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SELECTIVE PERCEPTION
The following excerpt is from Noam Chomsky's book Media Control:the
Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
"Selective perception (of certain countries that are out of favor
with the US government) has been going on for quite a while. In May 1986, the memoirs of
the released Cuban prisoner, Armando Valladares, came out. They quickly became a media
sensation. I'll give you a couple of quotes. The media described his revelations as
"the definitive account of the vast system of torture and prison by which Castro
punishes and obliterates political opposition." It was "an inspiring and
unforgettable account" of the "bestial prisons," inhuman torture, [and]
record of state violence [under] yet another of this century's mass murderers, who we
learn, at last, from this book "has created a new despotism that has
institutionalized torture as a mechanism of social control" in "the hell that
was the Cuba that [Valladares] lived in." That's the Washington Post and New York
Times in repeated reviews. Castro was described as "a dictatorial goon. "His
atrocities were revealed in this book so conclusively that "only the most
light-headed and cold-blooded Western intellectual will come to the tyrant's
defense," said the Washington Post. Remember, this is the account of what happened to
one man. Let's say it's all true. Let's raise no questions about what happened to the one
man who says he was tortured. At a White House ceremony marking Human Rights Day, he was
singled out by Ronald Reagan for his courage in enduring the horrors and sadism of this
bloody Cuban tyrant. He was then appointed the U.S. representative at the UN Human Rights
Commission, where he has been able to per-form signal services defending the Salvadoran
and Guatemalan governments against charges that they conduct atrocities so massive that
they make anything he suffered look pretty minor. That's the way things stand. (Editor's
note: On March 10, 1999, President Clinton admitted U.S. complicity in the genocide of
200,000 Mayan peasants in Guatemala-see San Jose Mercury, March, 1999, "Apology for
U.S. Role.")
"That was May 1986. It was interesting, and it tells you something about the
manufacture of consent. The same month, the surviving members of the Human Rights Group of
El Salvador--the leaders had been killed--were arrested and tortured, including Herbert
Anaya, who was the director. They were sent to a prison-La Esperanza (hope) Prison. While
they were in prison they continued their human rights work. They were lawyers, they
continued taking affidavits. There were 432 prisoners in that prison. They got signed
affidavits from 430 of them in which they described, under oath, the torture that they had
received: electrical torture and other atrocities, including, in one case, torture by a
North American U.S. major in uniform, who is described in some detail. This is an
unusually explicit and comprehensive testimony, probably unique in its detail about what's
going on in a torture chamber. This 160-page report of the prisoners' sworn testimony was
sneaked out of prison, along with a videotape, which was taken showing people testifying
in prison about their torture. It was distributed by the Marin County Interfaith Task
Force. The national press refused to cover it. The TV stations refused to run it. There
was an article in the local Marin County newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and I
think that's all. No one else would touch it. This was a time when there was more than a
few "light-headed and cold-blooded Western intellectuals" who were singing the
praises of Jose Napoleon Duarte and of Ronald Reagan. Anaya was not the subject of any
tributes. He didn't get on Human Rights Day. He wasn't appointed to anything. He was
released in a prisoner exchange and then assassinated, apparently by the U.S.-backed
security forces. Very little information about that ever appeared. The media never asked
whether exposure of the atrocities--instead of sitting on them and silencing them--might
have saved his life.
"This tells you something about the way a well-functioning system of consent
manufacturing works. In comparison with the revelations of Herbert Anaya in El Salvador,
Valladares's memoirs are not even a pea next to the mountain. But you've got your job to
do. That takes us toward the next war. I expect, we're going to hear more and more of
this, until the next operation takes place.
"A few remarks about the last one. Let's turn finally to that. Let me begin with
this University of Massachusetts study that I mentioned before. It has some interesting
conclusions. In the study people were asked whether they thought that the United States
should intervene with force to reverse illegal occupation or serious human rights abuses.
By about two to one, people in the United States thought we should. We should use force in
the case of illegal occupation of land and severe human rights abuses. If the United
States was to follow that advice, we would bomb El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia,
Damascus, Tel Aviv, Capetown, Turkey, Washington, and a whole list of states. These are
all cases of illegal occupation and aggression and severe human rights abuses. If you know
the facts about the range of examples, you'll know very well that Saddam Hussein's
aggression and atrocities fall well within the range. They're not the most extreme. Why
doesn't anybody come to that conclusion? The reason is that nobody knows. In a
well-functioning propaganda system, nobody would know what I'm talking about when I list
that range of examples. If you bother to look, you find that those examples are quite
appropriate.
"Take one that was ominously close to being perceived during the Gulf War. In
February, right in the middle of the bombing campaign, the government of Lebanon requested
Israel to observe UN Security Council Resolution 425, which called on it to withdraw
immediately and unconditionally from Lebanon. That resolution dates from March 1978. There
have since been two subsequent resolutions calling for the immediate and unconditional
withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. Of course it doesn't observe them because the United
States backs it in maintaining that occupation. Meanwhile southern Lebanon is terrorized.
There are big torture-chambers with horrifying things going on, it's used as a base for
attacking other parts of Lebanon. Since 1978, Lebanon was invaded, the city of Beirut was
bombed, about 20,000 people were killed, about 80 percent of them civilians, hospitals
were destroyed, and more terror, looting, and robbery was inflicted. All fine, the United
States backed it. That's just one case. You didn't see anything in the media about it or
any discussion about whether Israel and the United States should observe UN Security
Council Resolution 425 or any of the other resolutions, nor did anyone call for the
bombing of Tel Aviv, although by the principles upheld by two-thirds of the population, we
should. After all, that's illegal occupation and severe human rights abuses. That's just
one case. There are much worse ones. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor knocked off
about 200,000 people. They all look minor by that one. That was strongly backed by the
United States and is still going on with major United States diplomatic and military
support. We can go on and on."
Bibliography:
Media Control: the Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (pages 40-45), by Noam Chomsky,
a Seven Stories Press First Edition published in association with Open Media, Copyright
1991, 1997.
Bibliography:
Media Control: the Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (pages 40-45), by Noam Chomsky,
a Seven Stories Press First Edition published in association with Open Media, Copyright
1991, 1997.
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