media watch the president, we will attack Iran [if it attacks Israel]. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” Clinton also commented of Egypt’s then dictator, Mubarak: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” In 2006, Clinton co-sponsored a (failed) bill that would have criminalised the burning of the American flag. Clinton described it as ‘an opportunity to protect our flag’.
‘Hillary’s Moment’ In the BBC website article mentioned above, Zurcher writes: “If this is Hillary’s moment, she’s going to have to earn it.” It is a trite but far from innocuous comment. Referring to Clinton by her first name indicates that “Hillary” is one of “the good guys”, unlike surname-only “bad guys” like Putin, Chavez, Gaddafi and Assad. Try imagining a BBC news piece commenting: “If this is Bashar’s moment, he’s going to have to earn it.” In 2013, BBC journalist Kim Ghattas authored a book titled, “The Secretary – A Journey With Hillary Clinton from Beirut to The Heart of American Power.” Clinton, Ghattas explained, is “a rock star diplomat who finally let her hair down”. As US Secretary of State, “Hillary” let her hair down in October 2011, after it emerged that Libyan leader Gaddafi (Muammar to his friends) had been beaten, sodomised with a knife and murdered. Moments after receiving the news, Clinton laughed, commenting: “We came, we saw, he died.” As Maximilian Forte observed: “Ghoulish, chilling, and perverse was this utterly remorseless display of how bloodthirsty US power can be.” (Forte, op.cit., pp.359-360) Zurcher notes that Clinton “faces an ongoing congressional investigation into her response to the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya”. This is Zurcher’s
only reference to Libya. Like the rest of the media, the failure to protect the US consulate is the only Libyan scandal worth mentioning. Thus, the Independent refers to Clinton’s “potential weaknesses, including controversies over her handling, as Secretary of State, of the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, her use of a private email server while at the State Department and donations by foreign governments to the Bill Clinton foundation”. In all the coverage of Clinton’s presidential bid recorded in the Lexis newspaper database, I have found not one inclusion of the destruction of Libya among her “controversies”. It has been estimated that Clinton will raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in the primary and general election campaigns, twice the amount Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each spent in 2012. The World Socialist Web Site notes the significance: “To raise these vast sums, all potential presidents must thus pass through a screening process that involves a few thousand billionaires and near-billionaires... The financial oligarchy selects the possible candidates, a process now referred to as the “invisible primary”... Those selected are invariably right-wing, reliable defenders of corporate America, usually themselves millionaires or multimillionaires.” Are we really to accept that gender equality counts more than the naked fraudulence of this “democratic” process, more than the bringing of death and destruction to entire countries? But this is exactly the message of the corporate “free press”, which works so hard to ensure that ethical discussion remains superficial, rootless, and powerless to challenge the status quo. CT
Are we really to accept that gender equality counts more than the naked fraudulence of this “democratic” process, more than the bringing of death and destruction to entire countries?
David Edwards is co-editor of the British media watchdog Media Lens – http://medialens.org www.coldtype.net | May 2015 | ColdType 7