There is so much of history that is hidden – it’s more a filtering process than actual censorship. Chomsky and Herman did a nice job of describing media filters in 1989 – there were five: 1)The size, ownership and profit orientation of media outlets, meaning that only big enterprises gain credibility; 2) advertising as a license to do business, giving advertisers de facto control of news; 3) sourcing, meaning that special access is granted to those news outlets that report in an acceptable manner (Tim Russert, for instance); 4) flak and the enforcers – negative fallout to unacceptable content (which is why Dan Rather lost his job); and 5) anti-communism as the dominant social control mechanism (since replaced by anti-terrorism).

With those filters in place, it is not even necessary to censor news (even though heavy censorship is accepted as normal in the name of vaguely defined “national security”). People who live within the upper echelons of our news delivery system internalize all the concepts and even think of them as normal. And, of course, the people down below who report to us haven’t a clue what goes on in the suites above.

That in mind, here’s a passage from David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism*:

There’s a very interesting story to be told … and I’m not sure it has been fully elaborated upon yet. With the OPEC oil price hike in 1973, a vast amount of money was being accumulated by the Saudis and other Gulf states. And then the big question was: well, what’s going to happen to that money? Now, we do know that the US government was very anxious that that money be brought back to New York, to be circulated back into the global economy via the New York investment banks, and persuaded the Saudis to do that. Why the Saudis were persuaded to do it remains a bit of a mystery. We know from British intelligence sources that the US was actually prepared to invade Saudi Arabia in 1973, but whether the Saudis were told: recycle the money through New York or you get invaded … who knows?

Now, the New York investment banks then had vast amounts of money. Where were they going to invest it? The economy wasn’t doing very well at all in 1974-75, as, all over, it was in depression. Citibank and Walter Wriston came up with the comment that the safest place to invest the money is in countries, because countries can’t disappear – you always know where they are. And so they started to make the money available to many countries like Argentina, Mexico – Latin America was very popular – but also places like Poland** even. They lent a lot of money to those countries.
[These words are taken from an interview of Harvey by Sasha Lilley.]

What follows is somewhat well-known – Mexico goes bankrupt, and is bailed out by Washington, in effect circulating taxpayer money back to Wall Street. Sound familiar? Mexico is not a richer country today as a result, but wealth is distributed differently. Mexican billionaires pop up on the Forbes list, peasants are dispossessed (further aggravated by NAFTA), and migrate north looking for sustenance.

In Argentina, military personnel work in league with Chile’s Pinochet to conduct terror operations, and take the country deep into fascism and later bankruptcy. The country is still recovering.

It would be interesting to know whether the US in 1973 actually threatened to invade Saudi Arabia or whether the Saudis intuitively knew to play ball. It would be nice to know of secret communications between fascist regimes and Washington, but that type of investigation is never undertaken due to the filters in operation above.

It’s complicated, of course. There is no one narrative that lays out history for us, that is, unless you follow American news. But there is always hope for gradual progress. The first filter, the size of media outlets as a prerequisite for entry into the business, is evaporating before our eyes. Newspapers are collapsing, media is heavily fragmented (though still centrally owned), and it is not difficult at all for a naturally curious person to research unreported events in foreign media and alternative histories. And if we lose the big newspapers – if the New York Times goes down, for instance – what replaces them? I do not know. It might be better, it certainly cannot be much worse than that state-subservient rag.
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*Neoliberalism and neoconservatism to me appear to be the same animal, but according to Harvey differ in that the Neolibs tend to want to leave markets alone to perform their magic (amassing of resources in a few hands). Neocons are less tolerant of markets, which can indeed be volatile and dangerous, and want to impose order from above. In this case there might indeed be differences between Neoliberal Democrats and Neoconservative Republicans, but neither has any good outcomes for ordinary people.
**It was around this time that Gerald Ford was pilloried for commenting in televised debates with Jimmy Carter that Poland was not part of the Soviet bloc. Gerald Ford was not a stupid man, and his statement that evening probably reflected a better understanding of world affairs than Carter possessed, and certainly more than the media that covered the event.

