Media and Empire: The ‘Dissident’ Smear of Gary Webb

The Dark Alliance of Media and Empire: The ‘Dissident’ Smear of Gary Webb

by Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

I assume that most of the rapidly dwindling number of people who read this blog have already read Tarzie’s takedown of The Intercept’s curiously CIA-slanted smear of Gary Webb, who revealed the Agency’s instrumental involvement in the 1980s crack epidemic that devastated America’s inner cities in order to fund the illegal Contra war in Nicaragua.

(As an aside, I’d like to note that the flood of crack into America was not of course confined to the inner cities, although that was indeed its epicenter. Over time, it crept out into that rural “heartland” where, in Gore Vidal’s immortal phase, “chiggers burrow and Jesus saves,” and destroyed the lives of many “good old boys” along with the ghetto dwellers who were the primary targets. One of these old boys was a close friend of mine, a good-hearted, “unharmful gentle soul” damaged by a violent upbringing who got hooked on crack and ended up in the absolute hellhole of the American prison complex. This was a sweet, music-loving, friend-supporting man who’d never hurt a single person in his life, who spent his time in prison trying to mediate between the racist gangs — paying the price for it with beatings and threats — trying to walk the line and being scorned for it by guards and prisoners alike. All this for a quiet, diversionary high he could have gotten from a couple of legal six-packs every night, if not for the insidious addictive nature of the product the CIA pushed into the hands of the pushers. This is one of the main things that drive my rage against the murderers and liars who strut upon the national and international stages, pretending to be pious leaders: the fate of good people like my friend, ordinary people, people filled with love, with dreams, who just want to get beyond whatever torments their pasts have inflicted upon them and enjoy their time, their friends, their children, their lovers, but are instead crushed like bugs beneath the bootheels of imperial policy. It’s things like this that make me want to say: Damn these killers and liars to hell, whatever their party or professed ideals may be.)

Anyway, in his original piece, Tarzie committed the increasingly rare sin of genuine journalism by investigating and debunking, point by point, The Intercept’s ugly spin on Webb’s work — work which was later confirmed by the CIA itself. Now Tarzie is back with a follow-up on the continuing disparagement of Webb’s work by the Establishment media (covering its own spotty posterior for its original collaboration with CIA smears) in a new piece, with links to several other important stories on the case. Both pieces are well worth reading, if you haven’t already.

II. The Oligarch’s Code Revisited

Speaking of The Intercept, and the billionaire oligarch behind this doughty bastion of ‘dissent,’ what has Pierre Omidyar’s favorite religious neo-fascist been up too, after Pierre’s money helped him into power? Why, fomenting war at one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoints, of course!

We speak of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has spent the months since his election in May stoking the flames in Kashmir, the disputed border region between India and Pakistan: a flashpoint that has already sparked three wars and numerous standoffs between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Modi and his minions now boast of his bellicosity in the new stirring of the hornet’s nest:

“The message we have been given from the prime minister’s office is very clear and precise,” said a senior Indian Home Ministry official. “The prime minister’s office has instructed us to ensure that Pakistan suffers deep and heavy losses.”

In his first extensive comments on the violence, Mr Modi told a political rally on Thursday, when 1,000 Indian mortars rained across into Pakistan, that “it is the enemy that is screaming”.

“The enemy has realised that times have changed and their old habits will not be tolerated,” he said.

We have written here before of our ‘dissenting’ oligarch’s profitable alliance with Modi, such as in this excerpt (see original for links):

Who is Modi? What sort of politician has America’s leading bankroller of dissent given his copious support to? Pankaj Mishra has written one of the best articles that I've seen on the situation. From the Guardian:

Modi is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary Hindu nationalist organisation inspired by the fascist movements of Europe, whose founder's belief that Nazi Germany had manifested "race pride at its highest" by purging the Jews is by no means unexceptional among the votaries of Hindutva, or "Hinduness". In 1948, a former member of the RSS murdered Gandhi for being too soft on Muslims. The outfit, traditionally dominated by upper-caste Hindus, has led many vicious assaults on minorities. A notorious executioner of dozens of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 crowed that he had slashed open with his sword the womb of a heavily pregnant woman and extracted her foetus. Modi himself described the relief camps housing tens of thousands of displaced Muslims as "child-breeding centres".

…

His record as chief minister is predominantly distinguished by the transfer – through privatisation or outright gifts – of national resources to the country's biggest corporations. His closest allies – India's biggest businessmen – have accordingly enlisted their mainstream media outlets into the cult of Modi as decisive administrator; dissenting journalists have been removed or silenced.

Omidyar has acquired impenetrable “liberal” cred since he decided to bankroll some of America’s leading adversarial journalists — including Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Matt Taibbi — to the tune of a cool quarter of a billion dollars. Yet, although some of these journalists continue to produce some informative work (Taibbi has a good piece in the Guardian this week on America’s two-tier justice system), one might be forgiven for suspecting that Omidyar is using them as something along the lines of human shields to cover some of his less salubrious activities — such supporting religious fascists like Modi, and working hand-in-glove with Washington to engineer a ‘regime change’ in Urkraine that relied heavily on avowed neo-fascist factions to force the issue.

For more on this, see Omidyar and the Oligarch’s Code: Enabling Extremism, Monetizing Dissent, which draws heavily on the incisive reporting that Mark Ames has been doing on Omidyar at Pando Daily.