media

the victim of disinformation

antarchi — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:29:31 -0600

I have been accused of relying on sources which are funded by the CIA - in particular, the reports by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Institute for Peace (among about another 30 funding organisations). So the following was my justification for reading their reports, and even believing some parts of them. The particular article in question was How the Georgian War Began.

For those readers who are completely baffled as to why NED and USIP should be seen as CIA instruments, I recommend The Battle for Global Civil Society and Sourcewatch's article on the NED. My personal position on this aspect is that the NED / CIA / US government has undoubtedly poured millions into 'civil society' organisations (and civil society organisations) around the world in the pursuance of its own dirty goals. And that, in general, this strategy has been successful (in their terms). Organisations such as IWPR are almost certainly unwittingly carrying out the agenda of the US government while pursuing their own agenda; but individual journalists writing for the organisation are also carrying out their own agenda - which I would argue is still significantly different.

* * *

So should we refrain from reading the reports of organisations which are funded partly through dirty money? I think most definitely not, for the following reasons:

1. The funding of civil society by the CIA - and others - is a general strategy, which means that there is room for certain initiatives not going 'as planned'. There has to be that slack, because the strategy wouldn't work if those implementing it on the ground thought that they were (merely) carrying out the CIA's agenda. Furthermore, with the amount of money being poured in and the number of initiatives being funded, plus the fact that the chain between the piper and the CIA-calling-the-tune is pretty long it's actually very difficult - impossible - for them to make sure that every local journalist who is hired is 'on message'. Not to mention the fact that the CIA - if it is involved in a particular organisation - is just one of many other funders, all of whom have their own slightly differing agenda.

To use another analogy: the CIA poured millions into the mujahideen. That was a 'good strategy' (in the short term - in terms of defeating the Soviet Union). But even in the short term, they couldn't control every individual mujahid: the reach is simply too long. The strategy worked as a whole, but it didn't depend on having total control of the whole operation (it couldn't depend on that). In the end of course, they lost control completely - and then you get blowback. I suspect the same may happen / may have happened already with much of the funding of civil society.

2. The fact that I believe there are numerous chinks in the system - rogue organisations, rogue journalists and rogue mujahideen - plus the fact that getting information out of the region is pretty difficult, plus the fact that I strongly believe we should be reading local reports and local analyses rather than just relying on international commentators - all mean that I consult publications / journalists from the region. But as a result of the economic situation in the region as a whole, these are in the vast majority of cases funded by the US or other governments, or by international organisations.

It should be said that the quality of analysis and the range of opinions is still far higher in these 'CIA-funded organs' than what you find in state sponsored publications (which also have their own agenda!). There are numerous examples - mostly in Russian - of articles written with western funding that contradict the CIA line. Here are just two English language ones from IWPR itself, both published in the past 10 days: Abkhaz open 'second front' and Eyewitness: Carnage in Tskhinvali

3. As far as agendas go — these are surely the possession of every individual, not to mention every media owner / editor. Which is why in general I think that articles should be allowed to stand on their own merits. Of course authors have their own position and bias, and of course to a certain extent (and in most cases) this 'fits' with what the CIA or any other funder wants to hear. But as long as we take this into account; as long as we understand why the author is saying whatever he or she is saying, and we consult reports from both sides in the conflict, I would have thought that the argumentation (which comes from the heart, not the CIA) and any additional information would only be a valuable contribution. At the very least, in the case of this article, in order to hear the best case for the side that we (on the left) are accusing.

In general, it is not hard to be aware of the 'agenda' of most journalists in this region — just as it is straightforward to understand the 'agenda' of a Guardian journalist, or indeed a journalist on a left website or publication. Knowing that, we simply need to be careful, in reading any article at all, to look out for weak arguments, unfounded claims, bias, or any other limitations imposed by editors or funders.

It's also worth remembering that in this region in particular, people became expert at doing their own thing while outwardly fitting the straitjacket of the state ideology. In the same way, most journalists and ngos now funded by western organisations are well aware of the agenda of the funders, and they mostly manage to milk the organisations while getting on with whatever they think is important. So I genuinely believe that these writers are writing about what they see — and I find that interesting, even if their vision is likely to be distorted both by their own prejudices and connection with the conflict and — to a lesser extent — by what they know they are permitted to write within the IWPR framework. Find me a writer who is completely free of prejudice, even on the left.

