The United States is “facing a nuclear threat in Iran” — article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26
“the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran” — article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26
“Iran’s threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran … to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world.” — op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27
“A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran” — headline in Investor’s Business Daily, May 27, 2009
This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days.
“Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites” — BBC, May 24
After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust.” — Haaretz (Israel), May 14, 2009
Like clinical paranoia, “the threat from Iran” is impervious to correction by rational argument.
Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends — “Banquo’s Ghosts” by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and “The Increment” by David Ignatius. “Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let’s bomb Iran,” declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of “dialogue” with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable.1
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein relates how nations brutalized by the Chicago School’s savage capitalism and the Dirty War juntas enforcing it have recovered and developed a healthy immunity against more eviscerating shock therapy:
Any strategy based on exploiting the window of opportunity opened by a traumatic shock relies heavily on the element of surprise… in North America, the September 11 attacks were, at first pure event, raw reality, unprocessed by story, narrative or anything that could bridge the gap between reality and understanding. Without a story, we are, as many of us were after September 11, intensely vulnerable to those people who take advantage of chaos for their own ends. As soon as we have a new narrative that offers perspective on the shocking events, we become reoriented and the world begins to make sense again.
That psychology pertains on both the individual and societal levels: a trauma that is never dealt with openly, but suppressed in the subconscious, festers, reinforcing crippling habits and sabotaging recovery. Maybe it is our reigning paradigm of dogmatic materialism that keeps us from acknowledging afflictions of the mind and spirit; imbibe a new pill to correct the faulty chemistry, or ingest an economic stimulus package to cure our destructive addiction to greed and gluttony. Consciousness, our scientists tell us, is a mere epiphenomenon of electrical brain circuits, so there can be no such thing as a collective “national psyche” capable of being wounded (socialist psychology!).
The Government has been accused of using a school exam paper to indoctrinate children about the controversial MMR vaccine.
Teenagers sitting a GCSE science exam were awarded marks only if they agreed that the study that first raised fears over the safety of MMR was bad science and biased because money changed hands.
The study in 1998 by Dr Andrew Wakefield led to a crisis of public confidence in immunisation.
The exam paper was set by UK exam board the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA).
It stated that Dr Wakefield claimed to have found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism and went on to say that his research into children with autism and bowel problems was being funded by lawyers who ‘wanted evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers’.
Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.
What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.
John Pilger
Information Clearing House
April 29, 2009
The BBC’s American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold.
It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush.
Only the most damning political conclusions can be drawn from the admission that 12 people rounded up in a major terror scare in Britain have all been released without charge.
Once again hysterical claims of an impending terrorist atrocity have proven baseless.
The 12 men—11 Pakistani nationals and one Briton—were arrested on April 8 in a series of high-profile swoops in Liverpool and Manchester.
Armed anti-terror police raided several premises in an operation that Prime Minister Gordon Brown claimed had uncovered a “very big plot” against the UK.
One young man was arrested by officers carrying machine guns as he ate his lunch outside Liverpool’s John Moores University (ten of the men are students at various northwest colleges and universities). Two other men were detained at the DIY store where they worked.
The media claimed the men had been planning to carry out a series of Al Qaeda-type explosions—potentially including suicide bombings—over the Easter holidays, targeting major public venues.
Six years ago, many of us awoke to see Saddam Hussein’s statue being torn down in Baghdad. The media ate it up. This was as eventful as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, George Bush stated. Iraq was free, most pundits wrote or spoke. The U.S. proved its naysayers to be wrong. Baghdad had fallen with a minimal loss of U.S. lives. A democratic Iraq was just over the horizon.
What you saw wasn’t real. Saddam’s statue was not torn down by Iraqis. The event was staged and well-rehearsed by the U.S. military.
The “crowd” comprised U.S. military personnel and tanks, and about 50 or so journalists who were alerted in the Palestinian Hotel, near the venue, to come and witness this historic event. This definitely was no popular action on behalf of the Iraqi people.
