Those that have been paying attention to the war hawks in DC know about the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a neocon think tank that rose out of the ashes of infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
When Abby was placed in the crosshairs of war mongers last year during the Ukraine incursion, Media Roots was repelled by the dark world of groups that help shape foreign policy yet are completely removed from the electoral process.
Intrepid journalists like Ken Silverstein have been writing about the trend for years. In 2007 Silverstein conducted a groundbreaking investigation into obscure lobbying firms in DC and their role in improving the image of dictatorial regimes in his book Turkmeniscam. He’s since written several important stories about the next generations of neocons who hype up the new Cold War and sensationalize aspects of the War on Terror.
As tensions between the US and Russia escalate further everyday, Silverstein joins Media Roots Radio to give his insight on foreign government lobbying and how news is made in the dark underbelly of DC’s revolving door.
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This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs.
Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.
Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the case of hacker Matt DeHart, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the Bin Laden raid, the Tom Cotton letter to Iran attempting to undermine the diplomatic negotiations, Vice’s interview with Obama and House of Cards Season three’s anti-Russian propaganda.
If you want to directly download the podcast, click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.
This Media Roots podcast is the product of many long hours of hard work and love. If you want to encourage our voice, please consider supporting us as we continue to speak from outside party lines. Even the smallest donations help us with operating costs.
Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio here.
This month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory after a close re-election race, cementing his right wing Likud party in power for another term.
Right before the election, Netanyahu reinforced his rejection of Palestinian statehood, vowed to continue building settlements and doubled down on his decade long fear-mongering campaign against Iran.
Since Netanyahu spoke at Congress, the media has been hyping a rift between the two heads of state, suggesting that the US is finally standing up its biggest welfare recipient. Yet it’s only rhetoric until the US government ceases its support for Israel’s policy of apartheid and annual allotment of $3 billion in military aid.
On this edition of Media Roots Radio, Rania Khalek of The Electronic Intifada talks about what another term of Netanyahu means for occupied Palestine and the US political establishment, as well as how the leader’s zealotry emboldens resistance against apartheid.
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During Israel’s latest offense on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge, Rania came on Breaking the Set to discuss the disproportionality of the conflict, the collective punishment against Palestinian civilians and how people can help the residents of Gaza.
Holding Israel Accountable From Bottom Up | Interview with Rania Khalek
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The UN estimates it will take 100 years to rebuild bombed out Gaza, but the territory cannot even get construction materials under Israel’s siege.
Get involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to push for exposure and necessary pressure on Israel.
One human family living on one organism. Yet man is embroiled in a war against himself.
Unfortunately this blatant truth hasn’t yet been realized by the vast majority of humans living on earth.
The wars against ISIS, Russia, and now laughably Venezuela are dominating headlines in the latest front of the information war, but a far more deadly battle is being carried out against the organism we all share.
We face the most severe environmental crises in history with deforestation at a rate of 36 football fields per minute, floating trash islands the size of Texas in the Pacific, and half the world’s species being wiped out in the last 40 years as a result of habitat loss and pollution. In just the last 30 years, climate change has already caused a tripling of natural disasters, with scientists predicting an irreparable tipping point around year 2020, the same year Obama pledged to cut US carbon emissions by 17%.
But how can climate change solutions be taken seriously without a massive overhaul of the agricultural industry and complete termination of the military industrial complex? The Pentagon is the largest polluting institution in the world and is exempt from all international climate treaties.
The climate change disinformation campaign has gotten to the point of such absurdity, that Florida’s State Environmental Protection Department has banned the use of the terms climate change and sustainability in all emails and reports. It’s an issue that should supersede politics. But a corporate controlled press run by oil and gas won’t dare undermine its sponsors.
Of course the establishment showcases an alternate reality. Media hysteria abounds about missing planes and Iran’s non existent nukes, yet there’s an eerie calm about the issues that most impact us, and what we can do to fix them. The population remains dumbed down, complacent and willfully blind.
Maybe the CEOs, lobbyists and politicians are shortsighted because they’re building their own elysium and don’t give a fuck if we all die, but the majority of them are inevitably just changing deck chairs on the Titanic – and they know it.
Deep down everyone knows the truth. Every last vestige of this precious planet is being pillaged without consequence. Endless consumption and unfettered capitalism cannot and will not last. And every empire falls. That’s just a matter of time.
The system blatantly protects the bottom line and resists all substantial change with military force and police aggression to keep the old guard. The elites at the helm will never capitulate their security for the good of humanity.
