John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NEIL MACDONALD IN CBC NEWS

 

“If newspaper health is a measure of democracy, our democracy is in decline: Neil Macdonald

“Newsrooms would mount costly, complex investigations that took teams of reporters out of play for months”

 

The costs of doing the classic newspaper journalistic operations – such investigative reporting and maintaining foreign correspondents – have risen greatly while newspapers’ sources of revenue have declined seriously.

It’s a new set of conditions created in large part by the Internet, where new kinds of businesses have taken the revenue that once belonged to newspapers – the best example being classified advertising.

And I really don’t think there’s any going back. Changing technology is always like that. It destroys old ways of doing things, forever. It’s Joseph Schumpeter’s principle of the “creative destruction of capitalism” writ large.

Technological advance always brings change to economic, social, and political conditions in any society – e.g., the original invention of the printing press itself went on to create books accessible to everyone (not a favorable development to authorities of the time), to become a force for public education, and to create newspapers plus a whole lot more.

I think it fair to say that the traditional newspaper represents now a kind of dead-end business model. It is likely to disappear as the existing generation of devoted users passes.

I do not necessarily agree with the statement about the press and its meaning for democracy. Journalists and editors have always had a somewhat exaggerated notion of their central importance. And newspapers, on the whole, for a couple of centuries, have no record of serving as genuine tribunes of the people against power.

Listening to people who are out to earn a living pat themselves on the back with distinctions such as serving as the nation’s “fourth estate” does sometimes reach vomit-inducing levels.

Newspapers have instead supported power, remembering corporations need to keep on the good side of government as well as on the good side of other powerful private establishment interests, and they have often misrepresented the reality of events to people. Just as in wartime, when we know newspapers typically become blatant propaganda outlets for the cause. It’s only somewhat less the case in peaceful times.

And who is it that has been at the very center of the explosive controversy over “fake news” in recent years, if not traditional newspapers and broadcasters? A lot of that controversy is artificially ginned up and reflects the power of the Internet to communicate even paranoia, but a lot of it is genuine and reflects the long history of the traditional press serving power while pretending to serve the people.

Of course, the same charges can be made against many, or most, of the people making charges against the traditional press. New “news” sources on the Internet are just as likely to be biased in their own fashion and to be catering to various moneyed or special interests as the old ones. There are very few heroic Assange or Manning figures out there. Almost none. Careers are not made that way.

Yes, a democracy, in theory, needs to be informed, however, first, I think it important to acknowledge that we, in fact, have no actual democracies in the West. And second, newspapers, generally have not played much of a role in trying to keep people informed.

Our “democracies” are all variations on a theme of making citizens believe they are central and important, when, in fact, we are still ruled by the power of wealth, much as France was in 1780. It’s all subtly diffused and disguised now. Realities are not so crudely obvious as they once were.

We have an entertaining Theater of Democracy with continuous-run performances in the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Canada, and other places.

Only big sources of money and special interest lobbies in the West support all significant political parties, not ordinary people, and they want and receive a return on their investment.

Second, newspapers have never really performed the pure function of keeping citizens informed. Never. Oh, yes, they have with sports scores or stock prices or travel information but not with the intimate workings of government and its agencies or in international affairs. The sports, weather, and travel stuff builds newspaper credibility in readers, but readers mostly have no way to judge what they are being given on the important topics. At least, not until many years later when the information becomes useless, being degraded almost as by entropy.

There are likely few newspapers in America today which do not agree about what a “tragedy” the Vietnam War was, but that is not what any of them said fifty-five years ago, when it counted, when three million Vietnamese faced extermination in a crusade against communism just as intense and bloody as the battle between Catholics and Protestants in the 16^th and 17th centuries. In effect, newspapers are able to publish elaborate retractions of all the fraudulent stories of years ago and go on pretending they are on the side of the angels

The New York Times, for example, which enjoys a better, if truly undeserved, reputation than most, plays that game endlessly. It is a sickening exercise if you observe it over time. Indeed, the years-later stories on terrible, avoidable events, such as the Vietnam War or CIA coups, enable The Times to titillate readers with “revelations,” in effect, bolstering a reputation for investigation and truth that it never deserved. It’s called, by an earlier generation, having your cake and eating it, too.

Newspapers and broadcasters have always served as servants for the powerful and wealthy and as mouthpieces for various power-establishment factions, including government itself.

The entire reason we had all those newspaper empires and barons, people such as Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch or William Randolph Hearst in the past, was because they were men who wanted to wield power without being elected, to influence opinion, both among citizens and inside government. That has been the aim of every single large news empire, without exception.

