Category Archives: Media

That Transparency Meme…

Posted on by

About that transparency meme that I caught on to in 2010, from whence it… er…percolated..to others, like the estimable Daily Bell, whom I have often and meticulously cited,  whom I applaud for its wonderful work and have supported over and over, despite many misgivings….

(One of its associates/editors’ comments to my post can even be seen later in this blog post).

A nod in the direction from where you get stuff, folks, would be nice. It would be even nicer if I got it without having to bring it up, although, as you can see, I’m not bashful about doing that either…

I  give credit regardless, and I hope for the same, politely, humbly, and patiently at first, but if not, then a tad more assertively. Ultimately, this blog is committed to subverting and destroying the lies on which modernity has lived for centuries and a little (intellectual) blood-letting will take place when it has to, with no qualms.

The biggest lie fostered by modernity is the lie called western supremacism, whose economic form is mercantilism. This, as I  see even in this day, can only be sustained by the appropriation of other people’s work, whether physical or mental.  That is fundamental to it.

My attribution battles, small and great, are thus an intrinsic part of  the mandate of this blog, and not solely personal. More later…

Thus this brief history of the transparency meme  is not the first such and it probably won’t be the last.

Over and over, even recently, I blog something  and then see it surface a day or so later, without a nod in this direction. [One recent example was when I blogged why we need avoid treating ‘End the Fed’ as a slogan and why I think that power has already moved to the BIS].

Sometimes, I daresay, it’s just accidental. I allow for that. But more often it isn’t. Then I am reluctantly forced to call them out.

That kind of thing is simply wrong, no matter how many people do it and what theories or philosophies they quote. It is a kind of theft. Whether it is simply careerism or the professional standards of hard money people or marketers or the financial industry, it has to be called out. Nothing will get better without a clean up of the intellectual pollution and smog that clogs political debate.

Think about it. How can you denounce state actions as the means to enforce norms, if your own conduct adheres to none? If you yourself worship at the foot of power, whether money power, or status, or marketing clout, or anything else, and rely on your ability to “get away with it” because “everyone does it,” rather than on objective truth, then you have no moral grounds to complain when another kind of power (state power, the power of law, or the will of the people) opposes you. In fact, your behavior invites it.

That is why, in the end, the OccupyWallStreet folks will triumph. Soros will win. Why shouldn’t he?

If all you really care about is your network, and the money you make from them, and aggrandizing yourself, rather than objective truth, well then, on all those counts Soros is your master. He has proved it.

You cannot complain. If capitalists express in their behavior no more than the tenet, “might makes right”, they  have nothing on which to stand when the might of the state turns against them.  And it will turn against them. In fact, it already has.

And, truthfully, they have no one to blame but themselves.

See below:

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2010/08/03/the-tangled-web/

“Again, I could be mistaken about Wikileaks.

But even if I were,  even if Assange himself turned out to be well-meaning and principled, I’m not enthusiastic about his perfect transparency, leak-for-profit model. I think it has ominous parallels in corporate and state intelligence services. In my reading (and that of some others), it was one of the instigating factors in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Furthermore, the model depends on flouting the privacy rights of innocent people and private outfits.

So however things turn out, I’ll pass on Wikileaks and the “glamor” of spy v. spy. Means are just as important, if not more, than ends. That’s a lesson the Cold War should have taught us. In fact, I thought libertarianism was premised on it.

It troubles me then to see so many liberty-minded people simply brush off these questions as “spiteful” or “envious”……

In such matters, no one is beyond respectful questioning.”

And this post below (I’d actually started doubting Assange much earlier…as you can see from checking back at my posts)

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2010/06/27/more-on-assange-and-wikileaks/

Here’s the main theoretical reason why one might tend to suspect Wikileaks.

Assange objects to privacy. Wikileaks violates privacy. Kind of like Google, notice? Google thinks it’s heroic too and Google has its China-connection too. Wikileaks makes anonymous sources, hacking, leaking, and ratting out your associates cool. It makes snitches heroes.

Cui bono? Need I ask? Corporate rivals, speculators and short-sellers, blackmailers, rival governments, spy agencies. Does that sound like the company the power-elites keep?

So even if Wikileaks were not a disinformation agent, whose agenda would its work finally help? A totalitarian outfit’s. It certainly doesn’t help individualism.

A friend said…

  • [From The Daily Bell]

    Hi! Interesting article. Can you post a definitive (or semi-definitive article) showing Assange is a disinformation agent? Is that your point in this excerpt … that your suspicions are re-ignited? Maybe we misunderstood.

    At this point, (without evidence to change our tiny, collective mind) our betting is still that it is more likely MADSEN is one (since he is actually a member of several US old boy intel clubs) than Assange. We have our doubts about Rense too, where Madsen often appears.

    06/27/10 2:05 PM | Comment Link Edit This

    • OWS-Connected Manifesto Calls For Global Government

    Posted on by

    From the October 14 Manifesto endorsed, apparently, by Eduardo Galeano (socialist), Naomi Klein (socialist), Noam Chomsky (allegedly left-anarchist) and Vandana Shiva (environmentalist):

    “Undemocratic international institutions are our global Mubarak, our global Assad, our global Gaddafi. These include: the IMF, the WTO, global markets, multinational banks, the G8, the G20, the European Central Bank and the UN Security Council. Like Mubarak and Assad, these institutions must not be allowed to run people’s lives without their consent. We are all born equal, rich or poor, woman or man. Every African and Asian is equal to every European and American. Our global institutions must reflect this, or be overturned.

