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Weapons of Mass Deception

By Christian Henderson

Monday 25 April 2005   

Schechter analysed the US mainstream media for his film

At the time of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 70% of Americans told pollsters they believed Saddam Hussein's government was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.In the prelude to the war, the Bush administration hinted at the existence of a link between Iraq and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.However, intelligence investigations commissioned by the White House and Congress have since determined the suggested links were false.According to Danny Schechter, a media veteran of almost 40 years who nicknamed himself the News Dissector, the 70% figure suggests US media failed their public and led them to believe a baseless claim.As the invasion played out on television screens around the world, Schechter "self-embedded" in his living room and examined US media coverage of the war. He turned his conclusions into Weapons of Mass Deception www.wmdthefilm.com, a documentary film that examines how the media covered the war.In the post-September 11 nationalistic ardour, the film concludes the US mainstream media failed to challenge Washington over its reasons for going to war, shut out anti-war voices and blurred the lines between commentary and journalism.Aljazeera.net spoke to Schechter on the sidelines of last week's Aljazeera Television Productions Festival in the Qatari capital, Doha, where Weapons of Mass Deception was shown. Aljazeera.net: Why did you make this film?Danny Schechter: I have been a journalist since the 1960s. And in some ways, this project grew out of a lifetime of work. I worked in radio; I worked in local television; I worked in cable news; I worked in ABC; I worked in mainstream and I worked in independent [media] so I think I had a wide range of experience. I have also written six books about media issues, so I have had a chance to think about it more deeply; I think all that uniquely qualified me to take on this project.What are you trying to do in this film?I try to offer some fresh insights. I also try to speak to journalists about what this means in terms of our responsibilities to challenge and what this means in terms of democracy. In the film, I make the suggestion that the Bush administration practices deception as part of its strategy and military strategy.

WMD accuses the US media of group think

We know that everything they were saying about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)and the link with Usama [bin Laden] were not true and many of us knew it then and we said so, but everyone was saying something different.Now, with study after study they say it was "group think" in the intelligence community. That's why they screwed up. If there was group think in the intelligence community, what about the journalistic community? There was group think there, too. Are you influenced by Noam Chomsky and his theory of manufacturing consent?Noam Chomsky doesn't watch television; he is more of an analyst of the New York Times and elite journalism so I didn't go to him for an interview.I was more interested in journalists who covered the war and how they were debating it. So I feel that Chomsky had a brilliant analysis of media, but more of it is oriented toward print. It doesn't always take into account the techniques of the media.What do you think of Chomsky's critics who accuse him of overestimating the sophistication of media control, and that - in reality - it is more to do with day-to-day decisions and market forces?I don't buy the conspiracy theories of media. I remember a group of Syrians came to our office and they said: 'We agree with you because we really know the Jews run everything.' This was their analysis. I said, excuse me, Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish the last time I looked. You know the problem is corporate media and corporate-controlled media and how they operate within their framework.What do you mean when you use the term post-journalism era?Journalism is at a crossroads. There are many journalists today who still believe in the values of journalism but who are frustrated by the difficulty of practicing it because the companies they work for do not really respect journalistic principles. What they are there to do is satisfy their bottom line concerns, they have closed bureau after bureau.

The film accuses the media of shutting out anti-war voices

There has been a pattern of dumbing down, and by dumbing it down it means people inside media are dumbing themselves down. They are not asking good questions, they are not challenging official narratives the way they should be.If you look at Fox News, there is very little journalism, very little reporting. Mostly it is talk shows posing as news programmes and [they are] opinion driven, you have three times more pundits on air as opposed to journalists. That's another sign of the post-journalism era.Are blogs an alternative to mainstream media sources?There are now 10 million blogs. Of those, maybe 10% claim to be journalistic. Some of the bloggers are very responsible, really challenging and doing investigative digging that mainstream media are not.