4. The content of the article in question fits well with what I have been observing myself over the past few years and it seems to me to raise a number of points that have not been discussed on the left at all. Having spent quite a lot of time in the region / studying the region, I do admit to being frustrated by the left's failure to recognise what I see as Russia's extremely underhand and provocative role in keeping these conflicts on the boil, and using them for its own interests. That is NOT to say I excuse Georgia, nor to say that I deny the contribution of NATO / the US, which has been immense. But I see Russia as much more of a dangerous and provocative agent than has been acknowledged in left commentaries. A simple glance at the local picture would show this up.

Most of the claims made in the article in question I had already read in different publications — including before the conflict started — or heard from people in the region. I would be interested to hear about specific claims for which there is evidence of their falsehood.

5. There is barely a Georgian on this planet who would not today write an article that could happily be funded by the CIA: the nation is practically united in its hatred of Russia. But need it mean, just because the CIA is also united in its hatred of Russia, that no articles by Georgians are worth reading? Or do they become not worth reading as soon as the CIA pays for them?

This is of course not quite what my accusants are saying , but given the financial situation at the moment in Georgia, and given the fact that you cannot be a Georgian and not 'serve the CIA's agenda' — one is almost forced to that conclusion. That leaves us in the position of having almost no sources who are actually living this conflict. I don't think that is the way to understand its complex and multi-faceted nature - and I strongly believe that the majority of reporting on the left has suffered as a result.

6. Finally: we do not refuse to read a single article in the Guardian simply because the Scott Foundation has an agenda which is to make as much money as possible; and we do not stop believing every statement made on the BBC, despite the fact that this is a state institution strongly controlled by the government. Why then should we apply different standards to media organisations in other countries, where the funding is far more difficult to come by and the possibilities of finding out for ourselves are far more limited? Media organisations are not completely monolithic structures and individual journalists can have something interesting - and credible - to say even within the limiting framework of an organisation funded with a particular purpose.

The standards are not even applied universally to media channels in the region: the very few reports by non-western journalists that are quoted by the left tend to come from Russia Today, which is as much an instrument of Russian governmental propaganda as those on the other side are instruments of US propaganda. I would say a great deal more so, because the control in the case of Russia Today is hands on, top down and comprehensive. You simply would not find an article on this channel that takes any line other than the official Russian one.

So: I shall continue to read the IWPR reports for information that western commentators simply have no access to, and in order to learn about the views of people in the region.

rushing to judgement

antarchi — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:05:52 -0600

The internet has been bubbling for 10 days now with experts on the Caucasus, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Georgia, and the big bad Russian bear. Everyone understands what's going on. No-one agrees with anyone else. Firm, decisive analyses from 'experts' (and a few experts) tell us precisely who did what, when, for which reason, and what we can expect to see next. Until you read the next analysis - which tells you exactly the opposite.

The Western Narrative

tragedy of our time

antarchi — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:14:09 -0600

"I think it is one of the great tragedies of our time that so many people have died, so many people have been displaced and so many people face famine as a result of the events of Darfur."

Gordon Brown, September 2007

* * *

It is, most certainly. According to (that well-known trusted source) the BBC, 'Some 200,000 people have been killed and 2m displaced in Darfur since 2003.' The BBC devotes video, audio and textual reports accompanied by photos to the protests being held today, with the message 'don't look away'. Gordon Brown is played over and over again on the World Service, sounding sober and sympathetic, in control.

What a tragic contrast with the total lack of attention given last week to a new poll by ORB, a respected polling company used and normally quoted by the BBC. A google search for 'bbc iraq poll orb' brings up just 2 polls quoted by the BBC: one asked British parents whether they would be happy for their son to join the army, and the second asked whether British troops were winning or losing the war. But the ORB poll that asked Iraqi citizens how many of their household had died since the invasion as a result of the violence has been almost totally ignored, as far as I can see.

That poll, conducted in August of this year, suggests that there have been 1,220,580 Iraqi deaths since the invasion in 2003. That is over a million deaths since the already sanctions-crushed Iraqis were invaded by the world's greatest military power (and its poodle).

The figure of a million roughly tallies with an estimate from Just Foreign Policy, based on the Lancet study (last October) and 'a rate of increase derived from Iraq Body Count'. Just Foreign Policy also reckon the death count is just over a million: 1,044,607 (to date). And the figure also tallies roughly with an estimate by Gideon Polya, a scientist and writer, in February of this year. He too used the Lancet study as a basis, and estimated that by February 2006, there had been over a million victims as a result of the invasion. 600,000 of those needless deaths, he estimates, were children under 5.

