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Monday, June 30th, 2008
Volume 7, No. 11
3 Articles, 22 Pages
1. Our Government's Dirty Little Secrets
2. We Just Might Rekindle The Patriot's Dream
1. OUR GOVERNMENT'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS
(House of Commons debates - Wednesday, 11 June 2008 -
Somalia (Human Rights))
BY
GEORGE GALLOWAY
A Government ready to rely on those friends of liberty, the Democratic Unionist party, to shred the liberties of our own people are almost by definition unembarrassable, but I hope this evening to add to the issues ventilated in a recent Channel 4 "Dispatches" programme to adumbrate the extent to which the tragedy in Somalia, which so many people are now becoming aware of, is another of our Government's dirty little secrets.
We must start the story in Ethiopia, where 4 million people, according to the United Nations, are facing starvation and 120,000 Ethiopian children have just one month to live, according to last week's media reports. Television viewers were shocked to see the pictures last week of the widespread suffering redolent of 1984 and the great famine of that year.
The US and Britain immediately pledged $90 million in famine relief. Just one week after its appeal to the international community for famine relief, the Ethiopian Government increased their military budget by $50 million to $400 million. The regime in Addis Ababa—when I knew them in the 1980s, they were pro-Albanian Maoists—are the most militarised and heavily armed in Africa. They are in a state of perpetual war or preparation for war with one neighbour, Eritrea, and they are supporting anti-Government rebels in Sudan, many believe with western connivance.
Most astonishingly of all, the Government of Ethiopia—that starving country whose little children are fly infested, kwashiorkor swollen, famished and famine stricken—have been encouraged, armed, trained, financed and otherwise facilitated to invade and occupy their neighbour, Somalia, and create a reign of terror in that land, which is testified to by this voluminous Amnesty International report, which, if I had time, I would extensively quote from.
Somalia has lost thousands of dead as a result of the Ethiopian invasion. Millions have been displaced. Somalia, under Ethiopian occupation, is the grimmest prison state in Africa—far worse than Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Who has done the encouraging, the arming, the training, the financing and the facilitating? The same US and British Governments who donated the $90 million to the same Ethiopian Government who are burning their money and burning the villages, the neighbourhoods and the people of occupied Somalia.
This Government are never done talking about the shortcomings of African leaders. Just last week in Rome, the Secretary of State for International Development was roaring at Robert Mugabe, yet there has not been a squeak out of him, or any other Minister, about the much bigger crime in which we are ourselves deeply complicit. Is it any wonder that African opinion considers so much of what we have to say about misgovernance in Africa to be the deepest, most cynical hypocrisy?
Two weeks ago, Channel 4's "Dispatches" team took terrifying risks to bring us the latest from occupied Mogadishu. That was undoubtedly an award-winning documentary. It was memorable for many reasons, not least the scene in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when the Minister of State, Lord Malloch-Brown, his face frozen in horror, was confronted by Aidan Hartley with the central case of the documentary makers. For the benefit of Members who did not see the programme—the Minister will certainly have seen it; she would hardly be sent out to bat on this wicket without being shown it—that central case was that, in the grim prison state of occupied Somalia, the fingerprints of our country and our Government were all over the scene of the crime.
The President of the puppet regime imposed by the Ethiopian army in Somalia turns out to be British. He spends much of his time here—well, it is dangerous in Somalia, after all—and has property and family here. After presiding over a gang of torturers, murderers, grand larceners and extortionists, he flies back to England. Then there is the police chief whose officers kidnap people for ransom, which they extort from people living in our own country—in Leicester, in Birmingham, in London. They torture people, make them disappear, and kill them if their families will not pay. He too is British. As for the former Interior Minister who presides over an interior of mass refugee camps, starvation and misery, and who stands accused of stealing international aid and diverting food for political purposes—why, he is British as well.
Guess who is paying the wages of the murdering, kidnapping, torturing, quisling police force in Ethiopian-occupied Somalia? That's right: we are. The public dictatorship in Somalia is a very British crime, especially as our own Government—in particular, that pocket-sized Palmerston to whom I referred earlier, the Secretary of State for International Development—are so voluble on the subject of other problems in Africa.
So how did we get here? How did we get into bed with the former pro-Albanian Maoists of the Government in Addis Ababa? I am afraid that the answer is our old friend, our old acquaintance, the policy of "my enemy's enemy is my friend". The policy that has got us into so much trouble, from Afghanistan to Iraq and many other parts of the world, is what lies behind this obscene paradox.
We are supporting the Ethiopian Government's occupation of Somalia because George Bush told us to: because Somalia is a front line in George Bush's ill-conceived, counter-productive, utterly discredited, "about to be booted out in the United States" so-called war on terror. We were against the former Government of Somalia because they were an Islamic Government, just as we are against the Government in Sudan because they are an Islamic Government, and just as Ethiopia, on our behalf, opposed the Government in Eritrea because they are an Islamic Government.
