De Mainstream Pers 12

Hoe is het te verklaren dat tussen voormalige journalisten van het voorheen kritische tijdschrift De Groene Amsterdammer en kritische Amerikaanse en Britse publisten zo’n wereld van verschil bestaat? Hoe komt het dat een huidige hoogbejaarde opiniemaker van De Groene, H.J.A. Hofland, kritiekloos de kwalificatie ‘het vredestichtende Westen’ kan gebruiken, terwijl iedereen die weleens een geschiedenisboek heeft gelezen weet dat ‘the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do,’ om nu eens uit The Clash of Civilizations te citeren, het wereldberoemde boek van Harvard-politicoloog, wijlen Samuel Huntington. Hofland’s even lachwekkende  als misdadige kwalificatie staat onder het absurde kopje: ‘Het machteloze Westen.’ De werkelijkheid staat lijnrecht er tegenover zoals de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse historicus Victor Davis Hanson in zijn boek Why The West Has Won. Nine Landmark Battles in the Brutal History of Western Victory aantoont. Kort maar krachtig samengevat concludeert Hanson dat de blanke cristenen vijf eeuwen lang wonnen vanwege het simpele feit dat het Westen meer geweld kon genereren, meedogenlozer was in zijn streven naar hegemonie, want wij bezaten

the most lethal practice of arms conceivable. Let us hope that we at last understand this legacy. It is a weighty and sometimes ominous heritage that we must neither deny nor feel ashamed about -- but insist that our deadly manner of war serves, rather thans buries, our civilization.

Hofland laat De Groene-lezers ook nog weten dat ‘een groeiend deel van de burgerij een werkelijke democratie wil,’ dat wil zeggen: hij heeft het over het Midden-Oosten, want in zijn visie is het Westen onder aanvoering van de Verenigde Staten al democratisch genoeg. Een opvatting die zelfs niet gedeeld wordt door kritische Congresleden als senaatslid Elizabeth Warren, die onlangs het volgende verklaarde:

We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement - and you know what? So do more than 80% of people. Wall Street will fight us, but the American people are on our side.

We believe in raising the minimum wage - and so do 71% of people.[iv] The Republicans will fight us, but the American people are on our side.

We believe in preventing cuts to Social Security benefits - and so do 87% of Americans. The Washington insiders will fight us, but the American people are on our side.

We believe in rebuilding our infrastructure and in passing legislation to create jobs - and so do 75% of Americans. The Tea Party will fight us, but the American people are on our side…

So here's my message:  Our agenda is America's agenda. The American people know that the system is rigged against them and they want us to level the playing field.  That's our mandate!

http://stanvanhoucke.blogspot.nl/2013/09/the-bankrupt-empire-3.html

Warren roept op de VS een functionerende democratie te maken onder andere door voor de armen en machtelozen op te komen, en door de ontelbare miljarden die naar de permanente oorlogsvoering verdwijnen te besteden aan volksgezondheid, onderwijs, volkshuisvesting, renovatie van de infrastructuur, de kunsten en wetenschappen. Maar daarover zwijgen de polderintellectuelen die liever zien dat, in het jargon van Paul Brill, Washington het belastinggeld verspilt aan 'strafoperaties, tuchtmaatregelen, corrigerende tikken,’ om op die manier ‘weerspannige volkeren’ in het gareel te meppen. Op grond van welk recht Washington dit massale geweld mag inzetten is geen onderwerp bij de Nederlandse opiniemakers. Het is een vanzelfsprekendheid, want in hun manicheisme vertegenwoordigt het Westen het Goede in de wereld en degenen die ons niet willen gehoorzamen het Kwade. Nooit zal het tot Geert Mak doordringen dat zijn bewering als zou de VS ‘decennialang als ordebewaker en politieagent’ zijn opgetreden een gevaarlijke leugen is die nog meer genadeloos geweld legitimeert, terwijl het een vaststaand feit is dat ‘Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold,’ en dat ‘For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice – no wonder people are sceptical no,’ zoals de Britse auteur George Monbiot twee dagen geleden in zijn Guardian-column schreef om vervolgens de realiteit als volgt te verwoorden: 

You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.

Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.

Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice…

Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job.

In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX,mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention – five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.

In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed a law through Congress which forbade international weapons inspectors from taking samples of chemicals in the US and allowed the president to refuse unannounced inspections. In 2002 the Bush government forced the sacking of José Maurício Bustani, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.

The US used millions of gallons of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It also used them during its destruction of Falluja in 2004, then lied about it. The Reagan government helped Saddam Hussein to wage war with Iran in the 1980s while aware that he was using nerve and mustard gas. (The Bush administration then cited this deployment as an excuse to attack Iraq, 15 years later).

Smallpox has been eliminated from the human population, but two nations – the US and Russia – insist on keeping the pathogen in cold storage. They claim their purpose is to develop defences against possible biological weapons attack, but most experts in the field consider this to be nonsense. While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.

In 2001 the New York Times reported that, without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The Pentagon claimed the purpose was defensive but, developed in contravention of international law, it didn't look good. The Bush government also sought to destroy the Biological Weapons Convention as an effective instrument by scuttling negotiations over the verification protocol required to make it work.

Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel – which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention – has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").

It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.

As for the norms of international law, let's remind ourselves where the US stands. It remains outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, after declaring its citizens immune from prosecution. The crime of aggression it committed in Iraq – defined by the Nuremberg tribunal as "the supreme international crime" – goes not just unpunished but also unmentioned by anyone in government. The same applies to most of the subsidiary war crimes US troops committed during the invasion and occupation. Guantánamo Bay raises a finger to any notions of justice between nations.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/09/obama-rogue-state-tramples-every-law#start-of-comments

Geen woord daarover bij Geert Mak die na jarenlang journalist van De Groene Amsterdammer zichzelf nu laat aankondigen als historicus, maar dit niet is. Geen woord daarover bij de voormalige hoofdredacteur van De Groene Amsterdammer Hubert Smeets, ook niet toen hij onlangs als ‘redacteur buitenland’ van de de NRC verontwaardigd schreef dat

Rusland sluit deelname aan een militaire operatie niet uit, zei Poetin, maar dan is een besluit daartoe van de Veiligheidsraad onontbeerlijk. En zo'n besluit is volgens Poetin weer ondenkbaar zonder onomstotelijk bewijs dat de Syrische regering zelf schuldig is aan de gifgasaanval twee weken geleden, en niet van een van de rebellengroepen of Al-Qaeda. 

Kortom, wie wil het laatste woord hebben bij een interventie in Syrie? Niemand minder dan Poetin zelf!

Met uitroepteken, om nog eens extra te benadrukken dat er een verdacht luchtje rond Poetin hangt, en dat deze voormalige communist alleen maar 'het laatste woord wil hebben.' Vooralsnog heeft Poetin inderdaad het laatste woord, maar dit deugt volgens Smeets niet. Het laatste woord moet Obama hebben, want die deugt in zijn ogen wel. Het feit dat Poetin in dit geval het internationaal recht niet wil schenden en 'onomstotelijk bewijs' wil hebben voordat Syrie bestookt wordt met bommen die een nog grotere chaos zullen veroorzaken, zoals wij in Irak, Afghanistan en Libie hebben gezien, is in de optiek van deze mainstream opiniemaker verwerpelijk. Ook het woordgebruik van Smeets is onthullend. Zo beweert hij dat 

De EU, Canada, Mexico, Duitsland, Italie (beide landen zitten kennelijk niet meer in de EU, of misschien werd anders het rijtje te kort. svh) Japan, Zuid-Korea en Australie zullen ook weinig amok maken als het erop aankomt.

Amok dus. Volgens de dikke Van Dale:

'bij de inheemse bewoners van O.- Indie voorkomende toestand van razernij... plotseling onbesuisd gaan optreden.'

Kortom, de politici die zich aan het internationaal recht wensen te houden, geraken dus in een 'toestand van razernij,' dan wel gaan 'onbesuisd optreden' is de impliciete bewering van collega Hubert Smeets. Onze 'redacteur buitenland' merkt voorts op:

Hoe hartstochtelijk zijn de opvattingen van India, Brazilie, Zuid-Afrika, Indonesie en Argentinie?