Also, the whole concept of freedom of the press has always been a bit of an illusion. It was best summed by the wag who said, “If you want a free press, you must own one.”

Not only is the old newspaper model almost dead, so is the model for our Western “free societies.” The term is starting to sound very dated and stale. The amount of repressive legislation, government spying, secrecy, false official investigations, and ignoring of what we regarded as basic rights has grown at an alarming rate, as have the number of, and resources for, secret agencies and police forces of every description.

Technology greatly assists spying and police effort, just as it’s destroying traditional newspapers. The Stasi never dreamed of such information systems as we have now in the West. Every time you order something from Amazon or do something on Facebook or look something up in Wikipedia or use Google to find something, you are automatically feeding government and huge private corporations information about yourself, quite intimate information.

Our governments, for the most part, have not prevented this with legislation, for obvious reasons.

It’s the same thing if you order your blood or your DNA analyzed for health purposes or for some information about your genetic origins or have your family history traced from a service. All the security services receive anything worth having. Do an on-line financial transaction? The same thing.

The public seems content with this form of voluntary confession to the authorities and corporations, even though it is intrusive and revealing beyond all precedents. It actually resembles the model of the Catholic Church with weekly confession, except that now the confessions are recorded and correlated by supercomputers. The Church was undoubtedly on to something important about human psychology ages ago, but then, at that time, it, in fact, represented the kind of power and privilege we are talking about.

Big Brother no longer needs Room 101 or the Thought Police in jackboots with truncheons, for the most part, although in special cases of urgency, these are very much still used, as at Guantanamo or the other CIA “black sites” in the international torture gulag.

I believe that this trend is only going to continue. The needs of a powerful world empire such as that of the United States drive us in that direction, absolutely. Remember, abroad, the United States doesn’t even pretend to the niceties of rights or basic principles like rule of law. We have CIA torture gulags, we have assassinations in wholesale numbers, we have threats and pressures against every government and international agency that even moderately opposes American policy. We have coups and wars and bombings. Why would anyone expect that such measures will not become incorporated into domestic society by the people so used to them?

The government of the United States does things weekly that it has no interest in most people ever knowing anything about. And it has become almost paranoid about opponents to its policies, seeking them out and even hunting them down.

We are, I believe, entering a kind of brave new world which few of us could have anticipated, something immensely more sophisticated and impersonal and efficient than Orwell’s 1984, a story actually intended to satirize Stalin’s Soviet Union.

All the traditional views and understandings of society, developed over the past couple of centuries, are likely going to pass. I’m sure, eventually, so are such traditional and basic things as the decision about having children. It will no longer be up to the individuals at some point in the not too distant future in Western countries.

I’m not sure what’s going to be put in place of traditional views, but it will be far cry from things like Bills or Charters of Rights, Freedom of Information, the importance of individuals (at least, ones who are not wealthy), and an informed electorate.

It is not a bright outlook, but I think there is no avoiding the direction of things, short of such cataclysms as great war or economic collapse, but even such fabric-of-society-destroying events would only put things off for a while. The forces have been set loose on the world. Pandora’s box has been opened.

 

 

 

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY AMOL RAJAN IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

I just want to know why Amol Rajan bothers to write when he has nothing to say?

Seems like the ultimate expression of vanity to me.

Corbyn has only held the job of leader a short time, yet here is a man saying he isn’t working out.

And during that short time, he has been under constant attack about every petty detail down to what he wears on his feet.

This is an intelligent, thoughtful, and decent man.

Is there then no longer a place in British politics for such a man?

If that is the case, then I think Britain has a lot more to worry about than whether Corbyn wears the right shoes.

The Independent seems to work night and day to tear a good man down.

I guess it isn’t just the Rupert Murdochs of this world with whom we need be concerned over the very future of democracy.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

 

Please, yet another “conspiracy theories” put-down.

You’ve done at least three of them in the last few weeks, almost as plentiful as attacks and put-downs on Jeremy Corbyn.

This kind of article is just about as brainless as the conspiracy mutterings of a poor homeless schizophrenic.

Thoughtful people do not need preaching to on this subject.

The truth is we live in a civilization in which conspiracies – genuine ones – are a normal part of our landscape.

And why is that?

Because where great wealth and power are at risk – as they frequently are in our western world of unprecedented affluence – there is the constant attraction to manipulate events to remove the risk, thus conspiracies.

In recent decades, we so many events which have been secretly manipulated, thus rendering them conspiratorial in nature, it seems to me laughable when someone publishes a piece such this one.

