NY Times Gasses its Own People, re: Syria
Mickey Z.
uruknet.info
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"The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human."
- Aldous Huxley
When I first read about a dictator unleashing chemical warfare upon
"his own people," I thought the media was finally discussing how
President Obama appointed Michael Taylor (vice president for public
policy at Monsanto) to the position of deputy commissioner for Foods at
the FDA.
(insert rimshot here)
But seriously, folks…
One of the "spins" I detailed in my 2004 book, Seven Deadly Spins,
was a little something I called "U.S. vs. Them." By portraying all
official enemies as savages, gooks, chinks, butchers, terrorists,
evildoers, godless communists, or a never-ending parade of thugs
auditioning for a starring role as the "next Hitler," wartime propaganda
plays into our worst fears: the bogeyman. Our enemies, we learn, are
never mere flesh-and-blood.
To make this happen -- time and time again -- the U.S. government calls on the corporate media to keep the rabble ready to rumble.
Not All Victims are Created Equal
The newspaper of record went officially on record with a piece of blatant indoctrination called "Blasts in the Night, a Smell, and a Flood of Syrian Victims," on Aug. 26, 2013.
Reporters (sic) Ben Hubbard and Mark Marzetti
waxed poetic over the victims of what is being called a "chemical
attack" in Syria with lines like: "Thousands of sick and dying" and
"overwhelmed doctors worked frantically" and details of doctors facing
this problem: "where to put the dead."
Of course, every life matters and we should mourn all those
humans and non-humans murdered throughout this needless conflict but
have we ever heard the U.S. corporate media humanize the victims of
Obama’s drones like this:
The attacks caused such chaos
among residents that the death toll is still unknown, and many are still
uncertain about the fate of their relatives. "Those are my cousins,"
said one person in a video shot in the city of Hamouriyeh, pointing to
the ground where the bodies of a man and his two children lay. "I’m
still looking for the rest," he said. "Five or six of them." … Bodies
covered tile floors, stretched down hallways and were laid out on
sidewalks and streets.
Are the ongoing drone strikes -- funded by heavily
programmed U.S. taxpayers -- ever described as the "indiscriminate
slaughter of civilians" or a "cowardly crime" or a "moral obscenity"?
Those are the precise words used by Secretary of State John Kerry when publicly denouncing the purported chemical attacks in Syria.
The New York Times and its ilk never call it a
"moral obscenity" when, for example, U.S.-enforced sanctions are
responsible for a half million dead children.
According to the corporate media, it is never a "cowardly
crime" when increasingly militarized law enforcement agents gun down
unarmed people of color.
Do we ever hear about "overwhelmed doctors" working "frantically" to help the victims of corporate pollution or global poverty?
"Bodies covered tile floors, stretched down hallways"?
Sounds like a typical day at the slaughterhouse or the fur farm or the
trawling nets.
Our entire culture is drenched in blood and is thus facing
this problem: "where to put the dead." However, thanks to the
professional propagandists of the corporate media, we’re only allowed to
focus on the victims in Syria -- all in the name of justifying yet
another military intervention ordered by the Nobel Peace Prize winner
currently occupying the White House.
This reluctant American president, as Hubbard and Marzetti tell us in the Times, has "tried desperately to keep the United States out of another war in the Middle East."
(insert rimshot here)
We’ve heard this story many, many times before. The seductive drumbeat of war has commenced and it won’t stop until we’re all gleefully sharing YouTube footage of Assad’s hanging. Ain’t democracy swell?
"The scale of what took place"
According to the NY Times, "Western nations say they have solid evidence" that the Syrian government used chemical weapons (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) but if the United States does "get involved," it will most likely be because of "the scale of what took place."
Again, if the reports are true or not, I’d never
underestimate the horror of chemical weapons (a.k.a. WMD). Rather, I’ll
shine a light on the "the scale" of the hypocrisy. The only nation ever
to use nuclear weapons -- purposely targeting civilians, no less --
wants us to share their outrage that the Syrian government may or may
not have used WMD.
News Flash: The only nation ever to use nuclear weapons is still using them, only now they employ the euphemism of "depleted uranium" or DU.
