Libya's 'protectors' - liberal saviours and media cheerleaders

The liberal interventionists, it seems, are out in offensive force again as Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and a cheerleading media drag us into another calamitous war.

Some avowed left/liberal 'anti-imperialists' have also succumbed to the Faustian acceptance of US/UK missiles bombarding Tripoli and Gaddafi's own bunkers, invoking the spurious trade-off that it's the only way of protecting Libyan rebel civilians.

The prospect of many thousands more civilians, pro and anti-Gaddafi, dying as an inevitable consequence of Western bombing, gets conveniently lost in the calculus.

Non-intervention, so the interventionist argument runs, means abandoning anti-Gaddafi forces to certain slaughter - a 'moral abrogation'.

It's a convenient emotional appeal to the public from a military-political assemblage that holds little regard for any Arab face.  As the recent all-guns-blazing US attack on a rebel party gathering suggests, they are all, ultimately, expendable.

More bombing and murder will solve nothing.  But it's the knee-jerk endorsement of Western military 'solutions' by supposedly thoughtful liberals and a default-line media which serves to marginalise the basic realities and possible alternatives for Libya.

As a group of academics otherwise declare: 

"We strongly advocate creative strategies of solidarity with the Libyan people while underscoring that calls for coercive external intervention do not qualify. Indeed, it is possible that demands for Western support to the rebels may already have done more harm than good.  In the end, we argue for humility in imagining the role we might play in the course of Libyans' struggle. The international community is neither entitled to take the reins today nor dictate the post-regime scenario tomorrow."

Thus, one can support the movement to oust Gaddafi without advocating another Western campaign of mass killing to 'achieve' it.

In the wake of Iraq, Afghanistan and other Western 'liberations', could we ever presume to bestow upon such forces the mantle of humanitarian protector? 

Media Lens provide the relevant analogy:

"A serial killer with a long history of violent, greed-driven crimes might claim to be motivated by compassion in committing further violence. He might even act morally. But his actions could not possibly be based on any ‘moral right’. And the rest of the world would be entitled to argue that, given his record, he was the last person likely to achieve positive results."

As Ken O'Keefe also reminds us, any proclamation of liberal interventionism, particularly regarding the Middle East, should be treated with definitive derision.

Where are the calls for military intervention to protect the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen, or to isolate all those other Middle East dictators, notably Saudi Arabia, eager to see their fellow dictator Gaddafi fall?

Where was the Western demand for a no-fly-zone over Gaza when 1400 Palestinians were being slaughtered by Israeli jets?  More Gazans, including children, have just been bombed and murdered.  Where's the emergency Security Council resolutions calling for their protection?

With the expedient backing of the Arab League, dictators and tyrants all, the West has now secured its tactical boot in the Libyan door.  And, as the showers of million dollar Cruise and Tomahawk missiles show, there will be no military end game short of mass civilian bloodshed and regime change favourable to Washington.

The only interests protected here will be the arms industry, oil companies and other venture investors eager to see the Blair-initiated 'deal in the desert' secured.

Media framing of Western involvement in Libya routinely pitches Gaddafi as the 'rogue tamed by good-guy Blair, but now needing to be punished for killing his own'.  Cameron is, thus, just doing his 'ethical best' now, following on from Blair's 'fine-but-failed' efforts.  Blair's role, and Cameron's support, in the genocide of Iraq, of course, forms no part of that 'ethical' narrative.

As with Britain's past arming of Saddam, George Galloway has, rightly, accused the BBC of going quietly along with the West in supporting Gaddafi this last decade, while he and many others on the left had been denouncing the Libyan dictator.

It's not a home truth the mainstream media appear keen on airing.  Stop the War has been all but ignored over Libya.  Pilger and notable anti-war others may be exposing the real hypocritical utterings and motives of Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy et al, but it's the language of 'necessary intervention' and 'our forces' that gets all the major media attention.

Even the Guardian's Seumas Milne, in denouncing Western hypocrisy, has precious little to say about the liberal media's own language-contorting role in rationalising the war.

From Colonel Bob Stewart to David Owen, the voice of 'sensible intervention' gives soothing reassurance to a public fearing another foreign military disaster.    

Another current liberal media favourite performing this task is Rory Stewart, an ex-foreign office point man for the Middle East - the quintessence of the modern career Orientalist - and now Tory MP.

Stewart is eagerly paraded by liberal apologists as the deep and thoughtful voice of 'ethical interventionism'.  Having dutifully considered the "national security arguments" and "moral" objections to the West's actions, Stewarts's conclusions amount to this:

"We need therefore to work out how best to use the no-fly zone, while recognising how insecure and reckless we can be tempted to be."

