times Square bomber,” both of whose bombs were duds. But all three of those are “terrorist” bombings.

“The” media keeps its criteria secret, as do the various Western governments. If anyone can see any definition operating here other than rank racism, I'd like to hear about it.

You might try asking your favorite establishment media to explain this. We can have fun with the predictably evasive and logically incoherent replies.

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New York Times Confers Legitimacy On Taliban Terrorists

But first...

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Is it only terrorism when “white” people are targets?

Or, more accurately, when the people or country are white?

Either that, or the U.S. media better explain what weird hidden political agendas drive its “coverage” of violent events. Politically motivated bombings by the same Islamic jihadists that the U.S. and its lackey nations and their media call “terrorists” when they're assassinated by the U.S., or when those groups try to blow up a couple of cargo planes with explosive printer toner cartridges, or take down a passenger jet with explosive underwear, are suddenly just “militants,” and their bombings plain old bombings, not “terrorist bombings,” when the victims are Pakistanis, or Nigerians, or Indonesians, or Turks. Same political movement, same ideological motivation, same deliberate murder of civilians, yet a different and lesser crime. Specifically, a much less serious crime, since according to the indoctrinational system, “terrorism” is the WORST POSSIBLE EVIL IN THE WORLD. That's certainly the attitude that is inculcated in the populace by the hysteria and outrage fed to us by Western bloc media.

But bombs in any of those places that target U.S. embassies, as happened in Africa in 1998, or even “Western” (i.e. “white”) tourists, are emphatically and always “terrorism.”

There are examples of this glaring and obvious double standard practically daily, which demonstrates that this inexplicable and unexplained devaluing of certain victims is routine and entrenched in U.S. establishment media. Obviously it is intended that we don't even notice the double standard, and that if we do notice, we just accept it as unremarkable, merely the natural order of things requiring no explanation, much less justification. As for assuming we wouldn't- or shouldn't- even notice; thanks for the insult to our intelligence, propagandists!

[See also: “What's the Difference Between a Terrorist Bombing And a Bombing?”]

Here are some examples on Sunday May 12^th from two “prestige” media outfits, NPR, and the crème de la crème of the U.S. bourgeois propaganda system, the august New York Times.

At 5 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time, the time zone of the east coast of the U.S., including Washington, D.C., New York City, and Boston, three important hubs of power), NPR led with a story about the bombings yesterday in Turkey in a city bordering Syria (Reyhanli, Turkey) with a large population of Syrian refugees. The Turkish government was quick to blame the Assad regime. (Probably correctly. That is, it's most likely a correct assumption.) Even though much devastation was caused, at least 43 people were killed and many injured, and the attack was obviously a wanton assault on civilians, the words “terrorism,” “terror,” or “terrorist” were not uttered in the story.

The next story starts by saying “the biggest terrorist trial in Germany in a long time.” It's the trial of a surviving member of a gang of neo-Nazi killers who went around murdering Turks (and one Greek) in Germany for a decade, and planting nail bombs (the poor man's cluster bomb- actually more like the poor man's Claymore mine) in marketplaces that permanently maimed people, to the indifference and hostility of the police, who brushed off the murders as communal spats among Turks or criminal gang activity. It wasn't until the Nazis made the mistake of killing a policewoman that suddenly “the authorities” took it seriously. That's when the German secret police when on a document destruction binge (unmentioned by NPR, natch) to hide its apparent links to the Nazis. Obviously they knew about them at the very least, and perhaps much worse.

So why are some serial killings by a gang of racist neo-Nazis in Germany “terrorism,” and large bombs that devastate a town in Turkey not? You tell us, NPR.

Meanwhile the New York Times did what it always does, demoting terrorism in non-elite countries to some lesser level of evil. It did this in two different articles this time. And in a third it couldn't seem to make up its mind whether the violence was “terrorism” or mere “militancy.” So it went with both.

First, on the front page, a story by Declan Walsh about the election victory of a former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. [A corrupt, rich bastard, by the way, which is to say a typical Pak PM, who was overthrown previously by the military. Not because he was corrupt. Because he fired a couple of generals. The nerve of the guy!] The Times sub-subhead reads “Record Turnout Despite Taliban Attacks That Killed at Least 21.” That would be 21 on election day itself, so it gives a false impression of the true toll of the Taliban's terror campaign. And 21 is only about a third of the number the European Union says died that day. 21 is seven times the number killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, which was immediately labeled terrorism. The EU's figure of 64 is 21 times the death toll in Boston, which was 3. If you like, we could do the math for the over 100 killed overall by the Taliban in its attempt to stop the election. (The terrorism continues even after the election is over.) Or the thousands they have murdered over the last several years to impose their will and express their displeasure with particular people or policies- like the schoolgirl they almost succeeded in murdering on her way to school, to make the totally reasonable point that girls should not be allowed to be educated. And what better way to impose that sensible policy on other people than by stopping a school bus at gunpoint and shooting a child in the head?

