Thought showering

I had definitive proof a quarter century ago that identity politics’ obsession with terminology …

… in just 200 years we’ve progressed all the way from expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned peoples while saying racist things, to expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned peoples while condemning racism … ¹

.. had blown a farewell kiss to common sense when a charity hiring me to write PR banned the term ‘brainstorming’  as offensive to epileptics differently abled persons with epilepsy. I asked: had it canvassed the opinions of that group? It had not, but did cite “an expert” then enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame in the social inclusion industry. On her say so it was now corporate policy to substitute ‘thought shower’.

Consider this post, then, an exercise in thought showering.

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Today Caitlin Johnstone, she of the 200 years of progress, followed this screengrab …

… in a post sarcastically headed, We deserve better war propaganda, with this:

They’re not even trying anymore.

US middle east envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Iran is “probably a week away” from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb — a line that Iran hawks have been falsely repeating for over three decades.

It’s such a transparently bogus claim that even The Jerusalem Post dunked on Witkoff for making it, quipping that “The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.”

This is the guy supposedly assigned by the White House to the task of establishing peace in the middle east, churning out the most fuzzbrained justifications for war with Iran you could possibly imagine …

… The New York Post has an article going viral right now with the flamboyantly propagandistic headline “Iranian forces hack out wombs of female protesters to hide horrific sexual abuse,” which would sound absurd at a glance even you didn’t know anything about atrocity propaganda. Like they said “Let’s mutilate these women’s reproductive organs so that nobody thinks we horrifically abused them!” How does that even make sense?

The article is of course based on no evidence whatsoever, citing nothing but a NewsNation report full of anonymously sourced assertions …

Recall my recent post, Was Navalny frog-poisoned?

Bearing in mind, as too few do, that “we have evidence”  is not evidence, what factual basis is being offered?  … Read critically. As we the many are once again primed to cheerlead for war to defend the eyewatering wealth of a criminally insane few, the survival of humanity demands no less.

Have we forgotten Saddam’s WMD?

Gaddafi’s issuing of Viagra to his army?

Colonel Gaddafi is to be investigated on charges of giving Viagra to his soldiers to encourage them to rape, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said.

Luis Moreno Ocampo’s office has become “more convinced” that Gaddafi has decided to instill fear into the Libyan population by punishing women with rape.

UK’s The Standard, April 12 2012

Needless to say, there was no investigation, no Viagra and soon enough no Gaddafi – he who had threatened the petrodollar with a gold-backed dinar for oil transactions – as Africa’s richest country, with free healthcare and literacy rates higher than the West’s, was plunged into failed statehood as an exporter of terror and hub for northbound sub-Saharan emigrants, with slaves sold openly on the quayside in Tripoli.

And don’t even get me started on Syria, which, as I wrote two months before that secular and ethnically diverse state fell to Western backed terror, had for me been:

… transformative, almost single-handedly inspiring this site. By now even I, slow of uptake, had cottoned on to an empire looking to set the Middle East ablaze in the name of ‘bringing democracy’, and in the ashes build a new regional order answerable to Washington

I ask again: have we forgotten? I have better questions though. Would we forget so easily if our systemically corrupt media did their job and spoke truth to power when it absolutely matters? If, instead of manufacturing our consent – ‘liberal’ media no less than right wing – for today’s wars to protect and expand the riches of the few, they crammed their airwaves and front pages with stark reminders of the lies told to justify yesterday’s?

If that demand strikes you as absurdly unreasonable, all you’re really doing – given what is at stake – is agreeing with me that media are indeed systemically corrupt.

On many matters the reporters, columnists and editors of ‘quality’ media serve us tolerably well but this truth enables a greater lie. Corporate media need to show themselves trustworthy even when doing so may embarrass those in high office. (Not only does their long term capacity to influence opinion and manufacture consent depend on this. So too, on pain of losing market share, do their business models.) But the trust so gained helps them mislead us, more by omission than commission, on matters critical – above all the vilifying of states and leaders in the way of empire designs – to the power they ultimately serve.

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1. Since women suffer disproportionately from empire’s wars on the global south, Caitlin might with no loss of accuracy have written:

   … in just 200 years we’ve progressed all the way from expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned women while saying racist and sexist things, to expecting our leaders to slaughter brown-skinned women while condemning racism and sexism