By David Edwards, Media Lens

The ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P), formulated at the 2005 UN World Summit, is based on the idea that state sovereignty is not a right but a responsibility. Where offending states fail to live up to this responsibility by inflicting genocide, ethnic cleansing and other crimes against humanity on their own people, the international community has a responsibility to act. Economic sanctions and the use of military force can thus be employed as ‘humanitarian intervention’.

A second version of R2P, proposed by the [Gareth] Evans Commission, goes much further. It authorises ‘regional or sub-regional organisations’ such as Nato to determine their ‘area of jurisdiction’ and to act in cases where ‘the Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time’.

 

Gareth Evans – described by the BBC as someone ‘who has championed the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians’ – has an interesting CV. John Pilger wrote in 2000:

‘One of the nauseating moments of the East Timor tragedy was in 1989, when Gareth Evans, the then Australian foreign minister, raised his champagne glass to his Indonesian equivalent, Ali Alatas, as they flew over the Timor Sea in an Australian aircraft, having signed the Timor Gap Treaty. Below them was the small country where a third of the population had died or been killed under Suharto.’

Pilger added:

‘Thanks largely to Evans, Australia was the only western country formally to recognise Suharto’s genocidal conquest. The murderous Indonesian special forces known as Kopassus were trained in Australia. The prize, said Evans, was “zillions” of dollars.’

R2P is often described as an ’emerging norm’ in international affairs. But as Noam Chomsky has noted, Japan’s attack on Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia were ‘all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations’. In fact, R2P has ‘been considered a norm as far back as we want to go’.

On March 18, 2011, the day before Nato launched its assault on Libya, the BBC quoted from a speech by prime minister David Cameron:

‘On the 23rd February the UN Secretary General cited the reported nature and scale of attacks on civilians as “egregious violations of international and human rights law” and called on the government of Libya to “meet its responsibility to protect its people.”‘

Two weeks earlier, the BBC had published an interview with Gareth Evans, asking:

‘Is there a clear-cut case for a “responsibility to protect” justification for intervention in Libya?’

Evans responded:

‘Absolutely… The question now, of course, is whether a step further should be taken to go down the military path and I think, morally, the case is overwhelming.’

Two weeks later, on March 22, 2011, with Nato bombing underway, Jonathan Freedland focused in the Guardian on how ‘in a global, interdependent world we have a “responsibility to protect” each other’. Freedland’s article was titled:

‘Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong – Not to respond to Gaddafi’s chilling threats would leave us morally culpable, but action in Libya is fraught with danger’

One day later, the Guardian’s former Middle East editor Brian Whitaker wrote under the title:

‘The difference with Libya – Unlike Bahrain or Yemen, the scale and nature of the Gaddafi regime’s actions have impelled the UN’s “responsibility to protect.”‘

Whitaker examined the origins and development of R2P, concluding that it had at last borne fruit: ‘it deserves to be recognised as an intervention based on principle and not as the “petro-imperialist” plot that Gaddafi claims it to be’.

The following day, also in the Guardian, Ian Williams discussed the origins and merits of R2P:

‘Under those principles, as Brian Whitaker demonstrates, the Libyan operation emerges with great credibility. Gaddafi had been repeatedly warned to stop killing his own people, but carried on using heavier and heavier weapons…’

Like other liberal commentators, Williams caveated freely, noting concerns about flaws in R2P, about ‘Washington’s methods and motivations’, and so on. But his conclusion was clear enough.

These articles were all published between March 22-24, 2011, shortly after Nato began its attacks. Whitaker referenced Freedland, Williams referenced Whitaker, an echo chamber in which three senior journalists all took seriously both R2P and the idea that the Libya ‘intervention’ was an example of the doctrine in action.

At the beginning of March, Timothy Garton Ash had also written in the Guardian on the application of R2P in Libya:

‘To intervene or not to intervene? That is the question… I defy anyone to watch Gaddafi’s planes attacking besieged towns and not accept that there is at least a legitimate question whether outside powers should intervene in some way to prevent him killing more of his own people.’

Although ‘unconvinced’ that a no-fly zone would be ‘justified – at the time of writing‘ (our emphasis), Garton Ash nevertheless asked:

‘And do we not have some responsibility to protect the people who have risen against him, if only in the form of the no-fly zone supported by Libyans?’