DU is the byproduct of uranium enrichment, a waste product
of the nuclear industry. As the International Coalition to Ban Uranium
Weapons explains: "Depleted uranium itself is a chemically toxic and
radioactive compound, which is used in armor piercing munitions because
of its very high density. It is 1.7 times denser than lead. This allows
it to easily penetrate the steel armor of tanks and other vehicles when
fired at high velocity."
"When fired," explained James Ridgeway in the Village Voice,
"the uranium bursts into flame and all but liquefies, searing through
steel armor like a white hot phosphorescent flare. The heat of the shell
causes any diesel fuel vapors in the enemy tank to explode, and the
crew inside is burned alive."
"Depleted uranium burns on contact," says Helen Caldicott,
"creating tiny aerosolized particles less than five microns in diameter,
small enough to be inhaled." These minute particles can travel "long
distances when airborne," she adds.
Some might even call this "moral obscenity."
"On the cold floor to die"
You may have noticed a smidgeon of skepticism on my part as to the veracity of the chemical weapons report. To help explain my suspicion, I’ll take you back to the build-up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990:
In the name of "rallying" public support for a U.S.
military intervention in Iraq, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti "refugee" named
Nayirah appeared before Congress and tearfully described witnessing
Iraqi troops stealing incubators from a hospital, leaving 312 babies "on
the cold floor to die."
Nayirah’s dramatic -- but ultimately false -- testimony may
have tricked the American populace but it was, in reality, part of a
$10 million Kuwait government propaganda campaign managed by the
NYC-based public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton. Rather than working
as a volunteer at a hospital, Nayirah was actually the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington.
"We didn’t know it wasn’t true at the time," said Brent
Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser. But,
he admitted: "It was useful in mobilizing public opinion."
As they say in South Florida: BINGO!
"His Own People"
To really drive home the misinformation, Hubbard, Marzetti, and their commissars at the Times shamelessly call upon a classic motif. The attacks in Syria, they declare, are "most likely the deadliest chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein’s troops killed thousands of Kurds with sarin gas during the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988."
When in doubt, drag out a Hall of Fame evildoer.
Needless to say, the Times reporters (sic)
opt to eschew context like this: While it was commonly cited as a
pretext for the relentless war against Iraq, the United States and
Britain did not call for a military strike after Saddam's gassing of
Kurds at Halabja in March 1988. In fact, both nations continued support
for Hussein’s regime.
As reported in the Dec. 20, 2002 edition of the Berlin daily, Die Tageszeitung,
24 U.S. corporations supplied Iraq with nuclear, chemical, biological,
and missile technology prior to 1991. The list includes Honeywell,
Rockwell, Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, and Bechtel.
Hey, who needs to worry about a few atrocities and war crimes when the shareholders are clamoring over this quarter’s profits?
It also remains amusing to still hear how Hussein gassed
"his own people" back in 1988. The Kurds were Saddam’s people as much as
the Seminoles were Andrew Jackson’s people.
"Experiments worthy of Dr. Mengele"
Before I close out here, please allow me to state for the record, that one precise, well-documented example of a nation using WMD on "its own people" does exist.
In late 1993, then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary released
documents about secret nuclear experiments performed on American
citizens. Immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. nuclear
researchers set about, at any cost, to discern the effects of plutonium
on the human body.
"In experiments worthy of Dr. Mengele," wrote reporter Jack
Bradigan Spula, "these researchers chose unwitting patients who were
not expected to live long anyway."
"There were two kinds of experiments," says Peter Montague,
director of the Environmental Research Foundation. "In one kind,
specific small groups (African-American prisoners, mentally retarded
children, and others) were induced, by money or by verbal subterfuge, to
submit to irradiation of one kind or another. In all, some 800
individuals participated in these 'guinea pig' trials. In the second
kind, large civilian populations were exposed to intentional releases of
radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere."
Far from a momentary lapse amidst post-"Good War" paranoia,
these U.S. radiation experiments have left a trail of declassified
documents that stretches three miles long.
Never forget, comrades: This is what we’re up against so let’s stop with the petty in-fighting and make some goddamned progress.
#shifthappens
NYC event note: Come see Mickey Z. in person at Bluestockings Bookstore on August 31 for a screening of The Cove/Japan Dolphins Day.
***
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.
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