Democracy ?

[Guest guest]

http://www.papersplease.org/davis/index.html

 

 

Next Stop: Big Brother

 

Meet Deborah Davis. She's a 50 year-old mother of four who lives and

works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son

is a soldier fighting in Iraq. She leads an ordinary, middle class

life. You probably never would have heard of Deb Davis if it weren't

for her belief in the U.S. Constitution.

Federal Public Transportation Pass

 

Will it come to this? The ID card above is satire, but how soon before

it becomes reality? When honest, law-abiding citizens can't commute to

work on a city bus without a demand for their " papers, " something is

very, very wrong.

 

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to

work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning

for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded

that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong,

declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and

charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID

on demand.

 

On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S.

District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest

of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show

" papers " whenever a cop demands them.

 

Get the facts...

http://www.papersplease.org/davis/index.html

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wittner/wittner16.html

 

The Abuse of 'Democracy'

 

by Lawrence S. Wittner

by Lawrence S. Wittner

 

Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a

link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a

link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly

version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View

a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most

popular articles on our site

 

George W. Bush's recent claim that the U.S. war in Iraq is part of an

attempt to spread " democracy " to the Middle East should not surprise

anyone familiar with the use of that word to camouflage sordid realities.

 

When, in the aftermath of World War II, Stalin had the Soviet Union

gobble up the nations of Eastern Europe, he christened them People's

Democracies – although they were neither democratic nor meant to be.

This debasement of " democracy " and other noble terms such as " freedom "

and " peace " to crude propaganda was undoubtedly what George Orwell had

in mind when he wrote his powerful novel, 1984, which portrayed a

nightmarish society in which words were turned inside out to justify

the policies of cynical and unscrupulous rulers.

 

Unfortunately, however, " democracy " has also been abused throughout

American history. In the nineteenth century, land-hungry politicians,

slaveholders, and businessmen defended the U.S. conquest of new

territory by claiming that it would extend the area of democracy and

freedom. In the twentieth century, President Woodrow Wilson grandly

proclaimed that U.S. participation in World War I would " make the

world safe for democracy. " A few decades later, Washington officials

again sanctified U.S. policy by invoking democracy, for they declared

repeatedly that the U.S. role in the Cold War was designed to defend

the " Free World. " Indeed, it would be hard to find a U.S. war or

expansionist enterprise that was not accompanied by enthusiastic

rhetoric about supporting democracy.

 

In fairness, it should be noted that the U.S. government has

economically and militarily supported many democratic nations. After

World War II, it forged alliances with a good number of them.

 

But it has also provided military and economic assistance to numerous

nations ruled by bloody dictatorships, including Franco's Spain,

Chiang Kai-Shek's China, the Shah's Iran, Somoza's Nicaragua,

Batista's Cuba, Sukarno's Indonesia, the Saud family's Saudi Arabia,

Diem's South Vietnam, Duvalier's Haiti, Marcos's Philippines, the

Colonels' Greece, and many other tyrannies. Indeed, the term " Free

World " originally included Stalin's Russia. And, not so long ago, the

U.S. government had no scruples about providing military assistance to

Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Furthermore, on occasion the U.S. government

has sought to overthrow democratic governments. Three of its success

stories along these lines occurred in Mossadeq's Iran, Arbenz's

Guatemala, and Allende's Chile, where democratic governments were

succeeded by vicious dictatorships. Based upon this record, observers

might well conclude that, for U.S. officials, the defense of democracy

has been less important as a motive than as a marketing device.

 

A good example of " democracy " as a marketing device is its employment

in selling the U.S. program of military and economic aid to Greece in

1947. This program had arisen out of the U.S. government's fear that

the Soviet Union, then at loggerheads with the United States, stood on

the verge of breaking through the Western defense line to the oil-rich

Middle East. To plan President Truman's address to the nation on the

new policy, Francis Russell, the director of the State Department's

Office of Public Affairs, met on February 27 with the State-War-Navy

Coordinating Committee. The meeting records indicate that, when

Russell asked if the speech should emphasize the conflict with the

Soviet Union, he was told that it should avoid " specifically

mentioning Russia. " Then perhaps, said Russell, the administration

" should couch it in terms of [a] new policy of this government to go

to the assistance of free governments everywhere. " This proposal was

greeted enthusiastically, for it would be useful to " relate military

aid to [the] principle of supporting democracy. " Or, as one

participant put it, the " only thing that can sell [the] public " would

be to emphasize the threat to democracy. Ultimately, then, the

president's March 12, 1947 address, which became known as the Truman

Doctrine, did not mention the conflict between two rival nations, the

United States and the Soviet Union, but instead emphasized

" alternative ways of life, " in which the United States was defending

the " free " one.

