Munich American
Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 14. April 2008
Alternative Radio
TARIQ ALI III
Der Krieg und die Medien
Der in Lahore geborene international
bekannte Schriftsteller und Aktivist Tariq Ali arbeitete lange Jahre in
London für die „New Left Review“. Er schrieb mehr als
ein Dutzend Bücher über Geschichte und Politik. Auf der
ganzen Welt schätzt man diesen charismatischen Redner, der in
seiner „Freizeit“ Filme macht und Drehbücher und
Romane schreibt. Zu seinen bekanntesten Werken gehören: „The
Clash of Fundamentalism“, „Bush in Babylon“ und
„Pirates of the Carribean“. Gemeinsam mit David Barsamian
verfasste er”Speaking of Empire and Resistance“
In den vergangenen 40 Jahren hat sich im Bereich der Medien ein
kolossaler Wandel vollzogen. Die Printmedien verloren ihre
Vormachtstellung. Das Bild verdrängte das geschriebene Wort. Das
Fernsehen wurde zur Hauptinformationsquelle.
In den Zeitungen war noch Platz gewesen für kontroverse, durchaus
nicht immer regierungskonforme Meinungen. Entscheidend für diese
Meinungsvielfalt war der Kalte Krieg. Weil die Menschen in den
kommunistischen Staaten nicht mehr glaubten, was ihnen von den
Parteiorganen vorgesetzt wurde, ließ man im Westen
unterschiedliche, auch radikale Fernsehsender, Zeitungen und
Radioprogramme zu, um so zu demonstrieren, wie liberal man ist. Die
Reportagen über den Vietnamkrieg waren von hoher journalistischer
Qualität. Der Fernsehsender CBS zeigte Marines, die im
vietnamesischen Dschungel ein Haus in Brand steckten, in dem sich
Frauen und Kinder befanden und deren Kommandeur diese Aktion als
„Kampf für den Frieden“ bezeichnete. Diese Art der
Fernsehberichterstattung ist inzwischen in den westlichen Medien von
den Bildschirmen verschwunden. Heute muss man niemandem mehr beweisen,
wie gut man ist – denn fast auf der ganzen Welt sieht man die
gleichen Nachrichten. Der beste Beweis dafür, sind die Berichte
über die drei großen Konflikte im Mittleren Osten.
Die Berichterstattung über den Krieg im Irak setzte neue
Maßstäbe. Nur „eingebettete“ Journalisten gelten
jetzt als zuverlässig. Journalisten also, die abhängig sind
von den westlichen Streitkräften, die die von der Armee
kontrollierten Gebiete nie verlassen haben und die nur das berichten.
was von den Presseoffizieren genehmigt wurde. Nur zwei oder drei mutige
Journalisten darunter Seymour Hersh und Robert Fisk halten sich nicht
an diese Regeln. Fast alle westlichen Zeitungen kauften Präsident
Bush ab, dass der Irak über Massenvernichtungswaffen verfügt.
In den USA nahm man ihm sogar auch Saddam Husseins Verbindungen zu
al-Qaida ab. Kein Europäer glaubte diese Geschichte und die
arabische Welt brach darüber in schallendes Gelächter aus. In
Wahrheit ermöglichte es erst die US-Invasion, dass al Qaida im
Land ihres ehemaligen Erzfeindes Saddam Hussein Fuß fassen konnte.
Später hat sich The New York Times bei ihren Lesern für diese
Fehlinformationen entschuldigt. Aber wir wurden nicht falsch
informiert, die Zeitungen hatten nur kritiklos die Meinung der
Regierung übernommen. Die BBC feuerte sogar einen
konservativer Journalisten weil er die angeblichen
Massenvernichtungswaffen als Coup der Geheimdienste bezeichnet hatte.
Sobald der Irakkrieg in vollem Gange war, bezahlten mehr und mehr
Journalisten mit ihrem Leben, wenn sie sich außerhalb der
militärischen Kontrollzone aufhielten. Nicht selten wurden sie
dabei „versehentlich“ von Marines erschossen.
Als 2005 durchsickerte, dass seit der US Invasion bis zu 600 000
irakische Zivilisten ums Leben gekommen sind, wurde dies von Tony Blair
und der amerikanische Regierung abgestritten. Da diese Zahlen sich
jedoch später als korrekt erwiesen, muss man davon ausgehen, dass
bis heute eine Million Iraker umgekommen sind. Zwei Millionen
flüchteten in die Nachbarländer. Iraks soziale Infrastruktur,
das Bildungs- und Gesundheitssystem brachen zusammen.
Über all das wird wohlweislich nicht berichtet. Dabei geht es hier
um Völkermord und um Politiker, die vor ein Militärgericht
gestellt werden müssten.
- 2 -.
Als ich vor zwei Jahren im winzigen Katar den größten US
Stützpunkt in Arabien und den Nachrichtensender Al Jazeera
besuchen wollte, erhielt ich zum Stützpunkt keinen Zutritt, aber
bei Al Jazeera beantwortete man bereitwillig alle meine Fragen. Seitens
der Regierung in Katar besteht für Berichte aus dem Ausland
keinerlei Zensur. Bei den Amerikanern ist das nicht immer so. Kaum
hatte Al Jazeera einen Filmbericht aus Bagdad, ausgestrahlt, der
zeigte, wie ein US Panzer auf offenere Strasse ein Privatauto beschoss
und die Insassen, ein junges Paar und seine zwei kleinen Kinder, darin
verbrannten, verschaffte sich ein hoher US General Zutritt in das
Sendegebäude und verlangte umgehend eine Entschuldigung, denn eine
derartig schamlose Berichterstattung würde in der arabischen Welt
antiamerikanischen Hass anfachen. Es war nicht der Tod dieser
unschuldigen Menschen, der ihn empörte, sondern die Bilder davon.
