Chomsky’s right: The New York Times’ latest big lie

[drunkenshoe]

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chomsky ... t_big_lie/

Chomsky's right: The New York Times' latest big lie

Never before have I written a column concerning nothing more than a pair of quotation marks. Then again, never until now have I seen the power of punctuation so perniciously deployed.

It is not a new trick. Very popular in hackdom during the Cold War decades. Enclose something in quotation marks and all between them is instantly de-legitimized; no argument or explanation need be made. Here, try it:

"... the Cuban 'doctors' sent to Angola..."

Or: "... Soviet-made 'farm equipment' in Portugal since its 1974 revolution..."

Well, they were doctors and it was farm equipment. In the latter category I sat in a Soviet tractor out in the Portuguese vineyards, and damn it if the camponês did not find it useful.

In the end, this kind of thing is simply passive aggression, my least favorite neurosis. No one actively lies such that one can confront and reveal. It is lying by misleading and by implication, so sending us off full of groundless conviction and prejudice.

In this case, we have the irresponsible use of inverted commas, as the Brits say, to shape national opinion on a question of vital importance. The question is Iran. And now to the supine, corrupted and corrupting organ.

You have taken a wild guess, and you are right. We have our familiar problem with our friends on Eighth Avenue, the New York Times, faithful servants of the sanctioned orthodoxy. I give these folks an "A" for clever disguise this time, and I flunk them in the professional ethics class. Simply shameful, this round of reckless chicanery.

Here is the situation.

As all know, a deal with Iran over its nuclear program is the biggest game going these days — an historic opportunity, as previously asserted in this space. Fumble this, and the Obama administration will go down as hopelessly moronic on the foreign-relations side.

You may know, too, that a round of talks between six world powers and the Iranians just hit a pothole. It is essential to understand why.

The paradox is apparent, not real. Knowing why reveals what a nation with imperial ambitions looks like when it is nearing exhaustion and would rather decline than shape up, re-imagine itself, and take a new and constructive place in the global community. Not knowing why encourages Americans to preserve their righteous self-image even as the moths of history chew holes in it.

Best, in Washington's view, that we do not know why talks in Geneva last weekend failed.

Complex story, but we can take care of it simply. Iran wants a nuclear program, and this includes the capacity to enrich uranium. This is Iran's right under international law. Washington and the major European powers do not want Iran to have such a program because they worry Iran will eventually build a nuclear weapon. The talks in Geneva went sour because the U.S. and the Europeans demanded that Iran surrender its right.

O.K. Here is the lead in the Times report from the City of Diplomacy:

          The Iranian government's insistence on formal recognition

          of its "right" to enrich uranium emerged as a major obstacle,

          diplomats said Sunday.

Two big problems. Nothing emerged as an obstacle in Geneva other than Secretary of State Kerry's duplicity, given that his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, now charges him with misleading Iran as to demands to be made on the enrichment question. Iran has been quite clear all along: Enrichment under law will never get on the table. Zarif would have skipped the trip had he known Kerry's plans; Kerry knew this.

Then the quotation marks. With them, the Times proposes to deprive Iran of its statutory rights so that Washington can lie to us as well as to the Iranians.

You are all set now for the corker. You search through the piece to understand the quotation marks, and you come to this, edited down so as to get to the point:

           Iran has asserted repeatedly that it has the right to enrich uranium....

           The Obama administration is prepared to allow Iran to enrich

          uranium to the low level of 3.5 percent.... But the administration

           is not prepared to acknowledge at this point that Iran has a "right"

           to enrich....

This is how the consciousness of empire is dribbled into us and sustained, one touch at a time. Iran asserts only the validity of international law. What the administration is prepared to allow or acknowledge has nothing to do with what Iran can and cannot do as a sovereign nation.

This is also why these talks are very likely to fail. If they do, it will be the fault of Washington and its allies and the complicit media. It is this kind of language that enables Congress to begin debates on new sanctions against Iran. Concessions and demands are different: Iran may choose to concede this or that; the U.S. cannot demand those things by pretending international law does not (somehow) apply.

In my view, we are amid a pandemic of misinformation as to our global behavior. The dishonesty with which we are given the world — an essentially fantastic version of it — is becoming abject to the point of danger. And it is frighteningly willful. Here is the paradox: We cannot bear to see things as they are because things as they are constitute a refutation of our dearest mythologies, but we must see things as they are if we are to make sense of ourselves in the 21st century.

The Iran case has just become urgent in this regard. As I have asserted previously, it will be profoundly detrimental if the U.S. and the Europeans do not pursue what is a patently serious effort on Iran's part to claim its rights and ease the world's worries as to its nuclear program.