"Insecure and reckless"?  "Tempted"?  Such diplomatic angst typifies the tortuous liberal deliberations on whether this 'intervention' can be morally validated.  For Stewart and his war-rationalising peers, the discussion may be laboured, but the outcome is predictably the same: the ultimate need for 'our best' military engagement.

Beyond all the soul-searching, reflective words on Britain's and the West's capacity for 'erroneous' foreign adventures, Stewart has nothing seriously damning to say about the UK's real political priorities and the relentless corporate imperatives that drive the conquest and control of such states in pursuit of oil, arms sales and other imperialist dividends.

Instead, we have to seek out other media commentary for credible understandings of Libya, assessments that don't take as their starting points presumptions of basic Western benevolence.  

One can only hope for a relatively quick and peaceful end to this conflict and the possibility of a true democracy for Libya.  It's, perhaps, a forlorn hope.  But any argument, from right or 'left', that believes in the quick-fix, or even long-fix, of Western intervention is more hopelessly misguided than the Criuse missiles now being fired in 'protective support' of the Libyan people.

John

Link update: some of the forces assisting the Libyan rebels.
More here.

Japan's disasters, natural and human

The astonishing natural tragedy of Japan's 9.0 magnitude earthquake and 30 foot tsunami has now been accompanied by another, much more human-constructed, terror as the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi continue to disintegrate and explode radioactive material.

The eventual scale of this nuclear disaster is, as yet, to be realised.  But, with an increasingly worst-case-scenario of core meltdowns, extensive atmospheric exposure and mass evacuations, the sheer folly of nuclear energy is there for all to see.  

It's usually only in hindsight, as with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, that the 'obvious case' against nuclear plants gets serious attention.  And, as we're now seeing, elementary issues over the Japanese plants seem to have gone wantonly unaddressed.

How could the Japanese authorities ever have permitted the concentration of so many coastal-sited reactors knowing the perennial threat of regional quakes and tsunamis?

Where are so many nuclear refugees now expected to go as the exclusion zone extends further and further from the plant?

If the dangers of nuclear energy seem all-too-evident to an alarmed public, the argument for abandoning it has still not been accepted by some 'environmental realists' who see nuclear as the only viable option to the bigger calamity of carbon-inflicting climate change.

While recognising the extent of Japan's nuclear disaster, and what might yet be learned from it, notable green advocate Mark Lynas insists that any wholesale criticism of the nuclear industry "may not be entirely fair."

"The majority of the world’s nuclear plants are not situated in seismic areas which present a threat along the scale of that faced by earthquake-prone Japan. Those which may be affected by tsunamis are likely even fewer in number. Moreover, the Fukushima plant is 40 years old and was due to be mothballed in February – it was given an extended license, just as has happened in the UK, Germany and many other countries – because no-one could agree on newer, safer designs at the same time as power shortages loomed."

This argument over nuclear location may be partially valid.  But it still doesn't make any other nuclear plant assuredly safe.  Just remember Windscale.  Nor does the age limit of Fukushima and the prevarications over its extended life, always based on economic expediency, provide much in the way of mitigation.

Lynas's associate, iconic activist George Monbiot, maintains a similar, if still qualified, defence of nuclear energy (just updated with an additional clause denouncing the siting of nuclear plants in such volatile places).

It's a position which Greenpeace and many others within the green movement convincingly reject - and regret, given the particular influence of Monbiot and Lynas as popular environmentalists.

What seems beyond doubt, even to these eco-veterans, is the potential catastrophe now unfolding and the glaring incapacity of humans to deal with nuclear emergencies.

And with this official desperation comes the official lies and subterfuge.  Little wonder we're now seeing a global government effort, as in France and Germany, to offset public anxiety and distrust.

As Michael McCarthy notes in the Independent:

"The reason is an industry which from its inception, more than half a century ago, has taken secrecy to be its watchword; and once that happens, cover-ups and downright lies often follow close behind. The sense of crisis surrounding Japan's stricken nuclear reactors is exacerbated a hundredfold by the fact that, in an emergency, public trust in the promoters of atomic power is virtually non-existent. On too many occasions in Britain, in America, in Russia, in Japan – pick your country – people have not been told the truth (and have frequently been told nothing at all) about nuclear misadventures."

While the Japanese authorities may be doing all they can to stem this crisis, the nuclear industry in Japan have displayed: 

"an identical culture of nuclear cover-up and lies. Of particular concern has been the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), Asia's biggest utility, which just happens to be the owner and operator of the stricken reactors at Fukushima.

