Pilger writes: "A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the
US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost
certain to win the Republican Party's nomination, Hillary Clinton is being
ordained both as the 'women's candidate' and the champion of American
liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (photo: CNBC)
Trump and Clinton: Censoring the Unpalatable
By John Pilger, CounterPunch
05 April 16
virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election
campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win
the Republican Partys nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as
the womens candidate and the champion of American liberalism in its
heroic struggle with the Evil One.
This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and
suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in
her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of
free speech.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the
most dewy-eyed. Obama based his hope campaign almost entirely on the fact
of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also
antiwar.
Obama was never antiwar. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he
was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bushs funding of the slaughter in
Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the
weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli
assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to
close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help
make the world free from nuclear weapons and did the opposite.
As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama
was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency,
with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around
the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is
fawned on as cool (the Guardian).
On March 23, CounterPunch published my article, A World War has Begun:
Break the Silence. As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the
piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal
American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least
Dahr Jamails outstanding corporate exposes.
Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on
CounterPunch and had broken guidelines. I replied that this had never been
a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.
My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved
provided I submitted to a review and agreed to changes and deletions made
by Truthouts editorial committee. The result was the softening and
censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from
Trump. The following was cut:
Trump is a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.
Trumps views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than David
Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States,
but the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama
The danger to the rest of us
is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the
resilience and violence of a system
As presidential election day draws
near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of
her crimes and lies just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black
president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about hope.
The editorial committee clearly wanted me to water down my argument that
Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world. Like all
censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote
to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a process of revision
meant she had to take it off her publication docket. Such is the
gatekeepers way with words.
At the root of this episode is an enduring unsayable. This is the need, the
compulsion, of many liberals in the United States to embrace a leader from
within a system that is demonstrably imperial and violent. Like Obamas
hope, Clintons gender is no more than a suitable facade.
This is an historical urge. In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern
liberals seem to pay unflagging homage, John Stuart Mill described the power
of empire. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, he wrote, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. The barbarians were large
sections of humanity of whom implicit obedience was required.
Its a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and
conservatives the warmongers, wrote the British historian Hywel Williams in
2001, but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because
of its open ended nature its conviction that it represents a superior form
of life [while denying its] self righteous fanaticism. He had in mind a
speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, in which Blair
promised to reorder this world around us according to his moral values.
The carnage of a million dead in Iraq was the result.
Blairs crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, some 69 countries more than a
third of the membership of the United Nations have suffered some or all of
the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their
popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people
bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions.
With the demise of the European empires, this has been the project of the
liberal flame carrier, the exceptional United States, whose celebrated
progressive president, John F Kennedy, according to new research,
authorised the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962.
If we have to use force, said Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state in
the liberal administration of Bill Clinton and today a passionate campaigner
for his wife, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable
nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.
One of Hillary Clintons most searing crimes was the destruction of Libya in
2011. At her urging, and with American logistical support, NATO, launched
9,700 strike sorties against Libya, according to its own records, of which
more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles
with uranium warheads. See the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and
Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UNICEF
report on the children killed, most [of them] under the age of ten.
In Anglo-American scholarship, followed slavishly by the liberal media on
both sides of the Atlantic, influential theorists known as liberal
realists have long taught that liberal imperialists a term they never use
are the worlds peace brokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause
of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and
congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole
nations for autopsy, they have identified failed states (nations difficult
to exploit) and rogue states (nations resistant to western dominance).
Whether or not the targeted regime is a democracy or dictatorship is
irrelevant. In the Middle East, western liberalisms collaborators have long
been extremist Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while cynical notions of
democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest and mayhem
as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Honduras. See the
record of those good liberals Bill and Hillary Clinton. Theirs is a standard
to which Trump can only aspire.
A Response from Truthout and a Letter from Truthouts publisher.
Dear Jeffrey,
Im writing in response to Counterpunchs publication of a highly misleading
and factually inaccurate article by John Pilger today regarding Truthout and
our editor-in-chief Maya Schenwar, Trump and Clinton: Censoring the
Unpalatable.
The idea that Truthout is stifling criticism of Hillary Clinton holds no
water, and this takes very little time to verify Ive appended below a few
of the many uncompromisingly critical articles weve published about her.
John Pilgers history of excellent journalism is without question. However,
the reality of this situation is that each and every writer who submits work
to Truthout for publication or republication need to work with our editors,
and treat them with some basic professional courtesy. That did not happen in
this case.
It has long been Truthouts policy that for articles to be featured as
Truthout originals, they need to either be exclusive content or to be very
substantially revised and rewritten versions of content that has appeared
elsewhere. This was communicated to John Pilger, and his refusal to
acknowledge this or to engage in civil discussion with our editors led to
our decision not to republish this piece.
As Pilger states, the article had already been published elsewhere. Calling
the decision not to run it again censorship is inaccurate Truthout makes
judgment calls as to what to republish every day, and a decision not to
republish an article does not mean we are damning that piece by implication,
let alone censoring it. Calling the decision politically-motivated
censorship stemming from a desire to protect Hillary Clinton is wildly,
maliciously inaccurate and easily demonstrable as false.
This article is a misrepresentation of Truthout, a misrepresentation of Maya
Schenwar, and a misrepresentation of what censorship entails that does a
disservice to the concept. It calls Counterpunchs credibility into question
for as long as this story remains on your site in its current form.