 

This approach not only misrepresented the motives of U.S. government

officials, but the realities in the two nations targeted for the

military and economic aid. Joseph Jones, who drafted the president's

address, recalled: " That the Greek government was corrupt,

reactionary, inefficient, and indulged in extremist practices was well

known and incontestable; that Turkey . . . had not achieved full

democratic self-government was also patent. " According to the minutes

of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee meeting, participants

agreed that the Greek government was a rotten one, though " not

basically fascist. "

 

Thus, President Bush's recent contention that his war in Iraq is

designed to further the cause of " democracy " is not out of line with

the statements of past U.S. government officials, who have not been

very scrupulous about how they have packaged their policies. Nor is it

out of line with the behavior of other governments, always eager to

put the most attractive face on their ventures.

 

Even so, given the long-term abuse of the word " democracy " as a public

relations device – as well as the collapse of the president's earlier

justifications for the Iraq War – we might be pardoned for viewing his

sudden enthusiasm for democracy with a good deal of skepticism.

 

November 29, 2005

 

Lawrence S. Wittner [send him mail] is Professor of History at the

State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear

Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971

to the Present (Stanford University Press).

 

This article originally appeared on the History News Network.

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wittner/wittner16.html

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/douglas2.html

 

 

 

None Dare Call It Censorship

 

by Jack D. Douglas

by Jack D. Douglas

 

Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a

link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a

link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly

version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View

a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most

popular articles on our site

 

All serious and intelligent journalists today know that the U.S.

government has massive media management brigades to carefully control

what Americans see in the media and, thus, what they are very likely

to believe about things of which they have no direct experience, such

as high-level politics, finance and foreign affairs. They also know

that the government is extremely effective in secretly censoring the

news by using devices such as " embedded reporting " in nations like

Afghanistan and Iraq which the U.S. government invades, occupies, and

governs.

 

Yesterday I saw Morley Safer, one of the real old timers of CBS, once

again bemoaning the almost total loss of freedom in reporting on these

invasions and occupations. As he said, in Vietnam, U.S. and other

national reporters could hop a ride on U.S. or other vehicles to cover

anything they wanted to cover, which led directly to their exposing

the Big Lies of the U.S. military and politicians about what was going

on there. In Iraq and Afghanistan the reporters are " in-bedded " (as I

call it) with the military to prevent such free lancing and the

soaring dangers of guerilla attacks almost totally prevents their even

trying to circumvent the official censorship. Of course, none dare

call it censorship for fear of being fired and ostracized to Alaska,

so he did not use that forbidden word.

 

What they do not normally realize or, at least, ever mention is that

the very concept of " The News " now totally blinds the media people

and, thence, the public about the Big Realities everywhere. We all

know that it is common for " specialists " to focus all their attention

on the trees and, thereby, fail to see the forest. We all know about

" Learned Ignorance, " the way in which even truthful, massive facts can

totally mislead about the important Big Realities. In a society of

immense division and specialization of function and labor, we are

continually bombarded by narrow-minded, even stereotypic thinking

about almost everything. Everyone focuses on the factoids of his

narrow specialty and almost no one puts it together, " draws the lines

to connect the dots, " as people routinely put it today. We know those

things, but the media are overwhelmingly focused at all levels and in

every way on narrow views of realities – today's food section, today's

casualty number in Iraq provided by the U.S. military, today's

promises by Bush, today's endless " human interest " kickers, and on and

on. The best and brightest journalists know all of this and much more

– but they fall victim to all of these problems every day in every

way. The media are set up that way. That's how they function. That's

what they do, over and over again, day after endless day in an eternal

return of Groundhog Day. The brilliant analysts of the news media like

David Altheide have shown us over many decades how the media operate

in these ways and the effects they have on public thinking.

 

Brilliant media strategists and government propagandists have worked

together intimately for decades to exploit these facts about the news

media to control as best they can the thinking of the American public

about the issues vital to the politicians who rule the U.S. By the

1980's they brought all of this together under the direction of people

like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove in the Republican Party and created a

very powerful Media Propaganda Grand Strategy for controlling public

thinking. The Party has daily media-war strategy consultations at the

top, instant response teams, overnight polling and instant response

special ops teams, daily talking points fed to massive brigades of

media operatives worldwide to make the messages come from a vast

number of seemingly independent inputs, and on and on. This Propaganda

War Against the American People makes the Big Lie campaigns of Hitler

and his media specialists look totally amateurish.

 

An obvious example is the Character Assassination Operation they

launch against anyone who becomes or might become an effective critic

of their vital policies in the media, thus undermining their Media War

Strategy. A war hero Congressman who comes out strongly against the

Party line on Iraq is instantly attacked from a great many

" independent " sources using variations on the day's talking points.

The instant polls and quick response focus groups track the public

response to the Assassination News.

 

When the polls for Bush and the Party plunged over their Assassination

attacks on the war hero, the Party talking points immediately reversed

their position on him, calling him a " fine American, " a strategic

retreat to prepare for a counterattack – recoil to regroup, regain

strength and attack in a new way.