Tepco has a truly rotten record in telling the truth. In 2002, its chairman and a group of senior executives had to resign after the Japanese government disclosed they had covered up a large series of cracks and other damage to reactors, and in 2006 the company admitted it had been falsifying data about coolant materials in its plants over a long period."

It's an endemic trait within the industry.  As McCarthy neatly puts it: "Secrecy came with nuclear energy, like a birthmark".

Like the radioactive carcinogens now seeping from Fukushima, the detection of corporate greed around the nuclear business is increasingly evident.

In the US, a mercenary nuclear lobby has preyed on hyped public fears over energy supplies, utilising big-business-leaning legislators to help bend government regulators to its will:

"Add to that the ongoing concern about peak oil, energy costs related to foreign fuels and the environmental problems associated with petroleum/coal energy sources and the shameless lobbyists for nuclear power have never had an easier task getting their product online."

However:

"That may have changed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.  With the event at that plant, the world was once again graphically reminded of the dangers of nuclear power.  The question is, can we the citizens of the planet, successfully mobilize against a corporate effort to impose this expensive, inefficient, dangerous and ultimately deadly form of power generation?"

Meanwhile, the people of a decimated and radioactive Japan are reliving past horrors, trying, in their amazingly quiet and dignified way, to contemplate the forces of natural catastrophe and the fallout from those built on misguided human design.

There are viable, alternative technologies.  Perhaps the Japanese tragedy might stimulate radical new movements for an end to nuclear madness.  

John

*  Some more here on TEPCO's shocking record of negligence and secrecy.

Cameron in Egypt - an exchange with the BBC

An exchange with the BBC over David Cameron's visit to Egypt and the issue of British hypocrisy.

(21 February 2011)
Dear Steve Herrmann and Helen Boaden,

The proclaimed watchword of the BBC is 'balance', as in providing within articles and reports an alternative view or interpretation, that which gives a contrary voice to what government and other officials say and claim to represent.

Please could you look at the BBC piece, 'David Cameron hails "opportunity" on Egypt visit', and tell me where the balancing opinion is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12523572

James Landale is not only travelling with David Cameron, he's amplifying his every word and claim as if they were obvious truths.

He and you, I'm sure, must be aware that, while Cameron is calling for an end to Egypt's 30 year emergency laws, the British state, including his government, have faithfully supported Mubarak and his regime over that same period, a policy which has seen a continuous flow of US/UK arms supplies and a blind-eye to his torture/rendition agenda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/08/uk-arms-exports-egypt?CMP=twt_fd

Where in any of the BBC's output do we see even the merest hint of British complicity in Egypt's repression?

Isn't there room for even a token challenge over Cameron's 'first Western leader' appearance and the suggestion of British hypocrisy?

Such output is a clear breach of the BBC's own notional guidelines.

I'm passing this on to the BBC Trust.  In the meantime, perhaps you could reference someone like historian and author Mark Curtis who, I'm sure, would provide a rather different take on Cameron's visit and the nature of the British state 'concerns' in Egypt.

Just in the interests of balance.   

Regards

John Hilley

----------------------------------
(25 February 2011)
From:

"NewsOnline Complaints"

Mr Hilley,

Thank you for your e-mail. There is a distinction between balance and historical context, and a straight news report is not always the best place for that. In fact, James Landale later provided a separate piece of analysis, including this paragraph:

"But why should Egypt, or any other country in the Gulf, listen to Britain's lessons in democracy? Until recently, the UK supported the nation's autocrats in the name of trade and security, turning a blind eye to the treatment of their people."

You can read his full report here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12532480

The following day, James Landale tackled Mr Cameron on the issue of arms sales to the new Egyptian democracy.

Http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12547010

Also, during Mr Cameron's visit to Kuwait ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12533520 ) we reported his view on past dealings with repressive regimes:

"Mr Cameron said Britain had been wrong to support some repressive regimes just to promote stability: 'I say that is a false choice. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability, rather the reverse.'"

Elsewhere, Bridget Kendall has explored Britain's past relationship with Bahrain:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12513135

So we would disagree that such issues have been ignored but are grateful for your observations on our output.

Best wishes,

BBC News website

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle.shtml

----------------------------
(27 February 2011)

Dear BBC

Thanks for writing back.  Yes, indeed,  some credit is due here to James Landale for questioning the Prime Minister.

Landale's point to David Cameron does contain a tacit charge of hypocrisy, as does the paragraph in the piece you note.

