Murdochgate = Watergate?

The Guardian's John Harris has written an article looking at how Murdochgate has unmasked the UK's political elite and how it will affect civil society in the future. I highly recommend you read this.

As the title implies I want to look at his allusion to Watergate at the end impacts things. First of all I want to direct you to a piece Noam Chomsky wrote in 1973, when admittedly the Watergate scandal had been running a bit longer (but then again info moves much faster now) but it is still very much a contemporary assessment. While Chomsky doesn't specifically predict the moral majority and Reagan, which Harris highlights as a key outcome of Watergate, he does accurately predict an increase and entrenchment of executive power over other branches of the US government.

There are also strong elements of Chomsky's main criticism, that Nixon was punished not for wrongdoing but for breaking the rules. For upsetting the cosy elite. In a similar sense Murdoch is receiving so much criticism because he used his influence to sway the political parties to do his will. This is not right, the press exists to influence the masses, to manufacture consent on issues the elite have already agreed upon. Even then it was only the revelations such as those about Milly Dowler that gave politicians enough cover to act in their own interests and take down Murdoch. Indeed Murdoch's strong connections to the elite before the past two weeks and even now is not a particularly large issue, other media groups seem to tacitly accept that influence and connection to the rich and powerful is a good thing, they were more jealous that they didn't hold as much power as Murdoch than worried about such close links between power and the fourth estate.

Finally to quote a paragraph of Chomsky's:

"Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm [from the media] over the health of the American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August 15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder or ugly disruption."

We are seeing a similar compartmentalisation of Murdoch's wrongdoing here, it is a British problem, it is a problem only with his papers, the TV arms of News Corporation in the UK and US is seperate and shouldn't be blamed. Close ties to a media oligarch by politicians in both main parties are seen as a sign of shame but not an indictment of the British political system as a whole.

The myth is still being maintained that this is a scandal that can be dealt with by the political class even though it is the creation of the political class. Removing Murdoch's influence removes an especially egregious symptom but it certainly does not cure the disease.

Chomsky on the Arab Spring...

...and why the west will likely stop at nothing to prevent democracy in the Arab world.

Read about it here. (Feel free to ignore that random editorialising at the start by someone else.)

Theres a reason Chomsky isn't allowed on TV

Glenn Greenwald on Obama's motives

Chomsky pointed this out before the election in 2008 and for several decades beforehand but nontheless Greenwald provides an excellent summary of the nature of politics in the US these days and what Obama wants in this article.

If nothing else the corporate media still let Greenwald on TV (this will likely change pretty soon) so its good hes getting Chomsky's ideas out there to a wider audience.

BBC Newsman takes blaming the victim to a new low.

In essence a BBC News presenter accused a severely disabled man of provoking and posing a threat to the police and thus justifying them forcibly removing him from his wheelchair twice during a protest. Jody McIntyre stood up to the absurd questioning very well but jeez those questions should not have been asked by anyone with any kind of grasp of reality.



To better understand why this happened I suggest two older posts:

Firstly Noam Chomsky explaining to another BBC man of a very similar mode to the above asshole interviewer about the propaganda model. Note Andrew Marr's reactions and how that thinking might well lead to how Ben Brown behaved above.

Secondly Mark Ames' coverage of anti-IMF protests in 2000. Note the media reactions and behaviour to that situation and the inherent similarities.

Chomsky talks about the latests Wikileak (and other stuff)

Democracy Now! have spoken with Noam Chomsky on a range of topics related to the cables leaked by Wikileaks. It covers a range of topics, notably the nature of the cables consistently supporting USA biases. If they are legitimate Chomsky points out that while Arab leaders, who are dictators to a man, may see eye to eye with the US in wanting to attack Iran the actual Arab populace not only view Israel and America as far bigger threats a majority, 57% actually view the prospect of a nuclear Iran positively. For some reason Arabs think only Israel having nukes in the region is dangerous.

A lot of other excellent points are made and he draws inferences and connections between various things that are obvious when he says them but very unlikely to occurred to most of us.

Please watch it: Part 1 and Part 2

thanks jonny

As an interesting post script the wikileaks twitter highlighted a cable from the leaks describing Prince Andrew. He seems like an absolute fucking idiot.

A product of the Propaganda model vs Chomsky.

If you don't know what COINTELPRO is/was please read up on it here. Its important for smugness later.

Andrew Marr studiously claims to be neutral but personal observations he is at the very least an ardent supporter of the status quo. However I can put forward a fairly damning piece of evidence, he was Tony Blair's chosen sole TV interview, which aired last wednesday, for the launch of his autobiography. If you're allowed to interview people that powerful you sure as hell wont say anything the elite consider controversial.

Anyway back in 1996 he interviewed Chomsky about the Propaganda model, its especially fun for British people to see him squirm uncomfortably but it has a more universal worth, it shows how those who merrily work within the propaganda model react to being confronted with the reality of things.




Chomsky does seem to be competing with Zizek for the most uncomfortable speech patterns of a leftist in public in these videos but I hope you enjoyed them anyway.

Breaking Month old news ahead of nearly everyone.

I really should have my finger more on the pulse and check everything more regularly than I do so I have to apologise that I'm linking this video a month after it was posted:


So yes, those rumblings that Wikileaks is at least tacitly approved as a leak point / dumping ground for getting info out there in overwhelming bulk seem somewhat more plausible but I feel it more likely the novelty of the wikileaks phenomena is what prevents the media from ignoring it as they are so doing with the medical survey of Fallujah.

The Patrick Cockburn article mentioned by Chomsky can be found here. Fun quotes:

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

Yes of course the pacification of Fallujah occurred in 2004.

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

Hmmery, the same white phosphorous that was used by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead(page 21, paragraph 48)? Still the Palestinians and Iraqis deserved it eh Amber?

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

Oh well, all those assurances DU rounds were completely harmless before and during the invasion were wrong, boy are those advocates' faces red (with the blood of Iraqi children) now!

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

The residents of Fallujah should be grateful the Coalition of the Willing freed them from the oppression of genetic orthodoxy and allowed Iraq to become a future centre for Oncology research. And by doing all this the west has certainly been saved from vague threats to their way of life or something.

Again apologies I'm only posting this a month late but at least I'm beating most of the mainstream media I guess.

Edit Whoops forgot to add this feature by Democracy now about it. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in

Chomsky on the "Iranian Threat"

Chomsky lays out in his usual patient but exceptionally well supported style exactly why Iran is seen as such a threat to America that they will seemingly in short order be obliterated:

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.

Nor is it actually anything to do with stopping nuclear proliferation:

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself.

It is merely a desire to stop an inconvenient non-conformist to US Imperial doctrine, one that in events such as the Brazil-Turkey nuclear waste deal seems to be a catalyst of action outside of Washington approved action. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Read the full analysis here.

Chomsky on the Pentagon system.

The Pentagon system is a sort militarised Keynesianism that emerged in the US following WW2. Basically it means that the government funds research and then this research is handed off to corporations who profit from this research, essentially having the government subsidise big business. This is an early example of the now entrenched system of socialising the risk and privatising the reward. It is simply the biggest refutation of the ideologies of the two US political parties and shows just how fucking dumb libertarians are.

Anyway Noam Chomsky wrote a far better summary of the system in 1993 and examined where the system was going now the cold war was over. In spite of not knowing the War on Terror would happen it pretty much accurately predicted where we are today by infering how the Pentagon system would be used to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. He goes into much more detail of course. Read it here