This policy, having been such a disaster around the world, is now in full force in Somalia, and but for Channel 4's "Dispatches" hardly anyone in Britain would know anything about it. No British Minister has come to the Dispatch Box to explain why British taxpayers' money is being paid to a police force in Mogadishu that is accused of kidnapping people and extorting ransom money from British citizens. No British Minister has come to explain—unless we interpret Lord Malloch-Brown's frozen face as an explanation—why we are so heavily involved with a puppet regime that is bereft of political and public support in Somalia.
This policy of backing anyone whom Bush tells us to back—this policy of backing anyone who is against those whom we, today, perceive ourselves to be against—is morally utterly vacuous. Arguably worse than that, however, is the fact that it is a total, dismal failure, as we have found in Afghanistan to our bitter, bitter cost, not least this very week. The very mujaheds whom Mrs. Thatcher's Government lauded, supported and armed are now murdering and killing our soldiers in Afghanistan—
It being Seven o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn .—[Ms Diana R. Johnson.]
House of Commons debates - Wednesday, 11 June 2008 -
PART 2 Somalia (Human Rights)
BY
GEORGE GALLOWAY
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn .—
Mr. Galloway: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This Adjournment debate was scheduled to begin at 7 pm and last for half an hour. I have spoken for 10 minutes, and the country—or at least those interested enough to watch on parliamentary television—will not hear the Minister reply.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood. The Adjournment debate is now starting, which means that he has so far had bonus time. This is one of the procedures, as far as the House is concerned, we have to go through.
Mr. Galloway: That is truly magnificent, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I have plenty to say. Perhaps I will be able to quote Amnesty International in more detail in the time that I did not think that I would have available.
This policy is not only morally bankrupt, it is politically disastrous. Afghanistan is the perfect example, but the Ethiopian Government preside over a country where famine and mass starvation stalk the land. They are being helped militarily to invade, occupy and threaten their neighbours. What can that conceivably do for our standing in Africa, or for our credibility when we lecture the Governments of Sudan or Zimbabwe?
It would be bad enough if our difficulties in that respect were confined to Africa, but the problem is much worse. The Somalians are the tallest people on earth, but they are virtually invisible, politically, on the international stage and in this country. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of Somalians here, either because they have European Union passports or because they are refugees from the very fighting that we initiated and are now fuelling. Increasingly, young Somalis are furious, bitter and angry. They nurse their wrath as they watch—on Somali television or other Muslim channels—the carnage being wrought in their country.
Two million people in Somalia are living as refugees, out of a population of 11 million. That is almost a fifth of the total: to scale it up, in our country that would amount to 12 million people. There are another 1 million Somali refugees in neighbouring countries, and God knows how many hundreds of thousands are scattered across the EU.
In their bitter exile, the sons—and may be the daughters too—of those Somali families are being brought up bitter and furious at the role played by the west in the problems that they see on their televisions screens. We have spent hours this afternoon trying to deal with the problem of terrorism, but we cannot see how that connects with the way that we constantly infuriate young Muslim boys and girls with the double standards and injustices of our policy towards their countries and the countries from which their parents come.
We cannot see the connection between the growth of extremism and our actions. The Government are always looking for a cleric or an organisation to ban or to blame for the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Britain. But those young people do not need a cleric or an organisation to radicalise them: they just have to watch the news and see what our Government are doing in Muslim countries such as Somalia.
I know that the Minister has seen Channel 4’s “Dispatches” programme. She will not claim otherwise, even though she is answering a debate on human rights in Somalia. I hope that she will do a better job than Lord Malloch-Brown did when it comes to explaining how are taxes are being used. Among other things, that tax money could be used to help starving people in Ethiopia. It could be used to keep our pensioners warm in winter or to keep some post offices open.
I see that the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is Under-Secretary of State for Transport and the Minister responsible for closing post offices, is standing by your Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that that counts as being in the House and that it is therefore in order for me to refer to him.
The British tax money that I have mentioned could have been used for a better purpose, but instead it is being spent on the security forces in Somalia, which Amnesty International, as well as Channel 4, accuses of widespread abuses of human rights—of torture, murder, disappearances, kidnapping, extortion and grand larceny. Why are we allowing the Interior Minister of Somalia to travel back and forth into our country unmolested when he is accused by aid agencies of purloining international aid—desperately needed emergency aid for hungry people—for himself and for political purposes for his political clan? Why are the Government not stopping him at the border and questioning him about where the money went that was put into Somalia and has disappeared?
Aid agencies will not now, by and large, set foot in Somalia, so catastrophic has the situation there become. I ask the Minister why we are supporting the President, the Interior Minister and the chief of police in Somalia, and allowing them to come and go freely without answering the charges that are being made against them? When will the Government at least condemn the human rights abuses in Somalia? Amnesty has voluminously recorded them, but not a squeak has come from the Government, which has never done roaring at Sudan or Zimbabwe. Why? Because we are deeply complicit in that. Indeed, we are paying for it; we are paying for the security services that are committing these crimes in Somalia.
