What the Mainstream Media Knows But Won't Tell You

Horhey · Jun 9, 2016

It cannot be discussed or acknowledged in any way. A summary of unguarded remarks by various elites within the foreign policy establishment.

Robert Kagan is a leading neoconservative historian and a self described "liberal interventionist". He is a Senior Fellow at the establishment think tank, the Brookings Institution, was a founder of the neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), formerly served as a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff in the Reagan administration, and served for over a decade as a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is also currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a written a number of works on the subject of U.S. hegemony. As he explained in 1997, "the present world order serves the needs of the United States and its allies, which constructed it."

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., prominent historian and adviser to President Kennedy wrote that the U.S. enjoys "an informal empire— military bases, status-of-forces agreements, trade concessions, multinational corporations, cultural penetrations, and other favors." "Since World War II," writes William Cohen, Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, "the military component of U.S. strategy has been to: Project power into other regions and maintain access to distant markets and resources."

According to a study of the World Bank, this system is characterized by "Neoliberalism," political and economic, which "represents a dramatic shift away from a pluralist, participatory ideal of politics and towards an authoritarian and technocratic ideal." "Global elites thrive," a CIA-sponsored study assessed, "but the majority of the world's population fails to benefit from globalization." "Sharpening inequalities in income" and "sharpening internal social cleavages" would further intensify widespread unrest, elevating "the problem of inequality into the central issue of our times."

[video=youtube_share;ndqPqOKh00k]http://youtu.be/ndqPqOKh00k[/video]

Naturally, as Bernard Fall, the prominent war correspondent, historian, political scientist, and expert on Indochina during the 1950s and 60s, pointed out, such a system "takes all the technical proficiency our system can provide to make up for the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy of most of the regimes that the West has thus far sought to prop up." One of these mechanisms was terrorism, according to Lt. General William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation. Consequently, no such law was ever passed.
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Hence the need to "manufacture consent" (Walter Lippmann) with "Necessary Illusions" (Reinhold Niebuhr).

Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann, 1922

That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. The process by which public opinions arise is certainly no less intricate than it has appeared in these pages, and the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough. . . . [a]s a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.... Under the impact of propaganda, not necessarily in the sinister meaning of the word alone, the old constants of our thinking have become variables.

It is no longer possible, for example, to believe in the original dogma of democracy; that the knowledge needed for the management of human affairs comes up spontaneously from the human heart. Where we act on that theory we expose ourselves to self-deception, and to forms of persuasion that we cannot verify. It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach.

[video=youtube_share;V4adRQX9Fio]https://youtu.be/V4adRQX9Fio[/video]

The Bounds of Thinkable Thought, Noam Chomsky, 1986

[In] Democratic systems ... it is necessary to control not only what people do, but also what they think. Since the State lacks the capacity to ensure obedience by force, the threat to order must be excised at the source. It is necessary to establish a framework for possible thought that is constrained by the principles of the state religion. These need not be asserted; it is better that they be presupposed. The critics reinforce this system by tacitly accepting these doctrines and confining their critique to tactical questions. To be admitted to the debate, they must accept without question the fundamental doctrine that the State is benevolent, governed by the loftiest intentions, adopting a defensive stance, not an actor in world affairs but only reacting—though some times unwisely—to the crimes of others.

If even the harshest critics tacitly adopt these premises, then, the ordinary person may ask, who am I to disagree? The more intensely the debate rages between the hawks and doves, the more firmly and effectively the doctrines of the state religion are established. It is because of their no table contribution to thought control that the critics are tolerated, indeed honored — that is, those who play by the rules.
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ARDY · Jun 9, 2016

Assuming we agree
What is your point?

Horhey · Jun 9, 2016

ARDY said: ↑

Assuming we agree
What is your point?
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Um, boycott the corporate media, I guess. What point does any thread have?

Horhey · Jul 9, 2016

Nothing has changed since Walter Lippmann and Reinhold Niebuhr advocated the "manufacture of consent" with "necessary illusions".

