The recent
Newsweek scandal was a classic case of media manipulation. Thankfully, some journalists in the American mainstream media smelt a case of diversion when they saw it. Take the Washington Post’s
Eugene Robinson:
“That was an awfully neat parlour trick the Bush administration performed last week, focusing attention on the reporting and editing process at Newsweek and away from more inconvenient facts: the copiously well-documented physical and psychological abuse of Muslim prisoners; the way this abuse has poisoned hearts and minds against America over the past three years; and the eruption of deadly riots in Afghanistan, a country we were supposed to have fixed.”
“White House spokesman Scott McClellan ought to be explaining why the administration turned away from still-problematic Afghanistan so quickly to rush pell-mell into Iraq. Flacks at the State Department and the Pentagon ought to be scurrying to assure the world that the disgraceful prisoner abuse has come to an end and that those responsible, including the higher-ups who hid behind “deniability” while making the abuse possible, will be brought to account.”
“Let me get this straight: The White House makes a mistake on the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, relying heavily on its own unidentified sources who turn out to have their own political agendas, and what follows is a war in which tens of thousands of Iraqis die. I’m being vague on the number because the administration refuses to count. Thousands of young Americans are maimed and more than 1,600 lose their lives; the flag-draped coffins are flown home, as in previous wars, but this administration doesn’t want you to see them. And we’re supposed to blame Newsweek’s editorial procedures. Watch my right hand, ladies and gents. Nothin’ up my sleeve.”
Game, set and match.
In news from Iraq, independent journalist Dahr Jamail reports on the ongoing insurgency and criminal behaviour of US forces: “I can’t tell you how many Iraqis I’ve interviewed after their homes were raided who complained of money, jewellery and other belongings being looted by American soldiers.”
The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), meanwhile, while not trying to save Sydney – a series virtually ignoring the incestuous relationship between NSW’s Bob Carr government, developers and private industry – reminds one of a March report by UK Medialens that revealed the failure of the “liberal press” in the UK to seriously examine the issues in climate change, preferring to view Tony Blair, as the SMH does Bob Carr, like Canadian philosopher John McMurtry explains:
“Tony Blair exemplifies the character structure of the global market order. Packaged in the corporate culture of youthful image, he is constructed as sincere, energetic and moral. Like other ruling-party leaders, he has worked hard to be selected by the financial and media axes of power as ”˜the man to do the job’. He is a moral metaphor of the system.”
The reality, of course, is that a person like Blair or Carr are incapable of delivering real leadership on major environmental issues because of their closeness to the fossil fuel industry, as but one example. Greenpeace explained this blatant hypocrisy in April:
“New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, is famously vocal against climate change. The joke is, his government is considering building another coal fired power plant.”
But we digress…
In Iraq, doctors are being threatened to leave their hospitals, causing a massive shortfall in health care:
“The letter came to Baghdad’s main cardiac hospital late last month. It was handwritten and unsigned, but its message was clear: it threatened the hospital’s top doctors and warned them to leave their jobs immediately.
Four of the hospital’s top surgeons stopped going to work. So did six senior cardiologists. Some left the country.
It was far from an isolated incident. The director of another hospital, Dr Abdula Sahab Eunice, was shot dead on May 17 on his way to work, officials said.
In the past year, about 10 per cent of Baghdad’s 32,000 registered doctors – Sunnis, Shiites and Christians – have left or been driven from work, according to the Iraqi Medical Association, which licenses practitioners.
The exodus has accelerated in recent months, said Akif Khalil al-Alousi, a pathologist at Kindi Teaching Hospital and a senior member of the association. The vast majority of those fleeing, he said, are the most senior doctors.”
In other assorted newsbytes today, further information on the scandal – virtually ignored in the compliant Australian media – of Israel’s Washington uber-lobby AIPAC, the Bush administration and intelligence leaks. Anti-war’s Justin Raimondo wonders whether the resignation of Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith is connected to the forthcoming revelations of collusion between the Israeli government, the Bushies, the war in Iraq and potential conflict with Iran.
Read the whole article because it deconstructs the real agenda behind America’s Middle East policy and its corruption from within. This is not conspiracy; this is reality in 2005.