    Today, more than ever before, global forces shape people’s lives. Our jobs, health, housing, education and pensions are controlled by global banks, markets, tax havens, corporations and financial crises. Our environment is destroyed by pollution in other continents. Our safety is determined by international wars and international trade in arms, drugs and natural resources. We are losing control over our lives. This must stop. This will stop. The citizens of the world must get control over the decisions that influence them at all levels – from global to local. That is global democracy. That is what we demand today.

    Comment:

    If this weren’t so serious, it would be funny.

    “Global Mubarak, Assad, and Gaddafi,” eh? All brown-skinned Muslims? No mention of  Barak Obama or George Bush or Bill Clinton? No mention of Paul Wolfowitz?

    The Global Wolfowitz Is At The Door has a nice ring…..

    Global Netanyahoo? Too polysyllabic for comfort.

    And George Soros, many megawatts more powerful than some Middle Eastern dictators? But Global Soros sounds too much like a disease….

    Talking about Soros, check back this to post of mine from June 2010, which analyzes a Soros proposal for global democracy, from 2009. This adds weight to what I said about the push-back against the Tea Party starting in 2009.  When he talks about  “demagogues” in the piece, he means the middle-class that rose up against the bail-outs.

    Oh dear. A bunch of professional activsts, westerners all (Vandana Shiva notwithstanding), sharing the same old world view (all leftists), speaking for the six billion plus people of this planet, hundreds of nations, hundreds if not thousands of languages and dialects, scores of religions, ethnicities, millions of companies and associations, most of whom are going about their business and have nothing to do with OWS.

    How’s that for Global Chutzpah?

    Here is Vandana Shiva calling for global democracy and name-checking George Soros and Mikhail Gorbachev (ANC.net/au):

    “And you might remember Gorbachev was a very keen free marketer, and he was speaking with me at the opening plenary of this meeting and said “it’s turned out to be very different from what I had imagined. I thought it would bring democracy; it brought mafia rule.”

    And then the person who’s really won out in this game of globalisation — George Soros — he was there too, and this is what he said. (my italics and emphases throughout)

    He said: “free markets were supposed to have created open societies, free societies, but we cannot speak of the triumph of democracy. Capitalism and political freedom do not go hand in hand. We cannot leave freedom and democracy to market forces. We need to create our own institutions and different institutions from those that serve capitalism to take care of it.

    “And anyone,” this is not my words, it’s not your words, it’s George Soros’, “who thinks they can leave freedom to free markets is a market fundamentalist, that’s not how societies work”.

    Ms. Shiva, we love your work.  But don’t be taken in by this Hegelian dialectic, this Mighty Wurlitzer of media manufactured global consensus between faux free-marketers (Soros) and faux -anarchists (Chomsky). The missing term from both adjectives is “state”. Soros is a state capitalist and Chomsky is a state socialist. It is the capitalist-communist convergence.

    State-capitalists fund the think-tank circuit and foundation activism. The corrosive effects of this on democracy have been established many times by serious analysts.  In what sense then can foundation activists call for democracy? A polarised dialectic is created by the state-capitalists to co-opt reform, and people like Ms. Siva are there to put a diverse face on the resolution of the dialectic and make it acceptable to the non-western world.

    Step back and think about the invisible hand here.

    Who is this George Soros?

    Even Magasaysay Award-winning Medha Patkar, according to renowned anti-globalization activist Arundhati Roy, has allowed herself to be bamboozled by the Wikileaks-blessed Anna Hazare circus.

    Now, it is becoming clear to many that behind the attractive “anti-corruption” agenda, which is dear to many, many ordinary Indians, the globalists are showing their hand, by trying to hustle through legislation favorable to them (the Janlok Pal Bill) in the hubbub of the cynically named so-called “Second Indian Independence.”  The government must be “transparent,” but foreign-funded non-governmental organizations promoting chauvinism and wedge-issues, mixing legitimate grievances with bogus accusations, must be exempt from transparency requirements.

    Chomsky: Taxman For Thee, but Not For Me

    Posted on by

    From the Hoover Institution

    “One of the most persistent themes in Noam Chomsky’s work has been class warfare. He has frequently lashed out against the “massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich” and criticized the concentration of wealth in “trusts” by the wealthiest 1 percent. The American tax code is rigged with “complicated devices for ensuring that the poor—like 80 percent of the population—pay off the rich.”

    But trusts can’t be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of $2,000,000, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston’s venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in “income-tax planning,” set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.

    Chomsky favors the estate tax and massive income redistribution—just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.

    When I challenged Chomsky about his trust, he suddenly started to sound very bourgeois: “I don’t apologize for putting aside money for my children and grandchildren,” he wrote in one e-mail. Chomsky offered no explanation for why he condemns others who are equally proud of their provision for their children and who try to protect their assets from Uncle Sam. Although he did say that the tax shelter is okay because he and his family are “trying to help suffering people.”

    Indeed, Chomsky is rich precisely because he has been such an enormously successful capitalist. Despite the anti-profit rhetoric, like any other corporate capitalist he has turned himself into a brand name. As John Lloyd puts it, writing critically in the lefty New Statesman, Chomsky is among those “open to being ‘commodified’—that is, to being simply one of the many wares of a capitalist media market place, in a way that the badly paid and overworked writers and journalists for the revolutionary parties could rarely be.”

    Chomsky’s business works something like this. He gives speeches on college campuses around the country at $12,000 a pop, often dozens of times a year.