Some Pundits Think the Solution to Right-Wing Populism Is Less Democracy, FAIR, Jul 8 2016

The core orthodoxies of neoliberalism are under attack by populist forces, and commentators are scrambling for a response. Some are suggesting more left-wing red meat. Others, a moment of self-reflection. But a number of pundits are doing that most noxious of political commentary pastimes—equating right and left responses to the failures of globalization and advocating that “elites” should fight back against the forces of inconvenient democracy.

First was Foreign Policy contributing editor James Traub (6/28/16), whose piece bore this cartoonishly Dickensian headline:

It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses.
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Magazine writers aren’t generally responsible for their headlines, but this one captured the flavor of Traub’s screed, which declared:

It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe…it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history.
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If you’re wondering what form the elite uprising against the “ignorant people” would take, Traub proposes:

Chunks of parties from the left and right of center could break away to form a different kind of center, defending pragmatism, meliorism, technical knowledge and effective governance against the ideological forces gathering on both sides…. The party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality, and its enablers among those who know better.
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In typical Serious Person form, Traub frames the problem as the center vs. ideologists “on both sides”; as Foreign Policy’s blurb puts it, “it’s not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry”—a framing belied by the fact that all of Traub’s criticisms are aimed entirely at the far right.

But never mind this, people are angry and Traub is on the case. “The issue, at bottom, is globalization,” writes Traub:

Brexit, Trump, the National Front and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces and thus the demand that someone, somehow, restore the status quo ante…. With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects.
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Funny, that doesn’t sound so “mindless”—it sounds like there are real grievances driving popular anger. But rather than proposing solutions that would address these problems, Traub instead suggests that globalization’s losers be politically sidelined, replaced by a “reformed center” that “would include the beneficiaries of globalization and the poor and non-white and marginal citizens who recognize that the celebration of national identity excludes them.”

Traub calls this putting “the fist-shakers on one side and the pragmatists on the other”; one could also describe it as a policy of letting those who don’t benefit from globalization fend for themselves, and labeling them “deluded” if they’re unhappy about that.

Next up is Bloomberg’s Justin Fox with “Voters Are Making a Mess of Democracy” (7/6/16) — a polemic sharing Traub’s distaste for democratic input but put in a more extreme, Glenn Beck-esque “just asking questions” interview form. He leads off with this white-hot take:

As one political theorist recently wrote, “The basic problem is not that most voters seek to maximize their self-interest, but rather that most voters lack the knowledge necessary to make informed political judgments.” Or, “The uncomfortable truth is that the best (perhaps only) way to reduce the political influence of ignorant voters is to deprive them of the vote.”
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Disenfranchisement as a means of protecting elite interests is now being floated, unironically, as something worthy of consideration. Fox attempts to lampshade hang this rather offensive notion by asking us to bear with him:

Meanwhile, in East Asia, not-exactly-democratic regimes have over the past half century achieved some pretty spectacular results for the people they govern. Singapore is the most obvious example, and Bell devotes a lot of ink to it in his book, but there’s also Hong Kong, pre-democracy Taiwan and South Korea, and — since its big economic-policy turn in the late 1970s — the People’s Republic of China.
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So because economic systems that lacked democracy “achieved some pretty spectacular results,” the whole democratic idea is to be reexamined. Without a clear definition of democracy (somehow Venezuela—which just had elections where the “regime” lost by a wide margin—doesn’t qualify), it’s difficult to pin down his point. This appears to be because it’s a point being argued in bad faith: Fox’s problem isn’t with too much democracy per se, it’s with too much democracy when it veers from the editorial stance of Bloomberg News.

This is an ethos that animates much of the post-Brexit elite panic: voting as audition. Like a bottle of wine at a restaurant, votes are something the public presents to the elite for them to taste, spit out and reject if they feel the need to do so.