(The last six paragraphs of the story are devoted to Walsh getting expelled from Pakistan, because of his “undesirable activities,” quoting the Paki “authorities.” As of press time the NYT wasn't able to pry any further explanation from the Pakis.) [1]

The article is mostly devoted to the election itself and the background of Sharif, and how it might affect the U.S. There is some reporting on the terrorism of the Taliban, who are mentioned by name- but the word “terrorism” (or “terror” or “terrorist”) does not appear. Instead we get “militant movement” (referring specifically to the Taliban by name) and “militant violence over the years.” Gee, when does it rise to the level of terrorism?

Walsh even quotes a statement from two days earlier (Friday, April 10th) by “the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud” (who by the way lives quite openly and moves about freely in Pakistan, unmolested by the so-called authorities, a fact unmentioned by the Times- hey don't want the Paks to feel pressure to arrest an actual terrorist) ordering his “commanders to attack the 'infidel system' of democracy, warning that teams of suicide bombers would hit targets across the country.” Said “targets” being entirely civilian in nature, indeed chosen specifically for their political significance and to terrorize people away from voting. But that's not terrorism.

Now consider what may have been Walsh's weirdest paragraph:

“But the sense of a vibrant, if flawed, democracy was tempered by Taliban attacks throughout the campaigning. [Not “terrorist” attacks, note, even though these were attacks on civilians for a stated political purpose, to stop people from voting, by terrorizing them.] The militant [sic] movement's ability to derail campaigning, particularly in the mountainous northwest, was taken as a signal that it has evolved beyond its nihilistic guerrilla roots and has become a powerful political insurgency bent on upending Western-style democracy in Pakistan.”[“Ex-Premier Is Set To Regain power In Pakistan Vote,” NYT, Sun. May 12, 2013, pgs. 1 and 8, paragraph 22.]

So the fact that its terrorism is successful means it has “evolved beyond” its “nihilistic guerrilla roots” and is now a “political insurgency”? What's the difference between a “political insurgency” and a terrorist movement? Why was the IRA “terrorist,” why was the PLO, why is Hamas? Indeed, why was the ANC “terrorist”? (Dick Cheney, for one, still insists it was.)

Does not referring to the Taliban as a “powerful political insurgency” lend it legitimacy? Sounds like a political movement. Which it is, albeit a violent one. With totalitarian aims that include the utter abnegation of women. And it uses terrorism to achieve its ends. Which is the only sensible way to judge whether a group is “terrorist,” as opposed to the U.S. method, which decides based on the ideology, goals, or economic structure of an entity, or cynically to dovetail with some U.S. political ploy of the moment. (Hence Cuba is officially “terrorist,” says the U.S. State Department, keeper of the Official List of Which Nations Are Terrorist.)

I think what the Paki Taliban does- plants bombs to stop elections, assassinates officials who call for reform in the vicious “blasphemy” law used to persecute innocent Christians and others, shoots schoolgirls in the head for going to school, and much more, constitutes terrorism. The NY Times evidently does not, for some odd reason.

Notice also the characteristic mealy-mouthed passive voice, “taken as a signal.” By whom? Declan never says. I would guess by the NYT, for whatever bizarre reason. And what is “nihilistic guerrilla roots” other than an example of contorting oneself into a verbal pretzel to avoid the word “terrorist”?

I wonder why Hezbollah isn't “a powerful political insurgency” that has “evolved beyond its nihilistic guerrilla roots” instead of being a “terrorist” organization? Why isn't Hamas, which actually governs territory, and doesn't bomb polling places to try and stop elections? And what are we to make of FARC as “terrorist.” They've never engaged in suicide bombings, or bombings of crowds of civilians simply to cause mayhem and kill random strangers. In fact, they laid down their arms and tried to participate in elections some years back, and the Colombian bourgeoisie proceeded to double-cross them and sic its fascist death squads on them, murdering their candidates. Those are the same people who systematically slaughter labor organizers and honest journalists, with U.S. support.

