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The Meaning of Right
Back in October 2000 Bush said:
"We will ask not only what is legal, but what is right.
People implied that Bush did expressed a promise to act on a standard more narrow or more ethical than the law.
They were wrong.
What Bush really expressed could only be seen over time. He did and does what he feels to be right – regardless of the law. If the law does not fit to what he perceives to be right, it will have to be ignored, changed or discarded.
To torture is unlawful and unethical. But when Bush says "We do not torture." He really says: "Torture is something illegal. My ethics determine, that any method by which we interrogate prisoners is right. We have changed the laws accordingly. The interrogation methods are within the limits of those laws. Thereby, we do not torture."
You can clearly detect this Orwellian language in Bush’s press conference today. It is followed by an excerpt from a New Yorker piece, also published today.
Q Mr. President, there has been a bit of an international outcry over reports of secret U.S. prisons in Europe for terrorism suspects. Will you let the Red Cross have access to them? And do you agree with Vice President Cheney that the CIA should be exempt from legislation to ban torture?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people. The executive branch has the obligation to protect the American people; the legislative branch has the obligation to protect the American people. And we are aggressively doing that. We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do to that effort, to that end, in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture. …
President Bush Meets with President Torrijos of Panama , Nov. 7, 2005
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A source familiar with the memo’s origins, who declined to speak on the record, said that it “was written as an immunity, a blank check.” In 2004, the “torture memo,” as it became known, was leaked, complicating the nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be Attorney General; as White House counsel, Gonzales had approved the memo. The Administration subsequently revised the guidelines, using language that seemed more restrictive. But a little-noticed footnote protected the coercive methods permitted by the “torture memo,” stating that they did not violate the “standards set forth in this memorandum.”
The Bush Administration has resisted disclosing the contents of two Justice Department memos that established a detailed interrogation policy for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. A March, 2003, classified memo was “breathtaking,” the same source said. The document dismissed virtually all national and international laws regulating the treatment of prisoners, including war-crimes and assault statutes, and it was radical in its view that in wartime the President can fight enemies by whatever means he sees fit. According to the memo, Congress has no constitutional right to interfere with the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief, including making laws that limit the ways in which prisoners may be interrogated. Another classified Justice Department memo, issued in August, 2002, is said to authorize numerous “enhanced” interrogation techniques for the C.I.A. These two memos sanction such extreme measures that, even if the agency wanted to discipline or prosecute agents who stray beyond its own comfort level, the legal tools to do so may no longer exist.
Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?, Jane Miller, The New Yorker, Nov. 7, 2005
The neo cons are attempting to effect a cultural change: to make torture acceptable. Bush does not have Saddam’s power, so some social agreement must be crafted. The aim is:
1) To give more power to agents of the State, let them act with impunity.
2) To use the general threat of torture to increase fear and self-control in a population.
3) To demean and stigmatise Muslims and Arabs.
This is often over-looked. Creating powerless victims, that is, a community that cannot defend its members from the gravest human rights violations enhances prejudice. It is the reverse engineering of prejudice and hate. Soldiers are on the front line here. If they cannot abuse their prisoners they may come to consider them to be humans just like them, poor buggers in a bad situation.
Gitmo has a similar function, but for the US public. It serves de de-sensitize Joe BBQ to harsh and inhuman treatment and the hints of torture. Once the hints are accepted as having a hypothetical existence – enter the discourse – it becomes necessary, it appears, to fix ‘limits’ (e.g. sleep deprivation OK, as everyone has had sleepness nights..). The Authorities dont care about the limits (they know that there are none), only want them discussed. The little moral conumdrums about ticking bombs fulfill the same function, even if intelligent discussion can take place, as for all such puzzles (see above) the trick here is to assimilate the situation to a very common human norm – that is, to sacrifice one or a few, for the good of the many, such as in a highly dangerous sortie for 3 soldiers which potentially might save the whole platoon. I need not point out the important differences in the situations, but will add that the trick works because that metaphor puts all the protagonists or actors on the same level: disembodied epistemic humans; that is very confortable, appealing, and can wipe out morality and law. Lastly, the puzzle harks back to the prevention of 9/11 by the simple method of ‘catching terrorists’, and so reinforces that scenario as well.
The emblematic figure of the Abu Ghraib torture victim is very telling. He is standing, therefore healthy, whole. There is no blood, no visible damage, he is not a smashed dislocated, tumefied, marionette. Moreover, he is menacing; he looks weird, evil, nasty. He is hooded – hidden, under cover, anonymous. His silhouette resembles that of a witch, or wizard, or a Ku-Kluxer, a comic book monster. He is scary ..and if he is so horrible it is his fault, as his image instills mild fear and repulsion.