Both assertions came after the initial BBC report cited in my letter.  

The BBC shouldn't, of course, be seeking some kind of pat on the back for raising what should be glaringly obvious.  Nor should it be resting on its 'journalistic laurels', resisting the opportunity to say much more critical things about Britain's hypocritical postures in the Middle East.
 
How much more effective and truthful that challenge would have been if Landale had suggested to Cameron that Britain has been criminally supporting, aiding and funding a torture regime rather than just "turning a blind eye to the treatment of [the Egyptian] people.'"

And what of the UK's own capacity for mass killing in the region - notably, its part in the million souls lost in the illegal destruction of Iraq?  It seems, for the BBC, that, whatever 'our' governments do, they are still in a position of ethical superiority to Mubarak, Gaddafi and the other Western clients now being discarded. 

You make the term "historical context" sound like some past aside to Britain's involvement here, when, in fact, this country has played a decisive role in propping-up a known tyrant and a torture regime.  That, in itself, should be the news story.
 

If the BBC is so dedicated to 'balance' in its reports and analyses, why doesn't it provide some actual comment and statistics from an authoritative counter-voice, like Campaign Against the Arms Trade?

Instead, we have reporters repeating Cameron's 'pleas for democracy' and his economic case for arms sales, with no illustration of the arms involved or detailed rebuttal of his claims.

Likewise, where does Landale or any other BBC reporter raise the issue of Britain's complicity in US-sponsored rendition involving Egypt?  Or is this kind of question just too sensitive and off-limits for the BBC?

A different, more accurate and, yes, still balanced (for BBC purposes) headline here might have read:

"Cameron's 'democracy' visit to Egypt 'hypocritical' given Britain's long-standing support for Mubarak's torture regime."

Such presentation, supported by critical quotes, would offer a reasoned, factual and open line of enquiry for readers and viewers to follow.  It would also go against the grain of the BBC's establishment-line reporting, ever-subjectively safe in its framing.   

It's the subjective judgement of BBC editors in how headlines, comments and quotes are ordered.  And, despite Landale's nominal rebuke to the PM over arms and democracy, it's pretty clear that the BBC would never countenance any content disputing this country's basic 'democratic values'.  It's still the British Broacasting Corporation.

I'm not sure what point you are seeking to make in citing the BBC's coverage of Cameron in Kuwait, other than to repeat his same 'appeals for democracy' in the region.  Indeed, this blanket 'Mr Cameron said' piece is even more disgraceful than the one initially complained about.

Again, why no serious counter-comment or consideration of Cameron's worries about the potential fall of such regimes and their replacement with real democracies hostile to arms-supplying Britain and the oil-demanding West?

It's the same with Bridget Kendall's article on Bahrain, 'analysis' which tells us precisely nothing about the UK's dirty dealings in that state, past and present.  Yes, we read about Britain's and the West's "nervousness" over losing its strategic interests.  That, again, is all rather obvious.  But where's the critical discussion of its dark corporate-military actions in keeping such regimes in power?  Kendall, like the others, knows the line that can't be crossed.

One can only hope that James Landale's useful mention of the eight arms contractors in Cameron's party emboldens him to probe a little deeper into the UK's murderous arms economy.

The nature, provenance and life-effects of such weaponry on our fellow humans is pretty clear: nasty, British and short.

Saying something more damning about that ugly industry and its unapologetic state sponsors would surely result in Landale's own 'journalistic rendition', but he might earn a little more public respect in the process.

Kind regards

John Hilley 
  

'Moderates' for the Middle East

Recent statements from the 'moderate forces for peace' in the Middle East have helped expose their mutual network, capacity for violence and blatant disregard for basic law.

Tzipi Livni has been held up by the West as the 'benign' face of the Israeli state.  Yet, as then prime minister, she was a zealous exponent of the murderous assault on Gaza in 2008-9.

In the recently-released Palestine Papers - documenting Israeli refusal to countenance even giveaway offers by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) - she is quoted as saying: 

"I was the Minister of Justice. I am a lawyer… But I am against law - international law in particular. Law in general."

It's a revealing statement of contempt from this 'voice of reason', consistent with her dismissals of the Goldstone Report, UN findings on the Mavi Marmara attack and any other judicial conclusions critical of Israeli conduct. 

The Palestine Papers also provide a solid indictment of the 'moderate' PA's part in the Gaza coup.

The resignation of PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat over the leaks comes in the wake of rearguard PA efforts to defend the Mubarak regime, including purges against solidarity-with-Egypt gatherings in the West Bank.  The simultaneous call from Abbas for fresh Palestinian elections, following Mubarak's ouster, can be seen as a last desperate attempt to maintain PA 'legitimacy', stifle dissent and placate Netanyahu.   