The Government might think that because most Somalis in Britain do not, for one reason or another, have votes, they can be ignored—that tall as they are, they can be disregarded. However, the truth is that the Somali community in Britain’s loathing of the actions of our Government is a ticking time bomb in Britain. I, if not the Minister, am constantly exposed in my constituency, and in Birmingham and Leicester and other places, to the anger of these young Somalis. There is a disaster waiting to happen. I hope that the Minister will announce today that, in the wake of the Channel 4 revelations, she will investigate the allegations properly, and that she will report her findings to the House.
I am talking in my speech tonight about not only the current British Government’s foreign policy towards the horn of Africa and Afghanistan, but about previous Governments’ foreign policies, too. I remember being on the Opposition Benches and accusing the then Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, of having opened the gates to the barbarians by her support for the so-called mujaheddin in Afghanistan so many years ago. The policy that our Governments have followed of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has proved to be fatally flawed everywhere that it has been tried, and it is now being tried all over again in Somalia.
Many Somalis will be watching our debate this evening—word is out about it in the Somali community, and it is being shown on Universal TV and other Somali channels. For their sake, I hope that the Minister will come clean about the dreadful problems that exist, and I also hope that she will say some words to the Ethiopian Government.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having secured this debate. I apologise for having arrived late for it; I was caught somewhat unawares as it began early. What is best for Somalia and its people is, of course, security. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Ethiopian Government are providing security in Somalia at present, and that they want to withdraw from Somalia at the earliest possible moment? Will he also join me in encouraging the United Nations, the African Union Mission in Somalia—AMISOM—and the African Union to ensure that troops are put back into Somalia in order to give Somalis that security, which they need? Ethiopian troops want to return to Addis Ababa.
Mr. Galloway: I do not accept that at all, and it seems that I know the Ethiopian Government rather better than the hon. Gentleman does. As I explained before he came in, I knew them when they were pro-Albanian Maoist guerrillas in the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front. I knew all the leaders—they are now the Government Ministers—and I know that they have no intention of withdrawing from Somalia unless they are forced to do so. They want to occupy Somalia because they have been paid to do so by the Government of the United States and our own Government. The Ethiopian Government are doing a job for what they imagine to be the western part of the international community. I see the Minister for closing post offices laughing. His constituency contains many Somalis, as does mine, and I hope that the camera caught him laughing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jim Fitzpatrick): I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman, but I must point out that I did not laugh at anything that he has been saying so far.
Mr. Galloway: I shall not go further down that track. Perhaps the camera caught the verisimilitude.
The truth is that the Ethiopian Government are carrying out a service for the people who give them weapons, for the people who give them money and for the people who give them diplomatic and political support. They are having a beano in the Ethiopian embassy next week. Perhaps the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) will go to it; he will certainly get an invitation in the post following his intervention. The Ethiopian Government are having a beano in the Ethiopian embassy in London to celebrate the 17th anniversary of their coming to power, and it is going to be a very grand event.
That event comes at a time when the Ethiopian Government’s own people are starving to death. Their children are starving to death—120,000 children have a month to live—they are invading and occupying their neighbouring countries and nobody says boo about it. In fact, far from saying boo, people are saying, “Here’s some more military and financial aid to do it.” That is because the Government of President Bush, who are utterly discredited and on their way out, with virtually nowhere to go except Downing street on Sunday for one last photo call, regard the defeat of the former Islamic Government in Somalia as part of their war on terror.
That is what this is all about. Ethiopia is playing the role of hammer in the horn of Africa for the policy of the United States and its war on terror. That is what Ethiopia is doing, so it will not withdraw until a new American Government, hopefully with a Kenyan-affiliated President, tell them that actually this policy is deeply flawed. The puppet regime of British citizens imposed on Somalia by the Ethiopian invasion would not last five minutes if the Ethiopian forces withdrew—that regime would have to withdraw with them. So, any Government who come to power in Somalia in the future will be filled with hatred of Britain and the United States.
That is the problem that we keep making everywhere; we intervene either to prop up tyrants or to support tyrants because we do not like the tyrants that they are fighting against, and we generate still more problems for ourselves. We wonder why that is, and we agonisingly debate anti-terrorism laws. We wonder why so many people in the Muslim world want to hurt us. We wonder why so many young people in the Muslim world are so bitter and angry about us that they want to hurt us. Is it any wonder? Can it be any wonder to any sane person? I beg the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to believe me when I say that it is because of the kinds of policies that I have described. I talk to Somalis all the time, and I know that the rage the Somali community both in Britain and around the world feels about Britain and America’s role in their country generates terrorists. As the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), who saved the Government’s bacon earlier this evening, is in his place and as we spent so many hours discussing anti-terrorism, let me spell it out: we are making new terrorists in Britain with our policy towards Somalia, with our double standards and with our hypocrisy.
