Saul Isaacson: I have a media question. When I heard about the fall of Mosul, to be honest, that was the first I've heard of ISIS and I follow the mainstream media fairly closely.
Chomsky: Same here. It was a real surprise.
Isaacson: Why is that? Were there people who knew and were keeping it from us?
Chomsky: First of all, when Iraq stopped being a US story, the press corps left. If we're not involved, what's the difference? So, for example, the worst crimes in the world right now in the last couple of years are going on in Eastern Congo. There's almost nothing about them.
Isaacson: I've read nothing of it.
Chomsky: Nothing, but maybe 5 million people have been killed in the last couple of years. One reason we don't hear anything about it is because there's very limited official US involvement of the press corps. The other reason is that the story is not going to be palatable. Part of the reason for the atrocities is so that you can have a device like a cell phone. The multinationals are all over the place. They're ripping off essential minerals. And the militias that are slaughtering everyone are basically providing the mineral resources for multinationals that are profiting off this kind of cheap access to resources and selling it to you. That's not the kind of story you want to tell people.
So there are several reasons why it's not covered. In the case of Mosul, there was an official story. General [David] Petraeus, who is a military genius, went to Mosul and pacified everything - was wonderful and he left and became a big hero. Five minutes after he left, it all fell apart because there was nothing going on. And as soon as he left, the place fell apart with warring militias and so on. But that's not a good story. It didn't fit with the party line at the moment. And since then, that's been continuing. It's kind of ironic a US and Iranian-backed government happens to be very brutal. It's been attacking the Sunni minority quite viciously and nobody's paying attention. Then all of a sudden, it turns out that you got this group ISIS, which had literally a couple of thousand lightly-armed jihadis facing an Iraqi army of 350,000 people heavily armed, trained by the United States for 10 years. The army, as soon as it looked at them, ran away and left their weapons behind. What does that tell you about the attitude of Iraqis toward the United States? It's not the kind of thing you report back. There are people doing it, like Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent, but he's almost alone.
http://www.alternet.org/chomsky-theres-overt-corporate-effort-indoctrinate-american-children?sc=fb
Chomsky: Same here. It was a real surprise.
Isaacson: Why is that? Were there people who knew and were keeping it from us?
Chomsky: First of all, when Iraq stopped being a US story, the press corps left. If we're not involved, what's the difference? So, for example, the worst crimes in the world right now in the last couple of years are going on in Eastern Congo. There's almost nothing about them.
Isaacson: I've read nothing of it.
Chomsky: Nothing, but maybe 5 million people have been killed in the last couple of years. One reason we don't hear anything about it is because there's very limited official US involvement of the press corps. The other reason is that the story is not going to be palatable. Part of the reason for the atrocities is so that you can have a device like a cell phone. The multinationals are all over the place. They're ripping off essential minerals. And the militias that are slaughtering everyone are basically providing the mineral resources for multinationals that are profiting off this kind of cheap access to resources and selling it to you. That's not the kind of story you want to tell people.
So there are several reasons why it's not covered. In the case of Mosul, there was an official story. General [David] Petraeus, who is a military genius, went to Mosul and pacified everything - was wonderful and he left and became a big hero. Five minutes after he left, it all fell apart because there was nothing going on. And as soon as he left, the place fell apart with warring militias and so on. But that's not a good story. It didn't fit with the party line at the moment. And since then, that's been continuing. It's kind of ironic a US and Iranian-backed government happens to be very brutal. It's been attacking the Sunni minority quite viciously and nobody's paying attention. Then all of a sudden, it turns out that you got this group ISIS, which had literally a couple of thousand lightly-armed jihadis facing an Iraqi army of 350,000 people heavily armed, trained by the United States for 10 years. The army, as soon as it looked at them, ran away and left their weapons behind. What does that tell you about the attitude of Iraqis toward the United States? It's not the kind of thing you report back. There are people doing it, like Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent, but he's almost alone.
http://www.alternet.org/chomsky-theres-overt-corporate-effort-indoctrinate-american-children?sc=fb