Once a system doesn’t work for 99.9% of the people, it might be time for a new one.
Abby Martin at Zeitgeist Day 2015 in Berlin
I’m more than happy to be a part of an annual event that showcases a different future than the dark path humanity is bulldozing down. So thank fuck for Peter Joseph’s not only incredible three part Zeitgeist documentary series, but also for his follow up work with Culture in Decline – all of which dismantle the toxic conventional wisdom that strangles our mental development.
Seeing the power of video to shatter religious, political and economic dogma inspired the hell out of me. But I was also moved by the trajectory of the series, which first deconstructed systems of control and then presented an entirely new realm of possibilities.
I used to be an anti-war organizer. But once I saw the media selling the Iraq war I realized something was very systemically wrong, and it crossed all party lines. Media became my number one battle, because if you don’t have a platform to tell your story then no one will hear it.
I started Media Roots as a hub for censored information and it grew into a multimedia citizen journalism project, which eventually brought me to RT and Breaking the Set. It was a dream job to attack power on an international platform, but I decided I want to be meeting the people behind the stories and telling them independent from any state or corporate entity.
I don’t just want to react to the mainstream media’s circle jerk of fuckery.
Bush lackey Karl Rove once brazenly told New York Times reporter Ron Suskind in 2004 “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality… judiciously as you will… we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you – all of you – will be left to just study what we do.”
Unfortunately, Rove’s right. Reality is dictated by an out-of-touch war mongering elite that doesn’t apply to the reality we live every day. But it’s only able to sustain on fear and war. And there’s nothing that terrifies the establishment more than a populace not living in fear.
People are rightly disillusioned after being called crazy for wanting more than two parties or questioning ludicrous paradoxical foreign policy. They also want sustainable energy.
Clearly I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone here claims to. But a resource based economy is one of the most thought provoking and groundbreaking solutions I’ve seen to the crisis of civilization we face.
We don’t have to wait for anyone but ourselves to start implementing the ideals either, because we are all agents of change and vessels of truth that can push our communities towards seismic sustainable shifts in the way we live right now.
Other countries already have a different approach. I recently had the chance to visit Cuba, and not only does the country have an organics renaissance, but there aren’t commercials telling you what a worthless piece of shit you are, or corporate chains eviscerating local culture.
But most spectacularly is Cuba’s medical internationalism. Cuba sent the world’s largest contingent of medical professionals to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to fight the ebola epidemic, and has healthcare workers operating in 66 countries. The country also has a medical school that trains international students to become doctors for free.
Of course, this wasn’t out of pure altruism, the long imposed embargo on Cuba forced it to become self sufficient and fiercely community oriented. The country is far from perfect, but the obvious takeaway remains the tremendous amount of good that can be done with such little resources. If that’s what an economically crippled nation can achieve, what can the richest one in the world do?
If people came first.
Every government that has tried to incorporate different economic models gets systematically undermined with regime change attempts. USAID is still spending $20 million dollars a year in Cuba to undermine the government despite the normalization process. 56 years after the Cold War, and the US government still can’t let a small socialist nation live in peace.
In socialist Venezuela, Obama just announced the country poses and quote “extraordinary threat” to national security and that he has quote “deep concerns” about its human rights abuses. Meanwhile America’s biggest ally Saudi Arabia summarily carries out beheadings and public floggings to bloggers who criticize the king.
Clearly these issues are deep rooted and deeply interconnected. This is about hegemony, and the clutches of capitalism won’t give up easily. The system can’t afford alternatives, and we’ve seen how far it will go, with no remorse. It’s a machine that runs on death and destruction, having institutionalized structural violence that kills millions of our brothers and sisters every day.
No one has to go without water in the streets of Detroit, or freeze to death in bombed out Gaza, because we have the resources to provide everyone. Would you let your mother or brother starve on the streets? No, because we belong to the commons and the commons belongs to us.
The revolution of values is the extension of empathy, understanding, compassion and humility – globally. Which means shattering the illusion of me as separate from you or us as separate from the dirt underneath our concrete jungle. It comes with expanding consciousness and media literacy. And most importantly, it’s about building alternatives ourselves. That’s why I believe that this movement is unstoppable and the ideas it’s spawned will create our reality of a sustainable future.
Because if we don’t, we’ll just become casualties in the war being waged against us and every living thing on this planet.
On this pale blue dot.
As Carl Sagan said, “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
Obama’s election marked a new dawn for hundreds of millions of people, who were looking to an eloquent, constitutional lawyer for “Hope” and “Change” in America. However, it quickly became apparent that Obama had little substance beyond the slogans branded by his campaign.