If 200,000 deaths and 2 million displaced is one of the great tragedies, what is a million deaths (or more) and 4 million displaced? What is it when those deaths have come about as a result of a pre-planned invasion, built on fabricated reasons and a deliberate policy of false propaganda? What is it when the invading poodle, the British Ministry of Defence states publicly that it "does not maintain records that would enable a definitive number of [Iraqi] civilian fatalities to be recorded."? And what is it when the British media keeps silent about 1 million deaths, pointedly ignores them, and presents the man who wrote the cheques for war as sober, sympathetic, in control?

Well - what would it be, if it had been Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China or Iran who had invaded, unprovoked, through deceit, and for selfish gain, causing a million needless deaths?

* * *

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought."

Harold Pinter, from his Nobel Lecture 'Art, Truth and Politics'

dictatorship and war

antarchi — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:30:33 -0600

About two years ago, a friend in Russia said that she had long been thinking about interviewing the last survivors of the Stalin era, to see how they perceived those years, and to remind the Russian public of the full horror of what happened. She was concerned about the gradual rehabilitation of Stalin in official discourse, the return to power of Russia's secret services and the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the Putin regime. And she was concerned that young people in today's Russia are taught almost nothing about that period of history; that almost all they know about it is from the official discourse.

I had an ulterior motive in joining her in the project - a motive which in a way was opposite to hers. I was concerned about the discourse in the 'west', where enemy dictators are identified and vilified, then separated off from the context and society in which they have come to power. I was sick of the finger-pointing, the moral high-horses, and the evil dictator discourse - whether that concerned Stalin or Hitler or Saddam or Slobodan (depending on the point the finger-pointer needed to make or the country they wanted to invade). I was sick of the idea that you remove the man and plant democracy in his place, and sick of what Jean Bricmont calls the humanitarian imperialists: self-righteous politicians, journalists and academics justifying savage bombing campaigns, illegal invasions and punitive economic sanctions in the name of human rights. Or human rights workers standing on the fence while the bombs fly.

In the 'west', dictators are the ultimate evil, along with paedophiles - and anything is justified to take them off the earth. But I wish the west (by which I mean humanitarian imperialists in the west) would take note of the other dictators, those we have supported or put into power - like Pinochet, Suharto or even Saddam in another era. I wish the west would look at daily life in a dictatorship, and daily life in an invaded, war-torn country - and then say which is best. I wish the west would ask whether a death from torture is anyway much worse than death from malnutrition or starvation, and I wish the west would look at how they (we) treat the citizens of developing nations, safely beyond our borders and safely out of reach of the human rights instruments which only apply to governments' treatment of their own citizens. I wish that we would try our own mass murderers in an international court, that we would count the victims that we are responsible for murdering in other regions of the world. We do not even bother to do that.

And I wish the humanitarian imperialists would see that if they do fail to do all this, if they fail to be informed about the crimes their own governments are committing, if they fail to shout about those crimes, and fail to keep on shouting until the crimes have stopped - then they show that they would be the ones who would be propping up dictators, had they been unfortunate enough to have been born in another part of the globe.

a new kind of anger

antarchi — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:04:15 -0600

I am of course delighted that John Simpson appears to have experienced a personal epiphany, and now admits to having understood something that he apparently had failed to understand before (despite 40-odd years of war reporting and 2 insignificant daughters):

'It is that life itself is immensely valuable. Not just the lives of people who think and look and maybe worship like you and me, people who are attractive or well-educated or rich, people who are the right type of Christian or the right type of Muslim. All lives.'

A bit late for the 1/2 million Iraqi children whose lives were lost as a result of a brutal sanctions regime, under-reported, un-reported or dispassionately reported; a bit late for the 1 million-odd Iraqis whose lives have been lost as a result of the invasion - an invasion that Simpson reported with such dispassion and even-handed respect for all sides that warmongers were barely recognisable as warmongers. A bit late, too, for all those other millions (unattractive, poor, ill-educated) around the world who have been maimed, killed, starved, irradiated, or tortured as a result of policy decisions by the British Government (and others); and whose damaged or curtailed lives have been reported even-handedly, as matters of hard fact, impartially - if at all.

But still, maybe better late than never. Perhaps John Simpson would now like to ask the BBC to update his quote on their page about 'impartiality':

"During the war in Iraq, opinions were fiercely divided. Both sides were certain they were right. So, as journalists, we had to be very clear about our function. It's to give people the plain, unvarnished facts."

