William Blum writes:
... "So what do we have here? The NSA being used to steal industrial
secrets; nothing to do with fighting terrorism. And the NSA stealing
money and otherwise sabotaging unnamed financial systems, which may
also represent gaining industrial advantage for the United States.
"Long-time readers of this report may have come to the realization
that I'm not an ecstatic admirer of US foreign policy. But this stuff
shocks even me. It's the gross pettiness of "The World's Only
Superpower".
A careful search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis database failed to turn
up a single American mainstream media source, print or broadcast,
that mentioned this revelation. I found it only on those websites
which carried my report, plus three other sites: Techdirt, Lawfare,
and Crikey (First Digital Media)." ...
The EU has been complaining about the US using its spy network to
steal industrial secrets for a long time.
The NSA and Britain's GCHQ started construction of the Echelon global
wide area network surveillance system in 1981, soon joined by
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Europe was excluded.
Europe started complaining about industrial eavesdropping in the 80s.
British journalist Duncan Campbell has covered this story from the start:
Somebody's listening
Duncan Campbell
New Statesman August 1988
http://praxis.leedsmet.ac.uk/praxis/documents/echelon_enc.doc?
Interception Capabilities 2000 (report written for the EU)
Duncan Campbell
http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/stoa/interception_capabilities_2000.htm
pdf:
http://www.duncancampbell.org/menu/surveillance/echelon/IC2001-Paper1.pdf
Up to now:
Revealed: Britain's 'secret listening post in the heart of Berlin'
Claims that GCHQ has maintained spying operations even after US pulled out
DUNCAN CAMPBELL , CAHAL MILMO , KIM SENGUPTA , NIGEL MORRIS , TONY PATTERSON
Tuesday 05 November 2013
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-britains-secret-listening-post-in-the-heart-of-berlin-8921548.html>
UPDATE: Germany calls in Britain's ambassador to demand explanation
over 'secret Berlin listening post'
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/germany-calls-in-britains-ambassador-to-demand-explanation-over-secret-berlin-listening-post-8923082.html>
--0--
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/125
The Anti-Empire Report #125
By William Blum - Published February 4th, 2014
"Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for
'objectivity'. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are
themselves dismissed as ideological." - Michael Parenti
An exchange in January with Paul Farhi, Washington Post columnist,
about coverage of US foreign policy:
Dear Mr. Farhi,
Now that you've done a study of al-Jazeera's political bias in
supporting Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, is it perhaps now time for a study
of the US mass media's bias on US foreign policy? And if you doubt
the extent and depth of this bias, consider this:
There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can
you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was
unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam? Or even
opposed to any two of these wars? How about one? In 1968, six years
into the Vietnam war, the Boston Globe surveyed the editorial
positions of 39 leading US papers concerning the war and found that
"none advocated a pull-out".
Now, can you name an American daily newspaper or TV network that more
or less gives any support to any US government ODE (Officially
Designated Enemy)? Like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or his successor,
Nicolás Maduro; Fidel or Raúl Castro of Cuba; Bashar al-Assad of
Syria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; or Evo
Morales of Bolivia? I mean that presents the ODE's point of view in a
reasonably fair manner most of the time? Or any ODE of the recent
past like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya,
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, or Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti?
Who in the mainstream media supports Hamas of Gaza? Or Hezbollah of
Lebanon? Who in the mainstream media is outspokenly critical of
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians? And keeps his or her job?
Who in the mainstream media treats Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning
as the heroes they are?
And this same mainstream media tell us that Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador,
et al. do not have a real opposition media.
The ideology of the American mainstream media is the belief that they
don't have any ideology; that they are instead what they call
"objective". I submit that there is something more important in
journalism than objectivity. It is capturing the essence, or the
truth, if you will, with the proper context and history. This can, as
well, serve as "enlightenment".
It's been said that the political spectrum concerning US foreign
policy in the America mainstream media "runs the gamut from A to B".
