Propaganda in translation

Currently one of the most dugg political news items on Digg: "Wiped off the Map - The Rumor of the Century." It links to an article on Antiwar.com that details the dangers of heresay in foreign policy.

Somehow our media turned Ahmedinijad's benign statement "As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated." into the menacing "Israel will be wiped out". Our media also conveniently ignored the statement by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that "We will never start a war."

I first heard this challenge to hawks' manufactured conventional wisdom on Iran last May at a forum organized by a friend in UCSB's Center for Middle East Studies. Panelists said the phrase "wipe off the map" doesn't even exist in Farsi. They cited Professor Juan Cole, who'd previously called attention to how this statement had been seized upon by neocons drumming up support for launching attacks on Iran:

The phrase is almost metaphysical...It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks.

Prof. Cole also debunked the myth of Ahamdinejad's clout:

Of course Ahamdinejad does wish Israel would disappear, but he is not commander of the armed forces and could not attack it even if he wanted to, which he denies.

Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele joined Prof. Cole in disputing the dubious translation:

The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favour Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out.

Good to see the story has regained some traction--too many still take it as a matter of fact. The only reason it remains at all controversial a year later is that intellectually lazy anchors and conservative pundits can't seem to mention Ahmadinejad without this catch phrase in the same breath. In doing so, they persistently reinforce the false notion that the Iranian president is politically powerful and poses a threat, framing talk of preemptive attack.

Arab League Summit

King Abdullah insisted at today's summit in Riyadh that "the 'real blame' for Arab woes lay with squabbling Arab rulers, who could only prevent 'foreign powers from drawing the region's future' if they united." However "unlike past summits that at times saw overt feuds break out, the gathering showed unusual public unity."


Arab leaders unite to reintroduce 2002 Beirut Declaration:

Under the plan, Arab nations would recognise Israel if Israel withdrew from land occupied in the 1967 war, accepted a Palestinian state, and agreed a "just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem".

Saudi monarch calls U.S. occupation illegal

"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war," said the king.

Juan Cole's analysis:

King Abdullah followed up on these harsh criticisms of the US by cancelling his planned appearance at a White House dinner in April. The Saudi royal family is fit to be tied that Bush gave Iraq away to fundamentalist Shiite parties that have close ties to Iran.

Although the Saudi statement is remarkable for its brutal frankness and coldness toward the United States, its real significance is its slam of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Abdullah has not only said that the US presence is an illegal occupation, he has said that the al-Maliki government is nothing more than Shiite sectarian hegemony. The Saudis are known for their behind the scenes diplomacy and their public discretion. King Abdullah is hopping mad, to talk this way. It augurs ill for US-Saudi relations. Abdullah is also angry that Bush is letting the Palestine issue fester and that he pushed for open Palestinian elections but then cut off the Hamas government once it was elected. Abdullah thinks Bush is pursuing irrational policies, the effect of which is to destabilize the Middle East.

Selling Israel

MoJo Blog looks at marketing Israel, in particular BlueStarPR's $17,000 ad campaign in the Bay Area.

I spotted their handywork on BART a couple weeks ago. My first thought--what about Al-Jazeera?

meloukhia also commented on this poster, noting that Israel was ranked 135 on the Freedom of Press Index 2006 by Reporters Sans Frontieres. Israel's extra-territorial behavior earned it such a dismal score.

Lebanon has fallen from 56th to 107th place in five years, as the country’s media continues to suffer from the region’s poisonous political atmosphere, with a series of bomb attacks in 2005 and Israeli military attacks this year. The Lebanese media - some of the freest and most experienced in the Arab world - desperately need peace and guarantees of security. The inability of the Palestinian Authority (134th) to maintain stability in its territories and the behaviour of Israel (135th) outside its borders seriously threaten freedom of expression in the Middle East.

