Abby Martin on the Jimmy Dore Show Talks about US Crimes of Empire: Part 2

This is the second part of my article on the interview with Abby Martin on the Jimmy Dore Show. Martin is the presenter of the Empire Files on TeleSur English, and a former presenter at RT. She is impassioned, incisive and tells the story of the victims of American and western imperialism both abroad in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the mass of severely normal Americans at home burdened with the tax bill and the sheer rapacious greed of the neoliberal, corporate elite.

She states that Boeing and the other big corporations fund the adverts in the media simply to show the journos, who’s paying their wages, and so keep in line. The media is now all about advertising, not news.

They then talk about the rampant Russia-phobia, which Martin says is causing her to lose her mind. At first she just thought it was the product of Trump and his brown shirts. Dore rips this to shreds by pointing out that it’s not Russia that preventing Americans from getting what they want on a range of issues. 90 per cent of Americans want some form of gun control. But they ain’t getting, and it’s not because of Russia. 80 per cent of the US wanted a public option for Obamacare. Didn’t get it. Not because of Russia either. Americans also want Medicare For All and free college education. Denied that too – but not by the Russians. And everybody in America wants the wars to end. And it ain’t the Russians that are preventing that from happening. The people really screwing America is Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, big pharma, and the fossil fuel industry.

Back to Boeing and its adverts, the company’s funding Meet the Press to shut the press up. Half of America doesn’t believe in climate change, because it’s just presented by the media as just another point of view. And this is because the networks are funded by the fossil fuel industry. And the networks bring on general after endless general to talk about how the US should go to war with North Korea. All they talk about is how the war should be fought, but they are never challenged on the reason why. They never bring on Medea Benjamin, the head of the anti-war opposition group, Code Pink, except to mock her. Similarly, you never see union leaders on TV, nor are there any anti-war voices. As for Brian Williams, who was sacked for telling porkies about how he took fire, his real crime was that he didn’t tell his audience that the ‘objective’ news he was broadcasting was paid for by the generals who appeared on his show.

They then talk about the revolving door between the generals and the defence contractors. After the generals retire, they go to work for some company like General Electric. Martin talks about the $500 million in one bill sponsored by John McCain, to train the Ukrainians against Russian aggression. She caustically and accurately remarks that ‘we’re now funding neo-Nazis’, after setting up the coup that overthrew their last president. America is also giving $750 million to Israel for defence.

The Russia scare was hatched by Ralph Mook and John Podesta in the Democrat party, and it’s grown into a huge conspiracy. Martin describes how she saw it all developing three years ago when she was working for RT. They first attacked Al-Jazeera, demonising it as the propaganda wing of Saddam Hussein. Then they turned against RT as a network and her personally. She states that the report on which the accusations are based is rubbish. It looks like it was half written by some unpaid intern. There’s that contempt for any truth or real fact in this document. She noticed when one of RT’s presenters publicly resigned over Putin’s annexation of the Crimea. That was a psy-ops operation launched by William Kristol, one of the founders of the Neocons and the head of the Project for the New American Century. There was absolute no proof that Russia was meddling in American democracy. And half of the document attacked Martin personally. It was fomenting radical discontent, and the elite hated the way they covered third parties, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street. so talking about how half of America has less than $1,000 in savings is now Russian propaganda. It’s at this point that Martin states she never said anything in praise in Putin. She states that there are plenty of leftists and socialists working at the network, not because they like Putin, but because there is nowhere else to go.

They then talk about how the Democrat party is full of people, who voted for Bush twice. And particularly the way Keith Olberman, whom Martin had previously admired, came out and publicly apologised to George Dubya. She states that Bush is a war criminal. He set up a gulag (Guantanamo) killed and tortured people wholesale, but when he appeared on Oprah she held his hand as if he was Buddha! Martin said she realised Obama was a fake when he refused to prosecute the war criminals. So now they have Trump, who’s hated because he’s a narcissist, but knows he will have people applauding every time he bombs people. They ask rhetorically whether the media will apologise to Nixon if Trump wins a second term.

They then go on to discuss how Trump is actually less dangerous, and more of a threat to the establishment, then Mike Pence, the Vice-President. Martin describes Pence, with good reason, as a ‘Christian ISIS who wants to kill gays’. He’s psychotic, but you wouldn’t have the cult of personality you have with Trump. She states that the Christian Evangelicals love him, as without him they wouldn’t have got in. And so Pence and DeVos are quite happy to use him as the fall guy, taking the rap for the policies they’re pushing through Congress. Trump represents the worst elements in society – the cult of celebrity, of reality TV shows, the adulation given to millionaires. She states that Joyce Behar, another personality, was paradoxically the voice of reason when she said on one interview that things wouldn’t be better if they only got rid of Trump. No, not if that meant Mike Pence becoming president. They talk about how, when Bush was in power, everyone talked about Bush Derangement Disorder. Then it was Obama Derangement Disorder, and now its Trump Derangement Disorder. But Dore also points out that progressives dodged a bullet with Trump. Voting for the lesser of two evils meant that they got Trump, who is too incompetent to get his policies through.

To be continued in Part 3.

