Oct
16
This is a short video produced by American News Project, and it powerfully demonstrates the America missed by the debates and overlooked by the corporate media. Thanks to Left I on the News for the link.
Sep
10
Obama points out the tactics and goals of the Republicans during this election: anything but issues.
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
Sep
10
While the mainstream media devote hours of analysis to lipstick-gate, they continue to accept without question the Bush and McCain claim that the surge in Iraq has been a success. One doesn’t have to look far to find example after example of this being put forward as a self-apparent truism. The logic behind the reporting is little more than, “Look, the violence is down, therefore the surge has worked.” Forget the over-arching goal of the surge was to bring about political reconciliation between the conflicting groups in Iraq. In reality, the political situation is worse than ever. As Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress writes:
The greatest myth promoted by Bush in his speech [at the National Defense University] was found in this line: “Political reconciliation is moving forward, and the Iraqi government has passed several major pieces of legislation.” By overstating the meagre steps taken by Iraq’s leaders in barely passing a few relatively insignificant laws in their parliament, Bush’s statement ranks right up there with his 2003 “mission accomplished” speech and vice-president Dick Cheney’s assertion that the insurgency was in its “last throes” in 2005.
Katulis continues:
The surge has frozen into place the accelerated fragmentation that Iraq underwent in 2006 and 2007 and has created disincentives to bridge central divisions between Iraqi factions. Moreover, rather than advancing Iraq’s political transition and facilitating power-sharing deals among Iraq’s factions, the surge has produced an oil revenue-fuelled, Shia-dominated national government with close ties to Iran. This national government shows few signs of seeking to compromise and share meaningful power with other frustrated political factions.
So much for political reconciliation. Rather than furthering steps toward some form of power sharing, the surge has solidified the divisions unleashed by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But McCain, Bush, and the media will inevitably make the case that at least the surge has reduced violence. This is the core of the “surge worked” hypothesis, yet it rests on a basic logical fallacy. Just because Y came after X, it doesn’t follow that X caused Y. Professor Juan Cole recently pointed this out with regards to media commentary on the surge.
The reality is far more complex than this simplistic narrative. An important factor to declining levels of violence was the so-called Sunni Awakening movement in Anbar province in which the US allied with, armed, and paid Sunni insurgents to fight Al-Qaeda. But this began before the surge, and there is no reason to believe this strategy required an increased troop level. Cole agrees:
In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years, the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join US-sponsored Awakening Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used much earlier than 2006, indeed, could have been deployed from 2003, and might have forestalled large numbers of deaths. Condi Rice forbade US military officers from dealing in this way with the Sunnis for fear of alienating US Shiite allies such as Ahmad Chalabi. The technique was independent of the troop escalation. Indeed, it depended on there not being much of a troop escalation in that province. Had large numbers of US soldiers been committed to simply fight the Sunnis or engage in search and destroy missions, they would have stirred up and reinforced the guerrilla movement.
An additional reason for the reduced violence in Iraq has been the unilateral cease-fire of the Mahdi Army ordered by Moqtada al-Sadr. Gen. Patraeus even admits this fact, stating that the “Sadr trend stands for service to the people,” and that he hopes Sadr’s organization will become “constructive partners in the way ahead.” While Patraeus would like to see the cease-fire as a result of the surge, the reality is again more complicated. Cole sees the successful ethnic cleansing of Baghdad – in which it has become a mostly Shiite city with almost no mixed communities and others separated by walls – as an important reason for the Mahdi Army’s cessation of hostilities because this was one of their major aims. As well, their pro-Iranian Shiite rivals, which include the Iraqi state, were becoming much more powerful militarily in relation to Moqtada al-Sadr’s organization.
Ethnic cleansing in Iraq points to a darker aspect of the surge, in which what so many call “success” is the result of brutality and violence. Robert Parry also makes this point:
With the total Iraqi death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands and many more Iraqis horribly maimed, the society has been deeply traumatized. As tyrants have learned throughout history, at some point violent repression does work.