Als Al Jazeera über den Krieg in Afghanistan berichtete,
bombardierte die US Armee das Al Jazeera Hauptquartier. Filmaufnahmen
bezeugen, wie auch das Sendegebäude in Bagdad ganz gezielt unter
Beschuss genommen wurde und der Chefkorrespondenten Tariq Ayub dabei
ums Leben kam. Al Jazeera wartet bis heute auf eine Entschuldigung.
Eigentlich wollten die USA noch vor den Überfall auf den Irak
diesen lästigen Sender aus dem Weg räumen. Es war
ausnahmsweise Tony Blair, der dies verhinderte.
Und obwohl nun alle Sender weltweit die gleichen eingebetteten Bilder
ausstrahlen, ist die öffentliche Stimmung schlecht. So fordert die
Mehrheit der Amerikaner und 80% der britischen Bevölkerung den
Rückzug aus dem Irak. Man hat offensichtlich die Wirkung
medialer Desinformation unterschätzt. Trotz der relativ
hohen amerikanischen Opferzahlen vertrauen die Menschen den
Massenmedien nicht mehr und wenden sich gegen diesen nun schon so lange
andauernden Krieg. Bei den Printmedien gibt es auch heute noch sehr
mutige Gegenstimmen, aber den Journalisten von The Guardian, The
Indepedent und auch von Los Angeles Times steht eine Phalanx aus
weltweit allein 230 Chefredakteuren des Rupert Murdoch
Zeitungs-Imperiums gegenüber.
Die Berichterstattung über den Krieg im Libanon von 2006 machte
keine Ausnahme. Schriftsteller aus Amerika, Brasilien und Israel
protestierten bei einem Literaturfestival in Brasilien gemeinsam gegen
das Vorgehen Israels. Es konnte sich nicht wirklich um eine spontane
Reaktion auf das Kidnapping von drei israelischen Soldaten durch die
Hisbollah gehandelt haben. Dazu war sie viel zu gut vorbereitet. Doch
die westlichen Medien verbreiteten unverdrossen, dass die Hisbollah
diesen Krieg provoziert habe. Sie erwähnten nicht die 50
gefangenen Hisbollah-Mitglieder, die gegen die drei Soldaten
ausgetauscht werden sollten. Später wurde bekannt, dass Bush und
Blair, gegen den heftigen Widerstand des britischen Kabinetts, den
Israelis grünes Licht gegeben hatten, die Hisbollah in einer Woche
und als das nicht gelang, in zwei Wochen, zurückzudrängen.
Doch als dies dann noch immer nicht klappte, zogen sich die
israelischen Truppen zurück und hinterließen Trümmer,
Ruinen und eine zerstörte Infrastruktur.
Als der israelische Premierminister Ehud Olmert vor einem
Untersuchungsausschuss zugeben musste, dass dieser Krieg 6 Monate lang
vorbereitet worden war, wurde dieses sensationelle Geständnis -
außer in Israel - auf den hinteren Seiten versteckt.
Schlecht ist auch die amerikanische Berichterstattung über die
palästinensische Tragödie. Eine starke Lobby diffamiert jede
Kritik an Israel als Antisemitismus oder, so es sich um jüdische
Kritiker handelt, als jüdischen Selbsthass. Deshalb rate ich
amerikanischen Journalisten, das abzudrucken, was kritische israelische
Journalisten schreiben. Selbst der Appell berühmter israelischer
Schriftsteller, mit der Hamas zu verhandeln und Gaza nicht weiter zu
strangulieren, wurde in den amerikanischen Medien totgeschwiegen. Damit
tut man Israel keinen Gefallen, denn es gibt nur zwei Optionen.
Entweder einen einziger Staat Israel-Palästina mit gleichen
Rechten für alle Bürger oder einen eigenen,
zusammenhängenden palästinensischen Staat, nachdem sich
Israel auf die Grenzen von 1967 zurückgezogen, seine Siedlungen
aufgelöst und seine Panzer abgezogen hat. Auch viele Israelis
sehen, dass es dazu keine Alternative gibt, auch wenn der Weg dahin
sehr mühsam sein wird..
- 3 –
Wenden wir uns jetzt der Berichterstattung über den
„guten“ Krieg in Afghanistan zu, durch den angeblich
afghanische Frauen von den Taliban befreit werden sollten.
Tatsächlich wollte man sich an Osama bin Laden rächen.
Natürlich waren die Afghanen froh, die Taliban loszuwerden, doch
sie bekamen stattdessen: einen Dressman für elegante Umhänge
von Amerikas Gnaden mit einem Bruder, der es vom Restaurantbesitzer zum
mächtigsten Waffen- und Heroin- Schmuggler des Landes gebracht
hat. Hamid Karzai und seine Leute bemächtigten sich des besten
Landes, bauten für sich unter dem Schutz der NATO Truppen elegante
Luxusvillen statt Wohnungen für Flüchtlinge. Als daraufhin
antiamerikanische Unruhen aufflackerten, wurde darüber wieder
einmal nicht berichtet.
Und so fassten die Taliban wieder Fuß und griffen die
NATO-Truppen an. Die USA antworteten mit Bombenangriffen, schossen
wahllos um sich und töteten dabei 70, 80, 90 oder 20 angebliche
Taliban-Kämpfer. Auch nach 35 Jahren Krieg haben die Afghanen noch
immer kein funktionierendes Gesundheitssystem, kaum Schulen und viel zu
wenig Wohnungen.