Secular Talk: Jeremy Scahill Criticises American Pro-War Journalism

This is another piece criticising the pro-War slant of American news, this time from Secular Talk. The host, Kyle Kulinski, comments on the appearance of the respected journalist Jeremy Scahill on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Scahill was asked by the programme’s male anchor if he believed Americans had been desensitised to the war in Syria through media coverage. Scahill attacked Trump for giving even more leeway to bomb and invade the countries of the Middle East in campaigns, which had killed civilians. In March alone, according to one group monitoring airstrikes, the US military had killed 1,000 civilians in Iraq. Trump had also supported military intervention in Syria for a long time, and there had been strikes made by special ops forces as well as normal ‘boots on the ground’. He had also supplied intelligence and arms to the Saudis for the war in Yemen, which was also claiming innocent lives.

Scahill stated that CNN needed to withdraw all appearances from retired generals and colonels, because they were pushing the war. He also attacked two journalists in particular, Fareed Zakaria and Brian Williams, for their outrageous enthusiasm for the war. He states that Zakaria would have sex with a cruise missile if he could, and criticised Williams for his ‘obscene’ quotation of Leonard Cohen.

Kulinski remarks on how Scahill seems to have been aged by his experiences making a film in which he talked to people in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, who had been the victims of drone strikes. He points out how a simple Google search will show that Trump doesn’t care about protecting civilians, as he claims. He said he wanted to kill the families of terrorists as well as the terrorists themselves. In his raid on Yemen, he killed an eight year old American girl, as well as 35 other innocent victims, in a raid that Obama had considered would cost too many innocent lives. 200 civilians have also died in a recent air strike in Mosul. Kulinski makes the point that there has been a 432 per cent rise in drone strikes. Trump is also aiding Saudi Arabia, who have blockaded Yemen. As a result of this, 17 million Yemenis are facing starvation. As for chemical weapons, America has given white phosphorus, a truly horrific weapon, to the Saudis for Yemen and Israel, which has used it in Gaza. Kulinski points out that the media is now part of the military-industrial complex. They don’t check their sources, and they have on retired generals and colonels, who are on the payroll of the arms companies. Kulinski praises Scahill for cutting through all the corporate, pro-war bullsh*t, but says that means that Scahill probably won’t be coming back to CNN any time soon.

I’ve put this up as I think it is interesting and heartening that some journalists are attacking the mainstream media for their bias in promoting an American invasion of Syria, and the obscenity of Brian Williams’ quotation of Leonard Cohen. I wonder what Cohen himself would have thought of it, if he were alive today. I don’t know what his personal politics were, but the people I knew, who were fans of his were leftie liberal types, who hated war.

Jimmy Dores Show Tears Into Rapturously Enthusiastic Journo for Air Strikes

This is more about Syria, I’m afraid. But I feel I have to write about this, no matter how tiresome it might be, because I’m afraid that the British people, as well as those of America and Europe, are being dragged by the political class and the military-industrial complex into another illegal and genocidal war. The last time it was Iraq. This time the imperialists and profiteers have their sights set on Syria.

In this clip from the Jimmy Dore Show, the American comedian and his co-hosts, Steffi Zamorano, Ron Placone and Bob Reinitz rip into Brian Williams, a news presenter on MSNBC. As you know, a few days ago Trump launched a missile strike against a Syrian air base under the pretext of punishing Assad for his poison gas attack. A gas attack that has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda false flag attack, with the bodies of the victims those of people, who had been kidnapped and then butchered from a pro-Assad village.

Williams showed the footage of the missiles’ launch from an American warship, and then went into raptures about it. Literally. He waxed lyrical, describing them as ‘beautiful pictures’. At one point, he even had the audacity to quote Leonard Cohen, ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’ One of the team on the programme makes the comment that Cohen wrote one of the most beautiful love poems, but Williams just wants to rave about weapons.

Dore makes the point that Williams is hardly an unbiased observer. He worked for General Electric, which is a major defence contractor. And General Electric used to own NBC. Williams was a cheerleader for the Iraq Invasion, bringing on generals, who would demand that the situation required more armaments and personnel. Of course they did. These generals were also in the pay of the armaments companies, so it was in their interests, and those of their corporate paymasters, to push for war. Williams, however, kept silent about all this. Which, in Dore’s view, constitutes journalistic malfeasance. Williams also lied about his own military exploits. He claimed to have been aboard a military helicopter when it came under fire. That was revealed as lie in an article in one of the New York papers. But it didn’t stop Williams carrying on with the pretence.

Dore points out the obscenity of Williams’ remarks, but makes the point that he’s no different from many other ‘leftie’ journalists, all repeating the same chorus of demands for war. These include Rachel Maddow, another supposedly liberal news presenter, who supported Killary against Bernie Sanders. Dore states that all the journalists on television are doing it. He then points out the difference between American coverage of the weapons’ launch, and al-Jazeera’s. American television shows them being launched. But only al-Jazeera show the chaos and bloodshed when they land. He also points out that the rebels America is fighting with against Assad are al-Qaeda and ISIS, and that the war is for the profit of the oil industry, the Saudis and the Israelis. He reminds his viewers how the media does not show the victims of American bombing in Iraq, where millions have been killed, Yemen or Libya. He states that an American bombing attack killed 150 people in Raqqa. They were told to stay in their homes for safety, but were killed anyway. As for American support of Islamist terrorists, he points out that this has not worked well In Libya, which is a failed state. He goes on to quote one of the members of The Young Turks, Steve Oh, who talked about how the media was able to get away with this because Americans didn’t know much about these places.

Here he was challenged by Steffi Zamorano. She stated that she believed Americans did understand what was going on in the Middle East, and did not like it. There were, she pointed out, countless peace demonstrations and protests going on all over the US, but these were being deliberately ignored by the mainstream media in order to make the protestors feel isolated.