Journalists review copies of the 9/11 Commission report

Some are motivated just by ideological concerns. Recently, for example, Eason Jordan, the former chief of news at CNN - when he said at Davos 12 journalists had been killed by US soldiers there was a big shock and he was forced to resign. In that case, a blogger took an off-the-record meeting and just blasted it out there with out having a full record of what was said. I think a lot of blogging can be very irresponsible and some of it is sponsored by political forces by the Republican party or the Democrat party and the like, so it has a political and ideological not a journalistic function. But in my blog www.mediachannel.org what I try to do every day is take the top stories and report what is not being reported by comparing and contrasting.You credit American journalists who helped you make this film. Do you think many in the US media are sympathetic to your message?Whenever I talk to people in the media off the record, including anchormen, people are very supportive, people slip me footage from various networks. People are very helpful, but a lot of them are living in a lot of fear. Everybody feels vulnerable, people have mortgages; they have families - it's difficult to be courageous.Many American media people feel vulnerable and as if they are being bullied, they feel totally insecure. In the culture of the newsroom, if you put your head up, it will get chopped off. Everybody is getting along by going along and that's a dangerous kind of conformity.If the US is involved in another war, how do you think it will be reported in the US media? Do you think the media have learned from some of the mistakes of the Iraq war.The institutional practices have not changed. I feel like the coverage of the elections was very similar to the coverage of the war. The same templates are being used, the same approach, the lack of political scrutiny, the lack of other voices, the way things are being framed, the lack of investigative checking. The American media reported the Iraqi elections as a great victory for democracy. Everyone else reported them and asked Iraqis why they were voting and they said to get the Americans out and to end the occupation. Their reasons are very different from the way it was presented on American televisions. So we still have this propaganda system, in effect, but its credibility is starting to be questioned. And I hope my film will contribute to that.What I want to see is more journalists taking more responsibility for what they do and showing more solidarity when other journalists are shot and killed. How many people in the American media protested the killing of Tariq Ayub [Aljazeera's correspondent slain in Baghdad by US fire on 8 April 2003]? That was blatant, a completely blatant assassination and yet nobody said a word. We need to challenge that and show more solidarity with other media workers.

Original axis of evil: Colonialists

By Dag Herbjornsrud

Thursday 07 April 2005  

Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, Northern Ireland: The root causes of the world's hottest conflicts lie in the break-up of Europe's colonial empires. But who dares admit it?Do you want to know the real scandal of the year 2005? According to The Sun in England and the world press, the scandal occurred when Prince Harry (son of British Crown Prince Charles) in January showed up at a party in Wiltshire, wearing a German Nazi uniform. The picture of the 20-year-old wearing a swastika armband and a Wehrmacht badge with a cigarette and drink in hand, shocked the world.Rightfully, the prince's flirting with Adolf Hitler's killing of six million Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals was strongly condemned.But here's the real conundrum: Do you know what Harry's older brother Prince William wore at the same party celebrating their friend's 22nd birthday with 250 guests in attendance?The answer is "native African" dress. Prince William proudly wore a Zulu outfit with black tights and a leopard skin robe.

"If you dig deep enough you will probably find some dirt on everyone" John Noonan, US More comments...

The reason? The theme of this upper class birthday party was "native and colonial". The English prince was celebrating his country's brutal colonial rule by dressing in the traditional clothes of one of its conquered peoples -the Zulus of South Africa.Not only did Prince William and the elite with their native-mocking costumes pay homage to the military atrocities of their ancestors, but so few in Europe today question the deaths of millions of Africans, Asians, and American Indians.The real scandal is that nobody views this celebration of colonial brutality as a scandal. But if one opposes Prince Harry's Nazi outfit, one should also question Prince William's colonial outfit. Hitler did, after all, have the British colonial empire as a main inspiration for his wars for more Lebensraum - living space.Norwegians and Irish.The only media pundit I have seen questioning the royal party's events is columnist Simon Woolley. Commenting on the theme Native and Colonial, Woolley wrote:A more appalling theme would be difficult to find unless you were ignorant and/or arrogant. For black people around the world there was no frivolity within colonialism, only degradation and dehumanisation."Exactly. But tell that to any average European, and what you get back is a blank stare. Citizens of former colonial empires are actually taught to be proud of their glorious colonial past. The present European celebration of the colonising of "the natives" seems to be caused less by pure arrogance than by pure ignorance. Or, as the motto is for the famous Where is Raed blog of the Iraqi Salam Pax, quoting Samuel Huntington:"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion ... but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do."

If we don't know about the mistakes of the past, on all sides, we are doomed to repeat them. It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation of the world

I have dedicated the latest decade of my life fighting Huntington's false Clash of Civilisations claims, but this one sentence at least has some truth in it.Huntington only forgets that Europeans were also victims of colonial occupation. Just ask the Irish. Thousands of Catholics from Ireland were sent aboard slave ships to the Caribbean by the invading protestant Englishmen. Ask Norway's two greatest authors - Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun - who were full of bitterness against the British empire because of its colonial actions in the 19th century. In order to understand the present conflict in Northern Ireland - as in Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda, and Kashmir - we need to acknowledge the effects of the unjust European occupations. Actions of the past have influenced our present world situation. Just as our present actions will influence our common future. Thus, in order to create justice in the future, we need to acknowledge the injustice of the past. Axis of EvilI am not bringing up this colonial theme to excuse the problems of the present. We should never point to former crimes in order to not improve our own societies.Rather the opposite: Basic knowledge of the brutalities both of the Nazi regime and of the colonial regimes are necessary in order to prevent similar atrocities again. If we don't know about the mistakes of the past, on all sides, we are doomed to repeat them. It's about time that Europeans also accept historic facts about their former occupation of the world.