According to its 2007 Annual Press Freedom Survey

Palestinian journalists faced many restrictions by the Israeli authorities, who considered them primarily as Palestinian citizens, and they were banned from travelling between Gaza and the West Bank for supposed security reasons. Israeli soldiers freely entered media offices and the homes of journalists in the Palestinian Territories looking for weapons and “illegal material.” Journalists of the pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera were prevented several times from reporting on the war in Lebanon in mid-2006. Walid al-Omari, the station’s Jerusalem bureau chief, was arrested on 17 and 18 July while reporting in the north of the country. An Israeli military vehicle opened fire on another Al-Jazeera crew, led by journalist Jevara al-Budeiri, during live coverage of an Israeli incursion into Nablus and a technician,Wael Tantous, was hit on the foot by rubber bullets.

Israeli forces bombed Lebanese media installations during the fighting with the Hezbollah militia. Israeli warplanes destroyed a transmission mast at Fatka, east of Beirut, on 22 July, temporarily putting the privately-owned Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) TV station off the air. A station technician, Sleiman Chidiac, was killed during the attack and two other employees injured. Israeli planes bombed an LBC installation in the northern town of Terbol the same day, cutting off broadcasts to some regions by LBC and privately-owned TV stations Future TV and Al-Manar.

Given these actions, it's no wonder Israel would feel the need to improve its image with a PR campaign.

American Jews to AIPAC: Not in our name.

Salon looks at how the 2nd most powerful lobby in Washington's strongest potential opponents are the people it purportedly represents:

The Bush administration's neoconservative Mideast policy is essentially indistinguishable from AIPAC's. And so it is no longer possible to ignore it -- even though it is a notoriously touchy and divisive subject. The touchiest aspect of all is the role played by pro-Israel neoconservatives in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war. Much of the media has been loath to go near this, for obvious and in some ways honorable reasons: It feels a little like "blame the Jews." But that taboo has faded as it has become clearer that "the Jews" are not the ones being blamed for helping pave the way to war, but a group of powerful neoconservatives, some but not all of them Jewish, who subscribe to the hard-right views of Israel's Likud Party. This group no more represents "the Jews" than the Shining Path represents "the Peruvians."
...
As a group, American Jews continue to be staunchly liberal. A new poll shows that 77 percent of American Jews now think that the Iraq war was a mistake, compared with 52 percent of all Americans. (Jewish support for the war has collapsed: A poll taken a month before the war showed that 56 percent of Jews supported it, somewhat below the national average at that time.) Eighty-seven percent of Jews voted Democratic in 2006. And although data here is murkier, polls also show that most American Jews hold views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are to the left of AIPAC's.
...
The fact that AIPAC has anointed itself as the de facto spokesmen for American Jews is becoming more and more unacceptable. And increasing numbers of them are beginning to speak out.

Jews Against the War is a coalition of Jewish leaders doing just that.

"[Stumbling] Home for Purim"

Oh, SF Gate DIP and its fakakta captions:

Ultra-orthodox Jewish men stagger down a Mea Shearim neighborhood street after ultra-heavy partying in Jerusalem. One of the precepts of the Purim holiday -- which commemorates the rescue of Jews from genocide in ancient Persia -- is excessive alcohol consumption.

Same old story.

Between this and an overdose of Lou Dobbs in the airport, I've had about all I can take. Here's my response to a video on the doctored Reuters photos that my friend forwarded me from Aish, a conservative Jewish org:

This makes my blood boil. There's nothing I detest more than misinformation in mainstream news media. But I'm afraid press misinformation is a much broader pandemic, and not in the way one might believe after seeing that video (which was not surprisingly produced by a right-wing religious organization). The video deliberately avoids a much more significant point to push its own agenda.

The truth is, mainstream media in the US is in no hurry to rush to Hezbollah's defense (or the defense of the Lebanese, Palestinian, or Iraqi people, for that matter). What most Americans see and read and hear is utterly uncritical of Israel, just as it is uncritical of the conservative DC establishment--which along with even the most "left-leaning" democrats voted by a huge margin last month to unconditionally endorsed Israel's attacks (that means you, Babs). Israel's role in the instigation of conflict is often neglected by allegedly "liberal" papers like the Times and the Post, and network television leaves considerably more out of its coverage. That's what happens when you've got NBC's parent company building the bombs Israel imports from the U.S.