Middle East 'peace envoy' Tony Blair has also been indulging Netanyahu in an effort to help 'moderate' his image and pre-empt 'criticism' of Israel by the Quartet.

Aware of Israel's outright dismissal of international law and the continued illegality of settlement building in East Jerusalem, Blair has counselled Netanyahu on the need for 'concessions' to the Palestinians on house permits.  In reality, Netanyahu's 'acceptance' suggests nothing more than token assurances all intended to buy more time and allay international condemnation.   

The Blair-Netanyahu relationship, however, may not be of the best-buddy type.  

According to fellow master of spin, populist 'moderate' and prima facie war criminal, Alastair Campbell, Blair always felt Netanyahu to be "untrustworthy".  The feeling was/is surely mutual. One can only speculate on the kind of suspicious, calculating 'friendship' that exists between such self-preserving figures.

Before the heroic result in Tahrir Square, Blair also defended his more confirmed friend Hosni Mubarak, describing him as "immensely courageous and a force for good".  Again, we can but wonder about the sort of 'moderate' mind that would endorse a tyrant torturer against the mass voice of the democracy-demanding Egyptian people.  But, of course, we need only think of Blair's own crimes in Iraq and dismissal of democratic opposition to understand the personal connection.

Likewise, Obama's, Netanyahu's and the PA's collective efforts to shore-up Omar Suleiman, the West's remaining point man on renditions and torture, tells us all we need to know about their true, repressive agenda. 

As the domino-effect of popular protest spreads across the region, the self-declared 'peace-makers' in Washington, Tel Aviv and Ramallah must be deeply concerned about the prospects of real democracy.

The implications of the Egyptian revolution for Israel are already worryingly clear, with alarming potential fallouts for the Obama/Netanyahu-sponsored PA.

The immediate problem now for this 'moderate' alignment  is how to suppress or, at least, moderate any further democratic threats to Abbas's client authority and Israel's apartheid order.    

John

Egypt and our default-line media

The current media presentation of Egypt is a textbook lesson on how to spin the message of a benevolent Western foreign policy while gradually dispensing with one of its foremost client dictators.  

From Obama, Hillary Cinton and PJ Crowley to David Cameron and William Hague, the press-room spin of 'democratic development' and 'free political expression' has been repeated and amplified without question by a default-line media.

The average viewer, with little or no background knowledge of Egyptian affairs, would likely be astonished to learn of America's and the West's true and active complicity in suppressing democratic rights and reform in Egypt.

Washington's proclaimed rationale for supporting Mubarak is, so we're informed, to prevent the 'Islamic contagion', a fiction duly internalised and filtered by the media. 

Thus, the US and its friends are issuing grave warnings about the vacuum now being created, leading to 'insecurity' and the 'dark prospect', so Joe Biden tells us, of 'Islamic extremists' taking control.  Think, as you're encouraged to do by the media, of Iran 1979, Tehran's 'mad moolahs', Lebanon's Hezbollah and the upstart Hamas rulers in Gaza.  

Not, of course, the royal-religio elite and torture-driven regime in Saudi Arabia, or any past US support for Islamic fighters like the Mujahadeen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

All that awkward aid and backing has to be blind-eyed, respectfully ignored, given, at best, token, sanitised mentions by senior correspondents. 

The reporting of US/Western support for Mubarak's 30-year repression could be easily disseminated as essential context by the BBC and other mainstream media.  The political positioning of Washington in support of a regime that has served American policy so centrally might, reasonably, be considered worthy of detailed consideration.  Yet, power relationships that have shaped US hegemony in the region, Israel's nuclear dominance, its relentless occupation of Palestine and the spurious 'war on terror' all, seemingly, deserve no examination.   

Evaded and glossed-over, the policy is, and has been, remarkably visible, so visible it simply can't be stated by most of the media in its raw, uncomfortable form:

"Successive US administrations, Republican and Democrat, have decided over the past three decades that their long-term interests are best served by maintaining Mubarak in power, even if he shows scant respect for civil liberties.  Despite systematic violations of human rights, rigged elections and evidence of a persistent culture of torture, US aid has continued to flow.  Under the banner of the 'war on terror', American policy has become even more intimately connected with the most repressive parts of Mubarak's regime, notably through Egypt's integration into a global network of subcontracted torturers run under the CIA's Extraordinary Rendition programme.  This partnership builds on a long history of US-Egyptian intelligence cooperation, which has also provided valuable support for US military intervention elsewhere in the region, such as US operations in Afghanistan."  (Anne Alexander, 'The international arena', in Rahab El-Mahdi and Philip Marfleet, eds, Egypt: The Moment of Change, (2009), Zed Books, p 146.)