Afghanistan kann nur zur Ruhe kommen, wenn sich seine einflussreichen
Nachbarn Russland, Pakistan, Iran und Indien über eine nationale
Regierung in Kabul einigen und für die nächsten 5 Jahre
Frieden und Sicherheit garantieren. Man kann nicht über Demokratie
reden, solange den Menschen die Luft zum Atmen fehlt. Doch anstatt
darüber zu informieren, erzählen uns die Medien etwas
über völlig sinnlose militärische Erfolge.
Diese Art der Berichterstattung prägt heute auch die Politik der westlichen Welt.
Staatsmännern wie Charles de Gaule, Winston Churchill, Konrad
Adenauer oder Clement Attlee folgten Politiker von der Stange, die am
Rockzipfel der Medien hängen und völlig von ihnen
abhängig sind.
Gleichzeitig ruinieren Politiker wie Tony Blair den Ruf der guten alten
BBC. Sie setzen kritische Programmmacher unter Druck, mischen sich in
ihre Programmgestaltung ein und wenn die Sache auffliegt, lassen sie
sie im Regen stehen. Das führt wiederum zu einer gefährlichen
Selbstzensur, zur Schere im Kopf.. Darüber hinaus passen die
öffentlichen Sender ihr Niveau immer mehr dem der
kommerziellen an. Junge Leute interessieren sich deshalb kaum mehr
für Politik. Dass ihre Wahlenthaltung keineswegs Zustimmung
bedeutet, zeigt der Slogan: „Wenn Wahlen etwas ändern
würden, hätte man sie schon längst verboten.“
Je schlechter die Qualität der öffentlichen Medien wurde,
umso schneller nahm besonders in den USA die Zahl der alternativen,
unabhängigen Sender zu.. 3 Millionen Amerikaner sehen und
hören allmorgendlich die Nachrichten auf Amy Goodmans Democracy
Now! Nicht resignieren heißt die Devise, sondern die richtigen
Informationsquellen aufspüren! Websites im Internet informieren
über das, was die Massenmedien verschweigen.
Nur wenn wir gut informiert sind, können wir unsere Gesellschaft
ändern. Eine Gesellschaft, die sich Konsumgesellschaft nennt, in
der aber immer weniger Menschen konsumieren können. Erst als die
Menschen aufhörten, den offiziellen Verlautbarungen Glauben zu
schenken und selbst Verantwortung übernahmen, konnten sie die
Regime in Russland, Polen und Tschechien zu Fall bringen. Auch bei uns
füllen nicht die Reden der politischen Elite die Kinosäle,
sondern Michael Moores Dokumentarfilme. Wir wissen eigentlich, was
für uns wichtig ist und deshalb könnten wir - wenn wir nur
wollten – sogar Berge versetzen.
Schließen möchte ich mit einem Gedicht von Bert Brecht:
Die Lösung:
Nach dem Aufstand des 17. Juni
Ließ der Sekretär des Schriftstellerverbandes
In der Stalinallee Flugblätter verteilen,
auf denen zu lesen war, dass das Volk
das Vertrauen der Regierung verscherzt habe
und es nur durch verdoppelte Arbeit
zurückerobern könne. Wäre es da
nicht einfacher, die Regierung
löste das Volk auf
und wählte ein anderes?
TARIQ ALI
War & the Media
Montreal, Quebec 4 October 2007
Tariq Ali, an internationally renowned writer and activist, was born in
Lahore, Pakistan. For many years he has been based in London where he
is an editor of "New Left Review." He's written more than a dozen books
on history and politics. A charismatic speaker, he is in great demand
all over the world. In his spare time he is a filmmaker, playwright and
novelist. He is the author of "The Clash of Fundamentalisms," "Bush in
Babylon," "Pirates of the Caribbean " and "Speaking of Empire
& Resistance" with David Barsamian.
A big change has taken place over the last 40 years-slightly longer.
The dominance of the print media, which existed in the 19th century and
a large chunk of the 20th, when the written word was crucially
important for the development of the human personality, for the
development of ideas, has been replaced by the image. So many, many
more people get the news from television than from any other medium.
There was much more space in the print media for divergent views, for
views which challenged governments, which challenged dominant ideas,
than there ever are now.
One crucial reason for this, in my opinion,
was the fact that during the Cold War the perceived enemy of the West
was communism, and one of the characteristics of the system that called
itself by that name was the total domination of one party. They were
one-party states, and one-party states meant one dominant newspaper and
one dominant state television network, and that's what gave the news.
And most people in those countries didn't believe a word of what they
read. That's a fact. Because of that, within the Western world it was
considered absolutely normal and natural to have media which reflected
different opinions, including very radical opinions. One reason for
that was to hold it up as an example to the world which lay on the
other side and say, "In our country the people who are opposed to the
government, and even strongly opposed, find voices on television,
radio, and national newspapers, the print media." So you can see a very
different way of reporting which emerged.
I will just give you one example, from the
United States. During the Vietnam War, in some of the print
media, such as The New York Times,
its correspondent, David Halberstam, was sending in reports from the
battlefields of Vietnam, the quality of this reporting was quite
extraordinary. If you look at what the television reporting was, I can
still remember one image very, very clearly, which was repeated on the
BBC when we were young and agitating against the war in Vietnam. This
was Morley Safer, the correspondent in Vietnam of CBS, reporting from
the jungles, where the Marines were about to torch a house with women
and children in it. Morley Safer filmed this entire operation and then
actually said, "When I asked the Marine commander, he said, 'This is a
fight for freedom.'" You didn't need to say anything else.
That level of reporting on television has
virtually disappeared, certainly in the Western media. You don't get
it. And the contrast is very pronounced. One reason is they don't have
to convince anyone in any other part of the world about how great the
media is compared to anything else, because the media is, by and large,
the same in most parts of the world-though not all, as we shall discuss
in a moment. So it's quite constructive to look at the media in
relation to the three different conflicts that are shaping, reshaping,
destabilizing the Middle East.