The organization that created this video is using a time-honored conservative technique--maintaining power by propagating their image as a weak and embattled minority. Think of Christians--"the war on Christmas," or even our friends at The Fund for American Studies--because everyone knows there are too damn many liberals in econ and polisci departments out there, and not enough money in conservative think tanks to raise a whole new generation of conservative leaders!

Regardless of whether those pictures were doctored, the fact is that Israel was responsible for that destruction, teddybear in the foreground or not. Nearly a million have been displaced and over a thousand innocent lives have been taken (many many more on the Lebanese side), and the "Paris of the Middle East" has been decimated. The capture of a soldier does not violate international law. The murder of civilians does, and an Israeli life is no more worthy or news coverage than a Palestinian one or a Lebanese one.

You're certainly not getting the whole truth when outlets give no coverage to the disproportionate toll of Israel military actions on the Lebanese people. Or what about when antiwar viewpoints were silenced in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq? How about the recent ruling by a federal judge that deemed Bush's warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional--it was ignored entirely (or only discussed by conservative legal experts) in favor of coverage of Ramsey developments. Jon Stewart did the math--10 year old murder of rich white beauty queen>Israel breaking the ceasefire>occupation of Iraq lasting longer than the US invovlement in WWII.

I have a million bones to pick with the media. That's why I want to be involved in its reform. But if one is criticizing the media, it should be for a tendency towards infotainment and the shuttering of opposing views that's so symptomatic of concentrated ownership and conservative corporate domination. So before jumping on the "liberal media" bandwagon ("Reuters is helping the terrorists!"), please consider the much more sophisticated smoke and mirrors techniques employed by the media at large.

P.S. Here's a story on the blogger from LittleGreenFootballs that challenges some of his accusations.

She's baaaaaack...

Graduation has yet to hit me like a bus...2 months of travelling this summer will pretty effectively soften the blow and provide for a cooshy landing. But come fall, I'd best have a job--doing some print or broadcast journalism, in theory. Indy stuff- if I'm lucky, at KPFA. In the meantime, thought I'd try to start posting regularly again, get a routine going. Just some pseudo-journalism for now--op-eds from the Daily Nexus.

Hasta la Vista Arnold
Governator’s Surprise Visit Was Simply a Ploy

Published Tuesday May 9, 2006

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger paid UCSB one of his signature stealth visits in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Touting a new bond initiative as part of his reelection campaign, Schwarzenegger and his crew shut down Davidson Library - to the dismay of those hoping to get a jump on midterm studying - for a cozy press conference. What, you weren’t invited? Not even local law enforcement knew about it until Friday night.

Perhaps Arnold thought that by scheduling his appearance on the morning after Cinco de Mayo he could sidestep protests because everyone would be too hung over to bother. But, au contraire - armed with only their phones and e-mails, tenacious UCSB activists were able to mobilize an impressive “welcome” crew late Friday night.

The governor hasn’t had the best reception in Santa Barbara, to say the least - hundreds turned out last October to protest his hush-hush, invitation-only “town hall” meeting for his failed special election. On the morning after Halloween in 2004, he visited the Elephant Bar in Goleta to endorse Bob Pohl, who lost the 35th District Assembly race to Pedro Nava. Students and concerned community members, there to voice opposition to education funding cuts and the Governor’s pro-business agenda, were written off as “special interests.”

Wherever Schwarzenegger makes an appearance, protests follow. Is it any wonder why he would keep a low profile when his approval rating is second only to the president’s dismal numbers?

When you hear Schwarzenegger touting his unwavering support for education and California students, beware. This man is no friend to higher education. In the past three years he has allowed our fees to rise. Have you seen that money come back to our campus in more classrooms, cheaper textbooks or more financial aid? Or did it go straight to the bank accounts of the UC system’s top staffers in the form of bonuses and outrageous salary hikes?

Let’s all sit back and watch as Schwarzenegger claims credit for freezing our fees this year, when the real credit belongs the UC Student Association (UCSA) and their strong lobbying efforts with legislative leaders and the governor. It was not a benevolent leader, but students themselves that saved us each $500 this year.

