Iran Review
Interview with: James F. Tracy
By: Kourosh Ziabari
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| Professor James F. Tracy |
American political commentator believes that the United States has been constantly allied with Al-Qaeda and supported it militarily and financially.
"Major media have recently had to acknowledge that US-NATO interests are aligned with Al Qaeda in Syria, of course overlooking the fact that the US and Sunni States also recruited and armed these soldiers of fortune. What the Obama administration has sought to do with the alleged murder of Bin Laden in May 2011 is to close the chapter on the old, villainous Al Qaeda and open a chapter on the new and friendly Al Qaeda. This narrative is slowly unfolding, while Americans are instructed on a different bogey to fear, which now appears to be homegrown terrorism," he said in an exclusive interview with Iran Review.
Prof. James F. Tracy is the Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he teaches courses on media history and the role of journalism in the public sphere. Tracy's scholarly work and commentary on media and politics have appeared in numerous academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative media news and opinion outlets. He is editor of Democratic Communiqué, journal of the Union for Democratic Communications, an affiliate of Project Censored, and a regular contributor to GlobalResearch.ca. Tracy's latest work assessing Western press coverage of US-NATO military ventures and the human costs of war appears in Censored 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-2013 (Seven Stories Press, 2012).
Prof. Tracy took part in an interview with Iran Review to answer some questions regarding the influence of advocacy organizations on the U.S. government and the mutual relationship between these entities, the further limitation of civil liberties and individual freedoms in the United States, the challenges ahead of progressive, alternative journalism in the United States, Western mainstream media's coverage of Iran and Syria affairs and the prospect of U.S. military expeditions in the Middle East.
Q: What do you think about the role of influential American think tanks and public diplomacy and advocacy organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the National Endowment for Democracy in creating unrest and instability in the countries which are opposed to the United States policies? Do you find traces of their footsteps in the ongoing violence in Syria? Do they have plans to destabilize Iran so as to realize their mischievous objective of regime change in Tehran?
A: One can contend that the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy are much more than advocacy organizations. The question suggests the popular view that Western states and especially the United States are above such organizations in terms of decision making power and responsiveness to the populations they purportedly serve.
This is the idealization of a transcendent governing apparatus upheld in public opinion and touted in Western mainstream media. This is the myth the CFR specifically perpetuates about itself and the liberal state. In fact, the CFR is a branch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and it has more or less dictated US foreign policy from within entities such as the US State Department since before World War Two.
This is not to say that every member of the CFR is involved in such maneuvers. Some are in the organization because they're flattered to be asked and they see it as prestigious and fashionable, or they wish to network with other influential figures. Yet it is no mistake that membership is exclusive and participants all occupy strategic positions of power in major global corporations, in academe and the media, and in government, and thus can be mobilized to exert their influence as the CFR inner circle desires. They also openly share in the ideology of weakening the nation state and privileging global-regional and international bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations.
It is through such organizations that they can get their policies enacted with little if any interference from the common people or their representatives at the national level. The CFR's interests and activities, alongside the interests supported by the major philanthropic foundations such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundations, and the Gates Foundation, are demonstrable manifestations of the deep state that truly runs the world, has priorities that differ greatly from the bulk of humanity, and has sought to exert itself since the 1920s.
The "Arab Spring" appears to be largely a maneuver of organizations such as the CFR and NED. This was evident from the onset with the high degree of Western media exposure afforded the fairly modest demonstrations 2011 in Tahrir Square that preceded Mubarak's ouster by the Central Intelligence Agency. The same media outlets unquestioningly covered the Western and Sunni-backed deployment of Al Qaeda mercenary forces and NATO airpower against the most modern and socially progressive state on the African continent under the Obama administration's "Responsibility to Protect" cover. A central bank was reportedly created in the back of a mercenary pickup truck. This was a colossal war crime that Western public opinion is left largely in the dark about. It also underscored liberal-progressive hypocrisy and credulousness in the US, evident in the pronouncements of public figures such as Juan Cole and Amy Goodman, who led the cheering section for Libya's destruction. If the Bush administration successfully vanquished the probable leader of the African Union those on the Left would have been in a huff. When one of their purported own oversees such a campaign it's not only condoned but applauded, much like the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia by Clinton.
As many of your readers are likely aware, Libya is significant because some of the same mercenary forces recruited by US intelligence and Sunni states that were employed there are now deployed in Syria. Like Libya, Syria is also a fairly modern state that is not hostile to the West but is regarded as being autonomous, particularly in its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. It is also seen as a strategic threat to Israel in terms of Iran, and so must be dismantled before a more concerted campaign against Iran is to take place. I'm inclined to think that those determining policy for the Obama administration want compliant fundamentalist regimes installed throughout the Middle East. This will be disastrous to overall security in the region but I don't believe that's their goal. War is much more profitable and has much greater potential than peace for those who wish to exert control over resources.