It’s a habit shared by Business Insider editor Josh Barro, another pundit who’s taken boring appeals to elite superiority to almost self-parody levels:

This is why the influence of elite opinion is an important check on majority rule. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/743671206017011712 …

Elites are usually elite for good reason, and tend to have better judgment than the average person. #confessyourunpopularopinion

This is why the public should be kept away from policymaking. https://twitter.com/fletcherr/status/746172864710205440 …
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The counter to those who argue for the sanctity of democracy is that many forms of government, including our own, already have checks against the forces of demagoguery and the proverbial mob mentality. But to respond to recent populist pushback by moving the goalpost of democratic control isn’t a principled stand, it’s cheating—cheating that requires no reckoning of mistakes that were made.

From the 2008 crash to the Iraq War to inequality to elite immunity from prosecution, there are legitimate criticisms of the order these pundits seek to protect. That right-wing charlatans have managed to couple those critiques with nativism doesn’t mean these grievances aren’t real and in urgent need of addressing. Indeed, it means addressing them is more urgent than ever.

The response to right-wing forces emerging in Europe and the US should be to examine the underlying ideological assumptions of globalization and see how these co-called “elites” could better serve the interests of voters. But to do this would require that they and their court pundits possess, if only for a moment, the one thing they lack above all else: self-awareness.
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Horhey · Jul 9, 2016

The cost of empire cannot be perceived, lest the entire enterprise falls apart.

The causes of al Qeada terrorism, in the words of a 2004 Pentagon-commissioned report:

Chilcot Report and 7/7 London Bombing Anniversary Converge to Highlight Terrorism’s Causes, The Intercept, July 7 2016

Eleven years ago today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.

Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: The attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. … Until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalization of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to The Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalization of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the U.K. as legitimate.”

The release on Tuesday of the massive Chilcot report — which the New York Times called a “devastating critique of Tony Blair” — not only offers more proof of this causal link, but also reveals that Blair was expressly warned before the invasion that his actions would provoke al Qaeda attacks on the U.K. As my colleague Jon Schwarz reported yesterday, the report’s executive summary quotes Blair confirming he was “aware” of a warning by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-U.S./anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”

None of this is the slightest bit surprising. Just as the British did, multiple Western intelligence agencies have long recognized (usually in secret) that at the top of the list of terrorism’s causes is the West’s militarism and interference in predominantly Muslim nations — as a 2004 Pentagon-commissioned report specified in listing the causes of terrorism: “American direct intervention in the Muslim world”; our “one-sided support in favor of Israel”; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, “the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.” The report concluded: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies.” Countless individuals who carried out or plotted attacks on the West have said the same.

Nobody should need official reports or statements from attackers to confirm what common sense makes clear: If you go around the world for years proclaiming yourself “at war,” bombing and occupying and otherwise interfering in numerous countries for your own ends — as the U.S. and U.K. have been doing for decades, long before 9/11 — some of those who identify with your victims will decide — choose — to retaliate with violence of their own. Even Tony Blair’s own Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott acknowledged this self-evident truth in 2015: “When I hear people talking about how people are radicalized, young Muslims — I’ll tell you how they are radicalized. Every time they watch the television where their families are worried, their kids are being killed or murdered and rockets, you know, firing on all these people, that’s what radicalizes them.”

Recognizing this fact is not — as is often absurdly claimed — a denial of agency. It is the opposite: an affirmation of agency, a recognition of how human beings make choices.

Despite how clear this causal connection is, it is still necessary to document because acknowledging it remains one of the West’s most harshly enforced taboos. In the U.K., those who pointed out that the Iraq War provoked this attack were — and still are — vilified. Tariq Ali recounts the vicious public repudiation he received when he raised the issue in a Guardian article the day after the attack. Tony Blair and his allies — acting out of self-absolution — continue to vehemently deny any causal connection. Last year, Ken Livingston was denounced in the harshest terms — accused of “siding with suicide bombers” — for highlighting how the attack on Iraq helped provoke the 7/7 attack. And then earlier this year, various Labour MPs denounced Jeremy Corbyn for the crime of linking these two events.

What we have here is an indisputable truth that has been turned into a harshly enforced taboo. No matter how much evidence mounts proving that Western aggression, violence, and domination fuels and provokes terror attacks, many influential factions still try to suppress this fact by decreeing it unspeakable. It’s obviously more comforting and pleasing to believe that one is purely the innocent victim of hideous violence rather than a participant in it, a perpetrator of it. But while that’s what motivates this refusal to acknowledge reality, it does not excuse it.