(Getting a bit long here, bit of a ramble…) I have seen people turn away in fear from that image (to be precise, they were American teenagers) : the conflicting sentiments evoked were too much. Some found him scary and said ‘he will give me bad dreams’ (say), others assimilated the image to what is painful but somehow ordered or necessary. One girl said it was yucky, just like the frogs you have to cut up in biology, or pictures of operations. At least here, some awareness of damage done was present; but the damage done is for someone else’s good – the student who must learn, the patient who can recover.
Posted by: Noisette | Nov 8 2005 14:20 utc | 27
@Noisette-
You are right. Images like the hooded figure may disturb the intellectuals who write for the New York Review of Books, but the Bush administration doesn’t care what a few “liberals” may think. The image plays out very well with their base, reinforcing the otherness of the victims. That those images may generate outrage, only increases the emotional intensity around this issue, further reinforcing the acceptance of torture with the 45% of the American public who literally cannot think critically. The MSM then “slice and dice” the truth, by telling partial truths, or decontextualized truths, or playing up general fears, like using the ticking bomb conundrum (first evinced by Alan Dershowitz about two days after 9-11), bringing along another 20 – 40% of the population. That is enough to “normalize” the administration’s actions with the public.
On another thread, someone was listing all of the scandals, and lies that the Bushites have endured in the past 5 years, without taking a hit in popularity, until Katrina and rising oil prices. While I don’t want to comment about the thesis specifically, it did get me thinking about the machinations of the MSM. Only a small percentage of the population (20% at most) have developed enough critical thinking ability under our didactic educational system to engage in fact-based arguments–and even then, we all know how facts can be spun many ways.
The MSM engages the rest of the population. Books like John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” point out that it is only in the last five hundred years, since the invention of the printing press, that mankind has been bombarded with images. Befor that, everything one saw was real, that is, the actual item, rather than the symbol of the item–with the exception of a few time consuming works of art, mostly of religious import: pictures, sculptures and stained glass. And even then, the religious content of the images should key us in to the pervasive psychological effect that they have upon the subsonscious. I, along with Madison Avenue, am sure that we have not evolved enough to be able to completely distinguish between image and reality on a psychological level.
We all know that the pupose of advertising is to create desire. The purpose of news and political coverage in the MSM is only slightly more complex: to manipulate opinion by generating emotion. The emotion generated then reinforces, or shall we say imprints, the opinion or belief that is created. The specific emotions can span the gamut, and there are numerous techniques used to generate this emotion.
Next, it is important to understand how information disseminates through society. This is a big topic, largely beyond the scope of this brief argument, but a few questions should be asked. How do people distinguish between fact, lie and myth? What does it mean for something to be “known” in society? Is there a difference between something that is known by 1% of the population, for instance, and 50%? What is the effect of somthing that is “known” by 40% of the population, while the complete opposite is “known” by another 40%. Many more questions can be asked. By putting the word “known” in quotes, I am implying a non-standard definition, that is: known and accepted as truth by a critical mass of people. In our society, information is not “known” when an article appears once or even fifteen times. For information to actually be “known” and accepted requires hundreds or thousands of repetions over a minimum of several days to a week. Everyone in America remembers the “Dean Scream.” Very few know that it was completely manufactured.
In respect to this thread, I would like to look at two techniques employed by the MSM, and their propaganda functions. The first technique is “the slow leak”. This is the technique employed with the hooded torture victim, or the news of the use of white phosphorus and napalm in last year’s assalt on Falluja. In “the slow leak” news comes out slowly, maybe starting with a paragraph on page A26, then later a story, then another, etc. The rate can be modulated as needed. One function of the slow leak is to reaffirm faith in the openness of our media system, “See, the news wasn’t hidden. This is a Democracy. It’s just that no one else picked it up.” This is the reverse of the “Few Bad Apples” argument-the “Few Good Apples” argument. And, of course, it brings up the question again of when information is actually “known.”
But a second, more important function of the “Slow Leak” is to acculturate, habituate and inure us; that is, to get us used to and accepting of potentially problematic information. The image of the hooded torture victim, or the news of the use of white phosphorus and napalm pervades the public’s consciousness slowly, like perked coffee. At the same time, the “Talking Heads” interpret this information for us: Should we feel indignance, shame, pride–indeed, should we feel anything at all about this image. If the public is having a hard time with some news, slow down the images and increase the Talking Heads. Once they catch on, you can practically dispense with the Talking Heads and ramp up the images, like cranking up an old time Cineascope; after all they know how to interpret them. So, in general, we see that the “Slow Leak” technique is used to engender public acceptance. In general, it has a calming and accepting influence on public opinion. It soothes emotion.
