Norman Solomon Quotes

In recent weeks, Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke has become a lightning rod... largely because of the vast hype about him from mass media and Democratic power brokers. At such times, when spin goes into overdrive, we need incisive factual information. Investigative journalist David Sirota provided it in a deeply researched Dec. 20 article, which The Guardian published under the headline “Beto O’Rourke Frequently Voted for Republican Legislation, Analysis Reveals.” ...it’s better to learn revealing political facts sooner rather than later. Thanks to Sirota’s coverage... we now know “O’Rourke has voted for GOP bills that his fellow Democratic lawmakers said reinforced Republicans’ anti-tax ideology, chipped away at the Affordable Care Act, weakened Wall Street regulations, boosted the fossil fuel industry and bolstered Donald Trump’s immigration policy.”

Contempt for diplomacy with Russia is now extreme... No doubt Hillary Clinton thought she was sending out an applause line in her tweet Sunday night: “Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?”

We really have to fault the mass media of the United States, not just for the last few days, but the last decades, pretending that somehow, by implication, almost that John McCain was doing the people of North Vietnam a favor as he flew over them and dropped bombs. You would think, in the hagiography that we’ve been getting about his role in a squadron flying over North Vietnam, that he was dropping, you know, flowers or marshmallows or something. He was shot down during his 23rd mission dropping bombs on massive numbers of human beings, in a totally illegal and immoral war.

During the week after U.S. missiles hit sites in Sudan and Afghanistan, some Americans seemed uncomfortable. A vocal minority even voiced opposition. But approval was routine among those who had learned a few easy Orwellian lessons. No matter how many times they’ve lied in the past, U.S. officials are credible in the present. When they... [say the] bombed pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was making ingredients for nerve gas, that should be good enough for us... Might doesn’t make right — except in the real world, when it’s American might. Only someone of dubious political orientation would split hairs about international law.

Activists have been encouraged by his ability to listen, learn and change...

Hours later, Sean Penn and I were sitting in the office of Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz. Dressed in a business suit, he greeted us cordially. His voice reminded me of a foghorn. In a far corner, three large televisions were on, without sound, tuned to Iraqi TV, EuroNews and CNN International. At the outset of the discussion, Penn said: “The politics for me are a side note to concern about my children, and the children of the United States, and the children of this country.” Aziz launched into a long explanation of why the United States should not attack Iraq. “Now we have brought the international inspectors, who are professionals, and they are doing their jobs freely, without any interruption. And still the warmongering language in Washington is keeping on.” He continued: “Iraq is rich in its oil reserves. They want to take it away. But at what cost? At what cost for Americans, and for Iraq and for the whole region? Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die, including Americans— because if they want to take over oil in Iraq, they have to fight for it, not by missiles and by airplanes . . . they have to bring troops and fight the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army. And that will be costly.”

With a launch of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign on the near horizon, efforts to block his trajectory to the Democratic presidential nomination are intensifying... The ferocity of media attacks on him often indicates that corporate power brokers are afraid his strong progressive populism is giving effective voice to majority views of the public... The overarching fear that defenders of oligarchy have about Bernie Sanders is not that he’s out of step with most Americans — it’s that he’s in step with them. For corporate elites determined to retain undemocratic power, a successful Bernie 2020 campaign would be the worst possible outcome of the election.

It’s mid-October, and the Wall Street bailout that was supposed to save the economy from collapse is a flop... Senate passage came on Thursday, Oct. 2...President Bush signed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout into law... Despite all the media hype about how the bailout measure would quickly steady the stock market, it fell and kept falling... the Dow made history as stocks plunged by 18 percent in five trading days. And what about the ostensible main reason for the humongous bailout... unfreezing the credit markets? Well, in spite of the enormous media outcry..., it didn’t. And the key economic factor in the recession — housing — remained just as stuck as before. As the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out on Oct. 1, “A real ‘bailout’ would target the troubled households of working American families. A $200 billion ‘Main Street Stimulus Package’ could bolster the real economy and those left vulnerable by the subprime mortgage meltdown.” Components of such a stimulus package could include “a $130 billion annual investment in renewable energy to stimulate good jobs anchored in local economies and reduce our dependency on oil” — and “a $50 billion outlay to help keep people in foreclosed homes through refinancing...” — and “a $20 billion aid package to states to address the squeeze on state and local government services that declining tax revenues are now forcing.” But that kind of discourse for grassroots economic stimulus hasn’t gotten into the media storyline...