Between 1977 and 2007, the US gave Egypt $62 billion in aid and arms.  Egypt's take from Washington is second only to that of Israel.  In 2008, Cairo's $1.3 billion payment from America's Economic Support Fund was more than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa combined (ibid, p 138).

In what passes for critical 'analysis', the BBC's John Simpson offers 'sage' statements of the obvious on Mubarak's precarious tenure and the word from Washington.  From the more 'street-savvy' editors like Jeremy Bowen, we hear of the gathering social alignments and 'problematic' role the Muslim Brotherhood may play in the coming constitutional reforms.  There's multi-additional caveats from the back streets of Cairo on demands for reform and how life will now change for many Egyptians.  And, of course, there's reminders of Foreign Office advice to travellers, helping to soothe the unease of the lucrative tourist industry. 

It's a neat media package of political upheaval, democratic demands, Western concerns, down-with-the-tyrant images, social hopes of the people and business-as-usual on the Red Sea.  

What's completely absent is any serious discussion of America's and Britain's crucial, historic support for that dictator and the shameful role they've played in keeping Mubarak's torture-regime intact.

The implications for Palestine of a falling Egyptian client, particularly in how it affects the border with Gaza, as well as the Fatah-Hamas dynamic, is of critical significance here.   Where's the applied media discussion of these vital factors? 

There's also the question of how the media has helped mask Washington's past hostilities towards Egyptian reformist and former chief weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei.  The looming possibility of an ElBaradei presidency and a less-compliant Egyptian position over Iran, is an alarming prospect for the US and Israel.  Again, where's the coverage?  

It's rather fitting that, in the wake of Obama's post-investiture Cairo speech - 'encouraging' regional 'democracy' and exerting a 'cordial hand' to the Arab world - that America should be contemplating this most uncomfortable of developments, this actual demand for real democratic change, in Egypt itself.  

The paradox of that unravelling and Washington's failure to renounce Mubarak then, as now, will, as with all past US and Western protection of the regime, likely go ignored by a media in dutiful service to the White House line.

        

John

Prosecutions, persecutions - last thoughts

Another year closes with more political persecutions and the same high political villains still at large.

Binyamin Netanyahu and his coterie have continued to evade prosecution for outright war crimes, not least the murder this year of nine peace activists aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Meanwhile, the Israeli leftist Jonathan Pollak has been sentenced to three months in jail by a Tel Aviv court for daring to join a bike protest in support of the Palestinian cause.

Here's some of the noble words Jonathan offered to the judge in response:

"I find myself unable to express remorse in this case. 

If His Honor decides to go ahead and impose my suspended prison sentence, I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that ought to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza's inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation.

The State of Israel maintains an illegitimate, inhuman and illegal siege on the Gaza Strip, which still is occupied territory according to international law. This siege, carried out in my name and in yours as well, sir, in fact in all of our names, is a cruel collective punishment inflicted on ordinary citizens, residents of the Gaza strip, subjects-without-rights under Israeli occupation.
 
In the face of this reality, and as a stance against it, we chose on January 31st, 2008, to exercise the freedom of speech afforded to Jewish citizens of Israel. However, it appears that here in our one-of-many-faux-democracies in the Middle East, even this freedom is no longer freely granted, even to society's privileged sons."

Two years on from the carnage of Cast Lead, Gaza itself still remains imprisoned, notes Jody McIntyre, yet another peaceful 'irritant' hauled-off by the law.

The year also ends with a guilty verdict and looming imprisonment for Tommy Sheridan.

We can discuss forever-more whether Sheridan said this, did that, went to a swingers club, kept indecent company and should, more prudently, have recognised the powers of Murdoch, the police and other elite interests all-too-eager to see him broken and jailed. 

Some others purporting to be committed socialists will have to reconcile their own consciences in taking The Digger's filthy lucre and revelling in this tragic outcome.  Again, much of that will remain the stuff of bitter hindsight and sad reflection. Hubris, pride and a trail of toxic division: nothing politically useful will ever be built on hate and recrimination.

Yet, beyond the schisms, legal intrigues and this 'public interest' prosecution, here's a more sobering thought to ponder.