The first, of course, is Iraq. If you look at
how the war in Iraq has been covered, it's completely different from
coverage given to previous wars. With the current war in Iraq, the
actual phrase used is the only trustworthy journalists are embedded
journalists. Embedded journalists are those totally dependent on the
Western armies in Iraq, who don't step outside the zones controlled by
these armies and who don't do anything without asking the public
relations people of the various armies there whether they can do this
or not. The bulk of the reporting comes like that. Occasionally you
have two or three brave journalists who break the routine, but by and
large that's what the reporting is. So you do not get a complete or an
everyday account of what is happening in the country.
I don't need to mention it now because this is so well known that it's
almost a cliché to repeat it, that all the mainstream papers in
the Western world by and large bought Bush's line on weapons of mass
destruction. And the United States bought the line which no European
paper could buy because it was too fantastical for words, that one
reason for invading Iraq was because of Saddam Hussein's links with
al-Qaeda. When the United States came up with that, the entire Arab
world roared with laughter, because anyone with a tiny bit of knowledge
knew that Saddam and al-Qaeda loathed each other, absolutely hated each
other, and al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq under the previous regime, it
went in with the occupation. Essentially, that's a fact. No one
believed that, so the European papers couldn't carry that line. In the
United States it was carried by the main networks, Fox television, the
main print media. Two lines went in tandem: he has weapons of mass
destruction and is a friend of al-Qaeda. This was repeated ad nauseam.
When it was challenged, people who challenged it were accused of being
apologists for the regime, saying, "Why are you challenging this? It's
a well-known fact."
We now know, and The New York Times
officially made an apology to its readers, "We were misled." But you
weren't just misled. You made no effort to investigate whether this was
true or not. That's the problem. You can certainly publish the views of
the government. You have to. But you must preserve independence. You
must have a team of journalists who go and investigate whether this was
true or not. And that investigation did not happen. When a BBC
journalist, as it so happens, a right-wing BBC journalist, Andrew
Gilligan, more or less said on BBC's main current affairs show, Today,
that nobody really believed in these weapons of mass destruction and
the whole dossier had been raped by the intelligence network, which
turned out to be true, he was fired.
Then, as the war began to unfold, you began to see a slightly different
nature of reporting. They only wanted you to report and they only
wanted you to see what was completely under their control. Journalists
who went outside Western military control were often found dead. More
journalists have died in the Iraq War than in previous wars in the last
25 years. And many of them were killed from accidental fire by the U.S.
Marines. Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk, and a few other intrepid souls
carried on reporting, but not everyone did, because your life could be
at risk if you actually went in search for the truth.
So what has happened to Iraq we only know
through alternative sources, that a million Iraqis have died. When the
British medical magazine Lancet first said about two years ago that,
using the same methods we use to ascertain causalities during times of
famine or civil wars, we have used exactly the same methods, our team
has said-this was two years ago-that up to 600,000 Iraqi civilians have
died since the U.S. occupation, there was shock, horror. Tony Blair
denounced them, the Americans denounced them. A year later they said,
"Well, these figures were accurate." And if those figures were accurate
two years ago, then the deaths now must be about a million. So a
million people have died in Iraq. There are over 2 million refugees
flooding neighboring countries. The social infrastructure of that
country has collapsed. The education system doesn't function, the
health system doesn't function. There is no electricity in Baghdad for
most of the day. But this is not reported, because countries which do
this to other countries are usually called-in these days especially,
when the word "genocide" is bandied about and used in a very cavalier
fashion, but that is the appellation that is normally applied to
it-genocidal and that the politicians carrying out or responsible for
this are war criminals and should be tried. But there is a set of
double standards in operation, that such an appellation is only applied
to people who are enemies of the West at a particular given point and
not to politicians belonging to the West, even though the conditions
they have created are much worse than have happened almost anywhere
else.
So the coverage here in the case of Iraq has
been very muted, very muted indeed, because if public opinion in the
West were shown pictures every single day of what has been happening in
Iraq, there would be anger. Have no doubt about it, there would be real
anger, crossing political lines, crossing all lines. People would be
angry that this is being done. But it's not reported.
About two years ago, a year and a half ago, I
was in the tiny Arab state of Qatar, literally a dot. This tiny state
is famous for two things: it has the largest U.S. military base in the
Arab world, Al Udeid, from where the war was launched, by the way, and
from where planes flew over off to bomb Baghdad; and it also is the
center of Al Jazeera television, probably the most radical in terms of
reporting television networks in the world. I was visiting to give a
lecture in Qatar, and they said, "What would you like to do? Is there
anything you would like to see?" I said, "I would like to see the U.S.
military base, and I'd like to go to Al Jazeera television, because
these are your two big tourist attractions. They said, "You can't go to
the base. That's not permissible. But you can certainly go to see Al
Jazeera." I said, "Okay, I'll settle for that."
I went and talked to the director of Al
Jazeera, and I said, "Be honest with me. If you want, I won't even
report it. But do you have any censorship?" And he said, "Look, we have
a self-denying ordinance. We don't mention the Qatari regime. It's a
tiny part of the world, no one cares. We don't discuss Qatar. But on
every other issue, we write, we speak, we film what we want." I said,
"That's remarkable." He then said, "But hang on. There was an open
attempt at censorship just two weeks ago, two weeks before you
arrived." I said, "What was that?" He said, "You know, we have 36
television crews in Iraq in different parts of the country covering
what is going on for our viewers. And one of our crews in Baghdad
actually captured on film a tank coming out on to the street, targeting
a car, hitting the car, burning the people in it alive. We had
photographs of who was in the car because our team just happened to be
there wondering what was going on. In the front of the car there was a
young couple and in the back of the car were their two kids. And the
car burnt up with the family in them. "So," he said, "we felt this was
an important news item and led our news with this the minute the film
arrived, with our correspondent saying what he had to say."