Sincerely, William Blum, Washington, DC
(followed by some of my writing credentials)
-
Reply from Paul Farhi:
I think you're conflating news coverage with editorial policy. They
are not the same. What a newspaper advocates on its editorial page
(the Vietnam example you cite) isn't the same as what or how the
story is covered in the news columns. News MAY have some advocacy in
it, but it's not supposed to, and not nearly as overt or blatant as
an editorial or opinion column. Go back over all of your ODE examples
and ask yourself if the news coverage was the same as the opinions
about those ODEs. In most cases. I doubt it was.
-
Dear Mr. Farhi,
Thank you for your remarkably prompt answer.
Your point about the difference between news coverage and editorial
policy is important, but the fact is, as a daily, and careful, reader
of the Post for the past 20 years I can attest to the extensive bias
in its foreign policy coverage in the areas I listed. Juan Ferrero in
Latin America and Kathy Lally in the Mideast are but two prime
examples. The bias, most commonly, is one of omission more than
commission; which is to say it's what they leave out that distorts
the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. My
Anti-Empire Report contains many examples of these omissions, as well
as some errors of commission.
Incidentally, since 1995 I have written dozens of letters to the Post
pointing out errors in foreign-policy coverage. Not one has been
printed.
Happy New Year
-
I present here an extreme example of bias by omission, in the entire
American mainstream media: In my last report I wrote of the committee
appointed by the president to study NSA abuses - Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications Technologies - which actually came up
with a few unexpected recommendations in its report presented
December 13, the most interesting of which perhaps are these two:
"Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to
advantage their domestic industry."
"Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to
change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate
the financial systems."
So what do we have here? The NSA being used to steal industrial
secrets; nothing to do with fighting terrorism. And the NSA stealing
money and otherwise sabotaging unnamed financial systems, which may
also represent gaining industrial advantage for the United States.
Long-time readers of this report may have come to the realization
that I'm not an ecstatic admirer of US foreign policy. But this stuff
shocks even me. It's the gross pettiness of "The World's Only
Superpower".
A careful search of the extensive Lexis-Nexis database failed to turn
up a single American mainstream media source, print or broadcast,
that mentioned this revelation. I found it only on those websites
which carried my report, plus three other sites: Techdirt, Lawfare,
and Crikey (First Digital Media).
For another very interesting and extreme example of bias by omission,
as well as commission, very typical of US foreign policy coverage in
the mainstream media: First read the January 31, page one, Washington
Post article making fun of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba.
Then read the response from two Americans who have spent a lot of
time in Venezuela, are fluent in Spanish, and whose opinions about
the article I solicited.
I lived in Chile during the 1972-73 period under Salvadore Allende
and his Socialist Party. The conservative Chilean media's sarcastic
claims at the time about shortages and socialist incompetence were
identical to what we've been seeing for years in the United States
concerning Venezuela and Cuba. The Washington Post article on
Venezuela referred to above could have been lifted out of Chile's El
Mercurio, 1973.
[Note to readers: Please do not send me the usual complaints about my
using the name "America(n)" to refer to "The United States". I find
it to be a meaningless issue, if not plain silly.]
JFK, RFK, and some myths about US foreign policy
On April 30, 1964, five months after the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was
interviewed by John B. Martin in one of a series of oral history
sessions with RFK. Part of the interview appears in the book "JFK
Conservative" by Ira Stoll, published three months ago. (pages 192-3)
RFK: The president had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in
Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.
MARTIN: What was the overwhelming reason?
RFK: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I
think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would
fall.
MARTIN: What if it did?
RFK: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the
world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also it
would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an
effect on the Middle East. Just as it would have, everybody felt, a
very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred
million population. All of those countries would be affected by the
fall of Vietnam to the Communists.
MARTIN: There was never any consideration given to pulling out?
RFK: No.
MARTIN: The president was convinced that we had to keep, had to
stay in there
RFK: Yes.