But this dark side of the “successful surge” is excluded from the U.S. political debate. As during the pre-invasion period, the Washington press corps acts more like Bush’s propagandists than anything close to skeptical journalists.
Instead media commentators waste our time with meaningless questions and speculation about what Barack Obama actually meant when making a comment about lipstick on a pig. Well all I can say, at least there are alternatives to the he-said-she-said style of reporting that passes for journalism and analysis. The following video is a commentary by Aijaz Ahmad from TheRealNews.com. It was originally broadcast following Bush’s State of the Union address in early 2008. Ahmad covers some of the issues I mention above and provides compelling reasons to question much of the conventional wisdom.
Sep
08
Here’s a recent talk by the great leftist political analyist, writer, and lecturer Michael Parenti. The title is Capitalism’s Apocalypse: Why the plutocrats can’t save anyone, not even themselves. It was originally broadcast on the program Raising Sand on KZSU Stanford FM 90.1. The audio is 54 minutes and worth taking the time to listen to.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Sep
06
Some of you might remember way back in late 2001 the widespread reports of Al-Qaeda’s vast and sophisticated cave complex in Afghanistan. We were led to believe bin Laden used his family’s construction enterprise to build a high-tech underground compound with “its own ventilation system and its own power, created by a hydro-electric generator. Its walls and floors are smooth and finished, and it extends about 315m beneath a solid mountain.” The article, written by Richard Lloyd Parry writing with the Independent (London) at the time, goes on to claim:
It is so well defended and concealed that – short of poison gas or a tactical nuclear weapon – it is completely immune to outside attack. And it is filled with heavily armed followers of Osama bin Laden, with a suicidal commitment to their cause, and with nothing left to lose.
Scary stuff indeed. Sounds like the lair of an evil genius from an Ian Fleming novel. The cave story was quickly picked up by other news outlets, though certain details changed – was the complex built by the bin Laden family or the US government in the 80s for the mujahideen fight against the Soviets? Journalist Edward Jay Epstein details how the story spread and finally reached its pinnacle in the US when the late Tim Russert unquestioningly accepted it as fact during an interview with Donald Rumsfeld on Meet the Press.
The following clip is from Adam Curtis’ excellent three-part documentary The Power of Nightmares, originally broadcast on the BBC in 2004. I highly recommend this film to anyone who hasn’t seen it. It’s (legally) available online for download or streaming at Archive.org. The clip begins with part of the interview with Rumsfeld on Meet the Press. Note how the former Secretary of Defense states matter-of-factly that there are many such complexes in the Afghan mountains, going beyond claims made in the original reports.
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
Curtis exposes how this was little more than blatant propaganda used to incite fear, to make the mostly British and American public think Al-Qaeda was indeed a grave threat that needed eradicating. This wasn’t some rag-tag bunch of terrorists with little support, these were advanced extremists that could only be handled with high tech weapons and massive military force. And it worked. This is at least in part how – with other similar stories – the US government justified increased military spending on advanced weaponry following 911, even though the perpetrators used box cutters and a little flight training to achieve the attack. The message and purpose was clear: we should simply cower in fear while allowing our leaders to protect us against such a tremendous threat, all the while expanding the military industrial complex.
Sep
05
Nice video from the Daily Show:
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.Sep
04
Rick Davis, a long-time Washington lobbyist and currently John McCain’s campaign manager, recently told The Washington Post, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” It was a somewhat rare and candid admission by a high level party operative to how the political process actually operates in the United States. While Davis’ comments might seem specific to this election, both major parties have for years preferred to avoid real issues – universal health care, the militaristic state, corporate crime and domination, a growing prison-industrial complex, to name a few – instead choosing to emphasize the personal qualities and style of candidates, especially when it comes to presidential elections. As in advertising, which permeates American’s consumerist culture, the PR surrounding political campaigns is more about feelings and emotions, faith and brand identity than it is about the issues most important to the public.