Mark Pritchard: While the Government of Ethiopia are not perfect—indeed, there are Governments closer to home who are not perfect—it is right that human rights abuses by the Somali security services are fully investigated. Nevertheless, does the hon. Gentleman accept that if Ethiopian troops withdrew, it would create a security vacuum in which terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, would create mayhem in the horn of Africa, which is a key strategic location, and that would come back to haunt us?
Mr. Galloway: I said in this House when it was recalled a few days after the atrocity of 9/11 that if we handled it the wrong way we would make 10,000 new bin Ladens. We have handled it the wrong way, and we have made 10,000 new bin Ladens. The problem of al-Qaeda in Somalia has been made worse by the western intervention and the Ethiopian invasion. Far more people have been recruited to a narrow, fundamentalist, separatist, violent Islamism by our policy than ever would have been if that policy had never been formed.
The hon. Gentleman obviously has not read the Amnesty International document. The Ethiopian forces are not providing security: they are providing mass murder and terror in occupied Somalia. The refugee camps are full with 2 million people. No one can walk on the streets of Mogadishu. Channel 4’s reporters were almost killed making their programme. Some of the team on the same vehicle with them were shot dead live on television—
Mark Pritchard: By Somalis.
Mr. Galloway: I do not know if they were shot by Somalis or Ethiopians. The point is that the country has been plunged into utter lawlessness, and to pretend that the Ethiopian Government are providing security is completely ridiculous. The words Somalia and security should not even be mentioned in the same sentence.
There may be a need for African Union forces or Arab League forces. This conflict will go on and I hope that the Minister will not claim that the deal reached this week is any kind of solution to the problem. The people who are doing the fighting are not involved in the deal. It is like a peace process in the north of Ireland that excluded the people who were doing the fighting. That is what has happened in relation to Somalia in the past few days.
I am grateful for the extra time that I had for this debate, and I apologise for my churlish point of order, which turned out to be entirely misconceived. I hope for some answers from the Minister this evening.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Meg Munn): I welcome the opportunity to reply to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) in this debate. I see this as an excellent chance to highlight how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seeks to address a number of issues relating to Somalia.
As my noble Friend Lord Malloch-Brown, the Minister for Africa, said in his statement this afternoon, we congratulate the Somali transitional federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia on reaching agreement on the cessation of violence. That agreement was signed by both parties in Djibouti on Monday and witnessed by members of the international community. I wish to thank the UN Secretary-General’s special representative, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, on his continued efforts to mediate in the talks between the parties which resulted in the agreement. This is a positive step and we look forward to all parties fulfilling their commitment to cease armed confrontation. We are committed to working with the UN to support this process.
Human rights issues in Somalia are longstanding and complex. They cannot be attributed to any one cause, and there are no easy or obvious solutions. Somalia is not like other countries. Serious violence, lack of governance structures and the deteriorating humanitarian situation have been ongoing for 17 years. Many in Somali society have been brutalised by years of violence. It is therefore often individuals, not answerable to any particular group or commander, who carry out abuses on their own initiative. That makes it even more difficult to prevent further abuses and to bring those responsible to justice.
Given that complexity and the insecurity in Somalia, there is little opportunity to monitor the situation reliably or gather and verify facts or allegations. Reporting is often biased and may be exaggerated to exert influence on the international community. The only sustainable way to address human rights in the long term is to engage in effective state building, concentrating on developing institutions, parliamentary accountability, an inclusive security sector and delivery of basic services. Short-term fixes that do not focus on state building will mean we return to the issue year after year, prolonging the suffering of the Somali people.
Reports of incidents and accusations of human rights abuses by Ethiopian troops are difficult to corroborate and have been categorically denied by the Ethiopian Government. Ethiopian troops in Somalia are carrying out a role that security providers in Somalia do not have the capacity for. Many critics forget that fighting between militias went on for 15 years before Ethiopia intervened, at the invitation of Somalia’s transitional federal Government.
African Union member nations have not yet committed to contributing sufficient troops to allow for full deployment of the African Union mission in Somalia, which currently has only 2,400 of the 8,000 troops mandated. Further planning for a possible UN mission was called for by UN Security Council resolution 1814, although that is unlikely to be mandated soon. Evidence from other Ethiopian peacekeeping deployments indicates that they make a positive contribution to missions. Ethiopian troops are likely to form the largest contingent of the UN-African Union mission in Darfur.
We regularly engage with human rights organisations, listen to their views and appreciate their efforts to gather information and evidence on human rights. We and they fully acknowledge that allegations of abuse are made against all parties to the conflict in Somalia. We sponsored an Arria meeting at the United Nations in New York on 31 March to enable Governments and the non-governmental organisation community freely to discuss human rights and humanitarian issues and to exchange views on how to achieve progress in Somalia.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow might be interested to know that in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I said:
“We unreservedly condemn all proven incidents of human rights abuse and expect those responsible to face justice.”—[ Official Report, 3 June 2008; Vol. 476, c. 832W.]