MARTIN: And couldn't lose it.
RFK: Yes.
These remarks are rather instructive from several points of view:
. Robert Kennedy contradicts the many people who are
convinced that, had he lived, JFK would have brought the US
involvement in Vietnam to a fairly prompt end, instead of it
continuing for ten more terrible years. The author, Stoll, quotes a
few of these people. And these other statements are just as
convincing as RFK's statements presented here. And if that is not
confusing enough, Stoll then quotes RFK himself in 1967 speaking
unmistakably in support of the war.
It appears that we'll never know with any kind of certainty what
would have happened if JFK had not been assassinated, but I still go
by his Cold War record in concluding that US foreign policy would
have continued along its imperial, anti-communist path. In Kennedy's
short time in office the United States unleashed many different types
of hostility, from attempts to overthrow governments and suppress
political movements to assassination attempts against leaders and
actual military combat; with one or more of these occurring in
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, British Guiana, Iraq, Haiti, Dominican
Republic, Cuba and Brazil.
. "Just have profound effects as far as our position
throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the
world."
Ah yes, a vital part of the world. Has there ever been any part of
the world, or any country, that the US has intervened in that was not
vital? Vital to American interests? Vital to our national security?
Of great strategic importance? Here's President Carter in his 1980
State of the Union Address: "An attempt by any outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on
the vital interests of the United States of America".
"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things
which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to
make war." - Simone Weil (1909-1943), French philosopher
. If the US lost Vietnam "everybody was quite clear
that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall."
As I once wrote:
Thus it was that the worst of Washington's fears had come to pass:
All of Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - had fallen to the
Communists. During the initial period of US involvement in Indochina
in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower and other
American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of the
type known as the "Domino Theory", warning that if Indochina should
fall, other nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one
instance, President Eisenhower listed no less than Taiwan, Australia,
New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the anticipated
"falling dominos".
Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by
succeeding administrations and other supporters of US policy in
Indochina as a key argument in defense of such policy. The fact that
these ominous predictions turned out to have no basis in reality did
not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same dogma up
until the 1990s about almost each new world "trouble-spot", testimony
to their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the
International Communist Conspiracy.
Killing suicide
Suicide bombers have become an international tragedy. One can not sit
in a restaurant or wait for a bus or go for a walk downtown, in
Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or Russia or Syria and elsewhere
without fearing for one's life from a person walking innocently by or
a car that just quietly parked nearby. The Pentagon has been working
for years to devise a means of countering this powerful weapon.
As far as we know, they haven't come up with anything. So I'd like to
suggest a possible solution. Go to the very source. Flood selected
Islamic societies with this message: "There is no heavenly reward for
dying a martyr. There are no 72 beautiful virgins waiting to reward
you for giving your life for jihad. No virgins at all. No sex at all."
Using every means of communication, from Facebook to skywriting, from
billboards to television, plant the seed of doubt, perhaps the very
first such seed the young men have ever experienced. As some wise
anonymous soul once wrote:
A person is unambivalent only with regard to those few beliefs,
attitudes and characteristics which are truly universal in his
experience. Thus a man might believe that the world is flat without
really being aware that he did so - if everyone in his society shared
the assumption. The flatness of the world would be simply a
"self-evident" fact. But if he once became conscious of thinking that
the world is flat, he would be capable of conceiving that it might be
otherwise. He might then be spurred to invent elaborate proofs of its
flatness, but he would have lost the innocence of absolute and
unambivalent belief.
We have to capture the minds of these suicide bombers. At the same
time we can work on our own soldiers. Making them fully conscious of
their belief, their precious belief, that their government means
well, that they're fighting for freedom and democracy, and for that
thing called "American exceptionalism". It could save them from
committing their own form of suicide.
Notes
1. Boston Globe, February 18, 1968, p.2-A
2. New York Times, April 8, 1954
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission,
provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this
website are given.
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