In yet another Guardian piece the following week, Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Philippe Sands, professor of law at University College London, commented:

‘International law does not require the world to stand by and do nothing as civilians are massacred on the orders of Colonel Gaddafi…’

They added:

‘It would be tragic for the Libyan people if the shadow of Iraq were to limit an emerging “responsibility to protect”, the principle that in some circumstances the use of force may be justified to prevent the massive and systematic violation of fundamental human rights.’

The Guardian was not alone in tirelessly promoting R2P as a basis for a Western war in Libya. Also in March 2011, human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson asked in the Independent:

‘Will the world stand idly by once Colonel Gaddafi, a man utterly without mercy, starts to deliver on his threat to “fight to the last man and woman” – and, inferentially, to the last child?’

Robertson also discussed the origins and development of R2P, concluding:

‘The duty to stop the mass murder of innocents, as best we can, has crystallised to make the use of force by Nato not merely “legitimate” but lawful.’

Ostensibly at the other end of the media ‘spectrum’, Matthew d’Ancona wrote of Libya in the Telegraph on March 27:

‘It is surely a matter for quiet national pride that an Arab Srebrenica was prevented by a coalition in which Britain played an important part…’

D’Ancona added:

‘”R2P” is being given a trial run in Libya, and the results of the experiment will have momentous consequences in the decades ahead.’

Clearly, in March 2011, readers were bombarded with commentary promoting R2P as a basis for Western military ‘intervention’ in Libya. As we have discussed, many of the alleged horrors said to justify Nato’s assault – Gaddafi’s use of vicious foreign mercenaries and Viagra-fuelled mass rape, his planned massacre in Benghazi – were sheer invention. The violent chaos that has befallen Libya since Nato’s war, however, is very real.

Some interesting questions arise. How did the same politicians and journalists respond to the overthrow of the democratically elected Egyptian government on July 3, 2013 by a military force trained, armed and supported by the United States? How did politics and media respond to the appalling and undisputed August 14 massacre of civilians by this same military? And how heavily did the much-loved R2P doctrine – allegedly rooted in ethics rather than realpolitik – feature in coverage of these crimes?

Comparing Obama on Libya, Syria And Egypt

According to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Research, 1,295 Egyptians were killed between August 14-16, with 1,063 losing their lives on August 14 alone. The violence was one-sided, as the Guardian reported:

‘But the central charges – that most Brotherhood supporters are violent, that their two huge protest camps were simply overgrown terrorist cells, and that their brutal suppression was justified and even restrained – are not supported by facts.’

To put the slaughter in perspective, 108 people were killed in the May 25, 2012 massacre in Houla, Syria, which was instantly blamed by the West on Syrian president Assad personally, leading to a storm of denunciations and calls for a Western military ‘response’.

So how does the US-UK political response compare on Libya, Syria and Egypt?

The Guardian quoted Obama’s view on Libya in an article entitled, ‘Obama throws the weight of the west behind freedom in the Middle East’:

‘While we cannot stop every injustice, there are circumstances that cut through our caution – when a leader is threatening to massacre his people and the international community is calling for action. That is why we stopped a massacre in Libya. And we will not relent until the people of Libya are protected, and the shadow of tyranny is lifted.’

With standard objectivity, the Guardian described this as ‘a stirring speech’, one that placed the US ‘unambiguously on the side of those fighting for freedom across the Middle East’.

How did this US commitment to human rights manifest itself in the aftermath of the vast massacre committed by the Egyptian military junta on August 14? Obama commented:

‘We appreciate the complexity of the situation… After the military intervention [sic] several weeks ago, there remained a chance to pursue a democratic path. Instead we have seen a more dangerous path taken.

‘The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government [sic] and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of marshal law.’

Obama cancelled joint military exercises but he did not even suspend the annual $1.3 billion of aid to Egypt’s armed forces. Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, commented:

‘This is a rocky road back to democracy. We continue to work at it.’

The New York Times noted that the $1.3 billion in military aid ‘is its main access to the kind of big-ticket, sophisticated weaponry that the Egyptian military loves’. Global Post listed the 10 biggest ‘defence’ contracts involving major US corporations like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and AgustaWestland.

Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Guardian:

‘Perhaps the most mystifying thing about the cosmetic US response to Wednesday’s massacre in Egypt is the reluctance for the US to use its massive aid leverage over Cairo’s generals.’

This must indeed be ‘mystifying’ for journalists who believe that the United States is ‘unambiguously on the side of those fighting for freedom’. Indifference to mass slaughter notwithstanding, Ackerman affirmed the happy truth:

‘Paramount among US concerns was that the military not massacre Egyptian civilians.’