    Can’t go and hear him in person? No problem: you can go online and download clips from earlier speeches—for a fee. You can hear Chomsky talk for one minute about “Property Rights”; it will cost you 79 cents. You can also buy a CD with clips from previous speeches for $12.99.

    But books are Chomsky’s mainstay, and on the international market he has become a publishing phenomenon. The Chomsky brand means instant sales. As publicist Dana O’Hare of Pluto Press explains: “All we have to do is put Chomsky’s name on a book and it sells out immediately!”

    Putting his name on a book should not be confused with writing a book because his most recent volumes are mainly transcriptions of speeches, or interviews that he has conducted over the years, put between covers and sold to the general public. You might call it multi-level marketing for radicals. Chomsky has admitted as much: “If you look at the things I write—articles for Z Magazine, or books for South End Press, or whatever—they are mostly based on talks and meetings and that kind of thing. But I’m kind of a parasite. I mean, I’m living off the activism of others. I’m happy to do it.”

    Chomsky’s marketing efforts shortly after September 11 give new meaning to the term war profiteer. In the days after the tragedy, he raised his speaking fee from $9,000 to $12,000 because he was suddenly in greater demand.

    He also cashed in by producing another instant book. Seven Stories Press, a small publisher, pulled together interviews conducted via e-mail that Chomsky gave in the three weeks following the attack on the Twin Towers and rushed the book to press. His controversial views were hot, particularly overseas. By early December 2001, the pushlisher had sold the foreign rights in 19 different languages. The book made the best-seller list in the United States, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand. It is safe to assume that he netted hundreds of thousands of dollars from this book alone.

    Over the years, Chomsky has been particularly critical of private property rights, which he considers simply a tool of the rich, of no benefit to ordinary people. “When property rights are granted to power and privilege, it can be expected to be harmful to most,” Chomsky wrote on a discussion board for the Washington Post. Intellectual property rights are equally despicable. According to Chomsky, for example, drug companies who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing drugs shouldn’t have ownership rights to patents. Intellectual property rights, he argues, “have to do with protectionism.”

    Protectionism is a bad thing—especially when it relates to other people. But when it comes to Chomsky’s own published work, this advocate of open intellectual property suddenly becomes very selfish. It would not be advisable to download the audio from one of his speeches without paying the fee, warns his record company, Alternative Tentacles. (Did Andrei Sakharov have a licensing agreement with a record company?) And when it comes to his articles, you’d better keep your hands off. Go to the official Noam Chomsky website (www.chomsky.info) and the warning is clear: “Material on this site is copyrighted by Noam Chomsky and/or Noam Chomsky and his collaborators. No material on this site may be reprinted or posted on other web sites without written permission.” However, the website does give you the opportunity to “sublicense” the material if you are interested.

    Radicals used to think of their ideas as weapons; Chomsky sees them as a licensing opportunity.

    Chomsky has even gone the extra mile to protect the copyright to some of his material by transferring ownership to his children. Profits from those works will thus be taxed at his children’s lower rate. He also extends the length of time that the family is able to hold onto the copyright and protect his intellectual assets.

    In October 2002, radicals gathered in Philadelphia for a benefit entitled “Noam Chomsky: Media and Democracy.” Sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Democratic Left, for a fee of $15 you could attend the speech and hear the great man ruminate on the evils of capitalism. For another $35, you could attend a post-talk reception and he would speak directly with you.

    During the speech, Chomsky told the assembled crowd, “A democracy requires a free, independent, and inquiring media.” After the speech, Deborah Bolling, a writer for the lefty Philadelphia City Paper, tried to get an interview with Chomsky. She was turned away. To talk to Chomsky, she was told, this “free, independent, and inquiring” reporter needed to pay $35 to get into the private reception.

    Corporate America is one of Chomsky’s demons. It’s hard to find anything positive he might say about American business. He paints an ominous vision of America suffering under the “unaccountable and deadly rule of corporations.” He has called corporations “private tyrannies” and declared that they are “just as totalitarian as Bolshevism and fascism.” Capitalism, in his words, is a “grotesque catastrophe.”

    But a funny thing happened on the way to the retirement portfolio.

    Chomsky, for all of his moral dudgeon against American corporations, finds that they make a pretty good investment. When he made investment decisions for his retirement plan at MIT, he chose not to go with a money market fund or even a government bond fund. Instead, he threw the money into blue chips and invested in the TIAA-CREF stock fund. A look at the stock fund portfolio quickly reveals that it invests in all sorts of businesses that Chomsky says he finds abhorrent: oil companies, military contractors, pharmaceuticals, you name it.

    When I asked Chomsky about his investment portfolio he reverted to a “what else can I do?” defense: “Should I live in a cabin in Montana?” he asked. It was a clever rhetorical dodge. Chomsky was declaring that there is simply no way to avoid getting involved in the stock market short of complete withdrawal from the capitalist system. He certainly knows better. There are many alternative funds these days that allow you to invest your money in “green” or “socially responsible” enterprises. They just don’t yield the maximum available return.

    Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has served as a consultant to NBC News and as a member of the Ultra Terrorism Study Group at the U.S. Government’s Sandia National Laboratory. He and his wife, Rochelle Schweizer, wrote The Bushes: Profile of a Dynasty, which theNew York Times called “the best” of the books on the Bush family. His other books include Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy and Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism.

    This essay is adapted from the author’s new book Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy (Doubleday, 2005). Available from the Hoover Press is The Fall of the Berlin Wall, edited by Peter Schweizer. To order, call 800.935.2882 or visit www.hooverpress.org.