Whatever the grubby detail, a man who has stood up for ordinary people all his political life now faces years of painful incarceration over seeming personal indiscretions.  Meanwhile, another who has used his political career to help launch the genocidal killing of over 1 million Iraqis is still at large, feted by the establishment and made a Middle East peace envoy.  £5 million of public money spent on pursuing the victor of a libel case.  Not a penny on bringing to book the architect of this country's highest war crime. Where's the justice?

The capacity of the elite to protect their own while hounding radical others should never be underestimated.

Michael Moore rightly laughed out loud when Newsnight's Gavin Esler suggested that the 'sex charges' against Julian Assange should still be seen as unconnected to his Wikileaks activities.

But while Assange has been pursued by the US and its proxies through the international courts, a more appalling injustice goes virtually ignored by a subservient media and even human rights bodies like Amnesty International. 

Bradley Manning languishes in a US jail, contemplating an actual lifetime behind bars.  As noted:

"Manning expressed disillusionment with American foreign policy, opining that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and expressed a wish that the release of the videos would cause large-scale scandals and lead to "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms." "

The man who risked his liberty to alert us to the West's most wicked doings in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere should be hailed around the world for his services to humanity.  Instead, while Bush's memoirs boast unsparingly of torture and killing, Manning is painted as a deviant crank, the proverbial threat to international security and deserving of the most reactionary sentence.  Again, where's the equivalent justice?

 I'd like, in my token capacity, to nominate Bradley Manning for bravery of the year award. 

Wishing everyone who has happened in on this humble blog a kind new year, and for those wrongfully and selectively imprisoned by the forces of repression, my compassionate regards.  

John

Media Lens challenge academic book on media's 'independent' coverage of Iraq

Media Lens have been involved in a most illuminating exchange with Piers Robinson from the University of Manchester.  In his co-authored book, Pockets of Resistance, Robinson claims to have identified significant  "variations" in the media's coverage of the Iraq war.  The ML Editors have challenged this assertion, raising related issues about academic 'objectivity' and the ways in which 'scholarly' output often comes to serve the interests of power.

The Alert, What Happened to Academia?, can be read here:

Part 1

Part 2 

 

A letter to Piers Robinson on the issues:

Dear Piers

Thanks for engaging so earnestly with Media Lens over the content and claims of your book.

I suspect from the detailed defence offered that you are rather concerned about how its core message might be received by those, like the ML Editors, who closely observe and scrutinise such texts.

I haven't read the book, so can't offer an in-depth opinion. But it seems not unreasonably clear - as gleaned from the exchanges - that its central premise concerning the reporting of the Iraq war is deeply flawed.

As ML put it:

"Far from offering an "admirably wide range of coverage", the media facilitated an audacious government propaganda campaign while offering a strictly enfeebled version of dissent. Obvious facts and sources that had the power to derail the government case for war were essentially nowhere to be seen."

That lamentable truth is also repeated many times in John Pilger's film, The War You Don't See, where even key media figures were bound to acknowledge that if journalists were doing their job, the war might never have happened.

Parts of the media made the outright case for war. But there's also countless examples, archived at the ML site and elsewhere, of much more copy which offered only token and restrained 'questioning' of the invasion, occupation and US/UK war crimes - including The Guardian, Independent and Channel 4 News.

That, I presume, is what constitutes your "admirably wide range of coverage".

You note in your updated reply:

"At the same time, coverage of the war was not uniform. Understanding that there were important variations as well as establishing why that occurred is also part of developing the kind of knowledge that can lead to change. Even if CH4 and the Mirror were NOT doing enough, the fact that they were doing something different demands investigation in order to understand why, if only to explore ways of building upon that. We do this in the book."

I wonder whether the focus on these "important variations" is not just another scholarly acceptance of the prevailing narrative that there is supposedly real differentiation and plurality of thought within the corporate-run media. Where is the more fundamental assessment of the structural forces behind such media outlets and the ways in which those forces still constrain and temper these media "variations"?

You also discuss Chomsky, seeking, by inference to others' criticism of his "pejorative" "polemic," to problematise such output as "making an argument in a way which disregards the rules of scholarship".

Part of that objection seems to be saying that there's no room for 'subjective emotion' in 'scholarly' analysis. Or, where it occurs, it devalues the 'objective' impact of the analysis.

There's something about that kind of conditional 'defence' of Chomsky and reference to "the rules" of academic output which betrays, I think, the self-important claims of your study - and, perhaps, what purports to be 'social science' more generally.