I used to participate in Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count in Billings, Montana each year. Our group of three or four would walk the Yellowstone river from Huntley to the Exxon refinery, and part of the route was a narrow passage between the river and hillside that had a railroad track running through it. When trains came we had to stand aside and watch the massive engines and listen to the deafening roar. I remember one time thinking of the stark contrast, maybe even the absurdity of counting little gray rosy-crowned finches and nuthatches while feeling the massive power of the industrial system that so taxes our environment. I realized then, as a wilderness advocate, that I depended on those trains to support my lifestyle. I thought to myself “I am part of this.”

There’s been a pipeline leak under the Yellowstone River near where we counted dicksissels, godwits and peewees. (We never saw those particular birds – I just like the names.) ExxonMobil is a massive state-supported capitalist enterprise that operates against nature to provide for my lifestyle. It has fouled Prince William Sound and was surely in on the meetings wherein the invasion of Iraq was planned. It has financed the junk science that has led to climate change denial. But it is hard to grasp the notion of “massive” in our finite brains. People who work for Exxon, all the way up to Rex Tillerson, current CEO, merely occupy slots. He is as much guided as he guides. If he were to say tomorrow morning that climate change is real and human-caused, the word “former” would precede “CEO” tomorrow afternoon.

These people know what’s up, and cannot stop it. Capitalism is a seed-eating enterprise, and the motives that drive it are impervious to rational behavior. The choice of the CEO’s and Wall Street types is either to participate or not, to accumulate wealth and power to to elect to be powerless. They internalize the contradictions as they must to prosper, and their glorification of the system is a form of denial.

The matter of a small pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River was not intentional, and the people who built and monitor the pipeline are not political hacks going through the motions. While ExxonMobil is powerful enough to control government, it is also concerned about public opinion to a degree. It is not in their best interest to be cavalier about transport of oil. The company is many things, but the tiny people at the bottom of the ladder in Billings, Montana, are neither evil or incompetent.

What we have here is an accident. Time to say “Oops!,” and clean it up and get on with our lives. The sneering and moral indignation that I see from the pwoggies and Democrats is quite distasteful and unintentionally revealing.

Senator Bernie Sanders cast a disheartening note yesterday, even for those of us who realize that President Obama is a wolf in sheepskin. He said that as he hears it, Obama is negotiating for preservation of the National Weather Service in the great Kabuki “showdown,” the manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling. This means, he says, that he has probably already sold the farm on Medicare.

It’s official now! The baby is adopted, and is gurgling and spitting up, but will soon be up and walking. The US has adopted Somalia! Add that to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Colombia and Libya; add to that the loving glances we cast at Syria, Venezuela and Iran, and we are the Pitt-Jolie of the warmongers!

These are, of course, just the ones we know about.

Drone strikes, as I understand it, are managed from Texas. I sincerely doubt that President Obama has any control or any say over these matters. It’s above his pay grade.

The post down below led to an exchange with Polish Wolf that programmers might call the “endless loop.” My point was that we are subject to tyrannical rule by lifetime-appointed judges, and that their decisions are so hard to overturn that few even try. Impeachment is a futile enterprise – just ask the John Birch Society. This is his last comment partly redacted:

Well Mark, we don’t know who Gore would have chosen, that’s true. But here’s the thing – on most of the decisions you hate the most, there are two sides, and justices on both sides. Not one justice who voted in favor of Citizen’s United was appointed by a Democrat. Thus, the idea that Gore would have appointed two justices who voted with justices appointed by Reagan and Bush, rather than justices appointed Carter and Clinton, is absolutely absurd and kills your entire contention that Presidential election aren’t important. George Bush holding office created a situation wherein Citizens United was possible – thus, the election of 2000, far from being ‘Kabuki theater’, was instrumental in increasing the power of the wealthy in the United States. … People who voted for Nader or stayed home that day allowed Bush to be elected.