En let nu op het dédain van de opiniemaker uit de polder over de opkomende regionale machten, een minachting gevoed door een combinatie van onwetendheid, onzekerheid, en onnozelheid:

Als deze landen het uit desinteresse laten bij gemor, dan kan Obama in Sint-Petersburg een kleine publicitaire slag slaan.

Bij wie? Bij Hubert Smeets natuurlijk, die namens de hele wereld spreekt vanuit de optiek van een opiniemakertje uit een klein land, die geen inzicht heeft in de geopolitieke omslag die sinds tenminste 2008 gaande is. Voor Smeets, Brill, Mak, Hofland blijven de Amerikanen boven de wet staan, Washington mag van hen het internationaal recht schenden, want op die manier kunnen ze als ‘ordewaker en politieagent,’ fungeren en als ‘vredestichtende Westen,’ ervoor zorgen dat met ‘corrigerende tikken’ ook ‘weespannige volkeren’ ophouden ‘amok’ te maken, en blijft het verzet tegen de westerse terreur beperkt tot wat  ‘gemor’ in de marge. Alleen al het taalgebruik van deze dwazen van de mainstream is misdadig. Hun steun aan Amerikaans terrorisme is weerzinwekkend, maar blijft desalniettemin door de Nederlandse mainstream media verspreid worden. Tegelijkertijd beseffen ze niet dat wij een in een historische omslagperiode leven, waarin hun koude oorlogsretoriek gebaseerd op een messcherpe scheiding tussen goed en kwaad de geschiedenis alleen maar vertroebelt en volledig gedateerd is. De polder journalistiek is dermate verankerd in het ouderwetse zwart-wit denken dat de mainstream media niet kunnen inzien dat ze aan de verkeerde kant van de streep staan door terreur goed te praten. Wordt het niet de hoogste tijd voor hen te zwijgen? Ze hebben al genoeg chaos veroorzaakt en misdaden op mega-schaal gerechtvaardigd. Smeets, Mak en Brill zijn sinds het einden van de jaren zestig met de conjunctuur meegedreven en van kritisch naar conformistisch afgezakt, van links naar rechts. Van democraten zijn ze regenten geworden, en zijn nu, net als Hofland, de voorspelbare en almaar kleurlozere spreekbuizen van de mainstream. Zij hebben eigenlijk niets meer te zeggen, ze zijn talking heads geworden die over van alles en nog wat een meninkje hebben. Om hun inkomsten veilig te stellen mijden ze elke controverse, elke frictie. Ze zijn zo schaamteloos gecorrumpeerd dat ze nu ook de consequentieloze pleitbezorgers zijn van oorlog met de onvermijdelijke terreur tegen weerloze burgers die onlosmakelijk aan modern oorlogsgeweld kleeft. Zwijg in godsnaam, en als ze toch niet de drang kunnen weerstaan om zich te manifesteren laten ze dit dan pas doen na bijvoorbeeld de bekende Amerikaanse cultuurcriticus Henry A. Giroux te hebben gelezen.  Collega's, lees bijvoorbeeld het volgende van hem, al was het maar om nog eens met het feit te worden geconfronteerd dat niet elk mens te corrumperen is:

The political, economic, and social consequences have done more than destroy any viable vision of a good society. They undermine the modern public's capacity to think critically, celebrate a narcissistic hyperindividualism that borders on the pathological, destroy social protections and promote a massive shift towards a punitive state that criminalizes the behavior of those bearing the hardships imposed by a survival-of-the-fittest society that takes delight in the suffering of others. How else to account for a criminal justice stacked overwhelmingly against poor minorities, a prison system in which "prisoners can be held in solitary confinement for years in small, windowless cells in which they are kept for twenty-three hours of every day,"[5] or a police state that puts handcuffs on a 5-year old and puts him in jail because he violated a dress code by wearing sneakers that were the wrong color.[6] Why does the American public put up with a society in which "the top 1 percent of households owned 35.6 percent of net wealth (net worth) and a whopping 42.4 percent of net financial assets" in 2009, while many young people today represent the "new face of a national homeless population?"[7] American society is awash in a culture of civic illiteracy, cruelty and corruption. For example, major banks such as Barclays and HSBC swindle billions from clients and increase their profit margins by laundering money for terrorist organizations, and no one goes to jail. At the same time, we have the return of debtor prisons for the poor who cannot pay something as trivial as a parking fine. President Obama arbitrarily decides that he can ignore due process and kill American citizens through drone strikes and the American public barely blinks. Civic life collapses into a war zone and yet the dominant media is upset only because it was not invited to witness the golf match between Obama and Tiger Woods.