The real problem here is that your book, claiming to identify significant variations in the reporting of war, will become textual truth for many of the media students who will come to read it. Of course, some may be aware of, or be made aware, of Chomsky/Herman, Pilger and Media Lens, but the tendency will be to place these as 'alternative', 'secondary' and 'subjective' 'polemics' to the kind of 'core', 'objective' 'scholarship' to be grasped in texts like your own.

Your own conditional 'recognition' of that 'polemical' output, as noted in the exchange with ML, is in itself a kind of subtle direction to the reader and prospective media student: 'yes, it's valid discourse, but only as a questionable, over-radicalised take on the issues, not one that should obstruct serious, objective enquiry.'

This is how academia encourages 'respectable scholarship' and the safe indulgence of seminar room 'dissent', a process which produces 'suitable' candidates for the 'profession' and reliably restrained views, resulting in the kind of safely-critical, self-satisfied journalism that allowed the barbaric assaults on Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Thus, as ML note: "the scholar's obsession with objectivity tends to promote the interests of power.

Perhaps those reading this ML Alert and exchange will be encouraged towards their own subjective study of how academics come to profess on behalf of power. How, they might ask, do scholars manage to commend the media's "admirably wide range of coverage" while claiming 'regard' for Chomsky, Media Lens et al? Fittingly, such prevarication mirrors the kind of journalistic war coverage under discussion.

I wonder if you can see the paradox?

Kind regards

John Hilley

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 Dear John,

Thanks for this. Some of the initial exchanges reflect matters surrounding the press release and there is not a clear picture of what we actually are arguing. I've attached the conclusion to the book. Best to read and then perhaps the rest of the book before finalizing your opinion.

best,

Piers

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My thanks to Piers for passing this on.  There's not enough space here for a full dissection, but it's worth citing this central message from the concluding chapter:

"On television, the coverage provided by Channel 4 News conformed largely
to the independent model. Among newspapers, a majority of coverage in
the Guardian, Independent and Mirror could be categorised as consistent
with both the independent and oppositional models, and each of these titles
adopted an anti- war, oppositional editorial stance. Indeed, the diversity of
newspaper coverage that we were able to identify represents one of our most
remarkable findings: the 2003 invasion of Iraq was certainly not reported
in a uniform fashion by Britain’s press. Overall findings for negotiated and
oppositional coverage suggest that news media performance is, at the very
least, more nuanced and varied than is argued in the major works..."

While it was the case that certain press and TV outlets took an anti-war position, does this really indicate crucial variations in how the media reacted to the invasion and occupation?  Were many of the Guardian editorials really independent or oppositional in their criticism of Blair and his co-warmongers?  Where was the Guardian's outright call for Blair to be arraigned for war crimes? 

Contrary to the underlying message of this book, there are no media outlets in the UK that can be said to be truly "independent" or "oppositional".

We do, of course, refer to, and often rely upon, academic-based studies to help illustrate media bias and service to power - the Glasgow University Media Group work on Palestine- Israel, for example, or the Lancet study on deaths in Iraq. 'Social science' does have a key role in addressing, quantifying, collating and interpreting vital social phenomena.  The Chomsky/Herman Propaganda Model provides yet another set of qualitative-based criteria for understanding media subservience to power and how that facilitates corporate control over society.

Yet, Chomsky and other critical academics have also spent much of their scholarly lives identifying corporate-establishment constraints on academia itself, notably the ways in which it promotes, supports and cultivates conformity, including the belief that academia is an autonomous place for free investigation. 

The Pockets of Resistance thesis, in contrast, claims to identify a picture of serious media autonomy, editorial plurality and differentiated reportage.  The effect of this is to plant and encourage a basic acceptance of this liberal claim,  nullifying, in many students' and other readers' minds, the bigger context of how the corporate order still drives and informs all such media output, even that of the Trust-owned Guardian.  

The book's claims of 'greater nuance' in the reporting of Iraq also promotes the view that "the major works" are overly-polemical and monolithic.  It's offering a kind of headline statement on 'media freedom', concluding that due to certain variations in the reporting of the Iraq war, these media outlets are acting as "independent" or/and "oppositional" bodies.

The result is this social science 'tick-a-box' exercise, awarding labels to given media outlets based on what liberal media itself would regard as "independent" or "oppositional". It's similar to the ways in which the US-friendly political/electoral 'monitor' Freedom House offer ratings on whether a country can be called 'democratic', 'semi-democratic' or 'non-democratic'. 

Robinson and his co-authors may reject the conclusion that this study comprises any blatant service to power, but such close attention to scholarly 'evidence' of liberal 'media independence' in the coverage of Iraq lends itself precisely to this establishment-serving end.

John