Mainstream media coverage plays right along with the charade. In fact, it is the perfect vehicle for the branding of hollow political figures. Talk mostly revolves around questions like “Did he or she win over the public with this or that speech?” “How was the presentation?” “Does he come across as an elitist?” And on and on. It’s simple pundit-driven “journalism,” easy to produce, providing the illusion of substance while serving corporate masters.
When public opinion conflicts with elite interests, the public is silenced. Those seeking office know who their paymasters are, and if any issue supported by large portions of the population but opposed by corporate power gets through media filters, it is framed in such a way to be stripped of any substance. For example, take universal health care. For years large majorities of the American public have been in favor of it. So large in fact it can’t be ignored or easily swept under the rug. Ever since Bill Clinton – who was elected in large part for proposing universal coverage – eventually bowed to the insurance industry and HMOs and failed to make the necessary changes, any and all subsequent reform proposals, if even made, only give lip service to the idea of health care for all while doing everything to avoid making the real changes necessary.
Such is politics and democracy in America, a corporate friendly environment indeed.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com has a slightly different take on this subject than I do. Where I see the depoliticization of politics as a much more bipartisan issue, he points to the Republicans as the main culprits:
Ever since Ronald Reagan’s election, this is what the Republicans do every four years. They render issues irrelevant and convert campaigns into cultural wars and personality referenda. They converted our elections into tawdry reality shows long before networks realized their entertainment value. And every four years, Democrats seems shocked and paralyzed by all of this and desperately delude themselves into believing that mean-spirited “negativity” and nastiness will alienate voters, while the media swoons at the potency of these attacks.
While he certainly is correct in his assessment of the GOP’s approach, it seems to me one of the reasons the Democrats cave in is because they are unwilling to push a truly democratic, issues-based politics to the fore. Basically limited to rhetorical promises at best, Democrats are easily exposed as the hollow populists most of the country sees them to be. You see, they play the corporate game as well, which limits the depth and reach their campaigns can actually go.
Greenwald takes the stance of a “realist,” which is understandable. He knows that “cultural tribalism, resentment and alienation are very powerful influences in how people think.” This is certainly true, but is the most effective response more tribalism, more attacks, an increased focus on qualities and style? I doubt Greenwald thinks so. But it’s not so clear what he proposes the Democrats should do. He rightly deplores the empty, personal attack strategy of the GOP, and calls for a more combative (defensive?) approach:
Democrats have clearly decided (yet again) to cede that lowly playing field to the GOP and are hoping (yet again) that those personality and cultural issues are not enough to outweigh the country’s dislike of Republican policies…. If John McCain remains — even from the mouths of Democrats — the Honored, Honorable, Principled, Heroic Maverick, the GOP chances will be as high as they can be.
As I see it, what is needed to win is not more attention to personality and qualities, but rather a greater focus on the fundamental changes we know are needed. But the liberal wing of the corporate power structure will never be able to go that far.
Jul
29
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “southern Iraq’s most important historic sites … had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion” contrary to countless assertions stating otherwise. Journal author Melik Kaylan hints the mainstream press has ignored a report by “top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K.” for political reasons.
Kaylan’s main source comes from an article by Martin Bailey of The Art Newspaper which states, “Not a single recent dig hole was found” during an early-June British military mission to eight sites in northern Basra led by Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum. While the Art Newspaper report is somewhat accurate (see the full report by the British Museum [pdf]), claims made by Kaylan and others leave the reader with the impression that very little (or no) looting has taken place throughout the country. This based on the brief inspections of eight sites. One problem is the British Museum’s own report which states “[t]here were clear indications of looting holes” at five of the eight areas inspected, others were damaged due to neglect or military activities.
Kaylan denigrates warnings made by specialists as unscientific and prone to politically motivated fear mongering:
Considering the political impact of such data, one would expect the experts to approach the subject with scientific circumspection, using numbers sparingly and conservatively. Too often they seem to have done the reverse. So now, as a matter of course, their method, their probity in sifting the evidence — do they have a political agenda? — has come into question.