Nor can it be claimed that the NYT is merely slavishly hewing to the U.S. Government line and calling “terrorist” only those orgs that the State Department puts on its “terrorist list.” I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that the Paki Taliban is on that list. (It sure should be.) But the Iranian terrorist group MEK, which has killed Americans, most certainly was on that list. But it still wasn't “terrorist.” Rather, it was “on the State Department list of terrorist organizations” or “listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization.” Notice the difference. When it came to MEK, being on “the list” was a legal technicality. And a technicality with no import, as a slew of U.S. politicians, including Fearless Terrorism Fighter Rudolph Giuliani, who provided material support to, and received lavish speaking fees from MEK, can attest to, given the lack of prosecution for their obviously illegal activities. [2]

The point is that while affecting a tone of neutral, objective reportage, the NY Times and other outlets of corporate state propaganda are presenting an almost funhouse mirror distortion of the world, an image warped by their secret, almost inscrutable hidden political and ideological agendas. Figuring out the motives and inner workings of the U.S. media is akin to Kremlin-watching. At times keeping up with who are the demons and who are okay is like playing Simon Says, with the media telling people who to love and hate, according to today's alliances of convenience and temporary political gambits by the U.S.

None of this should be taken to mean that I defend or endorse Hamas or Hezbollah, or FARC. But nor can I say they are all good or all bad. I prefer to be objective and not be forced to boo or cheer on the command of the rulers of the U.S. to suit their own interests, which they define as the national interest. In fact, ultimately what goes under the rubric of U.S. “national interests” are the class interests of the top layer of the corporate elite and megarich individuals. The rest of us just pay the taxes and fight the wars, while they tell us we have to sacrifice more to maintain their empire for them. This is called “patriotism.” To object is disloyalty, or treason, or “supporting terrorism.” Such is life in a Free Country.

In that “vibrant, but flawed” Paki democracy, it turns out that in some districts more ballots were cast than there are registered voters. A mere “flaw,” I suppose. Hey, nobody's perfect!

A few words about the NYT equating of elections with democracy, indeed a “vibrant democracy.” Of course this is nonsense. Pakistan is no more a democracy, which would be a country where the government actually has to answer to the people and where ultimate power rests with the people, than the U.S. is. In Pakistan cliques of rich people vie with one another for state power, similar to what the GOP and Democrats [sic!] represent here. Plus, in Pakistan, the civilian government doesn't even control the military. And as Mao Zedong so depressingly observed, “political power flows out of the barrel of a gun.” Which he thought was a good thing. Of course he was a thug who lusted for power his whole life, the more power the better. [3]

The second article in the Sunday paper (p.12) was “Car Bombings Kill Dozens in Center of Turkish Town Near the Syrian Border.” “At least” 43 were killed. An accompanying photo shows blackened buildings with their facades blown off. But they weren't “terrorist bombings.” The “T” word appears nowhere in that article either. This is the same story as on NPR I mentioned near the beginning, the terrorist attack on the city of Reyhanli.

                                         

      

                    

                                         Reyhanli, Turkey, after car bombings on Saturday May 11^th. Not terrorism,

                                                                       according to the New York Times.

In the third article the Times gets sloppy and seems to use “militant” and “terrorist” synonymously, something I've never noticed in the paper before. In fact, usually the two words never so much as appear in the same article. This is also on p. 12 and concerns the arrest in Egypt of “three militants with ties to Al Qaeda [so why aren't they “terrorists”?? Obama KILLS people with such “ties”] who were planning terrorist [AH! there it is] attacks in Egyptian cities and against a foreign embassy, the interior minister said Saturday.” (My italics.) That's most of the first paragraph.

So, a “foreign embassy” was a target. Guess which country's? That might be a hint to why these “militants” were going to commit a “terrorist” attack. If it was just some Egyptians in a marketplace getting blown up- feh, that's just a bombing, not a terrorist bombing.

I think I understand. The attacks in Egyptian cities, i.e. against Egyptian civilians, would have merely been “bombings,” acts of “militancy.” Whereas attacking an (U.S., perhaps, NYT?) embassy would be terrorism. Hence some of their attacks would be acts of “militancy,” and some “terrorism,” depending on the target. Some would be tragic news from a faraway land, others would be moral outrages, occasions for high dudgeon requiring the U.S. to kill somebody, somewhere.

The next day, Monday, (May 13^th) NPR and the NY Times are still hewing to what's obviously an editorial policy on when and when not to use the T word. (A policy that per standard establishment media practice is never explained to their targets, namely us.) Bright and early on NPR's “Morning Edition,” the regular presenter Steve Inskeep has a chat with- what do you know!- Declan Walsh of the NY Times. The same Walsh who just got kicked out of Pakistan and wrote the first article I discussed. He says of the just-concluded elections there, “there was a very strenuous campaign of violence” by “militants.” That would be a reference to the bombings, shootings, kidnappings, and constant bloodcurdling threats by the Taliban terrorists that killed “over 125” in the last month of campaigning, we're told. [According to the EU, 64 people were murdered just on election day- that apparently wasn't included in Walsh's total. BBC reported this later the same morning.] So he's sticking to the script.