    Jeff Blankfort Deconstructs Chomsky On America and Israel

    Posted on by

    Update

    I should make it clear that, as a libertarian, I don’t support sanctions against any country. I wouldn’t have supported sanctions against South Africa, didn’t support them on Iraq, and don’t support them on Israel. However, targeted boycotts against specific, responsible parties (journalists, academics, government officials, businessmen or military officials directly involved in genocidal crimes or in their cover-up) would be defensible under international law. General sanctions only impoverish people and undermine resistance.

    So my problem here is less with Chomsky’s position on divestment – whatever it is – so much as his apparent double-standards on the issue – one standard for South Africans…… and another for Israel.One for Israel…and another for Palestine. One for the US…and another for Israel.

    If the Jews deserved a homeland, and they did, the Palestinians surely deserved land that was already their home and had been their home for centuries…

    Original Post [all varieties of emphasis –  underlines, capitals, and italics – are mine, not Blankfort’s]:

    The indefatigably brave and honest Jeff Blankfort analyzes Noam Chomsky’s writings on Israel and Palestine. I’ve  been very conflicted about Chomsky’s blind-eye on  9-11 for some time now. What to think about it? This analysis convinces me finally that Chomsky’s bias is not simply an emotional blind-spot, but a deliberate obfuscation that in such a prominent, sophisticated, and powerful voice, must be called out and questioned closely.

    “His reluctance to label Israel’s control of the Palestinians as “apartheid” out of concern that it be seen as a “red flag,” like describing it as “inflammatory,” was a red flag itself and raised questions that should have been asked by the interviewer, such as who would be inflamed by the reference to ‘apartheid’ as a “red flag” in Israel’s case and what objections would Chomsky have to that?

    A more disturbing exchange occurred later in the interview when Chomsky was asked if sanctions should be applied against Israel as they were against South Africa. He responded:

    “In fact, I’ve been strongly against it in the case of Israel. For a number of reasons. For one thing, even in the case of South Africa, I think sanctions are a very questionable tactic. In the case of South Africa, I think they were [ultimately] legitimate because it was clear that the large majority of the population of South Africa was in favor of it.

    Sanctions hurt the population. You don’t impose them unless the population is asking for them. That’s the moral issue. So, the first point in the case of Israel is that: Is the population asking for it? Well, obviously not.”

    Obviously not. But is it acceptable to make such a decision on the basis of what the majority of Israelis want? Israel, after all, is not a dictatorship in which the people are held in check by fear and, therefore, cannot be held responsible for their government’s actions. Israel has a largely unregulated, lively press and a “people’s army” in which all Israeli Jews, other than the ultra-orthodox, are expected to serve and that is viewed by the Israeli public with almost religious reverence. Over the years, in their own democratic fashion, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have consistently supported and participated in actions of their government against the Palestinians and Lebanese that are not only racist, but in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

    Chomsky made his position clear:

    “So calling for sanctions here, when the majority of the population doesn’t understand what you are doing, is tactically absurd-even if it were morally correct, which I don’t think it is. The country against which the sanctions are being imposed is not calling for it.”

    The interviewer, Lee, understandably puzzled by that answer, then asked him, “Palestinians aren’t calling for sanctions?

    Chomsky: “Well, the sanctions wouldn’t be imposed against the Palestinians, they would be imposed against Israel.”

    Lee: “Right… [And] Israelis aren’t calling for sanctions.”

    That response also disturbed Palestinian political analyst, Omar Barghouti, who, while tactfully acknowledging Chomsky as “a distinguished supporter of the Palestinian cause,” addressed the issue squarely:

    Of all the anti-boycott arguments, this one reflects either surprising naiveté or deliberate intellectual dishonesty. Are we to judge whether to apply sanctions on a colonial power based on the opinion of the majority in the oppressors community? Does the oppressed community count at all? [7]

    For Chomsky, apparently not……

    ………In an exchange with Washington Post readers, Chomsky was asked by a caller:

    Why did you sign an MIT petition calling for MIT to boycott Israeli investments, and then give an interview in which you state that you opposed such investment boycotts? What was or is your position on the proposal by some MIT faculty that MIT should boycott Israeli investments?

    Chomsky replied:

    As is well known in Cambridge, of anyone involved, I” was the most outspoken opponent of the petition calling for divestment, and in fact refused to sign until it was substantially changed, along lines that you can read if you are interested. The “divestment” part was reduced to three entirely meaningless words, which had nothing to do with the main thrust of the petition. I thought that the three meaningless words should also be deleted… On your last question, as noted, I was and remain strongly opposed, without exception — at least if I understand what the question means. How does one “boycott Israeli investments”? (Emphasis added). [10]

    I will assume that Chomsky understood very well what the caller meant: investing in Israeli companies and in State of Israel Bonds of which US labor union pension funds, and many states and universities have purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth. These purchases clearly obligate those institutions to lobby Congress to insure that the Israeli economy stays afloat. This isn’t something that Chomsky talks or writes about.

    The caller was referring to a speech that Chomsky had made to the Harvard Anthropology Dept. shortly after the MIT and Harvard faculties issued a joint statement on divestment. It was gleefully reported in the Harvard Crimson by pro-Israel activist, David Weinfeld, under the headline “Chomsky’s Gift”:

    MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky recently gave the greatest Hanukkah gift of all to opponents of the divestment campaign against Israel. By signing the Harvard-MIT divestment petition several months ago—and then denouncing divestment on Nov. 25 at Harvard—Chomsky has completely undercut the petition.

    At his recent talk for the Harvard anthropology department, Chomsky stated: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.”

