swatter555 wrote: ...Chomsky lost alot of respect in this country... It might have been a 911 conspiracy theories or something, I could be wrong.
Anyway, I normally like to conduct converstations in argument form. I don't like it when debates come down to making a bunch of assertions on each side.
"East Timorese peasants whose government until recently was able to carry out a policy of extermination with the U.S.’s connivance, material support and active co-operation."
If you have any real evidence of this, 99.9% of Americans would be just as appalled as you seem to be. If you have such evidence, I suggest you contact the New York Times. If there is any real evidence, there would be an endless line of journalists wanting to make the story of their career.
You will have to link me a story to explain that Kurdish comment, because I don't know what your talking about.
I will leave it at that, for the sake of time. Also, I wish you well in your personal life, I know you have been through alot.
With regard to Chomsky I suspect you're referring to the incident where he supported that Austrian guy's right (what the hell was his name?) to deny the holocaust. Chomsky came in for a lot of flack over that including a lot of unfounded criticism from people who could not understand that he was fighting for a universal right of free speech. Many misunderstood him and thought he was supporting an anti-holocaust theory.
When I have a moment, I will look out and send you analyses of the US involvement in the East Timorese genocide and of Turkey's near genocidal destruction of its northern Kurdish population. I don't think the NYT needs me to tell them about the genocide in East Timor
. No doubt they are perfectly familiar with it. But as it would not be useful to those in power for the population to know about it then institutional filters will ensure that it doesn't get turned into news.
We get more news about East Timor and Turkey in the press here (though not much, and again only very watered down versions of it) because the UK was not directly involved (as far as I know) in supporting the actions of the Indonesian and Turkish governments - at least not in the way the U.S. government was (and is, in the case of Turkey). So there is less of a threat to the power elites if the UK population knows.
In my (admittedly limited) observation (I look in on the NYT the Washington Post and the LAT from time to time) very little American foreign policy is actually reported in the American press. You will probably find more detailed and regular accounts of US involvement overseas in the British Guardian newspaper than you will find in any American press publication. (During the invasion of Iraq, the Guardian website was swamped with American subscribers wanting news). That's not to say the Guardian is any less establisment oriented than any other newspaper, though it is at the Liberal end of it.
Swatter, I understand your frustration about the issue of evidence. The problem I have is that, with my view of the media I cannot simply point to a newspaper article or a website and say, 'See, its like this.' I have to go to primary sources or, more often (because I am a private citizen with a job and a life to lead) to researchers I trust. I also have be constantly alert in the use of my own ability to smell out lies and contradictions. If you accept a conventional view of government and the press then you are working within an ideological construction which most other people broadly share and communication is made much easier. As many of the concepts I use cut right across those that are familiar from the press, I cannot rely on that automatic communication and to make myself understood on one small point often have to provide reams of evidence and argument. This is a huge problem that people like me regularly have.
Please accept the fact that I feel free to speak to you in these terms as a compliment to you and the way you have engaged with me here.
If you have any interest in considering the evidence for some of the things I have said, you won't do better than by reading Herman and Chomsky's book 'Manufacturing Consent'. It's a seminal work. Many of the ideas have been developed and applied subsequently, but it is still the best place to start. And as it applies the model to some interesting international situations, it also gives another view of U.S. involvement overseas.
The vast propaganda effort by American business (truly vast! costing trillions of dollars) to force the American population into docility and accept, almost without question, a business ethos is brilliantly analysed by Fones-Wolf in 'Selling Free Enterprise'.
In a smaller more topical way the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) website deals specifically with the U.S. media situation.
Thanks for your kind comment at the end Swatter.
Best wishes
Richard