UK foreign secretary William Hague, who has tirelessly demanded war against Libya and Syria in response to crimes real, imagined and predicted, had this to say about the killing of many hundreds of civilians in Egypt:

‘Our influence may be limited – it is a proudly independent country – and there may be years of turbulence in Egypt and other countries… We have to do our best to promote democratic institutions and political dialogue….’

Patrick Cockburn supplied a rare, honest summary of at least part of the ugly truth:

‘For all their expressions of dismay at last week’s bloodbath, the US and the EU states were so mute and mealy-mouthed about criticising the 3 July coup as to make clear that they prefer the military to the Brotherhood.’

This helps explain why the Lexis media database finds exactly two articles containing the words ‘Egypt’ and ‘responsibility to protect’, or ‘R2P’, since July 3. One is a single-sentence mention in passing in an Observer editorial focusing on Syria. Ironically, the other cites a statement issued by Egypt’s interior ministry after the August 14 bloodbath:

‘Upon the government’s assignment to take necessary measures against the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins, and out of national responsibility to protect citizens’ security, the security forces have started to take necessary measures to disperse both sit-ins.’ (‘Voices from the violence,’ Independent, August 15, 2013)

R2P is simply not an issue for the US-UK alliance in Egypt. But what is so striking is that R2P is simultaneously not an issue for the ostensibly objective and independent ‘free press’.

 

Part 2 will follow shortly…

Rhetoric and Reality
by JASON HIRTHLER

The Orwellian concept of doublethink, and its synonyms ‘doublespeak’ and ‘doubletalk’, are relatively recent euphemisms for political deceit, but they have a classical analogue in the Roman Empire. Janus was the Roman god of transitions, principally between war and peace. As such, he hovered in spirit over doors and passageways and gates, was celebrated during harvests and weddings and births. As depicted on Roman coinage, he boasted two heads, which allowed him to look forward and backward. Hence, the term “Janus-faced”, which is now almost universally synonymous with hypocrisy, even though the god was not initially a symbol of mendacity.

Perhaps Janus’ primary claim to fame—aside from being a phenomenally apt metaphor for every American politician—is that he is a uniquely Roman creation. The Greeks had no corollary. If you’ve read any Gibbon, you’ll instantly see why the Romans required a two-faced personage to preside over their society. Augustus, to pluck one name from the imperial genealogy, cleverly bought off the Senate, ostensibly restoring them but subtly disempowering them, assuming for himself all the essential authorities of state. His behavior naturally belied his rhetoric.

Some things never change. Last Sunday Glenn Greenwald, the tireless Guardian journalist and defender of civil liberties, got word his boyfriend David Miranda was detained, harassed, and needlessly interrogated for nine hours at Heathrow Airport in London. On Wednesday, Miranda “won” a British court decision that claimed his seized assets could not be used in criminal investigation, but only to track terrorist connections. While discrediting the criminal investigation of Miranda launched by London’s Metropolitan police, the judgment does little to prevent harassment of journalists or those around them.

Similarly to David Miranda, in July Bolivian President Evo Morales was blocked by France, Portugal, and Italy from passing through their sacred “airspace” for fears he was smuggling Edward Snowden to asylum in South America. (One conjures visions of symbologist Tom Hanks and Jesus’ lineal descendent, Audrey Tautou, being secretly squired to Rome on their manic “grail quest” in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code). In a related and equally contemptible incident, the British police ransacked offices of The Guardian, destroying hardware containing Snowden’s leaked files. Surely these events happened at the behest of the American government, which is the implicated party in the files and which has targeted the fugitive contractor since his revelations. Now the United States is extending its scope to include intimidation not simply of journalists, but also of those who assist them (much like double-tap drone strikes target suspects and those who try to rescue them).

Both of these international fiascos also happened in transit, the rightful territory of our twin-faced Roman deity. Miranda was even held by the British under the Terrorism Act 2000 act, which applies only in areas of transit: borders, ports, and airports. Snowden himself spent a month huddled in the “transit zone” of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. This is all apposite since these behaviors not only occurred in transitory spaces, but also because they indicate a regressive program of intimidation, sponsored by the White House, but that curiously is nowhere to be found in its progressive posturing about liberty.