My noble Friend the Minister for Africa, Lord Malloch-Brown, raised the issue of human rights in Somalia with the Ethiopian Prime Minister in late January 2008. Our ambassador to Ethiopia regularly raises the issue of respect for human rights in Somalia at senior levels of the Ethiopian Government. Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials in London and at the UN have also raised the issue with their Ethiopian counterparts.
Ethiopia has told us that it intends to withdraw from Somalia and that it has reduced force numbers by more than half since late February 2007. The Ethiopian Government are extremely positive about the newly signed peace agreement, which includes a strategy for their withdrawal from Somalia. Until Ethiopia withdraws its troops completely, we urge them to use only appropriate force, adhere to international humanitarian law and respect human rights. However, for Ethiopia to withdraw from Somalia before an effective alternative force has been established would risk creating a dangerous security vacuum. Somalis would suffer the most from such a development.
The UK is a leading contributor to world efforts to rebuild the Somali state. We support the efforts of the UN Secretary General’s special representative for Somalia to engage with civil society and to help bring about social and political reconciliation that will lead to greater respect for human rights and religious freedoms for all Somalis. Through helping to shape UN Security Council policy, and our membership of the EU and the international contact group, we press for greater focus on human rights in Somalia. We asked the UN to enhance its capacity to monitor and report on the human rights situation in Somalia and 11 Jun 2008 : Column 434
Council resolution 1814, unanimously adopted on 15 May, and the EU General Assembly and External Relations Council conclusions, adopted on 26 May, support the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, including the independent expert for Somalia, and encourage them to undertake a fact-finding and assessment mission to Somalia to address the human rights situation.
We co-chair the donors group and are the second largest bilateral humanitarian and development donor. We are also the second largest bilateral donor, after the US, for the African Union mission to Somalia. We are a key donor to the UN Development Programme effort to develop a full justice system, including improving the police force and the judiciary and penal systems to an internationally acceptable standard. I understand that the hon. Gentleman thought that that issue was a matter for the Department for International Development, but I can confirm that it is a policy area of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
We value human rights highly. No other states are as active as the UK on human rights issues in Somalia. We urge other states to join our efforts and encourage international human rights organisations to concentrate their advocacy activities on pressing other less active states for support, too.
2. WE JUST MIGHT REKINDLE THE PATRIOT'S DREAM
BY
BILL MOYERS
(Bill Moyers delivered these remarks Saturday, June 7, 2008 at the National Conference for Media Reform)
Here we are again.
And our numbers are growing.
We were 1700 in Madison four years ago, 2500 in St. Louis a year later, 3200 in Memphis last year. And now here in St. Paul we are 3500 — and counting. You represent millions of Americans who see media consolidation as a corrosive social force. It robs them of their voice in public affairs, pollutes the political culture, and turns the debate over profound issues into a shouting match of polarized views promulgated by partisan apologists who trivialize democracy while refusing to speak the truth about how our country is being plundered.
The patriarch of your movement warned a generation ago of what was coming. In his magisterial book Media Monopoly Ben Bagdikian wrote: “The result of the overwhelming power of relatively narrow corporate ideologies has been the creation of widely established political and economic illusions with little visible contradictions in the media to which a majority of the population is exclusively exposed.”
In other words, what we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society. Whether employing professional journalists trained at prestigious universities, or polemicists who serve partisan agendas, our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders; organizations whose self-styled mandate is not holding public and private power accountable so there is an equilibrium in society, but aggregating their interlocking interests; organizations whose reward comes from the manufacturing of news and information as profitable consumer commodities rather than the means to empower morally responsible citizens.
Why does it matter? What does the media do, anyway?
I’ll let an old Cherokee chief answer that. I heard this story a long time ago — of the tribal elder who was telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging inside himself. He said, “It is between two wolves, my son. One is an evil wolf: Anger, envy, sorrow, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is the good wolf: Joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The boy thought this over for a minute, and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee replied simply: “The one I feed.”
Democracy is that way: The wolf that wins is the one we feed, and the media provides the fodder.
Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.
Democracy without accountability creates the illusion of popular control while offering ordinary Americans cheap tickets to the balcony, too far away to see that the public stage is just a reality TV set.
Nothing more characterizes corporate media today — mainstream and partisan — than disdain towards the fragile nature of modern life and indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.
This leaves you with a heavy burden — it’s up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible.
(Let me in fact ask you to stand up. Stand up and look at your neighbor to your left or your neighbor on your right; come on, stand up. Turn to a neighbor on one side of you. Look each other in the eye. Shake hands. Now turn to your neighbor on the other side of you. Look each other in the eye and shake hands. See, you’re surrounded by kindred spirits. Remember them when you go home to continue this fight. Hold their presence and this moment in your heart. Keep reminding yourself, “I am not alone in this movement.”)
(Be Seated.)