In order to understand the present conflict in Northern Ireland - as in Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda, and Kashmir - we need to acknowledge the effects of the unjust European occupations

The Axis of Evil has become a popular phrase. Well, here is the original Colonial Axis of Evil: The empires of Britain, France, and Belgium.And here is how these former empires now treat the suppression of their past:1. Regret in Belgium: In 1885, King Leopold II received Kongo as his private gift. Belgium's king ravaged the country, chopped off Congolese arms and legs, killed millions, and provided inspiration for Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness in 1899.This year, as the Belgium state celebrates its 175th year, the country is about to confront its brutal past. That's much thanks to the American Adam Hochschild, who recently documented the atrocities. Official exhibits now acknowledge the colonial crimes in Congo. Soon the Belgians might also admit their responsibility for the tragedy in Rwanda: The racial identity cards of Hutus versus Tutsis which Belgium imposed in the 1930s - and the recent French Hutu support - paved the way for the Rwandan killing fields in 1994.2. Silence in France: A new film is confronting French brutality during Morocco's fight for independence in the mid-1950s. The magnificent film is called Le Regard (The Return), the first of its kind. The film is not made in France, but rather supported by Norway and Morocco. The film director's name is Nour-Eddine Lakhmari, a Moroccan Norwegian.The French still haven't faced their terrible "civilisation project". They are suppressing the memories of their suppression. While the Americans for decades have made films about their wars, and exported Vietnam-critical films like Platoon, France has refused. The French public still do not realise how gruesomely their soldiers behaved during le sale guerre, the dirty war, in Algeria in the late 1950s. Maybe as much as one million Algerians were killed, not to mention raped and wounded, just because France did not want to leave the illegally occupied country.3. Pride in England: While France refused to leave their colonies in Vietnam, Algeria, and Morocco, Britain could not have left faster in countries like India and Palestine.

The French public still do not realise how gruesomely their soldiers behaved during "le sale guerre", "the dirty war", in Algeria in late 1950s

After growing rich on India for almost 200 years, the British empire in 1947 left the continent in just 72 days: Britain did not work either for a unified India, or for a non-violent division, or for a peaceful future in Kashmir with its foggy borders.The same empire was responsible for the hands-off policy towards the guerrilla war during the fatal, last days of the British Palestine Mandate in 1947-1948.So, what is the British attitude towards its former crimes against Indian, Chinese, African and Arab peoples? They are actually proud of their colonial times, as Prince William's party outfit signals. Prime Minister Tony Blair boasts that the British empire was "a remarkable achievement". Recently, Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, said "Britain should stop apologising for colonialism and be proud of its history".They are backed by Niall Ferguson's Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World (2003). A bestseller which mocks Mahatma Gandhi and the UN declaration against racism.He hails the former British empire as a necessity, and does not question its legitimacy. The Times declared Ferguson "the most brilliant British historian of his generation".So what happened when Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins published in March, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya? Her work was ridiculed in papers such as The Independent.
Elkins documents how the British imprisoned 1.5 million Kenyans and killed tens of thousands of them during the Mau-Mau uprising in the 1950s. But Britain does not answer Kenya's demands for an apology.The European empires are still the black man's burden. Yet, we should forgive, we must move on. Maybe we should even forget about the past, so we can focus more on the future. But we should never let the European colonisers forget, nor let them be proud of their brutal suppression. This is the main problem: They still don't know what they have done.Dag Herbjornsrud is a Norwegian author, journalist and historian of ideas

Bringing Japan's biological war to light

By Benjamin Robertson in Beijing

Friday 22 April 2005 

Chinese accuse Japan of trying to whitewash its past

The latest round of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China may have
started to wind down, but one woman's campaign against Japan's wartime
legacy continues."I do not see myself as a political activist," Chinese lawyer Wang Xuan says. Representing Chinese victims of Japan's biological warfare research experiments, Wang's work is as political as it gets.With bilateral relations between the two countries at their worst since they were established in 1972, Wang is trying hard to build support for her case - scheduled for the later half of this year - in the Japanese courts.But the rejection by a Tokyo judge of a similar case brought by victims of Japan's wartime actions on 19 April has dampened her hopes."Given this ruling and the current diplomatic situation, it is quite possible our case will also be thrown out," Wang said.Little publicity.A linguist by training, 52-year-old Wang first took notice of the case in the early 1990s, soon after reading how some Chinese farmers were planning to sue Japan for testing the effects of the bubonic plague on their village.