 

Less obvious are Party campaigns like " Emphasize the Positive In

Iraq. " Anyone who knows anything about history knows that the crucial

facts about any war tend to be negative facts on a narrow front. The

U.S. and French defeated the British at Yorktown over a relatively few

days when 99% of Americans were not paying any attention at all, but

were going on with their daily, happy lives. (They couldn't get news

for days.) But those few days in that tiny part of America had

profound consequences for Americans and for world history in the past

few centuries. What happened in the U.S. prison at Abu Ghraib was tiny

by comparison with the millions of children going happily to school in

Iraq, but it has already had profound global effects, increasing the

already soaring loathing of the U.S. for its hypocrisy, Big Lies, and

mass killing. The children going to school did not have any comparable

effect. Any newsman senses that. The U.S. media managers try to

deceive them and the public by trying to force them with attacks for

" Bias " to cover the irrelevant Happy News.

 

The powerful censorship effects of this Media War Against the American

Public are most obvious in all of the language used by the American

media to talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, and almost everything else. The

media use only the U.S. government issued words for everything from

the U.S. GHQ in Baghdad – " The Green Zone, " a very Happy Talk Name –

to " Liberation " instead of " Imperialist Invasion and Occupation, "

which is what almost all intelligent people around the world see it as.

 

The same is true about everything. " Inflation, " " Terrorism, "

" Unemployment, " " War Crimes, " " blindness, " and on and on across the

global spectrum is what the Party defines them as, not what they

really are or what we in the public want them to mean. The Big Media

especially speak only in Government Speak, not in truth speak. That is

a fact of overwhelming and obvious importance in understanding the

Media, but it is a fact that none dare ever mention. The Media in

America are controlled more secretly and in some ways more indirectly

than Pravda and Izvestia in the Soviet Disunion Empire (not the name

they used for themselves), but their mission, daily operations and

effects on government are basically the same. The U.S. media have

covered a wider spectrum of the public discourse before invasions and

annihilations and vast war crimes, but they always have fallen in line

and saluted once the firing starts. On the vast majority of crucial

issues in social life, from inflation to taxation and government debt

and medical care, the media " News " stories are little more than

parroting of discussions among government officials and their

" experts. " There is certainly more " opinion " in the op-ed pieces and a

somewhat wider spectrum of opinion, mainly from the Republican wing to

the Democratic wing of the Republicrat Party, than in Soviet Media.

But only a tiny percent of the people, the more intelligent and

educated, read even that narrow spectrum of pre-approved Party

opinion, all of it done in the officially approved Government Speak words.

 

" Good Journalism " as now taught in the best schools of journalism is

now an enemy of the truth in America and, as far as I know, around the

world where similar Parties rule and manage their Media in similar

ways, always making adjustments for the local situations. An " Elite "

newspaper like the New York Times is now almost entirely irrelevant to

understanding what is really going on in our world. The journalists

are not purposefully misleading or lying to people, though some of the

top publishers and editors know exactly what is going on and they go

along to get ahead in the Party or just to make more money by

fattening the corporate " bottom line. " The reporters are generally

telling truths about what is going on in Podunk and in Iraq, just as

Pravda (Russian for truth) did to maintain their credibility. But

those masses of little facts are irrelevant to understanding the

crucial facts and the Big Truths in our world. They are the trees

blinding the public to what is being done to them by The Party. The

Media can be mined for " pearls " of facts, as serious analysts do, but

they cannot be relied on in any serious way to tell you the Truth.

 

The public needs desperately to tune-out on these Party Media, just as

the best and brightest young people are now doing more and more. They

need to think critically and creatively, see how the massive dots go

together in reality. When George Bush or one of his armies of media

hacks makes his umteenth pronuncio by reading from a telepromter Party

Script that is not NEWS – that is a Big Lie. Anyone who covers it as

News is deceiving you, whether he intends to do so or not.

 

People need to swear off on Party Government Speak. Make up your own

names. The GHQ for the U.S. Imperial Invasion Force in Iraq is The

Forbidden City, a huge inner city where Iraqis are not allowed to go

without being totally vetted by the U.S. Government of Iraq. The

Forbidden City was the term used by the Chinese for the Imperial

Palace in Peking. The U.S. Forbidden City is just like that.

 

Free men and women think freely. They do not submit to Party Speak, a

crucial fact of life George Orwell made all intelligent people aware

of fifty years ago. Only those who think freely can be free. Those who

think as the Party dictates through its Media are Party slaves, not

free people.

 

November 29, 2005

 

Jack D. Douglas [send him mail] is a retired professor of sociology

from the University of California at San Diego. He has published

widely on all major aspects of human beings, most notably The Myth of

the Welfare State.

 

2005 © LewRockwell.com

 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/douglas2.html