In numbers there is strength, and with strength comes success. It was just five years ago that millions of Americans, aroused by your movement, bombarded Washington to protest the FCC’s decision to radically lower the barriers to corporate media consolidation. Last December the Bush Administration tried again. Their majority on the FCC rush resurrected the plan to permit one company to control a large city’s newspaper and broadcast stations. Those stalwart servants of the public interest, Commissioner Michael Copps and Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, of course dissented once again. And once again the vigorous protest you created rocked the cozy confines of the media ownership elite. So that last month the Senate, on a bi-partisan vote assembled by Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, overwhelmingly passed a resolution of disapproval countering the FCC’s decision.
But even as we meet, the Administration is pressing to give the conglomerates more control — from newspapers and broadcast television, to satellite radio, to awarding some of the most valuable remaining swaths of our public airwaves to two of the largest telecommunications companies, to mergers and acquisitions by the biggest digital media giants. Inspired by FreePress, the bi-partisan coalition SavetheInternet.com has become crucial to the fight to keep the World Wide Web a bastion for free speech.
For example:
When the cable giant Cablevision tried this spring to pack an FCC hearing room on network neutrality, by literally hiring people off the street to ensure that advocates of net neutrality could not get in to participate, SavetheInternet.com and its supporters helped expose the ruse. Soon after there was a new hearing, this time without the gerrymandered seating by opponents of an open Internet. Now Congressman Ed Markey has introduced a bill to advance net neutrality, and it’s also become an issue in the presidential campaign.
Be vigilant; the fate of the cyber commons is at stake here, the future of “the mobile web” and the benefits of the Internet as open architecture. We’ll lose without you: the only antidote to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people at the netroots. When Verizon tried to censor NARAL’s use of text-messaging last year, it was quick action by your coalition that led the company to reverse its position. Your efforts also led to an FCC proceeding on this critical issue. Yes, be vigilant; wherever the Internet flows - on our PCs, cell phones, mobile devices, and even to our new digital televisions — we must assure it remains an open and non-discriminatory medium of expression — what our colleague Jeff Chester calls truly a digital democracy.
But it’s going to take more than just hopes that the new media will deliver up what we never fully realized with the old. And the clock is ticking. By 2011, the market analysts tell us, the Internet will surpass newspapers in advertising revenues. With MySpace and Dow Jones controlled by Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft determined to acquire Yahoo! And with advertisers already telling some bloggers their content may be unacceptable, we could see the potential loss of what’s now considered an unstoppable “long tail” of content offering abundant new, credible, and sustainable sources of news and information.
Advertisers have aggressively seized the new online world to go back into the programming business themselves, creating “branded content.” Imagine — the Camel News Caravan revived, but this time online as a sponsored YouTube channel. Already, newspapers and magazines (and soon TV programming) are encouraged to sell key words to advertisers — so-called “in-text advertising” — in the online versions of stories. Can you imagine advertisers going for stories with key words such as “health care reform,” “environmental degradation,” “Iraqi casualties,” “contracting fraud,” or “K Street lobbyists.” I don’t think so. So what will happen to news in the future as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely, as content, programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package? Last year the investment firm of Piper Jaffrey predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it “communitainment.”
Where are you, George Orwell, now that we need you?
Here I want to implore you to take up the cause of public broadcasting as one of your priorities in this digital age. I know, I know: Public broadcasting is deeply flawed — too bland, too timid, too risk-free, too marginalized by tribalism and the furies of political and ideological pressures. But it remains with community broadcasting the one national programming service ostensibly free of commercials and commercial values. I was present at its creation, have spent most of my adult life in its vineyards, and I still believe it could yet fulfill the promise held out for it by the visionary E.B. White, who over 40 years ago imagined public television as our Chataqua and our Lyceum, addressing itself “to the ideal of excellence, not to the idea of acceptability,” and devoted to restating and clarifying “the social dilemma and the political pickle.”
In some ways public broadcasting has lived up to that potential and in other ways it has not. But our shortfalls have been due largely to the longstanding softness of federal funding and policy support, to continued attacks on our editorial independence, and to the struggle to survive. In this era of deregulation the myths of the marketplace have prospered as our opponents argue that “the private system really can provide all that is necessary” and “the public interest is what the public is interested in.” So as the commercial voice of the megamedia companies has been loud, strident, threatening and clear, the voice of public broadcasting has been a relatively small whisper. Neither Congress nor the FCC has seen fit to provide public media the requisite policy support. By comparison the private, commercial cable, DBS, and telecommunications industries have been able to use their vast resources to influence the policy agenda. As a result their operations have been almost totally deregulated, they have been given substantial public assets at no cost and with few obligations to their licenses, and they have been allowed to integrate vertically and to consolidate ownership across radio, television, and newspapers. Against that mighty armada of power and influence, public broadcasting has had little to work with. It has had no think tanks, no affiliations with academic programs, no resources for generating appropriate research and no means of fostering widespread understanding of its potential and its needs. If this doesn’t change, public broadcasting will continue having its national policy agenda set for it by others with no regard for the mission of public media.