For example, the United States overthrew governments secretly in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, and kept a huge secret operation against Castro going for decades, a genuine secret terrorist operation which made bin Laden’s mountain redoubt resemble a boy scout camp. Troops were trained, weapons distributed, assassins launched, bombings undertaken (including one Cuban airliner), and immense resources squandered on America’s trying to get its own way.

The genuine holocaust of America’s invasion of Vietnam (3 million left dead there) was launched with a staged provocation called the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Later secret bombings and surreptitious incursions into peaceful Cambodia resulted in the fall of a neutral government and gave the world “the killing fields,” and ultimately the deaths of another million people.

The fall of Sukarno in Indonesia – an event manipulated by the CIA – resulted in a massive terror campaign. Half a million people were hacked to death as though in a spontaneous uprising and had their bodies thrown into rivers. The American State Department was burning the telephone wires into the night submitting lists of names of “communists” it regarded as suitable for such treatment.

The Soviet downing of Korean Air lines 107 was held up as an example of Soviet brutality, but what we learned later from Sy Hersh, the world’s best investigative reporter, was that the plane was on a secret mission for the CIA to test Soviet air defences.

America has launched dozens of lesser coups, interventions, and minor invasions in the last fifty years. The invasion of Panama, on the pretext of drugs, removed a disliked leader. Recent manipulations in Venezuela have destabilized that government. The first Gulf War was just such an operation with America’s ambassador in Iraq having told Saddam the U.S. had no interest in what he did in Kuwait, then using his minor invasion as a pretext for a massive war and horrible aftermath.

How about the supply of poison gas to Saddam during the long (American manipulated) Iraq-Iran War? It was used to kill thousands of Iranian soldiers, and no war crimes accusations were made.

Look at events in Syria. What a completely deceitful destruction just to topple a leader America and Israel hate. And to this day, there’s no honesty about what has gone on, the only truths we’re receiving coming out of Russia’s government-invited intervention.

Look at the mess made of Libya.

Look at the mess made of Iraq, once the Mideast’s most progressive and economically capable state. How was that miracle of destruction accomplished? A river of lies and manipulations about “weapons of mass destruction,” false papers about purchases of yellowcake, and even the CIA career of an honest Republican figure’s wife ended over his refusal to go along with the lies of Bush and Cheney.

The Dr. Kelly incident, about which we’ve never been told the truth. Kelly knew where the bodies were buried in the business of weapons – including importantly what happened to South Africa’s fissile stockpile after the fall of the apartheid government. Did it go to Israel? Dr. Kelly’s handedness made completely implausible the published version of his death.

The recent Sarin poison gas incidents in Syria are completely fraudulent. The gas was used on some poor people, but it was not used by Assad’s army, it was used by the ISIS or al-Nusrah terrorists up until now secretly supported by America. It was to provide a pretext for an American air assault – thus creating another Libya – but the Russians foiled the plot.

Israel’s entire modern history is riddled with such activity. It is not for nothing that Mossad’s motto is, “By way of deception, thou shalt do war.” The Lavon Affair. The bombing of the King David Hotel. The assassination of Count Bernadotte. The manipulation of events to create the 1967 War which Israel knew it could win while grabbing Palestinian and other land they coveted. The long air assault on the USS Liberty. America’s refusal to come to the ship’s aid. Israel’s lame stuff about a mistake. Secret assistance to ISIS and al Nusrah.

One could continue writing along these lines for a long time, so the article and its predecessors are nothing but propaganda to discredit those with genuine doubts and concerns.

Oh, and we shouldn’t forget the journalism practices of the newspapers belonging to David Cameron’s country-house buddy, Rupert Murdoch. Corruption and lies and manipulation on quite a grand scale, and likely never to be all sorted out.

 

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Mark Steel is just a second-rate propagandist.

Of course, China has its flaws, and some serious ones.

But perspective is everything.

After all, let’s not forget that Britain did help mightily in killing about a million people in Iraq, the creation of a couple of million miserable refugees, and the destruction of large parts of an advanced society for generations.

And Britain happily supports America’s horror in Syria, the letting-loose of tens of thousands of well-equipped cutthroats in an effort to destroy a beautiful land.

I haven’t heard any public cries from Downing Street over the Saudi terror campaign in Yemen, including the use of cluster bombs on civilians. Perhaps I missed something?

No, I don’t think I did. There was nothing either about all the Saudi beheadings and a sentence of crucifixion either. But there was a huge secret arms sale and a project for building prisons in one of the world’s great tyrannies.