    He argued that a call for divestment is “a very welcome gift to the most extreme supporters of US-Israeli violence… It removes from the agenda the primary issues and it allows them to turn the discussion to irrelevant issues, which are here irrelevant, anti-Semitism and academic freedom and so on and so forth.” [11] …….

    ….

    Chomsky’s rationalization of Israel’s criminal misdeeds in The Fateful Triangle should have rung alarm bells when it appeared in 1983. Written a year after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, in what would become a sacred text for Middle East activists, he actually began the book not by taking Israel to task so much as its critics:

    In the war of words that has been waged since Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, critics of Israeli actions have frequently been accused of hypocrisy. While the reasons advanced are spurious, the charge itself has some merit. It is surely hypocritical to condemn Israel for establishing settlements in the occupied territories while we pay for establishing and expanding them. Or to condemn Israel for attacking civilian targets with cluster and phosphorous bombs “to get the maximum kill per hit.” When we provide them gratis or at bargain rates, knowing that they will be used for just this purpose. Or to criticize Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ bombardment of heavily-settled civilian areas or its other military adventures, while we not only provide the means in abundance but welcome Israel’s assistance in testing the latest weaponry under live battlefield conditions... .In general, it is pure hypocrisy to criticize the exercise of Israeli power while welcoming Israel’s contributions towards realizing the US aim of eliminating possible threats, largely indigenous, to American domination of the Middle East region.[ 21]

    First, the PLO was seen as a threat by Israel, not by the United States in 1982, particularly since it had strictly abided by a US-brokered cease-fire with Israel for 11 months, giving it a dangerous degree of credibility in Israeli eyes. Second, whom did Chomsky mean by “we?” Perhaps, President Reagan and some members of Congress who gently expressed their concern when the number of Palestinians and Lebanese killed in the invasion and the wholesale destruction of the country could not be suppressed in the media. But he doesn’t say. It certainly wasn’t those who took to the streets across the country to protest Israel’s invasion. Both political parties had competed in their applause when Israel launched its attack, as did the AFL-CIO which took out a full page ad in the NY Times, declaring “We Are Not Neutral. We Support Israel!” paid for by an Israeli lobbyist with a Park Avenue address. The media, in the beginning, was also supportive, but it is rare to find an editorial supporting US aid to Israel. It is rarely ever mentioned and that’s the way the lobby likes it. So is Chomsky creating a straw figure? It appears so.

    If we follow Chomsky’s “logic,” it would be an injustice to bring charges of war crimes against Indonesian, El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Haitian, or Filipino officers, soldiers, or public officials for the atrocities committed against their own countrymen and women since they were funded, armed and politically supported by the US. Perhaps, General Pinochet will claim the Chomsky Defense if he goes to trial.

    He pressed the point of US responsibility for Israel’s sins again in his introduction to The New Intifada, noting that as one of the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, “It is therefore Washington’s responsibility to prevent settlement and expropriation, along with collective punishment and all other measures of violence… .It follows that the United States is in express and extreme violation of its obligations as a High Contracting Party.” [22]

    I would agree with Chomsky, but is the US refusal to act a more “extreme violation” than the actual crimes being committed by another signatory to the Conventions, namely Israel? Chomsky would have us believe that it is.

    It is a point he made clear at a talk in Oxford in May, 2004, when he brought up the killing a week earlier of the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin by the Israeli military as he left a Mosque in Gaza. “That was reported as an Israeli assassination, but inaccurately” said Chomsky. “Sheikh Yassin was killed by a US helicopter, flown by an Israeli pilot. Israel does not produce helicopters. The US sends them with the understanding that they will be used for such purposes, not defense, as they have been, regularly.”

    Chomsky is correct to a point. What is missing from his analysis is any reference to the demands from Congress, orchestrated by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s officially registered lobby, to make sure that the US provides those helicopters to Israel to use as its generals see fit. (In fact, there is not a single mention of AIPAC in any one of Chomsky’s many books on the Israel-Palestine conflict). What Chomsky’s British audience was left with was the conclusion that the assassination of Sheik Yassin was done with Washington’s approval.

    While its repeated use of helicopters against the Palestinian resistance and civilian population has been one of the more criminal aspects of Israel’s response to the Intifada, absolving the Israelis of blame for their use has become something of a fetish for Chomsky as his introduction to The New Intifada [23] and again, in more detail in Middle East Illusions, illustrates:

    On October 1, [at the beginning of the Al-Aksa Intifada] Israeli military helicopters, or, to be more precise, US military helicopters with Israeli pilots, sharply escalated the violence, killing two Palestinians in Gaza… . The continuing provision of attack helicopters by the United States to Israel, with the knowledge that these weapons are being used against the civilian Palestinian population, and the silence of the mainstream media is just one illustration of many of how we live up to the principle that we do not believe in violence. Again, it leaves honest citizens with two tasks: the important one, do something about it; and the second one, try to find out why the policies are being pursued. (Emphasis added) [24]

    What to do Chomsky again doesn’t say, but he does try to tell us why:

    “On that matter, the fundamental reasons are not really controversial… It has long been understood that the gulf region has the major energy sources in the world… ” [25]

    Chomsky then goes on for two pages explaining the importance of Middle East oil and the efforts by the US to control it. It is the basic explanation that he has repeated and republished, almost verbatim, over the years. What it has to do with the Palestinians who have no oil or how a truncated Palestinian state would present a threat to US regional interests is not provided, but after two pages the reader has forgotten that the question was even posed. In his explanation there is no mention of the lobby or domestic influences.