Not only did Tony Blair’s attack on Iraq provoke subsequent attacks on his own country, but he knew at the time he decided to attack Iraq that this would happen, because he was warned of it. The anniversary of these attacks is the ideal time to reflect on this causal connection, and this week’s Chilcot report — released the day before the anniversary of the 7/7 London attack — makes it impossible to ignore.
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Sushisnake · Jul 10, 2016

Here's one from my country, Horhey. It's looking a lot like the 1930s isn't it? Inequality on the rise, authoritarianism on the rise, elite hubris.

The screenshot failed. Sorry.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...to-choose-one-or-the-other-we-can-reject-both

Horhey · Jul 13, 2016

Western benevolence is presupposed. Military worship at the expense of 3.1 million children dieing from malnutrition each year.

USA Today Ducking the Question of Militarism, FAIR, Jul 8, 2016

The top story for USA Today on July 8, 2016: Western countries aren’t spending enough money on weapons of war.
The story displayed not a hint of skepticism that increasing military spending is anything other than an unalloyed good.

The top story for USA Today on July 8, 2016: Some Western countries aren’t spending enough money on weapons of war.

“NATO Nations Ducking the Check” was the headline across the top of the front page. “Despite Pledges, Some NATO Members Still Falling Behind on Defense Spending” was the online version (7/7/16).

The story, by USA Today White House correspondent Gregory Korte, emphasized the “big separation between those paying for the common defense and those who aren’t.” After noting that “only five member countries—the United States, Greece, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Poland—meet the required threshold of 2 percent or more of economic output devoted to defense,” the story continued:

Still, there has been overall progress. Twenty-two NATO members are spending a greater share of their economy on defense compared to last year, with an alliance-wide increase of 2.65 percent.
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Here are some countries that in USA Today‘s view are devoting enough of their national resources to a capacity for mass violence.

The story displayed not a hint of skepticism that increasing military spending is anything other than an unalloyed good. Nor did it mention the actual total military spending by NATO countries. It’s $906 billion a year—58 percent of the entire world’s military spending, though NATO countries represent less than 12 percent of Earth’s population. By comparison, Russia—which is sometimes portrayed as a looming threat to the West—has annual military budget of $43 billion, or less than 5 percent of NATO’s.

The article gave no space for questioning whether in a world in which 3.1 million children die from malnutrition each year, there might be more pressing spending priorities. It offered no evidence that increased NATO military spending would make the world safer, either—just quotes from officials, like NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who treat more Western war spending as a good in itself:

“This is real progress. After many years of going in the wrong direction, we are starting to go into the right direction,” he told defense ministers in Brussels last month. “But we are still far from where we need to be. And we clearly need to do more.”
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USA Today‘s choice of terminology reinforces the militaristic slant: The word “defense” appears 11 times in the article, whereas the words “military,” “war” and “weapons” don’t appear at all.
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Horhey · Jul 15, 2016

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

― Noam Chomsky

[video=youtube_share;NdD9uSrNFT4]https://youtu.be/NdD9uSrNFT4[/video]

Don't take his word for it. See my blog for some of the history, which is still a work in progress: Declassified Matrix

Or do your own research:

Why Propaganda Works

[video=youtube_share;NYpe9z8VMIU]https://youtu.be/NYpe9z8VMIU[/video]

Human Destiny by Noam Chomsky

The point is you have to work, and that is why the propaganda system has been so successful. Very few people are going to have the time, or the energy or the commitment to carry out the constant battlethats required to get outside of the know, theMacNeil / Lehrer or Dan Rather or somebody like that. The easy thing to do, you know you come home from work, you’re tired you’ve had a busy day, not going to spend the evening carrying out a research project, so you turn on the tube, say its probably right, or you look at the headlines of the papers, watch some sports, cause and that is basically the way the system of indoctrination 7orks. Sure the other stuff is there but, you have to work to find it.

As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interest that it serves. But the conditions of survival, the long justice, require rational social planning in the interest of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena.
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