But you can make a huge difference here. I am not asking for uncritical support. Those of us inside the Public Broadcasting System must put our own house in order — show courage, reveal to America the true face of a pluralistic society of many colors, origins, accents, and interests, and hold steady to high standards of excellence, providing a real alternative to the dominant and dumbed-down media. You should keep our feet to the fire, insist from us accountability of the highest order, demand of us that we live up to our potential of public broadcasting. We need your strong support, not as a lapdog, but as a watchdog.
Across the media landscape the health of our democracy is imperiled, buffeted by gale force winds of technological, political, and demographic forces. Without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it. I am no romantic about journalism — we are fallen creatures, too, like everyone else — but I believe more fervently than ever that as journalism goes, so goes democracy. Yet as mergers and buy-outs change both old and new media, bringing a frenzied focus on cost-cutting while fattening the pockets of the new owners and their investors, we are seeing journalism degraded through the layoffs and buyouts of legions of reporters and editors. Advertising Age reports that U.S. media employment has fallen to a 15-year low. The Los Angeles Times alone has experienced a withering series of resignations by editors who refused to turn a red pencil into an editorial scalpel. The new owner of the Tribune Company — the real estate mogul Sam Zell — recently toured the Los Angeles Times newsroom, telling employees that “the challenge is, how do we get somebody 126 years old to get it up? Well,” Zell said “I’m your Viagra.” He told his journalists that he didn’t have an editorial agenda or a perspective “about newspapers’ role as civic institutions. I’m a businessman. All that matters in the end is the bottom line.”
Just this week, he told Wall Street analysts that to save money he intends to eliminate 500 pages of news a week across all of the company’s 12 papers. That could mean some 82 pages a week lost from the Los Angeles Times alone. Reporting will be replaced by what Zell claims his readers want — maps, graphics, lists, rankings and stats. [Sounds to me as if Sam has confused Viagra with Lunesta.]
If you missed it, pull up the perceptive but disheartening eulogy for journalism written as an op-ed earlier this year by former Baltimore Sun journalist and creator of HBO’s “The Wire,” David Simon. Writing in the Washington Post, Simon explained:
Is there a separate elegy to be written for that generation of newspapermen and women who came of age after Vietnam, after the Pentagon Papers and Watergate? For us starry-eyed acolytes of a glorious new church, all of us secular and cynical and dedicated to the notion that though we would still be stained with ink, we were no longer quite wretches? Where is our special requiem?
Bright and shiny we were in the late 1970s, packed into our bursting journalism schools, dog-eared paperbacks of All the President’s Men” and The Powers that Be” atop our Associated Press stylebooks. No business school called to us, no engineering lab, no information-age computer degree - we had seen a future of substance in bylines and column inches. Immortality lay in a five-part series with sidebars in The Tribune, The Sun, The Register, The Post, The Express…
It’s not just about us journalists. Simon goes on to chronicle the effects that cost-cutting and consolidation has had in the business and on the communities where businesses had made so much money, noting that “I did not encounter a sustained period in which anyone endeavored to spend what it would actually cost to make the Baltimore Sun the most essential and deep-thinking and well-read account of life in central Maryland. The people you needed to gather for that kind of storytelling were ushered out the door, buyout after buyout.”
Or pull up the perceptive analysis on the state of newspaper journalism in the recent New Yorker, written by my good friend Eric Alterman: “It is impossible not to wonder what will become of not just news but democracy itself, in a world in which we can no longer depend on newspapers to invest their unmatched resources and professional pride in helping the rest of us to learn, however imperfectly, what we need to know.”
What do we need to know?
Here’s one example:
We needed to know the truth about Iraq. The truth could have spared that country from rack and ruin, saved thousands of American lives and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and freed hundreds of billions of dollars for investment in the American economy and infrastructure. But as Knight-Ridder reporters told us at the time (one of the few organizations that systematically and independently set out to challenge the claims of this Administration, by the way), as my colleagues reported in our documentary on PBS “Buying the War,” as Scott McClellan has now confessed, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed just this week, this Administration — with the complicity of the dominant media - conducted a political propaganda campaign, using erroneous and misleading intelligence to deceive Americans into supporting an unprovoked attack on another country, leading to a war that instead of being “quick and bloodless” as predicted, continues to this day. (At least we now know that a neo-conservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that no one can put it out.)
You couldn’t find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts — self-selected message multipliers of a disastrous foreign policy — who got it all wrong in the first place. It just goes to show: When the bar is low enough, you can never be too wrong.
So the press as a whole remains in denial about its complicity in passing on the government’s unverified claims as facts, while “blocking out any other narrative,” as Danny Schechter wrote this week. That’s the great danger. It’s not simply that the dominant media see the world as the powerful see it; they don’t allow alternative and competing narratives to emerge that would enable us to measure the claims of the official view of reality.