With a little more than a year left in his presidency, his milquetoast legacy has been embodied by his greatest skill: wordcraft. Obama’s team has continued, if not exacerbated, most Bush era policies, simply rebranding them in order to appease and confuse the public into compliance.
One of the first things his administration did was declare an end to the “War on Terror” that the Bush sociopaths launched worldwide. Turns out, all they wanted to do was stop calling it a “War on Terror,” making clear that any further military involvement abroad would simply be called “Overseas Contingency Operations.”
Six years later, and the Nobel Peace Prize winning president has bombing campaigns in seven different countries under his belt. And the casualties of the empire’s plunders? Collateral damage.
There are also new terms for war. When US and NATO bombed the hell out of Libya resulting in the failed state we see today, it wasn’t a war. No, it was merely a “Kinetic Military Action,” according to government officials.
Torture is now “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and the act of kidnapping and exporting torture is simply called “extraordinary rendition”.
Whenever the administration sends predator drones to bomb people around the world, they’re just “surgical strikes” targeting “militants”. However, simply being military aged male constitutes someone as a militant, and according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, less than four percent of drone victims in Pakistan are officially listed as al Qaeda.
When Obama’s cabinet dropped the term “enemy combatant”, it was a purely symbolic move to distance itself away from the Bush Guantanamo era. Unfortunately, over 140 men still remain rotting away in the notorious prison despite what they’re now called on paper. And when these prisoners go on a hunger strike, it’s now called a “long term non-religious fast”.
As journalist Glenn Greenwald reminds us, altering the names of policies doesn’t change the fact that they’re still happening:
“The Obama administration…makes only the most cosmetic and inconsequential changes – designed to generate headlines misleadingly depicting a significant reversal – while, in fact, retaining the crux of Bush’s extremist detention theory.”
Obviously this rebranding tactic wasn’t invented by Obama’s PR team.
Propaganda was propelled with the advent of PR genius Edward Bernays and later Nazi mastermind Joseph Goebbels, whose powerful techniques have been perfected and employed for decades by governments worldwide. Disturbing Newspeak phrases that absolve their pillaging and mass murder have permeated society and warped our interpretation of reality.
How Words Absolve Mass Murder
The term “Mowing the Lawn” is what governments say to allude to the literal mowing down of civilians. Shockingly, the callous term has been used not only by Israeli military commanders in reference to the recent bloodbath of Palestinians, but it’s also been used by Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser Bruce Riedel who said this about drone strikes:
“You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”
If you think that’s bad, officials also use the cute phrase “Shake ‘n Bake” to refer to using banned white phosphorus before blowing up people with high grade explosives. Administrators also think so lowly of the people they’re killing with flying robots that they brutishly call them “bug splats”.
Beyond war, in today’s cut throat capitalist world overrun by neoliberal doctrine, there’s a language of dehumanization employed towards everything, spoken among the elite class and policy heads in order to keep things running efficiently.
As the Guardian points out, the term “cleansing the stock” is actually used to describe excess human beings by parliamentarians. After all, you can’t afford to actually feel emotion, empathy or sorrow for the paupers at the bottom of the totem pole.
Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the natural world, the language is even more crude.
“Nature is “natural capital”. Ecological processes are ecosystem services, because their only purpose is to serve us. Hills, forests and rivers are described in government reports as green infrastructure. Wildlife and habitats are asset classes in an ecosystems market. Fish populations are invariably described as stocks, as if they exist only as moveable assets from which wealth can be extracted – like disabled recipients of social security.”
All of these devaluing terms have seeped into mainstream consciousness, dutifully repeated by media figures and then, by us.
Words hold tremendous power, and if we don’t reclaim our language and start seeing people instead of “militants”, drone victims instead of “bug splats”, or natural splendor instead of “green infrastructure”, then the voiceless are destined to be silenced forever.
Those that have been paying attention to the war hawks in DC know about the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a neocon think tank that rose out of the ashes of infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the case of hacker Matt DeHart, the bizarre circumstances surrounding the Bin Laden raid, the Tom Cotton letter to Iran attempting to undermine the diplomatic negotiations, Vice’s interview with Obama and House of Cards Season three’s anti-Russian propaganda.
One human family living on one organism. Yet man is embroiled in a war against himself.
Obama’s election marked a new dawn for hundreds of millions of people, who were looking to an eloquent, constitutional lawyer for “Hope” and “Change” in America. However, it quickly became apparent that Obama had little substance beyond the slogans branded by his campaign.