[Peace-discuss] If you think the BBC does better...

Thu Jan 24 01:50:31 CST 2008

Only slightly off topic: 

  Q. Which foreign governments are monitoring US elections to be sure they're fair?
  A. Uhhhhh...

"John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:

Plus ca change, plus que c'est la meme chose, n'est-ce pas?

At 12:59 AM 1/24/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> January 23, 2008
> The Danse Macabre Of Us-Style Democracy
> By John Pilger
>
>The former president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere once asked, "Why haven't 
>we all got a vote in the US election? Surely everyone with a TV set has 
>earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four 
>years." Having reported four presidential election campaigns, from the 
>Kennedys to Nixon, Carter to Reagan, with their Zeppelins of platitudes, 
>robotic followers and rictal wives, I can sympathise. But what difference 
>would the vote make? Of the presidential candidates I have interviewed, 
>only George C Wallace, governor of Alabama, spoke the truth. "There's not 
>a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and Republicans," he 
>said. And he was shot.
>
>What struck me, living and working in the United States, was that 
>presidential campaigns were a parody, entertaining and often grotesque. 
>They are a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, designed 
>to camouflage a venal system based on money power, human division and a 
>culture of permanent war.
>
>Travelling with Robert Kennedy in 1968 was eye-opening for me. To 
>audiences of the poor, Kennedy would present himself as a saviour. The 
>words "change" and "hope" were used relentlessly and cynically. For 
>audiences of fearful whites, he would use racist codes, such as "law and 
>order". With those opposed to the invasion of Vietnam, he would attack 
>"putting American boys in the line of fire", but never say when he would 
>withdraw them. That year (after Kennedy was assassinated), Richard Nixon 
>used a version of the same, malleable speech to win the presidency. 
>Thereafter, it was used successfully by Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill 
>Clinton and the two Bushes. Carter promised a foreign policy based on 
>"human rights" - and practised the very opposite. Reagan's "freedom 
>agenda" was a bloodbath in central America. Clinton "solemnly pledged" 
>universal health care and tore down the last safety net of the Depression.
>
>Nothing has changed. Barack Obama is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb 
>Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. John McCain's 
>one distinction is that he has personally bombed a country. They all 
>believe the US is not subject to the rules of human behaviour, because it 
>is "a city upon a hill", regardless that most of humanity sees it as a 
>monumental bully which, since 1945, has overthrown 50 governments, many of 
>them democracies, and bombed 30 nations, destroying millions of lives.
>
>If you wonder why this holocaust is not an "issue" in the current 
>campaign, you might ask the BBC, which is responsible for reporting the 
>campaign to much of the world, or better still Justin Webb, the BBC's 
>North America editor. In a Radio 4 series last year, Webb displayed the 
>kind of sycophancy that evokes the 1930s appeaser Geoffrey Dawson, then 
>editor of the London Times. Condoleezza Rice cannot be too mendacious for 
>Webb. According to Rice, the US is "supporting the democratic aspirations 
>of all people". For Webb, who believes American patriotism "creates a 
>feeling of happiness and solidity", the crimes committed in the name of 
>this patriotism, such as support for war and injustice in the Middle East 
>for the past 25 years, and in Latin America, are irrelevant. Indeed, those 
>who resist such an epic assault on democracy are guilty of 
>"anti-Americanism", says Webb, apparently unaware of the totalitarian 
>origins of this term of abuse. Journalists in Nazi Berlin would damn 
>critics of the Reich as "anti-German".
>
>Moreover, his treacle about the "ideals" and "core values" that make up 
>America's sanctified "set of ideas about human conduct" denies us a true 
>sense of the destruction of American democracy: the dismantling of the 
>Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and separation of powers. Here is Webb on 
>the campaign trail: "[This] is not about mass politics. It is a 
>celebration of the one-to-one relationship between an individual American 
>and his or her putative commander-in-chief." He calls this "dizzying". And 
>Webb on Bush: "Let us not forget that while the candidates win, lose, win 
>again . . . there is a world to be run and President Bush is still running 
>it." The emphasis in the BBC text actually links to the White House website.
>
>None of this drivel is journalism. It is anti-journalism, worthy of a 
>minor courtier of a great power. Webb is not exceptional. His boss Helen 
>Boaden, director of BBC News, sent this reply to a viewer who had 
>protested the prevalence of propaganda as the basis of news: "It is simply 
>a fact that Bush has tried to export democracy [to Iraq] and that this has 
>been troublesome."
>
>And her source for this "fact"? Quotations from Bush and Blair saying it 
>is a fact.
>
>http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2008-01/23pilger.cfm

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