Janus’ unmistakable modern approximation is Barack Obama, who has made sickeningly disingenuous statements in the wake of the Spygate eruption, namely that “we don’t have a domestic spying program” (that The Atlantic called, “Obama’s Bill Clinton moment”).  But Obama also said that he wants to set up a “national conversation” about NSA spying and that it’s “right to ask questions about surveillance.” As if, without the Snowden leak, he would’ve hosted a town hall meeting on CNN—moderated by the venerable Candy Crowley—to discuss the overblown global surveillance networks entrenched in our digital infrastructure. Perhaps asking a question about surveillance is all right, but one must then accept, with all the obtuse credulity of a born patriot, whatever sophomoric answers the spy state offers. That’s not a conversation; it’s a prefabricated Q&A. It’s Jay Leno pretending to be a journalist and Charlie Rose fashioning a rhetorical landing strip for the Dissembler in Chief. Tilt your head back and swallow the blue pill offered by our serene Morpheus.

How he pacifies us with his calmly imparted but utterly casuistic prescriptions. We’ll add an independent voice to the FISA court review—a privacy ombudsman representing…god only knows what. The interests of the populace? Wasn’t the FISA court supposed to do that? This is beginning to resemble a regression argument in which each justification requires its own justification. But who will supervise the ombudsman after he is bought off by Northrop Grumman or intimidated by Homeland Security or converted to the Tea Party? Beside, as Obama silkily explained to Rose, he is already looking after our interests (while scrupulously balancing them with our desire for freedom). In an almost surreal disclosure Wednesday, the administration is developing (via outsourcing, naturally) a Federal Cloud Credential Exchange (FCCX) that will allow citizens to safely access federal websites and services using a single password. The cloud-based authentication network will secure sensitive personal data from everyone except—the government! It’s all part of the President’s now-comically named “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” (NSTIC).

But this is just one of the many ways in which the administration will soothe our civil anxieties. As Obama tells it, we won’t simply appoint a feckless scarecrow to watch as the crows (and hawks) ravage our privacy. We’ll hold closed-door meetings with lapdog Fortune 500 companies, industry lobbyists in cash-lined suits, and privacy activists (one small step removed from ‘domestic extremists’). We’ll reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act to create a new lexical puzzle for the DOJ to swiftly solve (like a six-year old savant with a Rubik’s Cube). And, the piece de resistance, we’ll launch a brand new website disclosing intelligence activities to the nation, easily accessed with your new FCCX password, courtesy of NSTIC. All of this stands in disfigured contrast to the needless harrowing of Morales and Miranda, and the easily forgotten fact that all of these programs—from PRISM to XKEYSCORE—are all active and haven’t been restrained in the least.

The world is splitting down sharp ideological lines over the surveillance revelations. The line runs between the smoldering resentment of Latin American leaders, who were disgusted both by the Morales grounding and the NSA spying on South American governments, and the obsequious European governments who surely prostrated themselves before requests from Washington to interdict Morales. One region looks forward to a future of expanded rights and participatory governments. The other looks back to the cloistered fascisms of history, where the dictums of state were sacrosanct, and meant to be thoughtlessly ingested by a scorned and marginalized body politic.

In Roman antiquity, the gates to Janus’ numerous sanctuaries were traditionally left open in times of war so that he might intervene when appropriate. They were closed during peacetime. They now look to remain open for a long time to come. Our surveillance apparatus is premised on the fear of the other, the terrifying enemy who lurks in the shadows and silhouettes of our own backyards, but so rarely shows himself. The purveyors of 9/11 are dead, but their namesakes are metastasizing in distant lands thanks to our own clever efforts to produce—largely via signature strikes, sanctions, and shock-and-awe—an enemy worthy of our totalitarian dreams. Our imperial president seems intent on masking the master plan, but the destination is clear. As George Orwell slyly warned, a society transitions to totalitarianism when its ruling class retains power by dint of either “Force or Fraud,” which in our case is both: a fist for the foreigner and a façade for the free. We live in a land of in-betweens, but we are tipping forward into fascism, and away from anything resembling republicanism. Not to worry, though. Like Janus, we can always look the other way.

Jason Hirthler is a veteran of the communications industry. He lives and works in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.

By Alex Lantier, wsws.org 

Ten years after the US government went to war in Iraq on the basis of lies about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction (WMD), a no less grotesque provocation is being concocted by Paris, London, and Washington to justify a new war of aggression against Syria.

The allegations that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out mass chemical weapons attacks last Wednesday in Ghouta, near Damascus, lack any credibility.