He said, "When the third news bulletin was
being read, the security guards at the television station came running
in and they said to me, 'Sir, the American military is arriving.' I
said 'What?' He said, 'You know, the Jeeps, armored carriers are on the
way. They've just entered the compound.' And," he said, "just as he
said that, the senior U.S. general walked into my office with his
phalanx of armed guards and said, 'I've just been watching what you're
putting out on your television channel, and this is absolutely
disgraceful.'" So the guy said, "I remained very calm." And he said, "I
won't hide it from you, I was a bit scared as well. But I remained
calm. And I said, 'What exactly that we have reported upsets you,
General?' He said, 'It's images of this sort that create
anti-Americanism in the Arab world.'" I said, "What did you say?" He
said, "What could I say? I was speechless." He said, "Finally, I said,
'But, General, isn't it what you do that creates this anger rather than
what we show?' He said, 'But you shouldn't show it.'"
Then there was an argument, and the general
then demanded an apology. He said, "I want an apology that this was a
decontextualized item that you showed and you didn't know, you didn't
say what was in the mind of the commanding officer when he fired." He
said, "We can't read people's minds. We just saw a tank destroying a
car with civilians in it." But then he said, "General, when we went to
cover the war in Afghanistan, you bombed our headquarters in
Afghanistan. When we started to cover the war in Iraq, we told you, we
sent to the Pentagon where our offices were because of the Afghan
experience, and we said, 'This is where we are. These are our exact
coordinates. Please give them to our pilots and make sure they don't
hit us.' And," he said, "you used those coordinates to target our
offices and you killed Tariq Ayub, our chief war correspondent in
Baghdad, which was filmed. You sent in helicopter gunships with
rockets, and as he was reporting, he was hit by a rocket and died
immediately. So if it's time for apologies, why don't you start by
apologizing for what you've done to us?"
He said the general then walked out. And he
said, "That is the only concrete attempt to stop us reporting what we
report every single day and every week from this particular war zone in
the Arab world."
That's interesting. And one reason for the
hostility to Al Jazeera is not that these people are raving
left-wingers or anything nutty like that. Far from it. It's that they
show images that counter everything that is being shown in the Western
media or not being shown at all. It's alternative images. That's what
they provide. And that's what creates the anger. Tony Blair admitted
it. It came out in the British press that before they launched the war
in Iraq, Bush said to Blair, "Should we take out Al Jazeera before we
go to war? It will solve a lot of problems." Blair claims that the
British government said that this would be unacceptable behavior, which
is the only time he ever disagreed with Bush, if he did. But that is
what the British government said, that the Americans wanted to bomb,
just so that there was no alternative reporting of this war, which
indicates how important public opinion has become.
But now despite that, despite the strict
regulation of images-and often if you watch on a single day, when
something has happened in Iraq, as I tend to do, CNN, BBC World, and a
few other channels, you will find it's the same image that is shown,
the same image that is shown on all these channels-despite that, public
opinion remains angry. A majority of citizens in the United States want
to withdraw from Iraq, are opposed to the war. In Britain the figure is
now 80%. So that is an interesting thing, which shows that one
shouldn't overrate the role of the media in creating disinformation,
because sometimes they go so far that people just switch off and don't
believe them at all. This has happened in some countries. And that is a
corrective to what sometimes those of us who study the media get very
worked up about, and rightly so. But we sometimes underestimate the
intelligence of the average citizen. And that we should not do, because
if people just believed what they saw in the media, you wouldn't have
these high figures that are against the war. Because the American
casualties are relatively high, but they're not as high as they have
been in previous wars. It's just that people see this as an endless
war. So that is the relationship of the bulk of the Western media to
the Iraq war.
If you look at the print media, there are brave oppositional voices, The Guardian, The Independent in Britain, occasionally, the Los Angeles Times
will do one or two strong pieces. But in terms of the corporate control
of the media, the figure I like giving is that Rupert Murdoch, who is
not just a television mogul but also owns over 200 newspapers all over
the world-that all Rupert Murdoch's newspaper editors, 230 or however
many there are, supported the war in Iraq. When I made this point in
Australia, where Rupert Murdoch, as you know, is a sort of household
word, one journalist said, "Well, I think you're 99.9% right, Tariq,
but I think the editor in Tasmania was a bit critical of the war." I
said, "Well, I'm glad to hear that. That means that some progress is
being made. That's very good news," I said, "because it shows change is
in the air."
If you then look at the two other events-and
because the world is dominated by these wars-you will see a similar
process. The Lebanese war of 2006. When this war happened, I was in
Brazil at a festival of literature, Toni Morrison, many other writers
from the United States. Everyone came and said, "We've got to issue a
statement. It's unacceptable what the Israelis have done." So we signed
a big appeal. All the Brazilian writers signed it. There were some
Israeli writers. They signed it, too. It was a very broad thing, saying
this is not the way to deal with it. I remember reading all the press
coverage, and I just said publicly at the time, "This war is too well
prepared to be a spontaneous response to the kidnapping of two or three
Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. It can't be done like that. This is a
well-prepared reaction." This created a bit of a controversy. I thought
it was quite a mild statement on my part. But people said, "No, no, no.
Of course it's Hezbollah that provoked the war." Anyway, that was the
overwhelming coverage in the Western media, that Hezbollah had provoked
the war by kidnapping three Israeli soldiers. The fact that each side
kidnapped the other side and they kidnapped them because they wanted 50
Hezbollah prisoners released, all these things get forgotten in the
heat of the moment.