Surveys show that voters are hungry for genuinely progressive policies that have drawn little interest from mainstream media outlets. For instance, polling of the US public shows:
76 percent support higher taxes on the wealthy.
70 percent support Medicare for All.
59 percent support a $15 minimum wage.
60 percent support expanded tuition-free college.
69 percent oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.
65 percent support progressive criminal justice reform.
59 percent support stricter environmental regulation.
Yet such popular positions are routinely ignored or denigrated by elite political pros who warn that such programs are too far left for electoral success. The same kind of claims assumed that Bernie Sanders would never get beyond single digits in his 2016 presidential campaign.... pandering to the military-industrial complex — enabling and reinforcing endless US warfare now in its 18th year — may well be touted as a sign of “moderate” leadership. But it is far more popular inside the Beltway than it is among working-class voters.

With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation’s extreme income inequality. Viewed in that light — and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media — it shouldn’t be surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class.

A bellicose stance toward Russia has become so routine and widespread that we might not give it a second thought... Often the biggest lies involve what remains unsaid. For instance, U.S. media rarely mention such key matters as the promise-breaking huge expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders since the fall of the Berlin Wall... or the more than 800 U.S. military bases overseas -- in contrast to Russia’s nine...

That’s because turning the Democratic Party into a truly progressive force will require turning “primary” into a verb. The corporate Democrats who dominate the party’s power structure in Congress should fear losing their seats because they’re out of step with constituents. And Democratic voters should understand that if they want to change the party, the only path to do so is to change the people who represent them. Otherwise, the leverage of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex will continue to hold sway.

For several decades, Helen Thomas covered the White House as a reporter for United Press International.... and when the specter of war grew large in 2002, she didn’t hold back. “It’s bombs away for Iraq and on our civil liberties if Bush and his cronies get their way,” Thomas said... during a speech at MIT. Looking back on a long career, she said: “I censored myself for fifty years when I was a reporter.” Although we may want journalists to keep their personal opinions out of news reporting, we might expect to be provided with all the relevant facts. This is rarely the case. A lot of key information gets filtered out. The process is often subtle in a society with democratic freedoms and little overt censorship. “Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip,” George Orwell remarked more than half a century ago, “but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.” No whips are visible in America’s modern newsrooms and broadcast studios. There are no leashes on editors, reporters, producers, or news correspondents. But in mainstream media, few journalists wander far... Conformity becomes habitual. Among the results is a dynamic that Orwell described as the conditioned reflex of “stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought . . . and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.” p. 21

In late 2002, new squads of inspectors poking around Iraq could furnish valuable data to the United States, heightening the effectiveness of a subsequent military attack. “We are now a country facing the threat of war,” the speaker of Iraq’s National Assembly, Saadoun Hammadi, told us. “We have to prepare for that.” A silver-haired man in frail Target Iraq 6 physical condition, Hammadi was somber: “The U.S. administration is now speaking war. We are not going to turn the other cheek. We are going to fight. Not only our armed forces will fight. Our people will fight.” As those words settled in the air, the gaunt old man paused, then added: “I personally will fight.” At that moment, I thought I could see the dimming of light in his eyes, like embers in a dying fire. p. 6

December 14, 2002: Near the center of Baghdad, along the Tigris River, an Iraqi woman showed a few foreigners around a water treatment plant that was seriously damaged during the Gulf War in early 1991. Our guide spoke in steady tones, describing various technical matters. But when someone asked about the possibility of war in 2003, her voice began to quaver. A young American woman tried to offer comfort. She said, “You’re strong.” “No,” our guide responded emphatically. “Not strong.” Tears welled in her eyes. Moments later she added, “We are tired.” She was speaking for herself, but also, it seemed, for most Iraqi people. After so much mourning, hardship and stress, they were exhausted—and frightened by what the future was likely to bring. For an American in Baghdad, perhaps the most startling aspect of any visit was to encounter, up close and personal, Iraqis so routinely rendered invisible or fleeting by U.S. media coverage. It’s all too easy to accept the bombing of people who have never quite seemed like people, whose suffering is abstract and distant. Looking them in the eyes can change that. In the words of my traveling companion on this trip, the actor and director Sean Penn: “I needed to come here and see a smile, see a street, smell the smells, talk to the people and take that home with me.”