 

The Assad regime has no motive to carry out such an attack. Until Wednesday, its forces were handily defeating the US-backed opposition militias without using chemical weapons. Due to their lack of popular support and the repeated defeats they have suffered, the opposition is disintegrating into bands of looters and murderers—a state of affairs confirmed by Al Qaeda-linked opposition forces’ declaration that after the Ghouta attack, they will kill any member of Assad’s Alawite faith they capture.

Allegations that Assad used chemical weapons serve only one purpose: to give Washington and its allies a pretext to attack Syria, which they have repeatedly threatened to do if a chemical attack by the regime occurred. If a chemical weapon attack did take place in Ghouta, François Hollande, David Cameron, and Barack Obama know far more about its execution than does Bashar al-Assad.

Before any proof of a chemical attack had emerged, and before any investigation had even begun—indeed, in less time than police departments take to issue an indictment in a routine street crime—French and British officials were calling for war with Assad. The day after the alleged attack, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius insisted that “force” was the only appropriate response.

Obama administration officials even said that they did not want a UN investigation or the collection of evidence before proceeding with their war plans. They told the New York Times yesterday that, with target lists for US strikes in Syria already circulating at the White House, they were “determined not to be drawn into a protracted debate over gaining access for United Nations investigators, because of doubts that they could now produce credible findings.”

The Obama administration’s claims that it is going to war because it is concerned that a “red line” of chemical weapons use has been breached is utterly fraudulent. It does not intend to investigate what occurred in Ghouta. Rather, it wants to obtain a pretext for war that it can present as “credible” to the media, to justify military action that it intends to pursue regardless of whether the Assad regime used any chemical weapons.

Paris, London, and Washington are rushing into a war with far-reaching implications. US guided missile destroyers are heading to the eastern Mediterranean to get in position to strike Syria, and military planners are preparing a massive bombing campaign and stepped-up weapons shipments to Islamist opposition militias in Syria. They are dismissing blunt warnings by Syria’s allies, Iran and Russia, that a US attack on Syria will have dire consequences throughout the region.

The geostrategic and economic interests driving war preparations against Syria were spelled out in a long statement by one of US imperialism’s leading strategists, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, issued two days after the alleged chemical attack.

He wrote, “If Bashar al-Assad wins or survives in ways that give him control over most of Syria, Iran will have a massive new degree of influence over Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon in a polarized Middle East divided between Sunni and Shi’ite and steadily driving minorities into exile. This will present serious new risks for an Israel that will never again be able to count on a passive Assad. It will weaken Jordan and Turkey and, most importantly, give Iran far more influence in the Gulf. BP estimates that Iraq and Iran together have nearly 20 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and the Middle East has over 48 percent.”

To achieve the objective of removing all impediments to their control over the vast oil reserves of the Middle East, the imperialist powers, led by the United States, would gladly organize the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, just as they did in Iraq.

There is deep opposition in the working class in the United States and Europe to being railroaded into another war for oil and geopolitical advantage. One Reuters/Ipsos poll published Saturday shows that only 9 percent of the US public supports US intervention in Syria, and only 25 percent would support it even if it were proven that Assad had used chemical weapons.

Well aware of this public sentiment, the American and European media say nothing of the interests underlying the war plans and subject none of the Islamist opposition’s accusations to critical examination, even though it is well known that these forces have ties to Al Qaeda and routinely lie to the press. The stench of lies surrounds this latest operation by a state-controlled media to roll out a pack of WMD lies to justify yet another war of aggression.

As for the imperialist powers’ claims that they are attacking Syria out of a humanitarian urge to protect Syrian civilians, these statements deserve nothing but contempt. They are moving to start another bloody war only days after sanctioning the slaughter of thousands of unarmed protesters by Egypt’s US-backed military junta.

Workers and youth must oppose the war that Washington and its allies are threatening to unleash in Syria. Until they are stopped by a movement of the working class, the imperialist powers will go well beyond war with Syria in pursuit of the agenda outlined by Cordesman. Besides the countries already devastated by fighting spilling over from Syria, such as Lebanon and Iraq, the imperialist powers have Iran, and ultimately Russia and China, in their sights.

Alex Lantier is a senior analyst with wsws.org, information arm of the Social Equality Party.