Anyway, what happens? The war backfires, and
we now know what happened. Members of Tony Blair's cabinet have said
that within the British cabinet there was real anger and hostility to
the war, but Blair overrode them because he and Bush had agreed and
given the green light to the Israelis. And when the Israelis, who said
they needed a week to go in and wipe out Hezbollah, couldn't do it in
the first week, Bush and Blair said, "Have another week, then." And the
war went on unnecessarily, destroying a lot of the infrastructure
around Beirut, and many buildings which had been newly built were
destroyed. They still didn't succeed. And they finally had to pull out.
It was seen as a big setback.
This setback created a big crisis inside
Israel, and there was a public inquiry. At this inquiry, Ehud Olmert,
the prime minister of Israel, testified before Israeli judges and said
that "We had been preparing this war for six months." What was the
coverage? In Israel it was very big; it was a major admission. It was
buried in all the newspapers which had headlined the Hezbollah-provoked
war, etc. You would have thought at least they would have put it on the
front page. No. Even in Britain, it was reported, but it was buried.
And that, then, decontextualizes what goes on in that part of the world.
While on the subject, I want to say something
else, which is that the coverage of the Palestinian tragedy is pretty
bad in North America. Less so in Europe, but it's pretty bad in North
America, to put it mildly. Anyone who tries to report on Israel or be
critical of Israel is denounced. There is an active lobby in North
America which systematically denounces people and attacks people as
anti-Semites or, as is often the case, if they happen to be people who
are of Jewish origin, as self-hating Jews. So you can't win: either
you're anti-Semitic or you're a self-hating Jew.
So I often when I'm in the United States I say to journalists from The New York Times, "I know your problems, guys. But if you compare with what is published in the Israeli press itself, in Ha'aretz, in Maariv
occasionally, they are extremely critical, courageous, Israeli
journalists. Why don't you just reprint what the Israeli press is
saying without comment?" They still won't do it.
Two weeks ago, some of the most distinguished
Israeli novelists, some of them hard-core Zionists, like A. B.
Yehoshua, one of the founders of the Israeli republic, issued a public
statement in Israel calling on the Israeli government to open
negotiations with Hamas and to stop torturing Gaza. These are Israeli
novelists. Does it have any impact within the North American media? No.
I think this is a real tragedy, because this
does Israel no favors, because the situation in that part of the world
is getting worse, and there are only two real solutions there: either
you have a single Israel-Palestinian state with equal rights for all
citizens; or the only other option, which doesn't seem to be a serious
option now but used to be considered a serious option, is that Israel
pulls back to the 1967 frontiers, moves the settlements out, and
permits the Palestinians to set up their own state without being
overlooked by Israeli tanks, without their having settlements in there,
and without being divided into shriveled little bantustans. Those are
the only two alternatives. Many Israelis-I was at a conference in Rome
two weeks ago with the former Israeli foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami.
This is a guy who was at the heart of the Israeli regime. I said what
I'm saying to you, with him on the platform. And he said, "Basically, I
think you're right. There is no third solution." I said, "You're no
longer the foreign minister, and maybe that's why." But he said, "A lot
of people in Israel realize that there is no way out." But you cannot
get there without a debate."
I want to tell you another story about the
courage of one Israeli journalist. A dozen Israeli air force pilots
-and those of you who know what it means to be inside the military,
it's very difficult to breach discipline-about four of five years ago
went public in Israel and said, "We are not going to go and bomb
Palestinian villages. We are not going to bomb anything outside the
1967 frontiers." And they were provocative. They said, "When we joined,
we thought we were joining the Israeli air force and not some Mafia
outfit which embarks on revenge killings." They were sacked, naturally,
and they knew they would be. They were not only sacked, but they were
denounced, traduced. They said, "We are defending the best in Jewish
culture, the right to dissent. It's part of our culture, and no one can
tell us they're better Jews than us. We know what our traditions are."
The anger against them was so great that one Israeli journalist on the newspaper Maariv-his
name was Yehuda Nuriel, which means he was a Baghdadi Jew who had gone
to Israel, whatever, his family had-wrote a column. He used to have a
full page in Maariv, which is
not the most radical newspaper in Israel, called "Nuriel's World." He
did something which even I found a bit provocative and which no one in
the West would even dream of doing. He got so angered by the constant
attack on these pilots and their families and their children being spat
on at schools that he went into the library, researched something, and
in next week's paper published in his column "Nuriel's World" a whole
page denouncing the Israeli pilots in savage terms and said that this
was an article that had been submitted to him by someone he didn't know
whose name was A. Schicklgruber. Some of you know that that was
Hitler's real name. What he had gone and done inside the library is dug
out Mein Kampf and all
Hitler's speeches denouncing dissent, cobbled them together, which is
quite an achievement, to make them coherent, and said, "This is an
article denouncing the Israeli pilots." Every single word used was from
Hitler's speeches. But for two or three days no one knew. And this
article was reprinted in other papers and other magazines, until
someone in Jerusalem said, "What the hell is going on?" and rang up the
editor. They fired this guy. And he gave a press conference and he
said, "I knew they would fire me, but it was worth doing."
That sort of journalist has virtually
disappeared from the West: someone who just puts his or her job on the
line to make a point and challenges orthodoxy. That's why my criticism
of the Western media is not that they're craven on this question
because they're scared, but that they don't even have the guts to
publicly praise the courageous Israeli journalists who are reporting
what they are reporting.