Walsh further explains to Inskeep (and us) that the “Taliban” “abandoned the democratic process.”

Abandoned? When did they uphold it? They do have front parties with the same demented ideology. Does he mean those parties didn't run? I've heard nothing about that. Certainly if they didn't run, it would have been because they were ordered not to, or like the Taliban, suddenly believe that “democracy” is “UnIslamic,” as the Taliban have announced in justifying their terrorism-enforced edict that there should be no elections and no one better vote- or else.

I can see why the terrorists would prefer Pakistan's traditional military dictatorships. The Pak military has been very very good for Islamic terrorists. They actually were created as a nominally covert arm of the Pak military to attack India, especially the Indian province of Kashmir, as well as do other dirty work. By the way, Kashmir was actually divided into three, with about the same land area going to India, China, and Pakistan. For some reason the U.S. media never tells you that. I guess it's to support U.S. policy of telling India- Hey, just give Pakistan your part of Kashmir. Then you guys can be friends.

As if.

But I'll bet you the Pakis never try and pull their terrorism shit on China!

These days the Paki Taliban are feeling their oats, and thinking they should be running the show, not the ISI. The terrorists' ultimate goal is to take over Pakistan themselves, and its nuclear weapons arsenal. Meanwhile their ideological soul mates are trying to take over Afghanistan again, and have only recently been beaten back from taking over Mali and Somalia, at least temporarily.

So what should the U.S. media do? It should either use the word “terrorism” and its variants in a consistent, even-handed, objective manner, like actual journalists would do, or refrain from using the word at all if it is hopelessly tainted by its use as a political and ideological bludgeon against official enemies. But since the U.S. media is the propaganda arm of the corporate oligarchy, an oligarchy which is served by the U.S. Government (and by the 50 individual state governments as well) this will not happen. So it is up to us to be constantly skeptical and critical of the propaganda system to avoid being duped and brainwashed by it. That's more work than just being able to trust. (Hello there, welcome to the adult world!)

We live in interesting times. It is morally and ethically challenging to defend human values and not just throw in with either global imperialists or fanatical primitives. This requires resisting easy thinking. I offer my analyses to you to help you in this worthwhile endeavor.

1] He and the NY Times can be thankful they get privileged treatment. They aren't murdered, the way journalists get murdered in Pakistan by the ISI, or the way the U.S. military and U.S.-backed governments of Mexico, or Colombia, or Yemen assassinate them. Nor do NY Times employees get kidnapped and imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay like an Aljazeera employee was, where his captors pumped him for info on Aljazeera's inner workings and tried to force him to agree to be a spy for them in order to be let out of his cage in Gitmo and go home to his wife and children. Nor does the President of the United States call up a foreign government to demand that their reporters be locked up in prison, as Obama as done with the Yemeni journalist who revealed a civilian massacre in Yemen by a U.S. aerial attack. (Of course he was tortured also.)

2] Yet the Supreme Court recently ruled that if lawyers were to give free advice to the “terrorist” Tamil Tigers (since exterminated by the Sri Lankan rulers and army, along with a large number of Tamil civilians held hostage by the Tigers) on how to renounce terrorism and legalize themselves, that would be “material support for a terrorist organization” and subject to criminal prosecution. This is the kind of mind-twisting hyper-hypocritical double standard the U.S. legal system subjects us to. Obviously U.S. law is purely and simply an instrument of political power. Their judges are left to twist themselves into logical pretzels to give a judicial imprimatur to the cynical calculations of state power.

The MEK is A-okay, because influential politicians support them, and they help out in planting bombs in movie theaters in Tehran and other chores, such as assassinations, and spying on the regime for Israel and the U.S. (Gee, spying on one's own country for foreign powers, and hostile ones at that? Isn't that high treason? Nah, it's patriotism, because they're doing it for US.)

See, in order to wind up in prison (or dead), you have to be connected to a group the U.S. really doesn't like. Like charities that try and help the Palestinians and Lebanese subjected to Israeli bombardment and so forth. These are said to be “linked” to the “terrorist” Hamas and Hezbollah. Hey, if you get an email from someone on a U.S. shitlist, you're “linked to terrorism.” That's not an exaggeration. That's exactly the kind of “link” that is cited by the media, between Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter who killed 13 soldiers in 2009, and the now late Anwar al-Awlaki- aka Scourge of Yemen, to hear the U.S. media tell it. Why, his very genes are evil, thus they needed to bump off his 16 year old son in a restaurant two weeks after they offed al-Awlaki. [No, no, I'm not “defending” al-Awlaki. But anyone who defends government assassinations as routine policy is defending the most sinister form of oppressive state power.]