A Monitored Populace is a Compliant Populace … Until It Isn’t

by ROB URIE, Counterpunch

With the CIA finally admitting the open secret this week that it and its counterparts in the British oil mafia (‘intelligence’ service) were behind the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup it orchestrated in 1953 the economic interests behind American geopolitics in the Middle East were partly revealed. Apparently left to be revealed another half century hence is the current open secret, that the U.S. war on and occupation of Iraq was also oil geopolitics sold to the always gullible American public as self preservation —‘attack them over there before they attack us over here.’ That from what is known the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001 were ‘blowback’ for previous meddling to secure oil in Saudi Arabia should raise fundamental questions about truer motives for the ‘war on terror’ and whose interests the American and British oil mafias are really working in?

This question unites the thirty-five year prison sentence of Bradley Manning for revealing inconvenient truths about U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan with the illegal detention of David Miranda, husband of journalist Glenn Greenwald who reported on illegal NSA surveillance in the name of this so-called war on terror, by British ‘authorities’ at Heathrow Airport. Framed differently, the CIA and British intelligence overthrew democratically elected governments whose leaders were acting in the interests of their citizens to install despotic regimes that immiserated ‘their’ populations to facilitate the control over, and extraction of, cheap oil for the U.S. When purportedly non-state actors brought the fight back to the U.S. on ‘9/11’ the U.S. responded by doubling down to declare war on Iraq in which over one-million people died and the nation was substantially destroyed. While terrorism no doubt played a role in the U.S. war on Iraq, it was hardly the Iraqis doing the terrorizing.

In alleged response to the attacks on the U.S. brought about by oil geopolitics a surveillance state was created to monitor and control the domestic population much as the despotic leaders installed by the U.S. overseas had done to their populations. When NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed evidence of this surveillance state the U.S. threatened foreign governments believed to harbor him, orchestrated the brief kidnapping of the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and illegally detained (a/k/a kidnapped) Mr. Greenwald’s husband as he passed through the U.K. on his way back to his home in Brazil. Some fair proportion of brave and noble Americans– who stand a greater chance of dying from furniture falling on them than from blowback for the overseas depredations of the oil mafia (CIA), now cower by their televisions wandering out only to wish for the violent deaths of those courageous souls who bring them news of what their government, in the interests of its plutocrat masters, is doing.

The ‘shadow’ back-story, presented as indelible, anti-historical fact, is that current circumstance is the result of ‘natural’ development, that the way we live in the West, with its dependencies that require global depredations, somehow self-generated to arrive at ‘the world’ we inhabit. Put another way, through free choice we ‘consumers’ chose the world we were born into before we were born into it. Left out is the history of American industry tearing out mass transit systems to engineer a ‘car culture’ to sell cars, car parts and oil. Left out is the arrangement of cities that require driving to and from work to pay for the cars that transport us to and from work. Left out is that the largest ‘user’ of energy is the U.S. military so that it can fight wars to secure the energy it needs to fight wars to secure energy. Left out is the century of corporate propaganda (advertising) needed to sell the idea that what we ‘want’ is the stuff capitalism produces. And left out is the relation of the stuff we now want to the facts of the world required to produce it.

The question for we in ‘the West’ is who more fears the disclosures of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and the other reporters on the doings of empire–the U.S. government so clearly acting in the interests of imperial capitalism or the co-opted masses staring through the mall window believing, as we have been so well taught, that our lives would be complete if we could just get one more iGadget? What Bradley Manning revealed, and Edward Snowden well articulated, is the distance between ‘the world’ as it has been sold to us and the world as it is. Both persons were inserted into circumstances of disjunction, partly stumbling, partly intentional, where cost was suddenly and forcibly associated with price. And both determined the cost was too high. This possibility was well understood by the architects and engineers of conquest, hence the ‘privatization’ of the military where cost could be better associated with price for those willing to draw their circle of humanity tightly enough to ‘grow’ profits.

The more telling stories of America’s heroic efforts to spread freedom and democracy in Iraq came in pairs—the young girl whose head was cut off and a dog’s head sewn onto her body and the boy- child whose hands were drilled through and bolted before he was murdered. Western reports of ‘those people’ thrive on ignorance of similar stories from everywhere American empire has gone. The banned chemical weapon white phosphorous that burns through flesh to the bone was reportedly used extensively in the siege of Fallujah where the city was emptied of all but ‘military-age’ men 12-75 years old so that only ‘terrorists’ would be incinerated by the thousands. And prior still was a century of brutality and slaughter always sold as making ‘them’ like ‘us,’ only raped, dismembered and / or dead. But Bradley Manning had made an oath and Edward Snowden had signed a contract promising the crimes they uncovered wouldn’t be revealed. And we all understand the sanctity, nay—the moral imperative, of a contract.