Let's move now from the Middle East to the
third war that is being fought, which concerns this country, which is
the war in Afghanistan, and how this war is being reported. This is not
an unimportant war. This was meant be the good war. Iraq was the bad
war, Afghanistan was going to be the good war. Why was it going to be
the good war? Because, as Mrs. Blair and Mrs. Bush explained to an
incredulous nation, the war in Afghanistan is a war to liberate Afghani
women from the Taliban. When I was asked to comment on it, I said,
"This would be interesting, because it would certainly make history. It
would be the first war waged to liberate women. And I hope they
succeed," I said slightly sarcastically, "but I somehow doubt it." Bush
was, of course, more open about it and said that this is war which has
one aim, to capture Osama bin Laden dead or alive, which was closer to
the mark. But they failed to do that either. So Osama wasn't captured,
nor was Mullah Omar. The NATO occupation is now in its sixth year, and
it is getting more and more tricky for them.
Why? Because this war is waged at a very
strange time in world politics, when only one economic orthodoxy,
neoliberal economics, is dominant. So the way in which they reshape
Afghan society doesn't do anything for ordinary people. That's the big
problem. Most Afghans, to be totally frank with you, were quite
relieved when the Taliban was removed. It wasn't a popular government.
They were quite relieved. But when they saw that a bunch of people
implanted there from the United States, Hamid Karzai, who would have
been better off showing off shawls on a Parisian catwalk, because he
loves shawls, and his brother, who was running an Afghan restaurant in
Baltimore. I remember I once went in and they said, "This is Karzai's
brother's restaurant." So I said, "Maybe we shouldn't be here." He went
back and was implanted in Afghanistan and is today regarded as one of
the top gun runners, arms smugglers, and heroin merchants in the
country.
All the prime land in Kabul was seized by
Karzai and his cronies, often cabinet ministers, guarded by NATO
troops, constructing lavish villas in the heart of Kabul, when all it
costs to build an apartment or a little single-story house, which could
put four or five Afghans, even more probably, is $5,000. That's all it
costs to build a very elementary house to house the Afghan refugees.
But all the money was siphoned off by corrupt politicians in charge.
That began to anger people. And you had anti-American riots in Kabul
two years ago, precisely because of this issue. Barely reported.
Then you had the Taliban reformed, and it
started attacking the NATO armies. Initially they didn't have much
support, but the response of the United States was to use bombers to go
and bomb people. And often they did it in a sort of
shooting-from-the-hip way; they didn't care who they killed. If you
study the reports which have appeared on pages 6, 7, and 8 of most
newspapers, 70 Taliban killed, 80 Taliban killed, 90 Taliban killed, 20
Taliban killed, and you add it up, you suddenly find that if this is
actually the case, then the Taliban must have a phenomenally large army
inside of Afghanistan. It's these killings now which have turned many,
many Afghans totally against the NATO occupation.
And they're just not going to be able to pull
it off because they've done absolutely nothing that would make real
sense in terms of health, education, housing for ordinary Afghans, who
have known nothing but war now for the last 35 years. So this isn't
going to help the situation. This is a part of the world where the
culture of revenge is very strong still. It's essentially a tribal
society, pretty largely. The one thing they're all agreed on is they
don't like being occupied by foreigners. This is something people in
the United States find difficult to understand sometimes. But to most
people in the world it's pretty normal, especially a country which was
never occupied. The British tried it in the 19th century. They waged
two wars and they were defeated. The Russians tried it in the 20th
century. They were defeated. Now the NATO armies are trying it out with
the United States at the head, and they are finding out it's not going
to work.
The only solution here, if one is being
serious, is to have all the regional powers who have influence, Iran in
western Afghanistan, the Russians in northern Afghanistan, Pakistan in
southern Afghanistan, and India is the largest regional power in the
whole area, sit down and agree on a national government and for all
these regional powers to guarantee peace and security there for the
next five years to give the country a chance to breathe. You can't talk
about democracy or anything like that if people can't breathe in a
country.
This is barely reported. I was watching the television news before I
came here today. And the ticker tape that runs underneath the news,
which sometimes can be more interesting than what you're actually
seeing, said the actions carried out by Canadians in one part of
Afghanistan were reported to be a huge success. This is nonsense,
absolute nonsense. The British used to say it, the United States used
to say it. It's nonsense. It's not going to work.
Good journalists should be out there reporting
what is going on in that country and why it is turning against a
foreign occupation. It's not a big mystery. Occasionally Pakistani
journalists go in and do report what is going on. And the reporting is
quite good. So in times of war, how a war is reported is increasingly
vital in the formation of public opinion. Sometimes public opinion
doesn't even need it. It gets worked up. But in the case of
Afghanistan, about which very little is known, it does need it, and it
should need it. But it doesn't get it.
There is another problem, which is linked to
the problem of the media, which is what is happening to politics in the
Western world. If you look just at the caliber of politicians that are
being produced in the Western world, regardless of whether they're from
the center left or center right or whatever their politics may be, you
have to realize that the standards have deteriorated phenomenally. Just
if you go back to the period of the Second World War, you had Charles
de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, three major political
leaders of the right. And one disagreed with them, but you knew what
they said, you could argue with them. You had Clement Attlee, the
Labour leader in Britain, a very mild-spoken man who didn't do well on
television, but very sharp, very effective. These leaders no longer
exist. Instead, you largely have confected politicians. And these
confected politicians are overdependent on the media because it's their
only real contact with the population because of the decline we're
seeing in political parties and their ability to mobilize people in the
Western world. When you see that, then you understand the symbiosis
which exists between politicians and the media and why they get very
agitated when the media or sections of the media defy them or challenge
them.
A classic case in point is the BBC. This is an
institution which people still respect, but this respect is declining
very rapidly because of what happened to it under Blair. During the
Iraq War, the BBC director-general confronted a big problem. Normally,
balance, as they call it, is determined by the interplay of
parliamentary debates. What happens when there are no debates? What
happens when the country goes to war and the main opposition party and
the government party are in total agreement? When that happens, what
does the BBC do?