Japan's atrocities in China were till recently largely unknown

It was not just that they were her compatriots that drew her attention.They were from her hometown of Yiwu, in the coastal province of Zhejiang, and as she was to find out later, her own uncle had been one of the victims of the Japanese tests.Compared to the Holocaust, Japan's atrocities in China were until recently unknown to the Western public.The 1997 book Rape of Nanking by the late Iris Chang changed this.Translated into 13 languages, the book was received as an eye-opener into what had happened.Chang documented for a Western audience how Japanese soldiers raped and killed Chinese residents of the central Chinese city of Nanjing. Several hundred thousand civilians were killed in a period of four months.Nanjing was previously known as Nanking to the West.Japan's biological warfare experiments are, however, less well documented. Initiated under a signed order from the Japanese emperor - a factor Wang believes explains why, to this day, Japan has not fully opened its archives on the subject - Japan established a series of chemical and biological weapon research centres across China.Human guinea pigsJapanese scientists conducted experiments using the local population as human guinea pigs, she says.Typically, whole villages were exposed to various pathogens, such as the bubonic plague or cholera, and then monitored for effects.Documents seized after the war ended show that some people - referred to as "monkeys" by the scientists - were even taken to the centres and vivisected without anaesthetic so scientists could see the effects of the diseases on the internal organs.

Unit 731 was said to have carried out human experiments

At the clinically named Unit 731 in the northeast Chinese city of Harbin, several thousand people - some prisoners of war, others civilians - were kept inside the centre and injected with pathogens directly.Others were tied up outside in the freezing winter temperatures so scientists could see the body's reaction to frostbite.In one town that Wang is working with in Zhejiang province, six different germs were tested on the civilian population between 1940 and 1942.Using testimony from Japanese soldiers, and records from the local centre for disease control, Wang has shown that over 300,000 people were affected by the tests, which included plague. Some 50,000 died.Scientists also researched how best to deploy these potential weapons. At Unit 731, now a museum, records show how the military perfected bombs that could securely carry germs, or their animal hosts, and not destroy them upon impact.Historians' estimates say as many as 300,000 people died as a result of these tests, although as most of the relevant documents were either burnt or taken back to Japan, the actual figure remains unknown.Japanese journalistsThis all came to light, however, not at the end of World War II, when China was once again racked by internal conflict, but in the early 1980s when Japanese journalists began investigating stories that military scientists had been experimenting on human subjects.

"Theoretically speaking, there is no government mechanism that recognises how such programmes were conducted, but on the other hand, no Japanese politician would say that these programmes did not exist" Ide Kenji, spokesman, Japanese embassy

What they discovered was that a number of respected doctors then working in Japanese hospitals and pharmaceutical companies had made a deal with the US military at the end of the war.In exchange for the research data, the scientists won immunity from the war trials, and were able - temporarily, it turned out - to reintegrate into an unsuspecting society.Enter Wang, who after meeting with survivors of the tests, began petitioning the Chinese government in the early 1990s to let her take her clients' claims for compensation to the Japanese courts.It was to be a long journey.Supportive of the recent protests, but critical of the police's failure to curb anti-Japan violence in Chinese cities, Wang says in pursuing this case it has not just been the Japanese government she has had to fight, but her own as well.No government helpIn 1972, renouncing all demands for state-to-state war reparations as one of the conditions for establishing diplomatic relations, the Chinese government was not at all keen on the idea of Wang reopening old wounds."If I was being charitable I would say the Chinese government did not understand the idea of an individual pursuing such a case," Wang says."At that time, the rights of the individual were still new to China. However, I also heard that given the economic relationship between the two countries, and that as many officials were privately benefiting from it, there were people who did not want me to upset the status quo."