There are people rotting in U.S. prisons right now for donating to the wrong charity. Viewing the wrong website will get you on a terror suspect list too. Such unhealthy interest has been used as evidence in U.S. courts to convict people of “terrorism,” including for translating jihadist statements. (The ACLU was appalled by that last case, but they're terrorist sympathizers, of course, so who cares? Anyway, the ACLU has been a target of FBI and CIA infiltration going back decades, so they're a known “enemy” of the secret police, and thus unpatriotic.)

Cutting off any and all economic and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians- especially the ones living under Hamas- has long been U.S. policy. Palestinian political activists were persecuted by the Clinton regime for years for the crime of handing out leaflets that said the wrong things. (Namely pro-Palestinian things that of course highlighted Israeli oppression.) American Jews on the other hand are encouraged to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually to finance “settlement expansion,” i.e. the sacred mission by Jewish religious fundamentalists of “re”claiming the Land of Israel (as they imagine it), rightly theirs because “God” promised it to them. (So why doesn't “God” get rid of the Palestinians? Send in a flood or a hoard of locusts or a leprosy epidemic or something? Never mind, that must be an “anti-Semitic” question.) That's on top of the several billion a year in free money that all U.S. taxpayers are compelled to give to Israel to buy high tech U.S. weapons to bomb hospitals in Gaza with white phosphorous (see the Goldstone Report etc. if you think I'm making that up) shoot kids who throw rocks, (and non-violent protesters who don't) and so on. Israel, it's rarely mentioned, so therefore needs to be mentioned more often, is the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid. And those are grants, not loans.

Oh, but those horrible Hamas and Hezbollah are such religious fanatics! And they're suicide bombers! (Unlike World War II Japanese kamikaze pilots.) And they want to impose Sharia! (Whatever that is.) They cut off people's hands! (Our Saudi “allies” only cut off people's heads. What, the jihadists do that too? That's different! They're the Bad Guys. And besides, they videotape it! Anyway the Saudis only behead people who deserve it, like drug dealers and foreign maids.)

And they oppress women! (True enough, and they're loathsome for it, and for their general totalitarianism and imposing their religious CRAP.)

After all, the U.S. establishment cares so much about the oppression of Muslim women! Why wouldn't they? Hey, look at how the U.S. insists on equality for women in its own society! That's why women make just as much money as men for the same jobs. And half the members of Congress are women. And half the Fortune 500 companies are headed by women, and...

What's that? None of that is true? Far from it?

So what!

To quote the Great Man Himself, Ronald Reagan, “facts are stupid things.” They're stupid because they keep contradicting ideology, which is Truth Itself. (RR, GOP Convention speech, .)

3] Regarding the attitude of the U.S. government and corporate media towards elections. Their attitude is either to use the ritual of elections to validate as legitimate some oppressive government it supports, or slams elections as shams when they're in countries whose regimes they don't like, for economic or political reasons. For example, the NYT and the rest of the gang regularly held the “elections” that the PRI staged during its 75-year one-party dictatorship in Mexico. Only after the PRI's monopoly on power was broken did there start to creep into Timesland oblique references to past, shall we say, a taint of unfairness in Mexico's electoral process. And the elections of fascist state terror dictatorships, like “South” Vietnam under the rule of various generals, or El Salvador in the 1980s, where people were herded to the polls under a state reign of terror, are treated as if they're actual free and fair elections occurring in normal democratic lands. [See the book Demonstration Elections, by Herman and Brodhead, for example.] Japan is another example of a long-time one-party dictatorship that only recently has loosened up some, but to no avail in terms of real change in the power structure or social order.

On the other hand, perfectly legitimate elections that produce winners the U.S. doesn't like- such as in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez first won, or the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (after they overthrew Somoza), or Hamas among the Palestinians, running against the corrupt and venal PLO (now inflated into the grander-sounding Palestinian Authority, to which the Israelis have subcontracted repression in the West Bank, which helps Israel assassinate “militants,” and whose “security forces” are trained by those avatars of human rights, the CIA)- those elections are dismissed with contempt as shams or as somehow unfair.(Why, U.S. elections are perfectly fair! Even when five political apparatchiks on the Supreme Court do the electing! Just ask the U.S. media!)