    Chomsky does acknowledge that “major sectors of American corporate capitalism, including powerful elements with interests in the Middle East [the major oil companies!]” have endorsed a “two-state solution” on the basis that

    the radical nationalist tendencies that are enflamed by the unsettled Palestinian problem would be reduced by the establishment of a Palestinian mini-state that would be contained within a Jordanian-Israeli military alliance (perhaps tacit), surviving at the pleasure of its far more powerful neighbors and subsidized by the most conservative and pro-American forces in the Arab world… .This would, in fact, be the likely outcome of a two-state settlement.” [26]

    Such an outcome would have little direct influence on regional Arab politics, except to demoralize supporters of the Palestinian struggle in the neighboring countries and around the world, a development that would clearly serve US interests. It would, however, curb Israel’s expansion, which is critical to Israel’s agenda, not Washington’s. Chomsky also fails to recognize a fundamental contradiction in his argument. If the support of Israel has been based on its role as protector of US strategic resources, namely oil, why does not that position enjoy the support of the major oil companies with interests in the region?…”

    (Lila: My emphasis)

    The Extremists Who Founded America….

    Posted on by

    Right Wing Extremists: Saving America Since 1776

    With the 233rd Independence Day celebration on it’s way in America, we thought it would be a good idea to honor the radical extremists that founded this country.
    Now, it might be true that calling Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin “right wing” is a bit historically questionable within the original context of the old Left-Right paradigm laid out in the French Assembly in the late 18th Century. We understand that technically the founders had more in common with what would historically be deemed the “left” than anything. ……”

    Edward Bernays On Self Interest And Propaganda

    Posted on by

    It’s a mistake to think propaganda is solely something “they” (the power elites) do to us (passive viewers). It’s just not so.

    While propaganda can often be so subtle that the viewer cannot recognize he’s being manipulated, it isn’t true that the viewer is completely helpless to resist it.

    The reason for this is that contemporary propaganda is rarely a direct command. Instead, it’s couched in language that appeals to viewers’ self-interests. So, anything that flatters our self-perception or claims to fulfill our desires should alert us to the fact that manipulation might be going on.

    The father of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this process at length:

    “The leaders who lend their authority to any propaganda campaign will do so only if it can be made to touch their own interests. There must be a disinterested aspect of the propagandist’s activities. In other words, it is one of the functions of the public relations counsel to discover at what points his client’s interests coincide with those of other individuals or groups.
    In the case of the soap sculpture competition, the distinguished artists and educators who sponsored the idea were glad to lend their services and their names because the competitions really promoted an interest which they had at heart—the cultivation of the esthetic impulse among the younger generation.
    Such coincidence and overlapping of interests is as infinite as the interlacing of group formations themselves. For example, a railway wishes to develop its business. The counsel on public relations makes a survey to discover at what points its interests coincide with those of its prospective customers. The company then establishes relations with chambers of commerce along its right of way and assists them in developing their communities. It helps them to secure new plants and industries for the town. It facilitates business through the dissemination of technical information. It is not merely a case of bestowing favors in the hope of receiving favors; these activities of the railroad, besides creating good will, actually promote growth on its right of way. The interests of the railroad and the communities through which it passes mutually interact and feed one another.
    In the same way, a bank institutes an investment service for the benefit of its customers in order that the latter may have more money to deposit with the bank. Or a jewelry concern develops an insurance department to insure the jewels it sells, in order to make the purchaser feel greater security in buying jewels. Or a baking company establishes an information service suggesting recipes for bread to encourage new uses for bread in the home. The ideas of the new propaganda are predicated on sound psychology based on enlightened selfinterest.”

    —    Edward Bernays in Propaganda (1928)

    Obama: Dining On Whatever The Pentagon Feeds Him

    Posted on by

    Andrew Bacevich reports that in his latest opus, Bob Woodward, the McDonald’s of court-historians, is better at recording the trivia of Washington in-fighting that make it to the Sunday headlines than understanding the constitutional significance of a shift in decision-making at the highest level:

    “Obama’s Wars also affirms what we already suspected about the decision-making process that led up to the president’s announcement at West Point in December 2009 to prolong and escalate the war.  Bluntly put, the Pentagon gamed the process to exclude any possibility of Obama rendering a decision not to its liking.

    Pick your surge: 20,000 troops? Or 30,000 troops?  Or 40,000 troops?  Only the most powerful man in the world — or Goldilocks contemplating three bowls of porridge — could handle a decision like that.  Even as Obama opted for the middle course, the real decision had already been made elsewhere by others: the war in Afghanistan would expand and continue.

    And then there’s this from the estimable General David Petraeus: ”I don’t think you win this war,” Woodward quotes the field commander as saying. “I think you keep fighting… This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

    Here we confront a series of questions to which Woodward (not to mention the rest of Washington) remains steadfastly oblivious.  Why fight a war that even the general in charge says can’t be won?  What will the perpetuation of this conflict cost?  Who will it benefit?  Does the ostensibly most powerful nation in the world have no choice but to wage permanent war?  Are there no alternatives?  Can Obama shut down an unwinnable war now about to enter its tenth year?  Or is he — along with the rest of us — a prisoner of war?”

    Bill Clinton Gets 6 Billion In Pledges For Global Philanthropy

    Posted on by

    (MORE LINKS TO COME)

    Reuters reports that ex-President Bill Clinton has raised a record $6 billion for a global philanthropic effort called Clinton Global Initiatives:

    “Former President Bill Clinton secured a record 291 pledges worth more than $6 billion to tackle global woes at his sixth annual philanthropic summit, which wound up on Thursday.