If the honorable editor will permit the unconventional, two things belong in caps so that a modest few Americans might stop wandering in the dark purposely created by the Times and all the other media too weak-minded to make judgments without reference to the Times:

ONE: IRAN HAS AN UNAMBIGUOUS RIGHT UNDER LAW TO A NUCLEAR PROGRAM, INCLUDING ENRICHMENT, EVEN IF THIS MAKES IT (AS IT WILL) NEARLY CAPABLE OF WEAPONIZING. READ YOUR DAILY NEWS DOSAGE WITH THIS IN MIND.

TWO. THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE THAT IRAN DESIRES A NUCLEAR WEAPON, AND DECADES OF POLICY TO INDICATE IT PREFERS A NUCLEAR-FREE MIDDLE EAST. THERE IS ONLY ONE REASON IRAN WOULD CHANGE ITS MIND: ISRAEL'S NEVER-MENTIONED ARSENAL OF NUKES. THE MOTIVE WOULD BE DETERRENCE, AND MOST OF US WORSHIPPED AT THE ALTAR OF DETERRENCE WELL ENOUGH DURING THE COLD WAR.

The adage among properly cynical diplomats used to be that they were sent abroad to lie for their country. During the Cold War, as Washington's sponsored atrocities grew evident, the thought took a turn: Diplomats were sent abroad to lie to their country.

Consider it a template and apply it to our press folk.

Correspondents used to be sent abroad to keep the country informed (in theory, at least). Now correspondents go forth to send home a simulacrum of truth, a semblance, while keeping their country misinformed.

It is no good positing some golden age of spotless integrity, some yesteryear when newspapers, the wires and broadcasters glistened with high principle. There never was such a time. A good press is ever a work in progress, requiring the calloused hands of each generation to make it however good it can, always and by definition short of any ideal.


Too far short when one considers this columnist's cohort.

Patrick Smith is the author of "Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century" was the International Herald Tribune's bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote "Letter from Tokyo" for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications.

 =D>

Man, I am such a sucker for men with this size of balls. The biggest one is an old man, he is known as 'The Senile that went too far' in the forum. If ever there will be real an American revolution in this century, those children born after will read a VERY different American history.  

No one actively lies such that one can confront and reveal. It is lying by misleading and by implication, so sending us off full of groundless conviction and prejudice.

I wish this 'conviction' was just about international politics.

The dishonesty with which we are given the world — an essentially fantastic version of it — is becoming abject to the point of danger. And it is frighteningly willful. Here is the paradox: We cannot bear to see things as they are because things as they are constitute a refutation of our dearest mythologies, but we must see things as they are if we are to make sense of ourselves in the 21st century.

I tried to write very similar things^ with bad English in this forum many times before. But seeing it in real English, from a journalist tastes good. Capitals are not mine.

[Solitary]

:-?  Solitary

[AllPurposeAtheist]

So you're trying to say our press lies to us to attempt to make us believe the unbelievable? I find that unbelievable!
Chomsky likes to tell it like it really is, but notice every time he does the corporate shills try to make him out to be some crazed, commie conspiracy theorist. The Times at times is a decent paper, but when it boils down to THEIR bottom line they would sell their own children's kidneys. Tell me one major media outlet that won't.
That's one of the reasons I tend to stick to outlets such as The Nation, but then again..I'm a dyed in the wool tree hugging tree fucker.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

As far as nuclear proliferation I've never really bought it. If a nuclear war were to break out we'll find to late the nations with nukes have secretly exported nukes a lot more than anyone would ever believe.. It's the great boogieman game the west AND Israel have played for a long time. 'If so and so gets nuclear weapons it's curtains!'
Really?...like Pakistan?

[entropy]

I am in sync with a lot of what Chomsky says but there are definitely quite a few avenues I don't follow him down. If what he asserts here as facts are indeed facts then he has his finger on the pulse of a pile of stink. I'm not particularly enamored with the quality of some of his "in-your-face"-ism, but I can't really fault him in any way for his moral passion. Whether I agree or not with what he is saying, though, I'm almost always impressed by the rhetorical flair in his writing style.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

But...but...but... Americans are exceptional and would never fall for bullshit lies and misdirection at the hands of those who seek control and dominance especially using the guise of some invisible, magical man in the sky.. would we? :shock: After all.. we have cars and hundreds of thousands of miles of open road and hoola hoops and Hollywood and GUNS! Don't forget guns! Why if big bad gubnit ever tried all these bad things we could just take back gubnit with our guns and restore our future!  

Well...maybe not.. hmmm..

[Solitary]

Right! You don't bring a gun to a hydrogen bomb fight. Did anyone pry the gun from Charlie's cold dead hands yet? :roll:  Solitary

[Jmpty]

Bread and circus. Nobody cares.

[zarus tathra]

"Bread and circuses" really needs to re-enter the popular mind.