With thanks for your prompt attention to this matter,
Joe Macaré
Publisher, Truthout
jmacare@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (photo: CNBC)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/29/trump-and-clinton-censoring-the-unpal
atable/http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/29/trump-and-clinton-censoring-th
e-unpalatable/
Trump and Clinton: Censoring the Unpalatable
By John Pilger, CounterPunch
05 April 16
virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election
campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win
the Republican Partys nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as
the womens candidate and the champion of American liberalism in its
heroic struggle with the Evil One.
This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and
suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in
her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of
free speech.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the
most dewy-eyed. Obama based his hope campaign almost entirely on the fact
of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also
antiwar.
Obama was never antiwar. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he
was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bushs funding of the slaughter in
Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the
weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli
assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to
close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help
make the world free from nuclear weapons and did the opposite.
As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama
was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency,
with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around
the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is
fawned on as cool (the Guardian).
On March 23, CounterPunch published my article, A World War has Begun:
Break the Silence. As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the
piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal
American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least
Dahr Jamails outstanding corporate exposes.
Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on
CounterPunch and had broken guidelines. I replied that this had never been
a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.
My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved
provided I submitted to a review and agreed to changes and deletions made
by Truthouts editorial committee. The result was the softening and
censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from
Trump. The following was cut:
Trump is a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.
Trumps views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than David
Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States,
but the Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama
The danger to the rest of us
is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the
resilience and violence of a system
As presidential election day draws
near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of
her crimes and lies just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black
president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about hope.
The editorial committee clearly wanted me to water down my argument that
Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world. Like all
censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote
to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a process of revision
meant she had to take it off her publication docket. Such is the
gatekeepers way with words.
At the root of this episode is an enduring unsayable. This is the need, the
compulsion, of many liberals in the United States to embrace a leader from
within a system that is demonstrably imperial and violent. Like Obamas
hope, Clintons gender is no more than a suitable facade.
This is an historical urge. In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern
liberals seem to pay unflagging homage, John Stuart Mill described the power
of empire. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with
barbarians, he wrote, provided the end be their improvement, and the means
justified by actually effecting that end. The barbarians were large
sections of humanity of whom implicit obedience was required.
Its a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and
conservatives the warmongers, wrote the British historian Hywel Williams in
2001, but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because
of its open ended nature its conviction that it represents a superior form
of life [while denying its] self righteous fanaticism. He had in mind a
speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, in which Blair
promised to reorder this world around us according to his moral values.
The carnage of a million dead in Iraq was the result.
Blairs crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, some 69 countries more than a
third of the membership of the United Nations have suffered some or all of
the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their
popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people
bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions.
With the demise of the European empires, this has been the project of the
liberal flame carrier, the exceptional United States, whose celebrated
progressive president, John F Kennedy, according to new research,
authorised the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962.
If we have to use force, said Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state in
the liberal administration of Bill Clinton and today a passionate campaigner
for his wife, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable
nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.
One of Hillary Clintons most searing crimes was the destruction of Libya in
2011. At her urging, and with American logistical support, NATO, launched
9,700 strike sorties against Libya, according to its own records, of which
more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles
with uranium warheads. See the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and
Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UNICEF
report on the children killed, most [of them] under the age of ten.
In Anglo-American scholarship, followed slavishly by the liberal media on
both sides of the Atlantic, influential theorists known as liberal
realists have long taught that liberal imperialists a term they never use
are the worlds peace brokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause
of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and
congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole
nations for autopsy, they have identified failed states (nations difficult
to exploit) and rogue states (nations resistant to western dominance).
Whether or not the targeted regime is a democracy or dictatorship is
irrelevant. In the Middle East, western liberalisms collaborators have long
been extremist Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while cynical notions of
democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest and mayhem
as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Honduras. See the
record of those good liberals Bill and Hillary Clinton. Theirs is a standard
to which Trump can only aspire.
A Response from Truthout and a Letter from Truthouts publisher.
Dear Jeffrey,
Im writing in response to Counterpunchs publication of a highly misleading
and factually inaccurate article by John Pilger today regarding Truthout and
our editor-in-chief Maya Schenwar, Trump and Clinton: Censoring the
Unpalatable.
The idea that Truthout is stifling criticism of Hillary Clinton holds no
water, and this takes very little time to verify Ive appended below a few
of the many uncompromisingly critical articles weve published about her.
John Pilgers history of excellent journalism is without question. However,
the reality of this situation is that each and every writer who submits work
to Truthout for publication or republication need to work with our editors,
and treat them with some basic professional courtesy. That did not happen in
this case.
It has long been Truthouts policy that for articles to be featured as
Truthout originals, they need to either be exclusive content or to be very
substantially revised and rewritten versions of content that has appeared
elsewhere. This was communicated to John Pilger, and his refusal to
acknowledge this or to engage in civil discussion with our editors led to
our decision not to republish this piece.
As Pilger states, the article had already been published elsewhere. Calling
the decision not to run it again censorship is inaccurate Truthout makes
judgment calls as to what to republish every day, and a decision not to
republish an article does not mean we are damning that piece by implication,
let alone censoring it. Calling the decision politically-motivated
censorship stemming from a desire to protect Hillary Clinton is wildly,
maliciously inaccurate and easily demonstrable as false.
This article is a misrepresentation of Truthout, a misrepresentation of Maya
Schenwar, and a misrepresentation of what censorship entails that does a
disservice to the concept. It calls Counterpunchs credibility into question
for as long as this story remains on your site in its current form.
With thanks for your prompt attention to this matter,
Joe Macaré
Publisher, Truthout
jmacare@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