So the anti-American tendency runs deep indeed, forget the actual concerns of trained scientists. But yet again the scientific evidence proves who actually has the political agenda here. In a more detailed discussion of the known evidence, Hugh Eakin, writing in The New York Review of Books, covers Elizabeth Stone’s research (among others) of thousands of satellite images taken between 2003 and today. Eakin cites Stone as writing that the total amount lost as a result of recent looting is “many times greater than all archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq – and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands.” Of course, how much has been taken can’t be known for sure, but the pace and rapidity of the retrieval is clear.
Laying the blame is less important than knowing the truth. But as Kaylan knows the truth sometimes hurts. Considering something that makes perfect since if we examine, according to the most detailed scientific data covering thousands of archaeological sites, the most extensive looting – though by no means not all – took place immediately prior to the invasion when the Baathist regime in Iraq had more pressing worries than protecting (as it had done) Iraq’s cultural heritage. And of course in war the conflicting parties always have greater concerns than whether some ancient artifact is stolen, therefore such an environment provides a perfect opportunity for some to profit on the black market. And items turn up day after day. So much for Kaylan’s conspiracy.
Jul
27
Raad Alkadiri, an oil and gas industry advisor for PFC Energy, writing in the Washington Post, scoffs at the idea that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq had anything to do with oil. Despite his acknowledgment that “a number of international oil companies are on the brink of signing contracts with Iraq,” Mr. Alkadiri argues, “If the Iraq invasion was about oil, let the record show that that mission has been botched even worse than the war’s toughest critics claim the military expedition has been.”
He goes on to assert that since Iraqi production declined as an immediate result of the war, the entire affair therefore had little to do with energy resources. The obvious and immediate fallacy in this argument is that it assumes that greater access to oil, and hence increased production, is the primary goal of the industry rather than control over it. Increasing the global oil supply would result in lower prices and therefore lower profits. Tightly dictating production and keeping most of the profits out of Iraqi hands provides a much more advantageous result for the Western companies negotiating the terms of contract.
Investigative journalist Greg Palast has reported on this aspect of the Iraq strategy extensively over the last few years. After reviewing the British and American strategy since 1925 to limit Iraqi oil production, Palast writes in his 2006 book Armed Madhouse:
The decision to expand production has, for now, been kept out of Iraqi’s hands by the latest method of suppressing Iraq’s oil flow – the 2003 invasion and resistance to invasion. And it has been darn effective. Iraq’s output in 2003, 2004 and 2005 was less than produced under the restrictive Oil-for-Food Program. Whether by design or happenstance, this decline in output has resulted in tripling the profits of the five U.S. oil majors to $89 billion for a single year, 2005, compared to pre-invasion 2002. That suggests an interesting arithmetic equation. Big Oil’s profits are up $89 billion a year in the same period the oil industry boosted contributions to Mr. Bush’s reelection campaign to roughly $40 million.
And remember, these points were made back in the good old days when oil was at a minuscule price of about $60 per barrel rather than today’s $140. So contrary to Mr. Alkadiri’s point, decreased production is anything but proof the war never was about oil and in fact shows it most likely was.
As an advisor to the energy industries on issues of Iraq, it is not surprising Mr. Alkadiri also paints negotiations between oil and gas companies and the Iraqi government as a fair process initiated by a sovereign government, claiming Iraqi oil “ministry officials reached out directly to nine companies” (including the five majors of Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron) that are now poised to claim the prize. But should we assume a nation occupied by a foreign power can truly act independently in these types of negotiations? A recent New York Times report contradicts this assessment by revealing:
A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.
Of course the administration denies these claims and prefers to argue Iraqis are free to establish any agreements they see as being in their own best interest. Yet if that were the case, it is an interesting coincidence these new no-bid contracts reverse agreements established under Saddam Hussein which opened development of reserves to, among others, Chinese, Russian and Indian firms. It just so happens this is completely in line with US strategic and military interests.
