Critical rationalist, proactive pacifist, economically and politically promoting fair play with heart, strictly secular, agnostic but atheist regarding the gods of each religion I got acquainted with so far,
One of this year's finest contributions of real journalism: When reporters from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (a sister paper of The Independent) posed as agents for the government of Uzbekistan – a notorious dictatorship allegedly responsible for killings, human rights violations and child labour – they caught on camara what the guys of PR agency Bell Pottinger Group plc told about their dark arts, e.g.
exploiting their contacts to highest governmental officials to get into dialogue with foreign politicians;
manipulating Google results to "drown" out negative coverage;
using members of parliament known to be critical of investigative programs to attack their reporting for minor errors ...
Probably the easiest way of manipulation politics in European countries is via EU staff and law makers, as the example of Ernst Strasser, ex-Federal Minister for the Interior of both conservative Schüssel-governments in Austria - has spectacularly shown:
BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman is here trying to lead Chomsky up the garden path with partly provocating, but also crucial questions. Main topics are the ongoing Arab revolts and how the Western states are supposed to react, the role of technology and the internet with regard to the revolts and ... stupid people. Here are some highlights and cliffhangers:
Part I
[...]
Paxman: What should the West be doing?
Chomsky: For example, the Arab press – if you read it, including from London - is proposing that countries which have some respect in the region become involved, namely Egypt and Turkey. That would make a lot more sense than countries that are hated ... for good reasons.
Pacman: So, what do we do, just do nothing?
Chomsky: First, we're not asked to do anything. Mostly we've been asked to stay away. Just read what is being said. Mostly: "Stay away! You've got enough blood on your hands already. The question what to do is not up to us. We're not the only ones in the world.
Paxman: Sure.
Chomsky: So, say Brazil for example, is a respected country, so is Turkey. If you look at the Arab world, ask yourself: which leader is most respected? [...]
Paxman: We have an obligation - do we not – to behave responsibly.
Chomsky: Yes.
Paxman: And you're saying that the responsible thing is to simply not getting involved.
Chomsky: There may come a time when it would make sense for the West to become involved despite of its horrendous record of atrocities and crimes, in that region too [...]. But the question is: has this time come? There are other which have a much better status and may be able to do things that would lead to some sort of reconciliation or at least mediation. I mean it's very possible that Libya is going to break up into two states.
[...]
Paxman: We know [...] how you regard Bush's and Blair's record in the Middle-East. Do you think Obama has known better?
Paxman: You famously said that every American president since the 2nd World War would fail in the judgement as applied in Nuremberg and therefore [...] should be hanged. [...]
Chomsky: I didn't say that. Not everybody was hanged at Nuremberg. I said that if we believed in the Nuremberg Principles, every American president would be subject to them. What the decision would be we have to check. [...]
Paxman: But Obama would fare no better if the principles were applied to him?
Chomsky: No, ... he's carrying out a major war in Afghanistan ... he's directly involved in aggressive and criminal actions carried out by Israel for example ...
Paxman: Can I finish with a personal question? You're how old now?
Chomsky: 82.
Paxman: Why haven't you mellowed?
Chomsky: Because I look at the world. And there are things happening in the world which should lead anyone to become indignant, outraged, active and ... simply engaged.
[...]
Chomsky: Congress has already moved to ban funding for the most mild evironmental efforts. Furthermore, unfortunately, many of these people are true believers. The head of one of the Congressional Subcommittees, a republican, explained that the global warming can't be a problem because God promised there would be no other flood. [...]
Paxman: But why do you care about stupid people?
Chomsky: Stupid people? These people have power! They're carrying out the actions defunding possible efforts ...
[...]
And certainly, if one looks at stupid people, we'll find them all over the place. For example, we happened to be right in the middle of a huge financial crisis, people have noticed. If you trace that back, a lot of it comes from a fanatic religious belief in what is called the efficient market hypothesis. It's pure fanaticism – dominated the economics profession, dominated the Federal Reserve. One consequence was that when an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble developed – totally unrelated to any fundamentals, completely off the hundred years history of housing prices - the profession and the Fed and the Central Bank said it's not necessary to pay attention because of the efficient markets. I mean is that very different from "God promised Noah"?
Let me begin by counter-posing two different conceptions of democracy. One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. If you look up democracy in the dictionary you'll get a definition something like that.
An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it's important to understand that it is the prevailing conception. In fact, it has long been, not just in operation, but even in theory. There's a long history that goes back to the earliest modern democratic revolutions in seventeenth century England which largely expresses this point of view.
According to Chomsky, a democracy must fulfill at least the following three, vaguely formulated, conditions: (i) citizens have "the means to participate in some meaningful way" in the decision-making process and (ii) citizens have free access to information concerning this process and (iii) this information is "open" (true, uncensored, unfiltered). One might call in question whether the denial of (ii) and (iii) still leave the possibility of (i) but the latter is too indefinite to be tested and has to be further specified.
A clear representative of the „alternative“ conception of democracy is Edward L. Bernays – the godfather of the Public Relations industry. In 1928 he put forward his „invisible government“ theory of democracy by deniying each of these three „conventional“ conditions. In the first chapter of his book „Propaganda“, tellingly entitled „Organizing Chaos“, he maintains that it is practically impossible to match conditions (ii) and (iii) and therefore we should forget about (i) and/or be content with leaving decisions to our invisible leaders:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty million—who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
Edward L. Bernays
It is not usually realized how necessary these invisible governors are to the orderly functioning of our group life. In theory, every citizen may vote for whom he pleases. Our Constitution does not envisage political parties as part of the mechanism of government, and its framers seem not to have pictured to themselves the existence in our national politics of anything like the modern political machine. But the American voters soon found that without organization and direction their individual votes, cast, perhaps, for dozens or hundreds of candidates, would produce nothing but confusion. Invisible government, in the shape of rudimentary political parties, arose almost overnight. Ever since then we have agreed, for the sake of simplicity and practicality, that party machines should narrow down the field of choice to two candidates, or at most three or four. In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite assayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.
In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.
We have grown accustomed to go around pricing – most of us do to some extent. We choose among the products offered in supermarkets or real estate agencies, or search for the cheapest flight to our envisaged holiday destination. We have grown accustomed to competition (and we are not surprised about the similarity of prices for similar products because we believe that competition is often not real). This is only possible because pricing is (in most cases) tranparent. If it would be not (and we know such cases), then we would really end up hopelessly lost as Bernays said. Instead, independent institutions for consumer protection have shown great impact to ensure half-way fair competition and free flow of useful information in the marketplace. None of these institutions, in Western Europe mostly set up in the 50s and 60, may be perfectly objective or independent. But this shows only that the independent intitutions monitoring/controlling the actions in a democratic system are always improvable. What Bernays had in mind, when he formulated his „invisible government“ theory in 1928, was a totally uncontrolled marketplace which was, at that time, reality. It was indeed dangerous for the consumer then, just think of German pharmaceutical groups promoting aspirin, heroin and cocain in cough syrup.
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