The celebration of violence in both virtual culture and real life now feed each other. The spectacle of carnage celebrated in movies such as A Good Day to Die Hard is now matched by the deadly violence now playing out in cities such as Chicago and New Orleans. Young people are particularly vulnerable to such violence, with 561 children age 12 and under killed by firearms between 2006 and 2010.

America's Plunge Into Militarized Madness

How does one account for the lack of public outcry over millions of Americans losing their homes because of corrupt banking practices and millions more becoming unemployed because of the lack of an adequate jobs program in the United States, while at the same time stories abound of colossal greed and corruption on Wall Street? [11] For example, in 2009 alone, hedge fund manager David Tepper made approximately 4 billion dollars.[12] As Michael Yates points out: "This income, spent at a rate of $10,000 a day and exclusive of any interest, would last him and his heirs 1,096 years! If we were to suppose that Mr. Tepper worked 2,000 hours in 2009 (fifty weeks at forty hours per week), he took in $2,000,000 per hour and $30,000 a minute."[13] This juxtaposition of robber-baron power and greed is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media in conjunction with the deep suffering and misery now experienced by millions of families, workers, children, jobless public servants and young people. This is especially true of a generation of youth who have become the new precariat[14] - a zero generation relegated to zones of social and economic abandonment and marked by zero jobs, zero future, zero hope and what Zygmunt Bauman has defined as a societal condition which is more "liquid,"less defined, punitive, and, in the end, more death dealing.[15]

Narcissism and unchecked greed have morphed into more than a psychological category that points to a character flaw among a marginal few. Such registers are now symptomatic of a market-driven society in which extremes of violence, militarization, cruelty and inequality are hardly noticed and have become normalized. Avarice and narcissism are not new. What is new is the unprecedented social sanction of the ethos of greed that has emerged since the 1980s.[16] What is also new is that military force and values have become a source of pride rather than alarm in American society. Not only has the war on terror violated a host of civil liberties, it has further sanctioned a military that has assumed a central role in American society, influencing everything from markets and education to popular culture and fashion. President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning about the rise of the military-industrial complex, with its pernicious alignment of the defense industry, the military and political power.[17] What he underestimated was the transition from a militarized economy to a militarized society in which the culture itself was shaped by military power, values and interests. What has become clear in contemporary America is that the organization of civil society for the production of violence is about more than producing militarized technologies and weapons; it is also about producing militarized subjects and a permanent war economy. As Aaron B. O'Connell points outs:

Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower's era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers' constant use of "support our troops" to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like "NCIS," "Homeland"and "Call of Duty," to NBC's shameful and unreal reality show "Stars Earn Stripes," Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas.

The imaginary of war and violence informs every aspect of American society and extends from the celebration of a warrior culture in mainstream media to the use of universities to educate students in the logic of the national security state. Military deployments now protect "free trade" arrangements, provide job programs and drain revenue from public coffers. For instance, Lockheed Martin stands to gain billions of dollars in profits as Washington prepares to buy 2,443 F-35 fighter planes at a cost of $90 billion each from the company. The overall cost of the project for a plane that has been called a "one trillion dollar boondoggle" is expected to cost more "than Australia's entire GDP ($924 billion)."[19] Yet, the American government has no qualms about cutting food programs for the poor, early childhood programs for low-income students and food stamps for those who exist below the poverty line. Such misplaced priorities represent more than a military-industrial complex that is out of control. They also suggest the plunge of American society into the dark abyss of a state that is increasingly punitive, organized around the production of violence and unethical in its policies, priorities and values.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/14814-the-politics-of-disimagination-and-the-pathologies-of-power