I won’t rehash it here but we now know the Bush administration and the oil industry was interested in dividing Iraq’s oil wealth before 9/11. Documents dated March 2001 from Cheney’s infamous Energy Task Force released as a result of a successful lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act include a detailed map of Iraq’s oilfields, pipelines and oil related capacities. There are also charts and a list of international oil companies titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” As is well known, the Task Force was a who’s who of industry insiders. SourceWatch has a comprehensive overview of the group, including its participants and what is known of documents and reports it produced.
So it seems odd to hear members of the political elite still arguing with a straight face that oil had nothing to do with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In his wit and insight, Noam Chomsky as usual states it most plainly:
Doctrinal managers would like us to believe that the US and UK would have “liberated” Iraq even if its major exports were lettuce and pickles and the major energy resources of the world were in the South Pacific. It takes really impressive discipline “not to see” the obvious.
Jul
19
Following up on my last post regarding the mainstream media’s spin on Iraq and troop withdrawal, I came across this article from the Financial Times. While it does not mention time horizons it purports to describe how Iraqis are “divided” over the idea of a US military withdrawal from their country. Writing from Baghdad – likely not far from the Green Zone if even outside – the author claims “[m]ost Iraqis appear wary of setting any specific timetables for the withdrawal of US troops,” fearing doing so would destabilize the country and lead to civil war.
Yet the article offers but one quote from an Iraqi that is clearly against withdrawal. Of the remaining four quotes, only two are concerned with the issue of a troop pullout, one wants a drawdown in the number of US personnel, the other argues for a gradual withdrawal, no timetables mentioned. The remaining two Iraqis quoted are statements of support for Barack Obama, who has stated his intention of setting a timetable (what form that will actually take if he becomes president we have to wait and see).
This kind of anecdotal evidence abounds in media reports, while actual polling data is rarely mentioned. One such poll taken in early 2006 when the security situation was far more dire than today showed that 67% of Iraqis felt a six month withdrawal from that time would increase security, 70% wanted a timeline of either six months or two years, and 80% approved the Iraqi government calling for such a timeline.
A more recent poll [PDF] shows opinions have changed little since, demonstrating that as of March 2008 61% of Iraqis felt the US presence was making the security situation there worse and 69% claimed a complete withdrawal would either improve security or not change things at all. The numbers supporting the occupation are even worse, yet we are constantly led to believe through media reports such as this one in the Financial Times that Iraqis are torn between wanting to keep American troops in their country and having them leave.
If more news outlets would report the clear position of the people of Iraq – ironically from polling data often commissioned by the very news agencies that rarely use it – rather than confusing things with anectodal evidence, maybe taking a position demanding a full and timely withdrawal wouldn’t seem such a radical idea.
Yet the article offers but one quote from an Iraqi that is clearly against withdrawal. Of the remaining four quotes, only two are concerned with the issue of a troop pullout, one wants a drawdown in the number of US personnel, the other argues for a gradual withdrawal, no timetables mentioned. The remaining two Iraqis quoted are statements of support for Barack Obama, who has stated his intention of setting a timetable (what form that will actually take if he becomes president we have to wait and see).
This kind of anecdotal evidence abounds in media reports, while actual polling data is rarely mentioned. One such poll taken in early 2006 when the security situation was far more dire than today showed that 67% of Iraqis felt a six month withdrawal from that time would increase security, 70% wanted a timeline of either six months or two years, and 80% approved the Iraqi government calling for such a timeline.
A more recent poll [PDF] shows opinions have changed little since, demonstrating that as of March 2008 61% of Iraqis felt the US presence was making the security situation there worse and 69% claimed a complete withdrawal would either improve security or not change things at all. The numbers supporting the occupation are even worse, yet we are constantly led to believe through media reports such as this one in the Financial Times that Iraqis are torn between wanting to keep American troops in their country and having them leave.
If more news outlets would report the clear position of the people of Iraq – ironically from polling data often commissioned by the very news agencies that rarely use it – rather than confusing things with anectodal evidence, maybe taking a position demanding a full and timely withdrawal wouldn’t seem such a radical idea.