One, I did not say that the 2000 election was Kabuki Theater. The current “debate” about the debt ceiling is that. The 2000 election was rigged, for sure, and the outcome tilted to elect the Bush cadre, and part of the infinite loop is our incessant bickering about whether we are better off with weasel Democrats or self-assured Republicans. The larger point contained in the post is that the United States Supreme Court acts as a Guardian Council, just like those who are the real government of Iran, unelected, robed, mystically imbued with profound wisdom, and completely submissive to the oligarchy. Jefferson angrily complained after Marbury v Madison that decision had turned the constitution to “wax.” Until we alter this system to remove tenure for judges and/or make is feasible to quickly and easily overturn corrupt decisions like Citizens United, we are a fake democracy.*

But we were fake anyway, as even the pre-CU campaign finance system used to support the “two” parties assures that outsiders like Nader are kept out of power.

But your contempt for Nader exposes you in ways that you do not intend. LB spoke of the fear factor – that Democrats are simply afraid of leaving the playground because the task of imposing real change on this screwball system is daunting. Nader brings your fear to the surface, and you react with bitter disapproval not of the corrupt system in which you participate, but of Nader.

Finally, to the more mundane matter of the failure to elect savior Gore, a man who refused to take leadership on progressive issues, who ran a weak and uninspiring campaign, and who, in the face of the James Baker-led theft of the office meekly backed down, Sam Smith reminds us that while Nader got only 3% of the vote, exit polls showed that 9% of blacks; 46% of those under 30; 49% of the college educated; 37% of the poor; 39% of working mothers; 11% of Democrats; 34% of union members; 13% of self-described liberals; 25% of gays and lesbians; 15% of Clinton voters in 1996; 25% of those supporting abortion … all voted for Bush. That is the percentage of those who actually voted. Most eligible voters seem to recognize that it’s a rigged system, and don’t bother. Gore did not reach that segment either.

Those are people who by your imperial standard should have voted for Gore! They betrayed you! And yet, your focus, your anger and indignation, is directed only at Nader.

What gives, Polish Wolf? Eh? Eh?
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*A third aspect of our screwball system that needs change is ten-year redistricting. As one Englishman observed, our system is odd in that we allow voters to elect office holders, but then turn around and allow office holders to select voters.

We returned from vacation and away from news to learn from Swede in comments down below that Hugo Chavez was dead, and that he had died in a Cuban hospital. I had no way of checking that out at the time, but was deeply saddened. I’ve since followed up, and don’t know his status. It does appear the the jackals of the Venezuelan oligarchy, supported by the US, are circling the camp down there. The grand experiment in representative democracy might soon end, and the oil giants will once again control that country’s oil.

Chavez’s greatest offense was to offer assistance to other Latin American countries by use of oil wealth. He offered loans and direct assistance without strings, allowing some countries to get out from under the jackboot of the IMF.

Swede loves to run on fumes, assertions without evidence stated with arrogant assurance. That’s a long-winded way of saying he’s a right winger. The Cuban hospital quip was meant to say, in his way, that Cuban health care is inferior to American health care. He has no way of knowing that, of course. If he is an insider here, that is, one who actually has access to our health care system, he might have a point. If he is an outsider, and has access only through emergent care, he’s full of shit.

This much I can say with some certainty: Chavez was surely better off in a Cuban hospital than an American one. The US government, which tried to overthrow him in 2002, still wants him gone gone gone, and American health care might well have been his demise. He surely knew this.

Interest on public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product:

1980 2.70%
1985 3.96%
1988 4.23%
1990 4.52%
2000 3.66%
2005 2.80%
2010 2.82%

Interest on public debt is 2/3 now of what it was when Reagan left office. All things being relative, if this is a crisis, then was a worse one. But this is no surprise – the current “fiscal crisis” is manufactured for political purposes. Unfortunately, both parties are doing the business on us, the debt ceiling “standoff” mere Kabuki Theater.

Obama will back down, as he always does, not because he is weak, but merely because he is a player on a stage, playing his part.