"We have been pushing for years for our government to conduct more open research into the war but they won't. Until recently, Chinese newspapers would not even report on our case" Lawyer Wang Xuan

It was only because the government realised it could not be seen by the public to be blocking such a sensitive case that Wang won permission.Still prohibited from even forming a pressure group on the issue, Wang has relied on the help of Japanese peace activists and donations from Chinese individuals. Asking for help from the Chinese authorities, she says, would be futile."We have been pushing for years for our government to conduct more open research into the war but they won't. Until recently, Chinese newspapers would not even report on our case."Difficulties and intricaciesThat little of this is known to the protesters at the recent demonstrations speaks volumes about how the government has obscured the realities of Japan-China relations.One example has been China's use of maps.In the 1950s, several maps published showed the now disputed Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku in Japanese) as belonging to Japan, indicating, at the very least, official indifference to the barren rocks' ownership.After suggestions in 1969 that there could be oil and gas in the surrounding waters, Beijing's position on the island's ownership hardened, and the demarcation line was shifted in China's favour.Another example is statistics.

Lawyer Wang Xuan wants most of all to air historical facts

At the end of World War II, the Chinese government said 1.75 million Chinese had died. In 1949, it gave a total number of 9.32 million, and then in 1995, this increased to 35 million. One foreign journalist told Aljazeera.net that he remembered the number jumping by five million in a week during the mid 1990s.Statisticians say the most recent figure takes into account more detailed analysis of civilian casualties but with China's reputation for distorting figures, critics have dismissed it as politically motivated.Tokyo taciturn.Japan, however, has never fully come to terms with its wartime experiments. On the issue of biological weapon research, the government still remains tight-lipped."Theoretically speaking, there is no government mechanism that recognises how such programmes were conducted, but on the other hand, no Japanese politician would say that these programmes did not exist," Ide Kenji, Japanese embassy spokesman, told Aljazeera.net.This has translated into problems for Wang in the courts.When her case was heard in 2002, Japanese courts ruled that although biological weapons had been used, the individual is not a recognised entity under international law and so foreign nationals could not sue for war damages.In addition, says Wang, judges appointed to hear her case keep being changed. She suspects it is so they do not become swayed by the emotionally powerful testimonies.What is needed most of all, says Wang, is an airing of historical facts.This week's suggestion by the Japanese foreign minister to establish a joint committee to explore the war might go some way to achieving this.This way, in between all the diplomatic jostling and economic cooperation, the real victims of the war might still be remembered.

http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2798469E-8290-4C1A-9560-51AEBFCB09BA.htm

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Marburg cases increase in Angola

Tuesday 19 April 2005   

Mobile medical teams are facing resistance from local residents

An outbreak of the killer Marburg virus, which has claimed 235 lives in northern Angola, is not over, with the number of cases and deaths continuing to rise.

World Health Organisation spokesman Dave Daigle said he did not think the deadly haemorrhagic fever outbreak was over. It has hit hardest in the war-ravaged town of Uige, the northern front between government and rebel forces during Angola's brutal 27-year war.

  

"The numbers are still going up," Daigle said from Uige on Monday.

  

He said mobile teams sent out into the sprawling townships around the town to look for the sick and the dead were again encountering resistance from the town's communities.

 

Security concerns

 

"We still have security concerns. Yesterday [Sunday] people threw stones at the teams who go out in the field," said Daigle.

 

A team of top virologists, epidemiologists and anthropologists from the WHO and Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders) arrived in the devastated town late last month, where the paediatric ward of the local hospital was fingered as the possible source of the Ebola-like outbreak. 

 

The deadly disease has struck Uige, a war-devastated town

Their efforts have been met with fierce resistance and denial by many residents, who are shunning the hospitals and the specially suited medical teams that roam the city in search of Marburg cases.

  

Daigle said efforts had been increased to mobilise the community to tell them about Marburg, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids including blood, urine, saliva, excrement, sweat, tears and vomit.

 

Musical message

 

"We have more people, about nine in the team, who work now on social mobilisation," Daigle said, adding that a special song against Marburg, recorded by three local musicians last week and initiated by anthropologists, was being played around the town.

  

"The song is now on the radio and also on trucks with loudspeakers," Daigle said.

 

"We have more people, about nine in the team, who work now on social mobilisation" Dave Daigle, WHO spokesman

"Marburg, leave our people in peace. We are going to kick you out of this country," goes the song in Portuguese.

  

The Marburg virus can kill a healthy person in a week by diarrhoea and vomiting followed by severe internal bleeding, and is not treatable with any known drugs.

  

The virus was first detected in 1967 when German laboratory workers in Marburg were infected by monkeys from Uganda.

  

Until now the most serious outbreak of the disease was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 123 people died between 1998 and 2000.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/78348473-746D-4DBB-AC44-B933DCF87DF7.htm