“The business of a journalist now is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, fall at the feet of Mammon and sell himself for his daily bread. We are tools, vessels of rich men behind the scenes, we are jumping jacks. They pull the strings; we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are the properties of these men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”[1]

“In their scholarship, William Appleton Williams, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Ramsey Clark, Ali Mazrui, and other critics of US foreign policies have provided an abundance of evidence to support the charges on the counter-democratic role of the United States in much of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”[2]

There are particularly pertinent reasons to begin with their model - the primary one being that it is arguably the most thoroughly researched and empirically verified model available. Herman and Chomsky’s landmark study, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, comes under the recommendation of America’s leading national media watchdog and research group, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). It is also recommended as an essential resource for media literacy by the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID), affiliated with the US-based Community Media Centre (CMC).[6] The Oxford-based research and publishing group Corporate Watch (not to be confused with the US-based organisation of the same name), which works in cooperation with a variety of other human rights and environmentalist organisations, describes the study as “one of the most incisive critiques of the media’s role in society”.[7] The respected journal Publisher’s Weekly gives the following review of Manufacturing Consent:

Indeed, according to the leading American media scholar Robert W. McChesney, Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Illinois, any significant attempt to comprehend the structure and operation of the mass media must begin with Herman and Chomsky’s study.[8] He further observes that:

“This book promises to be a seminal work in critical media analysis and to open a door through which future media analysis will follow… Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky are certainly well qualified to provide a simple yet powerful model that explains how the media function to serve the large propaganda requirements of the elite. Together and individually, they have written numerous articles and books which have chronicled the ways in which the US media have actively promoted the agenda of the elite, particularly in regard to US activities in the Third World. Manufacturing Consent is a work of tremendous importance for scholars and activists alike… Each chapter is meticulously researched and most draw heavily on the authors’ earlier works in these areas.”[9]

“Herman and Chomsky quickly dismiss the standard mainstream critique of radical media analysis that accuses it of offering some sort of ‘conspiracy’ theory for media behavior; rather, they argue, media bias arises from ‘the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints’ of a series of objective filters they present in their propaganda model. Hence the bias occurs largely through self-censorship, which explains the superiority of the US mass media as a propaganda system: it is far more credible than a system which relies on official state censorship.”[10]

“Only stories with a strong orientation to elite interests can pass through the five filters unobstructed and receive ample media attention. The model also explains how the media can conscientiously function when even a superficial analysis of the evidence would indicate the preposterous nature of many of the stories that receive ample publicity in the press and on the network news broadcasts.”[11]

“Many of these corporations have extensive holdings in other industries and nations. Objectively, their needs for profit severely influence the news operations and overall content of the media. Subjectively, there is a clear conflict of interest when the media system upon which self-government rests is controlled by a handful of corporations and operated in their self-interest.”[14]

A remarkably large amount of the information the public receives is controlled by a very small number of media sources. Freedom House records that within states, out of 187 governments, 92 have complete ownership of the television broadcasting structure, while 67 have part ownership.[15] Ownership of the world’s media sources is similarly increasingly concentrated in a few giant corporations. Thousands of other sources do exist, but in comparison their influence is negligible. The leading American media analyst Ben Bagdikan, noting that despite more than 25,000 media entities in the US only “23 corporations control most of the business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books, and motion pictures”, concludes that this endows corporations with the extensive power to exercise influence over “news, information, public ideas, popular culture, and political attitudes”.[16]

Former newspaper reporter who became a journalism professor, Doug Underwood, also confirms this corporatisation of the media: “It’s probably no surprise that in an era of mass media conglomerates, big chain expansion, and multimillion dollar newspaper buy-outs, the editors of daily newspapers have begun to behave more and more like the managers of any corporate entity.”[17]

“Of the eighty-five governers who have served in the first fifty years of the BBC’s history, fifty-six had a university education (forty at Oxford or Cambridge) and twenty were products of Eton, Harrow or Winchester. The political experience of Board members has come mainly from the House of Lords although there have been nineteen former MPs.”[19]

Further documentation observes Bob Franklin, Reader in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Sheffield, illustrates that the elite “uses its privileged access to media institutions to produce programming which is partial and supportive of a particular class interest.” Franklin refers to the series of Bad News studies by Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG), offering ample evidence “of a systematic skew in the reporting of certain kinds of news.”[20] For example, in their first study the Glasgow scholars concluded that “television news is a cultural artifact; a sequence of socially-manufactured messages which carry many of the culturally dominant assumptions of our society.” In a later study titled More Bad News, they similarly concluded that television news reporting “consistently maintains and supports a cultural framework within which viewpoints favourable to the status quo are given preferred and privileged readings.”[21]

Former editor-in-chief David Bowman of the Australian newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald therefore confirms that “having thrown off one yoke, the press should now be falling under another, in the form of a tiny and ever-contracting band of businessmen-proprietors. Instead of developing as a diverse social institution, serving the needs of democratic society, the press, and now the media, have become or are becoming the property of a few, governed by whatever social, political and cultural values the few think tolerable”.[22] “The danger”, he elsewhere observes, “is that the media of the future, the channels of mass communication, will be dominated locally and world-wide by the values - social, cultural and political - of a few individuals and their huge corporations.”[23]