Please, stuff like this of Mr. Steel’s is just clap-trap. I doubt very much he raised his voice on such other atrocities as Israel’s murderous abuse of several million Palestinians for half a century. This remains the world’s single greatest example of a complete squashing of human rights and decency: the Palestinians have no votes, no rights, no future, and they can’t even enjoy their homes and farms with any security. Again, that is a matter about which we never hear from good old David or Mr. Steel for that matter.

After all, for David to do so, even slightly, would seriously harm relations with Rupert Murdoch, a man, by the way, whose British publishing empire was built in part on hacking the intimate telephone conversations of hundreds of unfortunate people, including victims of violent crime. To say nothing of casting a pall over those delightful country weekends with Rupert’s designated creature in Britain, red-haired bombshell Rebekah Brooks

Interesting, despite China’s shortcomings in human rights, it has pretty well lived in peace with its neighbors for its entire modern existence.

That certainly cannot be said of the United States or its colony in the Middle East, the two most dangerous states in the modern world, both of whom get David’s unlimited support and affection.

______________________

America has given us nothing but wars and coups and “interventions” since the end of the Second World War. The toll of their attempts to control the planet, including such glorious episodes as the Vietnam War, has been literally as many people killed – mostly civilian, as is the case in all modern war – as were killed in the Holocaust.

Three million victims just in Vietnam, another million in Iraq, a million in Cambodia, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Chile, Guatemala, and on and on.

Israel, America’s colony in the Middle East, has behaved as a miniature replica of the mother country. It has done nothing but kill and suppress people for 65 years, having invaded every neighbor that it has, many of them two or three times.

I don’t see how anyone can write what Mark Steel writes without being entirely ignorant of modern history or deliberately ignoring it. In either case, the result is not worth publishing.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Sorry, David, but I do think Jeremy Corbyn likely understands exactly what ISIS represents.

It really is you, David, who pretends not to understand.

After all, you support American policy in the region, don’t you, David, even though, if I may be permitted to say, you do so with just a trifle too much groveling?

American policy is about using filth like ISIS and al Qaeda to destroy the beautiful land of Syria. America helped round up this collection of human trash from many places, including Benghazi, and along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, it armed, trained, and supported them in their murderous rampage.

Of course, the Americans do not say that openly, David, but anyone who does just a little thinking can see the pattern. Those who do not see it, choose not to see it.

The U.S. drops bombs in the desert and on Syrian infrastructure, pretending to attack ISIS. The bombing of so-called terrorists you want to do, David, is clearly of the “Me too, Mr. Obama, Sir!” kind.

You really are so transparent, David, quite an ineffective puff-ball of a Prime Minister trying to sound stern and heroic. But then you have no one to answer to, do you, with a “majority” government representing 35% of British voters? Not your fault, is it, that Britain’s election system has such a built-in democratic deficit?

By all accounts, that horrible tyrant Assad is somehow strangely supported by a substantial majority of Syrians owing to his policies of secularism and protection of religious minorities. Then there’s the fact that he accepted at least a million refugees fleeing the American-British invasion of Iraq which killed about a million people, but he’s not fooling you, is he, David? He’s a heartless tyrant who must go. After all, he didn’t listen to you about getting out of town.

I’m just waiting to see how you’ll wiggle your little trotters and oink (sorry for the reference, David, but I couldn’t resist) after Putin’s air force has sent the American-organized cutthroats running for home. There are already reports of some fleeing. Maybe you’ll take them in, David? But I understand you’re not that fond of refugees.

Putin just proves what amazing things can happen when you actually aim for the enemy you claim you are aiming at. In their first 60 sorties, Putin’s boys did more damage to ISIS than America’s claimed 6,000 or so. But then that could be because Americans spend so much effort bombing things like hospitals, or don’t you agree, David?

David, there is one thing I wish you’d clear up for all us lowly, ordinary citizens. What do Rebekah and Rupert think about ISIS? Surely, you discuss the subject on your country weekends?

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

No wonder The Guardian keeps running the smarmy words of the world’s greatest a$$hole, Tony Blair, against Corbyn. You really are trying to sink his candidacy.

By the way, it really is unfair for newspapers to make political recommendations.

It’s not part of legitimate journalism, although I grant it has a long tradition.

____________________________

Israel is reported as not happy about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn.

And it has nothing to do with “anti-Semitism,” although without a doubt that now-tired canard will be used, or suggested subtly, yet again.

It has really to do with Corbyn’s independence of mind. And I would suggest The Guardian shares this view.