Or maybe not, since the quote bears no relation to reality before Simpson's epiphany either. He didn't give the facts: not unvarnished, not varnished, not at all. Nor did anyone at the BBC, except perhaps one person - and he was sacked. The war would probably not have happened if they had done so.

tidy right winger

antarchi — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:01:33 -0600

When I was a tidy and naive right-winger, I thought it was very important to read the press of the 'opposition', rather than to read journalists who viewed things in the same way as you did. So I bought the Guardian rather than the Daily Telegraph, studying the opposition's best arguments for their position, trying to understand how they could believe in anything as obviously outdated and absurd as 'socialism' (as it was still called, just).

I thought that we would only ever get a true discourse between different ideologies if each side really understood the other - and that meant living, breathing, feeling the arguments as expounded by the others' best exponents. Trying to understand how on earth they could believe in them.

It seemed quite clear - and still does - that one could never expect to do that, if one only ever looked at the newspapers and journals that most naturally appealed. But that is exactly what happens: one side reads one set of arguments, statistics and interpretations; political 'opponents' read another set, completely different. Each set has been carefully selected and selected out to back up an existing position and appeal to readers who agree with it already. Not surprisingly, ne'er the twain do meet.

Something must have met - fleetingly, momentarily - in me, on my journey to the left. The trouble is, I don't remember passing through the mid-point, even if I noticed it. The first few months of Guardian reading made only imperceptible, tidy little alterations to my outlook. By the time I saw that I was on the move, I was going at such a pace that I could barely see the passing scenery. Since then I only seem to keep accelerating.

* * *

If I were true to my word (and beliefs) I should be reading the Telegraph again by now. I persuade myself that I don't need to because I've been there, done that, know the arguments. The truth is that I can't bring myself to do it, and find nothing except emptiness and odious opinions when I open it. Even the Guardian would represent an 'other' to my current thinking (and reading). Even the Guardian is often odious (with honourable exceptions).

But the danger in not looking at the odious opinions is that we then can't find the way back to another point of view. That doesn't matter too much if you really know you never want to go back; but it does matter for other reasons. First of all it matters because there are people - nice people - who actually believe the odious things. That is very difficult to reconcile. Secondly, it matters because it becomes increasingly difficult to engage in any sort of useful dialogue with anyone outside a narrow circle. Thirdly, it matters if you want (and need) the help of those who are still 'back' there to bring the world forward - and there is no doubt that we do.

fatso

antarchi — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:44:15 -0600

Media critic Philip Hammond observed that within 24 hours of the start of NATO bombing, "the Yugoslav president had been described by the UK press as a 'warlord' a 'Serb butcher', the 'Butcher of Belgrade', the 'Butcher of the Balkans', 'the most evil dictator to emerge in Europe since Adolph Hitler', a 'psychopath', a 'Serb tyrant', a 'psychopathic tyrant', 'evil', a 'man of no mercy', and a 'former communist hardliner'. Casting around for insults, the Star added that he was 'dumpy'.

the disinformation is total

antarchi — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 11:49:44 -0600

The disinformation is total (...) Television needs a scapegoat. For the moment, there is complete unanimity in condemning the Serbs, and that in no way facilitates the search for a solution. I don't think one can view the problem of ex-Yugoslavia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina only from the anti-Serb angle. It is much more complicated than that. One day in the middle of the Croat-Muslim war, we gave some information on the massacres committed by the Croatian army. An American journalist said to me: 'If you give out that sort of information, the American public won't understand anything.'"

genocide inflation: kosovo

antarchi — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:08:07 -0700

[Genocide inflation] occurred before and during NATO’s 78-day bombing war on Yugoslavia and takeover of Kosovo. The pre-bombing propaganda barrage claiming Serb misbehavior was massive, and then during the war itself there was a stream of hysterical claims of indiscriminate killing, official U.S. claims of Bosnian Muslim deaths reaching 500,000, with a very profuse use of the word “genocide.” After the war, the claimed deaths quickly fell to 11,000, and one of the greatest forensic body searches in history produced only 4,000 bodies (with some 2,000 still reportedly missing).

excising thought at source

antarchi — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:58:21 -0600

Those who rule by violence tend to be 'behaviourist' in their outlook. What people may think is not terribly important; what counts is what they do. They must obey, and this obedience is secured by force.... Democratic systems are quite different. It is necessary to control not only what people do, but also what they think. Since the state lacks the capacity to ensure obedience by force, thought can lead to action, and therefore the threat to order must be excised at the source. It is necessary to establish a framework for possible thought that is constrained wthin the principles of the state religion. These need not be asserted; it is better that they be presupposed, as the unstated framework for thinkable thought.