The opposite of this technique is the “Barrage.” The “Barrage” is to the MSM what full utilization is to factories. It is a relentless 24/7 echoing of a fact or a meme, or ideally, the marriage of the two: The image and how one should interpret it conjoined seemlessly as one. so united, one cannot see the image without the frame, that is, the emotional framing that the MSM wants us to associate with the image. This is the technique employed in the “Dean Scream”, when the short video clip with the artificially enhanced sound was played over one thousand times in just four days. The average person saw and heard the image five times a day, even not watching TV at home–at the pizza parlor, in the mall, on the radio, at work. Again, this is the same technique used to sell the war against Iraq. The constant repetition of memes: Mentioning Iraq and 9-11 in the same sentence, using the phrase “mushroom cloud”, all the fudged evidence, letting Joe Q. Public in on technical jargon with the term “Yellow Cake”, yadda, yadda, yadda. We received the “Barrage” constantly, only broken by the Talking Heads affirming the evidence. A refinement of this was the way Bush used the Talking Heads. They, along the Rices, Cheneys, and Rummys, etc., were as grim as possible, sowing as much fear as possible. That allowed Bush to play the corresponding tune: Hope, Freedom, Democracy, thus appearing more likeable, magnanimous, and above the fray. And it threw even more weight behind his adoption of the apocalyptic tone in his State of the Union address. We can see that the “Barrage” has the opposite effect of the “Slow Leak”: It heightens emotion. It plays on the public’s emotions, even to the point of creating a self-perpetuating cycle of fear or anger. Remember the panic produced right after 9-11 over “dirty bombs”? No one had ever heard about “dirty bombs” and suddenly people were having nightmares, selling their houses, etc. All part of the lead-up to war. Whatever happened to dirty bombs, were protective measures taken, was the threat addressed, did the threat dematerialize? Or did its function in the propaganda system dissappear, and the need to generate emotion evaporate without a trace?
Anyway, those are a few thoughts I had about the function of images, their presentation, and their function in the modern day propaganda system.
Posted by: Malooga | Nov 9 2005 11:38 utc | 34
I am against capital punishment, the death sentence, for any crime. Yes, any crime, no matter how heinous, inhuman, shocking and no matter the ‘scale’ of the crime.
Why ?
Because due process, even with checks and balances, even with jury panels, can still make mistakes or be manipulated, misinformed, dis-informed, misled, conspired against, etc, and for a myriad of reasons.
In the twilight of my life, I have come to understand in some small way the precious, priceless value of a single life.
In a modern, ‘neutral’, advocacy based trial, overseen by an ‘independent’ judiciary, if even one person ‘could’ be wrongly deprived of their life, that for me is ONE life too many …
True justice cannot allow for even the possibility of such a tragedy.
Revenge, retribution, ‘an eye for an eye’, et al, no matter how sincere or founded the victims, or victims relatives, or more distantly a communities revulsion or desires can ever justify the possibility of taking an innocent life …
So, if such an argument can be accepted, and many do not, how can the arbitrary ‘bagging’, effectively illegal kidnapping, secret transport, secret detention, secret ‘interrogation’ even torture of ‘suspected’ ‘terrorists’ by our Intelligence, Intelligence operational paramilitaries and seconded/detached Special Forces elements be deemed Legally or morally right or just ?
Deprivation of liberty alone, without ANY due process, absolutely none, with no judicial oversight, no advocacy, no judges, no jurors of peers, and above all in secret, outside multiple relevant statutes, treaties and conventions, is utterly indefensible.
This theme, Justice and Liberty, was one of the prime reasons we supposedly militarized our nation and girded for war so long ago against the then evil Soviet empire.
When we KNOW it includes effectively proven cases of state sanctioned torture, even death in custody, of uncharged ‘detainees’, an illegal combatant (a legal fiction), by executive degree only, without independent oversight or review, then WE are an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship of the executive, the State.
Numbers don’t count. One such victim is too many.
Whether they are American citizens or foreign nationals doesn’t matter. Their color, race or creed is irrelevant.
No matter what our demonstrably ‘infallible’ (sarcasm) Intelligence services may suspect, imply, purport or infer against the detainee is irrelevant.
We are all brothers because We are all human beings. We are supposedly One People before God.
I am outraged. I am grief stricken. I am bitter and aggrieved. I am day after day almost ashamed to be human.