But lo and behold, it’s an election year again. We are beginning to hear the rhetoric and shameless pandering from our loving governor. But we see through it. This is all too little, too late. I would at least have expected him to have a few token UCSB students standing behind him at the press conference. No doubt our campus still contains a few star-struck shills who still marvel at how it’s “f-ing sweet that the Terminator is our governor!”

We were also disappointed that Chancellor Henry T. Yang, usually a great champion of students, allowed Davidson Library to close for two hours during midterm time for what was nothing more than a cheap photo-op for political gain.

The upcoming primary election June 6 will be the first step toward getting a real champion of students and higher education into office. Providing much more than empty rhetoric, Democratic candidates like Phil Angelides for governor and Jackie Speier for lieutenant governor have fought for California’s students and schools. If elected in November, we can be sure they will use their political office for substantive change, not photo-ops.

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Readers Should Remain Skeptical of the News They Read, Press Makes Mistake

Published Thursday June 1, 2006

I was extremely disappointed after reading Elana Wenocur’s column (“Iran’s Wristbands Are Reminiscent of Nazi Germany,” Daily Nexus, May 24, 2006). Wenocur expressed her horror upon reading an article by Amir Taher printed in the conservative Canadian National Post about legislation that would institute a dress code for religious minorities in Iran. Her dismay would be quite understandable - if the story were true. However, the column she read - and that many others have undoubtedly been misled by - was a hoax pushed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the preeminent Israeli lobby AIPAC.

On May 19, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement acknowledging that “while it is factual that the Iranian parliament is considering some kind of dress code, there is no evidence of any discussion or legislation concerning badges or the like for Jews and others.” The following day, both Reuters and the Associated Press corroborated ADL’s report, which refuted the National Post author’s claims by obtaining a copy of the Iranian bill and listening to a broadcast of the parliamentary session where it was given preliminary approval. The false allegations have since been acknowledged by the Jewish Week and other pro-Israel publications.

Wenocur’s op-ed was published on the May 24 - the day the National Post issued an apology and retracted its story, and five days after it had first been called into question. Public opinion is built to a large extent upon stories transmitted by the press. Editors are to be held responsible for validating the factual content of columns before they are published and seen by thousands of readers. The media have a solemn responsibility to ensure they do not propagate an alarmist agenda intended to drum up domestic support for belligerent foreign policy.

I feel strongly that it is a civic duty to stay informed on world events and that inflammatory stories like Taheri’s should be viewed with healthy skepticism. Misconceptions are best challenged through education - the hugely successful panel on Iran a couple weeks ago in I.V. Theater was proof that there are many in our community who would rather get informed and seek the truth than hastily jump to conclusions.

It’s important to avoid provocative statements and casually toss around the notion that Iran, or any other nation for that matter, “is developing nuclear weapons.” Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It has not violated International Atomic Energy Agency regulations, and according to U.S. intelligence reports, the country is at least a decade away from producing any weapons.

In an effort to promote peace and stability - which ultimately will serve to protect Israel’s interests, too - I think it’s crucial to highlight efforts made toward brokering a diplomatic solution to recent escalations.

Last week the Washington Post reported that President Ahmadinejad followed up his letter to the White House with yet another overture for diplomatic negotiations. Paul Pillar, a recently retired senior CIA Middle East intelligence analyst said, “There is no question in my mind that there has been for some time a desire on the part of the senior Iranian leadership to engage in a dialogue with the United States.”

At this critical moment, it’s in everyone’s best interest to emphasize diplomacy and constructive discourse, and avoid exaggerated rhetoric.

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That last one precipitated a giant pissing contest on the Facebook with an Israeli student. Not the first time that's happened. And from what I've seen after 4 years at UCSB, there's a pretty vocal (to say the least) pro-Israel community at UCSB. The Nexus has successfully engaged these folks and maintained a steady tradition of perpetuating the Arab/Israeli conflict on its editorial pages. That is, of course, when they're not busily debating the finer points of masturbation. Not that there's anything wrong with a little intellectual masturbation now and again, am I right folks? Am I right? Oh the irony and the awful jokes. Yep, I'm blogging again. Only hopefully this time, no one's reading.

And for all the shit I talk about the Nexus, all I gotta say is--man...I'll miss having a surefire way to get published.