Right now, much of Europe marches in lockstep with America, and America’s foreign policy allows for almost no independence of mind, especially when places like the Mideast are involved.

America’s campaign contribution system – a disgrace which has close to eliminated effective democracy in the country – is at the root of the problem.

The American Lobby for Israel – not a figment of anyone’s fetid imagination but a hard reality documented by scholarly work – is the most well-organized and financed in the country, and Congressmen and Senators listen when it speaks.

Not only are substantial contributions at risk in opposing them, but there is always the threat of the major news sources going negative on such opponents in their local constituencies. Owing to unlimited corporate mergers, now only a half dozen mega-corporations control most of what Americans read and see on television. They are all friends of Israel if you judge by their words. The situation is very much like the Rupert Murdoch situation in Britain, only more so.

That is why freshmen Congressmen all dutifully attend the free trips for “information” Israel provides after every election. Declining to go is risky indeed, for you will be marked down as “not being a friend of Israel.”

That is why the American Congress today listens to the raging nonsense of Netanyahu’s violent government against their own elected President over an important international agreement. It is a scandal almost beyond describing for the government of the world’s greatest power to behave in this way.

And that is why Jeremy Corbyn can expect some rough treatment ahead. There is no allowance for independence of mind or, for that matter, ethical standards.

Tony Blair, as most readers know, has zero independence of mind, and he appears to have been born and educated without any ethical compass. He’s proved that scores of times. And being so had its rewards: amongst other prizes that tumbled into his lap after he helped kill a million Iraqis was the Israel Peace Prize, a one million dollar thank you for a job well done.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TELEGRAPH

You’ve no basis for saying this.

I’ve seen nothing that would warrant Putin being characterized this way.

He is not the kind of democratic spirit we tend to have in the West, but he is intelligent and capable, and he is the kind of leader a huge nation struggling to get its footing needs.

No democratic nation in the West is without an early history of strongmen, aristocrats, or kings. Indeed, today, those of great wealth still exercise inordinate power in our so-called democratic states.

Just look at the example of Rupert Murdoch, a man whose enterprises appear to have broken every British tradition of civility, privacy, and equality before the law.

But then the True Blue Right Wingers of Telegraph’s editorial staff don’t need proof to spout about those they don’t like, do they?

The truth is we have one absolutely proven gangster state in the world, and that is Israel.

It steals from others whatever it wants.

It kills anyone it feels like killing.

It holds more than 4 million people in seemingly endless bondage.

It threatens the security of every state within a thousand miles of its border, whatever that happens to be on a particular day.

Its leader is so flagrant a liar that two heads of major states were overheard saying so.

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Accountability in news?

You must be kidding.

Rupert Murdoch’s key to success in all his news operations was to understand what an utterly false and sentimental idea that has become and to offer the globs of raw meat that attracts viewers and readers.

Fox News is the perfect example. It contains almost no genuine news. It frequently plays the role of obvious propaganda outlet. It has no accountability. And it laughs at the ideas of scrupulousness and ethics.

Even though News of the World and Fox are the absolute trash pits of the news world, respectable papers like the Globe and Mail are not so far removed from them as your editors would like to think.

You play games with readers all the time, from the selection of pictures used to the titling of stories.

And the editorials on the editorial page have become a disgrace of hypocrisy and half-baked notions.

Your pretensions in political endorsements are laughable, and you should be ashamed of even still carrying on that hack tradition intended to buy you favor from politicians.

That grand old lady of pomposity, The New York Times, has a long record of dishonesty and favortism. On more than one occasion, it has kept CIA plants working in its newsroom, writing deliberately manipulated stuff, and gone after certain people in its pages based on secret tips from that most disreputable of all police agencies, the FBI. On many matters, e.g. Israeli affairs, it makes no pretense of showing fairness in its stories. It also pompously pretends to endorse things only serving its own interests.

The late I.F. Stone, an extraordinary and genuine journalist, warned people again and again that you must read between the lines and that you must compare what other sources say.

Unfortunately, a good part of the population only has the patience, and perhaps the understanding, to absorb headlines and sound bites. Your industry, and it is an industry not a cause, knows that and continues to play on it.

The truth is that most journalists are either heavily prejudiced or bent or not very competent or lazy. Stories are often rewritten press releases. The idea of being “embedded” with the military is utterly dishonest and contemptible.

The ideal of the journalist dedicated to the truth almost does not exist. A few people in my lifetime – like the late I.F. Stone, Semour Hersh, Anthony Summers, Robert Fisk, and a few others – did or do what journalists are supposed to do.