The temptation in the face of horror is to isolate it, to categorize it in a way that allows it to be packed away. This is also one definition of psychological alienation—the separation of what we know from its being known to us. When Mr. Mossadegh was deposed he was publicly humiliated and this became standard practice as U.S. foreign policy ‘liberated’ one country after another from freedom and any possibility of self-determination. The imperative that United Fruit Company not have to pay a minimum wage in Guatemala or respect land reforms in Honduras was well worth the tens of thousands of persons raped, tortured and slaughtered under U.S. / CIA guidance with U.S. supplied arms as long as profits accrued to the connected capitalists on whose behalf U.S. foreign policy is always undertaken. And through the magic of capitalism there is never any indication in the price at the store of how the bananas were gotten—of their true cost. A few, Messrs. Manning and Snowden, got a glimpse of the cost, determined it to be too high, and made the moral decision to make the costs known.

While the events—the practices and their results, brought to light by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are often framed as ‘embarrassing’ or ‘humiliating’ to the public officials so exposed, in the first place, the premise they are capable of embarrassment or humiliation needs to be proven and in the second place, irrespective of the answer to the first, the more relevant term is ‘costly.’ This doesn’t mean costly in the contrived frames of those who were exposed such as ‘putting American lives at risk.’ It means costly in the sense of interfering with business. Anyone contending those freed from their mortal coils by the U.S. in Iraq, Vietnam, Honduras, East Timor and on and on were the intended beneficiaries of U.S. foreign policy slept through history class. By articulating the distance between cost in terms of human misery and the price at the gas station, between the idiot-child cartoons of television and print news and the facts as they apply to human existence, Messrs. Manning and Snowden shifted the costs ever so microscopically back toward empire. And what is inferred in the response of political leaders to their revelations is that ultimately some proportion of the acts of empire, its ability to profit through malevolent actions, depends on the consent of we ‘little people.’

The purpose of the surveillance state is to keep the price of this consent low. The secret interpretations of secret laws by the powerful make a mockery of the ‘self-rule’ intended by laws. And Mr. Snowden’s ‘crime’ was to demonstrate that law has no bearing on state actions—the surveillance conducted by the NSA was ruled illegal even by the kangaroo (FISA) court put together to give it the faux semblance of judicial oversight. Threatening to put NSA chief Keith Alexander in charge of the ‘independent’ review of the NSA’s activities was President Barack Obama’s ever so charming way of telling those opposed to NSA intrusion into their lives exactly where to stick their opposition. So while the actors behind the state spy apparatus probably regret the release of some of the specifics of the programs—most likely because it raises the cost of carrying the spying out, there is little regret that we now know that they know what we had for breakfast and what the recent fight with our partner was over. A monitored populace is a compliant populace—until it isn’t.

With Mr. Manning destined to spend the next decade or three in Federal custody and Edward Snowden tucked away in Russia, the imperial state, in the service of its plutocrat masters, is planning its next moves. The current ‘revelations’ are public relations propaganda 101—admit in the vaguest terms possible what is already known and ‘leak’ enough additional information to create the likelihood in the public’s mind that the nature and the scope of the NSA’s predations against us have been revealed. Get some well-placed windbags in Congress to hold faux ‘investigations’ where NSA talking points are voiced as if they resulted from questions being both asked and answered. Appoint some Democrats to the FISA court in case the illusion this makes a difference still resonates with the duller ‘constituencies.’ Finally, issue a report and force insistence across ‘officialdom,’ government employees, contractors and the lap dog bourgeois press, that the matter is closed. And oh yes, create a new ‘threat’ to get the television crowd ready for a good slaughter—we all have bills to pay.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book Zen Economics will be published by Counterpunch / CK Press in Spring 2014.

By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times

Stop. Look at the photos. Linger on dozens of bodies lined up in a makeshift morgue. How can the appalling bloodbath in Egypt be justified? Take your pick. Either it’s Egypt’s remix of Tiananmen Square, or it’s the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by the leaders of the coup that is not a coup, with the aim of fighting “terror.”

Source: RT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, “The Roving Eye,” is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News, the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.  He argues that the world has become fragmented into “stans” — we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled “Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War”.  His latest book is “Obama Does Globalistan.“