Q: In one of your articles, you argue that the United States has become a police state, with such restrictive legislations and programs which the government has put into effect to limit the citizens' personal freedoms and different types of civil liberties, such as the Sedition Act of 1798 which criminalizes the publication of "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government and governmental officials. Would you please elaborate more on your notion of the United States becoming a police state?
A: I believe this was "The Paranoid Style of American Governance," where I pointed out that the laws, policies, and organizational structure of the US government, how its exaggerated concern over surveillance and security is arrayed against the American people. The situation is comparable to how an increasingly delusional paranoid might approach human relationships s/he is involved in. As a result of the 1996 Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act following the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing and the 2001 PATRIOT Act enacted after September 11, 2001 many of the civil liberties Americans have been guaranteed under the Constitution have been stolen, never to return.
Citizens cannot expect to be secure in their persons and papers. We are subjected to humiliating warrantless searches at transportation facilities. As a result of a string of legislation capped off by President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act of December 2011 the government now reserves the right to jail or murder citizens on political grounds. There is little if any recourse because our political representation has to a large degree been bought off by private interests. The US increasingly looks like a totalitarian state and is one major event away from fully resembling the Soviet Union or an Eastern Bloc state circa 1970. The extent of the rollback in civil liberties is very overdone because a majority of Americans are ill-informed, politically unsophisticated, and in many instances even functionally illiterate. Thus they are unaware of the police state's accelerated formation since the mid-1990s and unprepared to contest it. A combined regime of poor public education and the stultifying effects of mass media and culture have dumbed the American public down to the extent that its republic has been taken right out from underneath its nose.
Q: It's widely believed that the United States, as its leaders claim, is a "beacon of freedom" since the mass media are allowed to publish every critical material at will, even if they threaten the national security, in such cases of war with another nation. Is this widely-accepted belief true? Don't the mass media face any restriction or impediment by the government to censor certain stories or withhold from the public sensitive information?
A: The major, agenda-setting US news media—USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and their broadcast and cablecast amplifiers—that the small strata of semi-politically adept and literate citizens rely on for information are all controlled by interests that are overall supportive of the US police state and US-NATO foreign policy. To return to your initial question, many of the owners or top editors and journalists are also CFR members. Together they perform a central propagandistic function of the state through selective reportage of issues and events, omission of key information, and heavy reliance on "official" government or corporate sources.
Such a set of procedures is worse than outright falsehoods because a falsehood can be disproved and a journalist or news organization called out on the carpet. However, by owning most of the newsgathering and distribution outlets, by using official sources and employing careful editing procedures such media retain credibility in the public mind. In the Soviet Union much of the citizenry knew that by reading Pravda they were being fed outright lies so they learned to "read between the lines" to interpret what was really going on. That requires a degree of political sophistication that is beyond most Americans.
The government and major news media are also being challenged by alternative news media and thus resort to a more blatant form of disinformation that jeopardizes their perceived trustworthiness, which is now at an all-time low. This is the case with their coverage of the US-NATO actions and Libya and Syria—specifically the fact that the US is allied with and actively supporting its alleged arch enemy Al Qaeda.
For over a year corporate media tried to cover this up when it was there in plain view. Alternative outlets reported otherwise and in the face of this mainstream media had to eventually relent and admit that the US is indeed supporting Al Qaeda.
As an example, one case involved a US-based alternative media outlet reporting on the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies collectively purchasing over one billion rounds of lethal, "hollow point" ammunition. Major media sought to assuage growing public concern on this by focusing on a single government agency's (the Social Security Administration) purchase of 180,000 rounds of such ammunition, asserting that it was for target practice. This was absolute propaganda likely pitched to these outlets by covert government sources. It's fairly common knowledge among American gun enthusiasts that "full metal jacket" ammo is used on the range because it's far less expensive than hollow point and performs the same function. Nevertheless, the 180,000 SSA story was widely circulated, performing the intended propaganda function, mainly through conscious omission of the most important information that alternative media honestly chose to highlight.
Another argument that I need to make in light of the world wide expanse of news and information now available on the Internet is that the US citizenry doesn't need to rely primarily on USA Today or New York Times editors for what it is exposed to. This remains the case so long as the Internet remains free from government or corporate encroachment and regulation. In this regard there is a wealth of information for those who have the time, discernment, and initiative to seek it out and become informed. Investigative journalists and commentators have much to draw on in terms of analyzing and explaining the meaning and significance of issues and events. This is essentially what newspapers and journals did before the application of scientific objectivity to journalism and the pretentious separation of news from analysis and opinion.
Q: What challenges do the independent, progressive journalists of the United States face today? In one of your articles, you had criticized some of the progressive media for failing to give coverage to important topics such as the truth about the 9/11 attacks. Would you please elaborate on that? In my view, the progressive media outlets such as CounterPunch or The Nation have to some extent broken apart the monopoly of the mainstream media and allowed the free flow of information while the mainstream media steadfastly try to suffocate the truth. Don't you agree?
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