    The value of Clinton Global Initiative pledges for economic empowerment, education, environment, energy and health was $3 billion less than 2009, but the organization said that in previous years one or two big commitments represented a disproportionate share of the whole.”

    So what’s the Clinton Global Initiative?  Here’s the website

    And here’s what its all about (my translation in italics)

    “In 2005, President Clinton established CGI to turn ideas into action and to help our world move beyond the current state of globalization to a more integrated global community

    [Lila: More centralization leading to world government]

    of shared benefits, responsibilities, and values. [Lila: perks, taxes, and bureaucratic regulations]

    By gathering world leaders from a variety of backgrounds [Lila: We’ve bullied, bribed, and blackmailed every pol  on the face of the earth to join],

    CGI creates a unique opportunity to channel the capacities of individuals and organizations to realize change [Lila: You want to make any money, you’re going to need to do business through us].

    To fulfill the action-oriented mission of CGI, all members devise practical solutions to global issues through the development of specific and measurable Commitments to Action.

    CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 125 current and former heads of state [Lila: OK, we’re missing a few islands], 15 Nobel Peace Prize winners [Lila: Now you know why they’re given Nobel prizes – they can lend their credibility to the CGI], hundreds of leading global CEOs [Lila: Right-wing fat cats], major philanthropists and foundation heads [Left-wing fat cats], directors of the most effective non-governmental organizations [Lila: Professional do-gooders  and trojan horses], and prominent members of the media [Lila: The PR department].

    These CGI members have made nearly 1,700 commitments valued at $57 billion, which have already improved more than 220 million lives in 170 countries

    [Lila: 220 million reliable constituents and advocates of bigger government].

    The CGI community also includes CGI University (CGI U), a forum to engage college students in global citizenship; CGI Asia; MyCommitment.org, an online portal where anybody can make their own Commitment to Action; and, CGI Lead, which engages a select group of young leaders from business, government, and civil society.”

    Which “Bastards”? More Discrepancies In Wikileaks “Revelations”

    Posted on by

    Maximilien Forte at Zero Anthropology:

    “Which Bastards?

    When asked by Larry King on Monday, 26 July, who he meant to call “bastards” when he told Der Spiegel “I enjoy crushing bastards,” Assange specified he meant U.S. forces. Assange must also believe that those studying these documents will not focus as much on the atrocities committed by the Taleban, such as the devastating carnage caused by their IEDs and suicide bombers, and their apparent disregard for the scores of civilians that are killed as a result of going after one target with a massive bomb–The Guardian, with what is arguably the best coverage of the three newspapers to have obtained the documents a month in advance of their public release, has already covered this aspect quite quickly. In these same reports, the Taleban appear to be using hammers to kill mosquitoes. Left at that level of discussion, we have data, but not much understanding–for example, of why the Taleban have nonetheless gained strength and support, or why we may view their deadly attacks as something for which the U.S. and NATO share partial responsibility, for having overthrown and persecuted the Taleban after invading and occupying their country, thereby provoking a hostile and asymmetric reaction. It would be a silly or wicked person who would argue that Afghans have no right to fight back.

    While I generally agree with Assange’s sentiments, to the extent that they are knowable, I do not share his optimism about the impact of these documents. Information is not power, and it is not meaning. To make sense of these documents requires interpretation and argumentation that goes beyond and outside the limits of what are, after all, reports reflective of an American optic, produced by combatants. Source criticism and cross checking will be paramount, and to the extent that is not done, Wikileaks may witness members of the public using the same documents to not only bolster the arguments to support continuation of this war, but even an escalation to direct hostilities with Iran (see The Guardian, and see the justified alarm expressed by Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy). There is also debate between The Guardian and The New York Times over the extent to which the reports can be trusted when it comes to Pakistan’s supposed role in aiding the Taleban and conducting covert operations against the government of Afghanistan and western forces–that dispute happened within the first day of reporting on the documents, and disagreement over their credibility did not stop the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan from verbally thrashing each other in public, again within 24 hours of the documents’ release. These reports overall contain enough to hurt those who are critics of U.S. foreign policy, as much as they will hurt those who support it. They contain as much potential for escalating and expanding conflict, as they contain for mobilizing popular support to stop it. I also understand that my commentary here may well be premature, but then so are all the current commentaries.
    What Should Matter to Social Scientists?

    To bring this discussion closer to the concerns of anthropologists and social scientists generally, there are a few points that I feel need to be made. One concerns the extent to which these records are only a partial selection of all records produced by the U.S. military. That is a significant problem, because we cannot know if the items excluded would in some way modify any conclusions we reach about the records we have. Wikileaks received a total of about 110,000 records, and released about 92,000. It is hard to believe that a period covering six years of war could have produced only this amount. To my knowledge, Julian Assange has not been asked any questions about this issue. We therefore also do not know why these records were included and others excluded. This issue will come up again when I speak about what the records reveal about the workings of the Human Terrain System.

    A second problem, and it is a major one, concerns Assange’s assertions that the items were redacted to minimize the risk of harm to the sources indicated in the records. From what we have seen already, just with reference to Human Terrain Teams alone and their sources, that is completely untrue. There is no evidence whatsoever of any kind of redaction. Moreover, when one deletes information for a record, one is supposed to mark the text in some way to say either “name deleted” or “sentence deleted,” etc., and I see no evidence of that. In addition, who comprises Wikileaks’ team of redactors, and on the basis of what knowledge and expertise, as either war fighters, or people with experience and knowledge of Afghanistan, could they make calls about what was “harmless” versus “harmful” information? Which specialists did they consult, and for how long did they have the records to study? Not a word about this, merely bland and general assurances.