Greg Dyke, the director-general of the BBC,
said, "We had a choice. The bulk of the country was against the war, a
million and a half people had marched against the war in the largest
demonstration in British history, the politicians were for the war.
What the hell could we do? We had to give voice to antiwar people." And
he said the constant pressure from 10 Downing Street had become
unbearable.
The letters now have been published between Greg Dyke and Tony Blair.
Tony Blair more or less says to him, "You're being hostile." And Greg
Dyke says, "You have your job to do as prime minister of Britain, and I
have my job to do, and they're not the same jobs. I have to run a
public broadcasting network and tell people as much truth as I can."
And Blair's chief of staff then replies, "How come in all your current
affairs programs the bulk of the people you find are antiwar?" And Dyke
says, "That reflects the country. It's very difficult for us to find
pro-war to even bus in to our programs." The government then says, "We
will help you out on that." And they do. I was in one of these
programs, Question Time, and I said to the BBC producer, "Something has
changed. Who supplied half these people?" And they said, "Oh, the
government told us." I said, "Right. Say no more." So the pressures
were very great. Finally, Blair couldn't contain himself. He set up a
tame court to condemn the BBC, sacked Greg Dyke, sacked the chairman of
the board of governors of the BBC.
The BBC immediately imposed a self-censorship.
There was no official censorship, but they imposed a self-censorship.
So we have increasingly government exercising its influence, and then
we have the commercial channels exercising another influence. Whereas
when public service broadcasting was set up, you had the commercial
television channels which followed it using public broadcasting
standards as a guide and a criterion, that has now become exactly the
opposite. And many public service networks actually are waiting to be
privatized. That's the way it seems when you watch some of the stuff
they're putting out on their channels.
That, I think, would be a tragedy, if it
happened, because all these things begin to
impact
ondemocracy.Thenpeoplewonder,whyaren'tyoung people as engaged as they
used to be? They're alienated, that's why. In the last two elections in
Britain, a majority of young people between the ages of 18 and 26
didn't bother to vote. Gordon Brown, the new prime minister, when asked
about this, said, "The reason they aren't voting is because they're
perfectly happy with what we're doing." He actually said that. He
should have gone to Hackley in the East End of England and seen the
slogans that were chalked up. One slogan, which was very dominant
during the last election was, "If voting changed anything, they would
abolish it." That's the sort of anger and alienation that exists.
So what we are now seeing is attempts to
create alternative networks. The United States, where the channels
really went under in the 1990s, is the country where alternative media
is probably the most advanced. I often give this example. Here you
still have some public media and some room, some space, as in Britain.
It's getting reduced, but it's still there. In the United States, all
this space disappeared. So you have Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!, which
goes out every morning with alternative news, which is different from
the mainstream news. About 3 million Americans watch it or listen to it
or get it on the Web later. And that is what is going on. So it's not a
case for despairing, but it's a case for seeing where to get the news
from, how to get it. There are some Web sites which go electric.
Whenever there is a war on, people turn to them to try and get the
news. The editor of The Guardian in Britain once told me that the week following 9/11 the hits on The Guardian's
Web site from the United States increased by a million and a half.
That's a good sign, that there were a million and a half Americans who
wanted to read something different from what they were getting.
So it's not all over in that sense. Things are
changing. If total mainstream politics and the media go on like this,
people will eventually begin to ignore them and develop within these
societies a different way of functioning. Unless they come up with
certain good alternatives, that, unfortunately, will affect democracy
itself.
So the issues we're discussing are not small
issues. These are big issues, which is why it's extremely important for
people to be engaged, not to give up, not to say that you can't do
anything, not to retreat into a total narcissistic, individualist
world, a world which consumerist society encourages. But consumerist
society is limited, because not everyone can afford to shop. In
Britain, actually, fewer and fewer people can afford to shop because of
the prices, leave alone buy homes. And that's why change will have to
be made in the way in which these societies are being run. That will
only come about if there are movements from below, if people think, if
people challenge, if people question.
That remains a very important part of what
needs to be done in Western societies, because that was also what
happened ultimately in Brezhnev's Russia, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia.
People ignored officialdom and began to organize separately. And you
had very active dissidents, you had great literature being produced,
you had documentaries being produced. That's why Michael Moore is so
popular, because he produces a documentary which 30 years ago, give or
take a few scenes, would have been shown on mainstream television
everywhere. But now it isn't shown on mainstream television, so he has
to go and make a documentary, which plays to packed houses. So the
problem is not the people. The problem is the political elite, which is
very dominant at the present time. And when the people actually decide
to move, they can move mountains.
I end with a wonderful quote from the great German poet and playwright,
Bertholt Brecht. When the East German regime under which he lived sent
out the tanks to crush a workers' uprising in East Berlin and then
blamed the people and said, "The reason we had to send out the tanks is
because the people were irresponsible," Brecht wrote this wonderful
four-line poem, which was an open letter to the central committee of
the German Communist Party, which was ruling. He said,
"Dear comrades, it seems to me
You think the fault is with the people.
Why don't we dissolve the people
And elect a new one?"
Thank you.
Copies of the book "Speaking of Empire & Resistance" are available from AR
Other AR Tariq Ali programs -
Imperialism: Then & Now
Bush in Babylon
Cracks in the Empire
Enablers of Empire
Delusions of Empire
Imperial Hubris
Jihad: Theirs and Ours
Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope
For information about obtaining CDs, MP3s, or transcripts of this or other programs, please contact:
David Barsamian
Alternative Radio
P.O. Box 551
Boulder, CO 80306-0551
(800) 444-1977
info@alternativeradio.org
www.alternativeradio.org
(c)2008