Because for all our pretty baubles, ‘advanced’ technology, ‘sophisticated’ societies, supposed ‘learning’, our ‘civilization’, we are still as utterly ruthless, hypocritically brutal and self-righteously internecine savages as the ancient Romans we haughtily mock from afar …
And thousands of years of history has shown us … what the State did yesterday against the ‘suspected terrorist’, what it did today against the ‘other’ … tomorrow, the State can do against, you.
First they came for the ‘suspected’ Terrorists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a ‘suspected’ Terrorist.
Then they came for the Seditionists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Seditionist.
Then they came for the Populists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Populist.
Then they came for the dissenting ‘Radicals’,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a dissenting ‘Radical’.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
Unedited text and references here.
Posted by: Outraged | Nov 9 2005 14:20 utc | 38
@Donald Johnson
before Abu Ghraib, for instance, there were stories about torture in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only a few people would have noticed them and because it wasn’t common knowledge, the story never took off. If the soldiers hadn’t taken photos and if Seymour Hersh hadn’t been around, the torture scandal probably would have remained a page A10 story.
As Robert Fisk mentioned on Democracy Now today, everyone in Iraq and the Arab world already knew about the torture. The event was only hidden from the vast bulk of the American public. Remember Rummy’s response to this was to ban soldiers from carrying cameras, not to care about the torture.
So a rational person would expect this to be a front page story on every newspaper in the country and that it would have been common knowledge that the US was a state sponsor of terror. But it wasn’t. How odd. But it was reported, so no one can say that the US press practices censorship.
This is the concept of “Worthy and Unworthy Victims”, as propounded by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their groundbreaking book, “Manufacturing Consent” MSM News is always written with the slant of our propaganda system: Our cause, and that of our allies, is worthy and the same for our human loses. Our enemies cause is unworthy and the same for their human losses. “We are a force for good. If you present evidence otherwise, it is an inadvertent error, one of a few bad apples, which we will deal with.” Other humans beings are never accorded the same standing that we are, because we are Democratic and believe in Freedom.
I think something like this could happen without any overarching conspiracy
Of course. Again, in “Manufacturing Consent” the propaganda model is described as a series of five filters which cause coverage to be the way it is for very obvious reasons, without any conspiracy involved. See links below.
@ lonesomeG –
I hope you edited my misspellings. It was 5:00 AM and I had woken up from a nightmare, so I got on the computer to calm myself down.
Get your sister to read Bob McChesney. Also Project Censored publishes a book every year of the top censored or uncovered stories in the media, and much background material explaining how this process of important stories “falling” off the radar happens. Finally, The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation. This is perfect for high school students.
The best and easiest way that I know of to explain how the media works to someone who doesn’t understand it, is the recording “The Problem of the Media”, an interview of Bob McChesney by David Barsamian of “Alternative Radio”, at the National Conference of Media Reform this past summer in St. Louis. It’s a fantastic hour which I can’t recommend more highly. In the interview, McChesney details the whole history of American Journalism, how it developed, and how our current problems arose out of previous solutions enacted at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as insight into the current state of Journalism. I’m sorry that this recording costs a few bucks, but it is well worth it. (If you order it, use my URL and David will know who sent you). You can also google “McChesney mp3” and find many excellent recordings for free download; McChesney also hosts his own radio show, available online.
Another font of information about the media is Z magazine, which has a ton of free information online. I recommend “Propaganda in the Free Press – An Interview With Edward Herman”, where Herman goes through the propaganda model in simple terms, in a short readable article. Also, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream. There are many other resources out there. You can google “Media Literacy”, and “Critical Thinking”, though there is a lot of junk to wade through there. I have a course I teach from time to time, specifiaclly on political media literacy and understanding the news. Unfortunately, I don’t have the materail online yet. When I do, I will post a link. (Don’t hold your breath–it could be several months.)
Posted by: Malooga | Nov 9 2005 20:56 utc | 44
@Debs-
Malooga has given us an excellent outline of the mechanics of how these pricks manufacture consent but it still doesn’t tell me why we go along with it or how to deal with the destruction these grubs have wrought upon fellow humans.
But then when you stop and think. That’s it! Once again we have spent a lot of energy examining the how not the why. And that’s not to be having a go at what Malooga wrote because in essence here I am about to do the same, that is spend time examining the process of our society at the expense of fully studying the outcomes of that process.
So-called Democratic societies are very carefully constructed to control their populaces. Fully explicating this process and the models involved would entail a long post again, which I don’t have time to construct today, but in short here are some of the methods:
* Fragment groups of people, constituencies, and set them against each other, economically, socially, and religiously. Make them compete for money, jobs and housing. Do not teach cooperation or mediation or any other methods of non-violent problem resolution. Highten sectarian tensions.
* Inculcate blind unquestioning religious belief. Do not condone atheism. Lionize the most sectarian religious leaders, and obfuscate the implications of their edicts.