    Indeed, Assange’s statements about Wikileaks’ “harm minimization process” seem to only focus on the safety of his “bastards,” noting that the documents “do not generally cover top-secret operations” and that they “delayed the release of some 15,000 reports” as “demanded by our source” (source). This is an exchange Assange had with Der Spiegel on this issue:

    SPIEGEL: The material contains military secrets and names of sources. By publishing it, aren’t you endangering the lives of international troops and their informants in Afghanistan?

    Assange: The Kabul files contain no information related to current troop movements. The source went through their own harm-minimization process and instructed us to conduct our usual review to make sure there was not a significant chance of innocents being negatively affected. We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources [emphasis added].

    SPIEGEL: So what, specifically, did you do to minimize any possible harm?

    Assange: We identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.

    A third problem has to do with source criticism, source confirmation, and Assange’s call for crowdsourcing. Anthropologists should relate to this issue personally. Imagine that someone gets hold of your fieldnotes, and releases a part of them. No analysis, no contextualization, no doubts about the veracity of what an informant told you is in those notes. They are released, and then members of a broad public take hold of their interpretation, and take what is reported as the truth of a situation. Wouldn’t this make you freak out? Are any of our books and journal articles a mere transcription of our fieldnotes? So who is this “crowd” that will make solid arguments from these notes? How will they check their veracity? Do they know who wrote these reports, under what conditions, under what limitations, and with what motivations? Will they travel to Afghanistan and cover the ground covered by these military units? What other documents will they use to confirm these reports, or will they trust them blindly? These are already some of the issues being raised about the alleged Iran-Al Qaeda connection, and Pakistan’s role in supporting the Taleban.”

    Memoirs Of An American Refugee…

    Posted on by

    Stuart Bramhall links back to my earlier post on Barry Zwicker and the Left Gate-Keepers... who still refuse to talk about 9-11, under an article about the infiltration of the foundation left:

    “As Dana Priest’s recent Washington Post expose reveals, the use of private contractors to spy on Americans (in addition to the proliferation of government spy agencies) has gone viral since the 2002 enactment of the Patriot Act. In fact some civil libertarians warn that Americans’ shrinking privacy and personal freedom is rapidly approaching that of communist East Germany under the Stasi (the East German secret police) – where one in sixteen residents were paid to report on their friends on neighbors.

    Was There Domestic Spying Before 2002?

    Based on 20 years experience as an anti-war and single payer activist in Seattle, I would hazard that that spying on political and community groups didn’t suddenly leap from non-existent to astronomic levels when it was “legalized” in 2002. It has always been my impression that it increased at a fairly steady rate with the rightward drift at all levels of government following Reagan’s election in 1980. I also believe that prior to the enactment of the Patriot Act, much of this domestic “counterinsurgency” activity occurred under the auspices of “left” identified foundations and think-tanks. These are private entities, funded through a combination of CIA monies and right wing philanthropy, that give the appearance of being autonomous – and genuinely progressive and liberal. However it appears that their true function is to restrict the acceptable range of progressive debate and political activity. Barry Zwicker calls them “left gatekeepers (see July 19 and 24 blog)” and Webster Tarpley “counterinsurgency” foundations.

    Left Gatekeeping Foundations and the Single Payer Movement

    Most of my personal experience with these left gatekeeping foundations occurred as a single payer activist. In Washington State, the single payer movement was started by doctors in 1988, under the auspices of Physicians for a National Health Program. Between 1988 and 1993, when the Seattle chapter was run by and for health professionals, it expanded rapidly, attracted much public and media attention. It was also an important partner in a broader coalition that pressured the governor to appoint a blue ribbon health commission to develop a proposal for state based, publicly financed universal health care.

    Then in 1993, when the health provider joined with Washington Gray Panthers to build a broad based coalition, we suddenly hit a roadblock. There were suddenly all kinds of difficulties, which on the surface amounted to a textbook case of Cointelpro infiltration. However unlike Cointelpro, the problems didn’t appear to originate with the FBI or the police, but with local “left” leaning think tanks and foundations. The tactics, however, were classic – with the appearance of quirky outsiders who tampered with our database, seized control of our contact list to launch rumor and character assassination campaigns, split our coalitions by launching parallel, competing organizations (focused on safer lobbying activities and mild reformism), and scared off new members by repeatedly picking fights at our meetings.

    A Clear Pattern

    In one case we discovered the operative had a history of similar behavior in Seattle’s first Anti-Gulf War Coalition (1991) and the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists of America. The pattern in all three cases was the same – getting control of the database and leadership and shutting all three down – including the single payer coalition.

    It was only when Washington State joined a regional coalition with single payer activists from Oregon and California – the Pacific Rim Single Payer Summit – that I got some inkling of what was happening. The synchronicity activists from other states described – down to the exact political rhetoric and targeted personal attacks – was uncanny.

    It’s safe to assume that specific left gatekeeping foundations involved in suppressing the single payer movement receive generous support from the powerful insurance lobby and Big Pharma – in addition to any CIA and right wing philanthropy. Both the insurance and the pharmaceutical industry stand to lose big under a publicly funded health care system (as the sole purchaser of medication for 300 million Americans, the government would force the drug companies to agree to massive volume discounts – this occurs in all industrialized countries with publicly funded health care).

    I write about my personal experience, as a single payer activist, with left gatekeeping foundations in my recent memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.”