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Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 27, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- MEDIA SLANDER NORTH KOREA: DON'T WAIT 30 YEARS TO DEBUNK THESE LIES By Deirdre Griswold Many, many books have been written over the last three decades on the manipulation of news by agencies of the U.S. government like the CIA, and about the willingness--even eagerness--of the highly monopolized corporate media to disseminate propaganda tuned to the worldwide interests of U.S. big business. Often, however, it takes 30 or more years before even the faintest whiff of truth reaches a mass audience--like the documentary "Shadow Play," which was finally shown on PBS in May. It is about the bloody 1965 coup in Indonesia by a cabal of generals secretly supported by the United States. For 37 years, anyone dependent on the mass media for their views had thought just the opposite--that Indonesian communists had attempted a coup in 1965, but had been foiled by alert army officers. While U.S. newspapers gloated at the time that a million progressives and leftists were being slaughtered in Indonesia by the army, they blamed it all on a "failed coup" by the left--one that never happened, as the documentary shows. The mythology created at that time included Indonesian government films showing "reenactments" of "communist women" mutilating the genitals of dead generals--mutilations that never happened, according to the documentary. KUWAIT AND THE INCUBATOR STORY It is more than just coincidence that vivid stories of atrocities often precede U.S. military interventions. It seems to the public that the intervention is in response to some outrage, while in reality the "outrage" is manufactured to justify the intervention. In 1990 when the U.S. was planning to go to war with Iraq, a young Kuwaiti woman appeared before a congressional committee to describe how Iraqi troops had snatched babies out of incubators in Kuwait and smashed them on the ground. Her emotional testimony got headlines and prime-time coverage. Later it turned out that the story was completely manufactured. She was Nayirah Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the U.S., and had been in this country all the time. Her visit to the congressional committee had been arranged by the U.S. advertising agency Hill & Knowlton. But by then the U.S. war against Iraq had started and the damage had been done. It's not difficult today to see that racist "news stories" were used to egg on the massacres against Native people and the lynchings of African Americans. Or that the press was always there to justify imperialist wars of expansion, like the Hearst chain's contributions to the Spanish-American War of 1898. What's harder is to recognize the same process of deceit when it is going on now. TIMING OF KOREAN BABIES STORY A case in point is the latest "news" about north Korea. Suddenly, in all the major media, stories appeared around June 10 alleging the brutal treatment of women there. Pregnant women in jail were being forced to have abortions, said the stories. If their babies were born alive, guards forced the women themselves to kill them. What could horrify women readers more than the idea of being forced to kill your newborn baby? This story was said to have come from defectors who had forced their way into foreign embassies in China. The Korean Central News Agency denounced it as a "whopping lie." The timing of this story fits perfectly into the Bush administration's aggressive plans. Not only have the Washington gang created an "axis of evil" and put the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in it, but they are working night and day to reverse the June 15 Joint Announcement made in Pyongyang in 2000 by Kim Jong Il and Kim Dae-Jung, the leaders of north and south Korea, respectively. That declaration was a historic step toward reducing the tensions between the two halves of the Korean peninsula-- tensions that the U.S. has generated since the Korean War to justify the continued stationing of almost 40,000 troops in the south. The declaration is taken seriously in Korea, if not in Washington. A movement has been growing by leaps and bounds in south Korea to get the U.S. troops out. On June 22, major demonstrations are scheduled to take place. Anti-U.S. songs are now hot in south Korean culture. There is an angry rejection of Bush's characterization of the DPRK as "evil" and a passionate desire to go forward with improving relations with the north. But that's not what the U.S. media are talking about. They're focused on the stories about north Korean defectors and dead babies. Economic conditions in the DPRK deteriorated after the fall of the USSR, followed by several years of severe weather. Food shortages have been compounded by U.S. sanctions and attempts to isolate north Korea. So the Korean community in China, which has existed for many years, has swelled with emigrants seeking work. South Korea offers $35,000 cash, plus a job and apartment, to any north Korean who defects. So it is not surprising that a few north Koreans would show up at embassies in Beijing asking asylum. Just imagine the flood of humanity if the U.S. suddenly announced it would give $35,000 in cash, plus a home and apartment, to anyone from Central America or the Caribbean who could find their way into a U.S. Embassy. Knowing how the U.S. clandestine services operate, it is highly likely that Washington has found a way to carry out the active recruitment of defectors, even in China, which then becomes the grist for more propaganda against the DPRK. The real brutality in Korea is the U.S. military occupation there that has kept millions of families divided for over 50 years. When the U.S. press steps up its campaign to demonize the north, thinking people here should recognize this is no different than the lies told to justify so many wars and interventions in the past. U.S. STEPS UP PROVOCATIONS As the language from Washington becomes more threatening, north Korea must constantly be preoccupied with defense. U.S. warplanes and warships are always prowling around its borders. The Korean Central News Agency reported that in May the U.S. committed 180 cases of "air espionage," mobilizing strategic and tactical reconnaissance planes on various missions. Flying extremely high, these planes are able to photograph huge swaths of territory. The agency reported flights by U-2 spy planes, EP-3s, RC-7Bs, RC-12 and RF-4Cs. The Pentagon calls this vital to the "defense" of the U.S. Imagine what they'd say if the Koreans sent planes to U.S. shores to carry out similar flights. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED]. 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