* Disempower and alienate people through entertainment, fear, hopelessness, poverty, corruption of the political process, etc.; violence, and the threat thereof, is a last resort. Keep the populace ignorant of capitalism’s structural unemployment model, combined with the highly inculcated myth that “Economic growth” will solve it: The next big development will solve our economic insecurity.
*Co-opt just enough to maintain order–police salaries go up in times of social and economic unrest effectively forming a separate class interest of people; military spending is carefully apportioned geographically, and in the US, at least, the sums involved are sufficient to involve a very significant proportion of the populace. Indeed, many high tech developments which are not essentially military in nature, like the development of the internet, are grouped under military spending because of just this control factor and also military spending’s regressive redistributive function of channelling money away from the poor, and social needs, and towards the rich. Manage the co-optation of the coordinator class–doctors, lawyers, engineers, sports celebrities, etc.– that makes society function smoothly in the interests of the ruling class, through managing their income levels and monopolizing their knowledge rights, controling their laws, and propagandizing their actions (charitable foundations formed by sports celebrities, rather than questioning their exhorbitant salaries and lack of society’s social spending). Encourage mindless identification with capitalist ideals and goals: endless stock market reports and business shows, no labor reporters anymore; publicize wildly successful entrepreneurs.
* Maintain ignorance through defunding of schools, food programs, facilities, and educational materials; rote answer based testing; tranching of students; vocational training; and control of curriculum. Fill the void with empty idollization of celebrityism. Perpetuate the myth that anyone can be famous. Subtly encourage blind uniformity, while overtly promoting meaningless individuality. Delegitimate Science.
* Minimize knowledge of the effects of capitalist civilization upon the earth and its creatures. The great masses who still believe that Saddam Hussein is behind 9-11, have no idea about the rate of extinction of species, consumption of resources (water, minerals, arable land, etc.), the danger posed by nuclear waste, DU, and nuclear warfare, global warming, ozone depletion, toxic waste, and GM foods. Make sure that no one sees the exponential curves of humnankind’s effect on the earth, which began only 500 years ago, now going off the charts. Encourage unfounded faith in the unproven thesis that Science will solve all of these problems. Ridicule Native People’s and their collective wisdom.
* Minimize knowledge of the effects of capitalist policies within this country. Ensure that the populace has a mindless prejudice against the posssibilities of government, or any other collective body, implementing policy for their benefit. Ensure that no one reads Take the Rich Off of Welfare, or understands governments real role of perpetuating ineqity through upward income redistribution and social welfare for corporations. Ensure that no one questions corporations having the rights, but not the responsibilities of people. Legitimate the detrimental accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of a few through the worship of glamour and power. Encourage blind faith in endless growth. Encourage the mindless and meaningless belief that “Our country is the greatest!”
*Militarize society: Its language, its ideals, its pastimes, its entertainment, its legal system, its metaphors–so that everything becomes a war (War on drugs, war on fat, etc.). Mindlessly revere military figures as heros and authorities. Dehumanize the other. Delegitimate the other with prejudiced creeds like Racism, Orientalism, etc. Keep knowledge of our wars’ true aggressive, resource exploitative and imperialist nature obscured behind engineered sectarian strife. Teach a mindless faith in the rightgeousness of all our wars. Revere national military holidays and mindless jingoism.
* Propagandize an ignorant populace through Orwellian methods–Ignorance of critical thinking; undefined and malleable ideals: Democracy, Freedom, etc., Orwellian concepts like “waging war for peace”, “support our troops”, etc. Control the media at all costs: Accept major opinion makers into the ruling class for their service. Buy off others. Dumb down journalism. Have corporations own the media. Give away our airwaves; demand nothing in return. Manage the news cycle. Generate raw, unquestioning emotion in the masses. Mislead, misdirect, and misinform. Kowtow to power. Periodically, put the populace through it’s paces through the engineering of false crises–it’s like exercizing a brutish muscle.
Well, that’s some of my thoughts about why we go along with the Manufacture of Consent. Deconstructed like this, the why becomes simple and the why not becomes apparent. Every statement has its obvious solution. That’s not to minimize the enormity of the task confronting us.
How to overcome this: As Kwame Ture used to say, “Organize, organize, organize.” To which I would add, “Educate, educate, educate.” They have the money, but we have the burning desire.
See also, Charlie Reese’s classic “How to Control People”
Bonus question: How much of this can you see in the events themselves and the media’a covering of these events in the case of the riots on France. Remember the concept of “Worthy Victims.”
Posted by: Malooga | Nov 9 2005 23:51 utc | 48
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