The stars of the dominant media now tell us they did indeed ask tough questions of government during the run-up to the war. But you will go through the transcripts of that period before the war and you will find very few tough questions, and if you come across them, you will discover they are asked of the wrong people. That’s exactly what you could have heard last night on Bill Moyers Journal from John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy (previously Knight Ridder), who took his own colleagues in the dominant media to task for relying on the very sources who cooked the intelligence books in the first place, or who had memorized the White House talking points, and who were prepared to answer every ‘tough’ question with wry evasions and smooth lies that were swallowed quickly by gullible questioners. Sadly, the Fourth Estate became the Fifth Column of democracy, colluding with the powers-that-be in a “culture of deception,” to quote Scott McClellan, that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom — the truth. Danny Schechter reminds us on Huffington Post that after the media’s “all the war, all the time” coverage of this contrived and manufactured war, Vice President Cheney dropped into a post-invasion media dinner to thank journalists for their service. And just the other day, this same Dick Cheney was tossed softball after softball at an event at the National Press Club where he drew laughter when he said “No, he wouldn’t be reading Scott McClellan’s book.”
The blind leading the blind.
What you don’t know can kill you, as well as other people’s children.
What do we need to know?
We need to know we’re in trouble. Napoleon reportedly told his secretary to let him sleep during the night if the news from the front was good, but if the news was bad, he wanted to be awakened immediately so that he could act.
The new from the front is not good. As a journalist I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, employees and homeowners out of luck, out of work, and out of hope.
And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of regulations designed to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? The political marionettes in Washington who dance to the speculators’ tune, and who are well rewarded with campaign contributions and lucrative lobbying jobs when they have delivered the goods.
Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the Web of a system that can effectively limits politics to those who can afford to spend millions of dollars in their race for office, and who know that their careers depend on pleasing their donors while deserting their voters.
Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among other industrialized democracies, the greatest income inequality since the Roaring 20s, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining workers whose jobs have been exported and to programs of health care, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans of scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way up to middle-class security.
And I connect those numbers to campaigns by reactionaries against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of the social contract on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as workers struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, and for affordable housing — while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and execute the laws.
Edward R. Murrow told his generation of journalists: “No one can eliminate prejudices-just recognize them.” Here is my bias: Extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a truly just society. Capitalism will breed great inequality that is destructive unless tempered by an intuition for equality which is the heart of democracy. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people who have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to have a representative government.
Read historian Gordon Woods’ landmark book The Radicalism of the American Revolution. America discovered its greatness, he writes, “by creating a prosperous free society belonging to obscure people with their workaday concerns and their pecuniary pursuits of happiness — a democracy that changes the lives of hitherto neglected and despised masses of common laboring people.”
It’s going the other way now. But you will search the dominant media largely in vain for journalism that tells the truth about the fading of the American Dream. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and broadcast outlets, news organizations are folded into entertainment divisions. The “news hole” in the print media shrinks to make room for ads, celebrities, nonsense, and propaganda, and the news we need to know slips from sight.
It’s up to you to tell the truth about what’s happening to this country we love. It’s up to you to tell the truth about the struggle of ordinary people. It’s up to you to remind us that democracy only works when citizens claim it as their own. It’s up to you to write the story of America that leaves no one out.
And it’s up to you to rekindle the Patriot’s Dream.
Arlo Guthrie, remember:
Living now here but for fortune
Placed by fate’s mysterious schemes…
Who’d believe that we’re the ones asked
To try to rekindle the patriot’s dreams.
Arise sweet destiny, time runs short
All of your patience has heard their retort
Hear us now for alone we can’t seem
To try to rekindle the patriot’s dream.
Can you hear the words being whispered
All along the American stream
Tyrants freed the just are imprisoned
Try to rekindle the patriot’s dreams.
Ah, but perhaps too much is being asked of too few
You and your children with nothing to do
Hear us now for alone we can’t seem
To try to rekindle the patriot’s dreams.
Perhaps too much his being asked of too few — but you’re not alone, Remember? Look around. You’re not alone.
And you know what we need to know.
Go, now, and tell it on the mountains and in the cities. From your Web sites and laptops, tell it. From the street corners and the coffee house, from delis and diners, tell it. From the workplace and the bookstore, tell it. On campus and at the mall, tell it. Tell it at the synagogue, sanctuary, and mosque. Tell it. Tell it where you can, when you can, and while you can. Tell America what we need to know — and we just might rekindle the patriot’s dream.
3. IN THE GREAT TRADITION
(Obama Is A Hawk)
BY
JOHN PILGER
In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it." What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.
The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, "marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history", is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and "image-making", now magnified by "virtual" technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush's case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic bomb.
Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is not possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, "will get you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power". Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an "undivided Jerusalem" as Israel's capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.
His second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May. Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community – which over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US administrations – Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.
Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had "lost Latin America". He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a "vacuum" to be filled. He raised the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia's "right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders". Translated, this means the "right" of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned as the US bringing the "Colombian solution" to Mexico. He did not stop there. "We must press further south as well," he said. Not even Bush has said that.
It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama's difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great power game. The "truly exciting and historic moment in US history" will only occur when the game itself is challenged.