It would certainly be difficult to persuade an editor that proprietors are no longer in control of their newspapers. A succession of editors from Harold Evans to Andrew Neil acknowledge the power of proprietors in autobiographies which invariably detail their prompt removal from the editorial chair following a disagreement with the owner... Proprietors’ power to ‘hire and fire’ makes them formidable figures, but they also control all aspects of a newspaper’s financial and staffing resources.”[24]

“Following the same course that virtually every other major industry has in the last two decades, a relentless series of mergers and corporate takeovers has consolidated control of the media into the hands of a few corporate behemoths. The result has been that an increasingly authoritarian agenda has been sold to the American people by a massive, multi-tentacled media machine that has become, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda organ of the state.”[25]

“In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar, or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear. We call that a dictatorship. Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear beyond the natural environment and our own families. That’s something which surrounds us every day and night. If it were one person we’d call that a dictatorship, a ministry of information.”[26]

The extent of the power that elites have over the media can be well understood when it is noted that even Western intelligence agencies have a grip over the press. For example, an internal committee of the CIA reported in 1992 that: “We [i.e. the CIA] have relationships with reporters [that] have helped us turn some intelligence failure stories into intelligence success stories. Some responses to the media can be handled in a one-shot phone call.”[27] Former CIA Director William Colby was more forthcoming when he admitted: “The Central Intelligence Agency owns anyone of any significance in the major media.”[28] Consequently, it is easy to see how the legitimacy of elite interests can henceforth be presupposed by the mass media in terms of a general all-pervading set of assumptions. Since these assumptions are rooted in the elite ideology, the mass media that is of course owned by the corporate elite, is generally unable to question seriously that ideology. Bob Franklin thus concludes that “while it is possible to cite cases where the media have toppled the powerful, there is a greater body of evidence to suggest that their role is more typically to serve as a source of support.”[29] It is therefore not surprising if debate within the media is largely restricted to the assumption of Western governmental and corporate benevolence; the belief in the viability and legitimacy of the status quo. In this context, one can predict that dissent which stretches beyond these limits by choosing to question the very assumptions adopted at the outset by the media, will be neglected. Certainly, due to the sheer mass of news it is also predictable that the odd dissenting report may filter through - but the substantial majority of reports will “serve as a source of support” for elite interests.

As the American political scientist Michael Parenti documents, the result of corporate ownership of the media where staffing will be especially restricted to those who conform to the ideological requirements of corporate power, is that journalists “rarely doubt their own objectivity even as they faithfully echo the established political vocabularies and the prevailing politico-economic orthodoxy. Since they do not cross any forbidden lines, they are not reined in. So they are likely to have no awareness they are on an ideological leash.” The distinguished British correspondent John Pilger - who has twice won British journalism’s highest award, that of Journalist of the Year, as well as several other major awards - thus comments that “the true nature of power is not revealed, its changing contours are seldom explored, its goals and targets seldom identified. This is counterfeit journalism because the surface of events is not disturbed.”[30] A propaganda model thus clarifies the institutional structure of the media that explains why the facts of elite policy receive little in-depth critical analysis by the mainstream media. On this basis one may reasonably argue that permissible dissent becomes meaningless, being unable to question the ideological framework upon which the elite dominated social structures are based. The result has been noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett:

“The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to these messages... Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.”[31]

The second filter noted by Herman and Chomsky that is related to the first filter, is advertising, which Professor McChesney notes “has colonized the US mass media and is responsible for most of the media’s income.”[32] Other than the points already indicated, the growth of advertising has meant that newspapers and other media sources have an alternative primary source of funds other than their selling price. This alone means that the media’s tendencies in reporting can be influenced and manipulated by the significant withdrawing or forwarding of economic support. Since the mass media is largely financed through advertising, it becomes financially dependent for its existence on advertising revenue from corporations. One reason for this is that all forms of media have to ensure that their advertising profile is high to retain corporate investment in advertising, and thereby to retain a source of funds. This is ideally achieved by becoming ideologically appealing to an audience with a high buying capacity: members of the elite and generally members of the wealthiest classes. Newspapers that are attractive to advertisers are able to lower their price below the cost of producing them, thanks to the revenue that advertising brings in.

These ideological positions become implicit assumptions pervading permissible political discourse within the media, and it is thus extremely rare to find these principles being subjected to fundamental critical examination by the corporate-owned media.[34]

The third filter simply constitutes the sources that the mass media routinely relies on for its information. Naturally, since the media needs a steady and reliable source of news, resources are focused where such news can be most easily acquired. It so happens, unfortunately, that central news terminals of this type are the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, as well as business corporations and trade groups. The same is the case for other Western countries. The importance of such organisations as news sources is due to the elementary fact that they possess the greatest resources for public relations and promotional material, the result being that “the mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest”.[35] Alternative media entities established by human rights organisations and other groups are resultantly marginalised; consequently, the public is in consistent reception of news and analysis which is in fundamental ideological conformity to the elite ideology, thus being unable to scrutinise facts in a way free from the assumptions of that ideology. This means that news will be filtered in accordance with what is suitable to the requirements of elite power and its interests. McChesney explains:

“The media rely heavily upon news provided them by corporate and government sources, which have themselves developed enormous bureaucracies to provide this material to the media. They have developed great expertise at ‘managing’ the media. In effect, these bureaucracies subsidize the media and the media must be careful not to antagonize such an important supplier. Furthermore, these corporate and government sources are instantly credible by accepted journalistic practices. Anti-elite sources, on the other hand, are regarded with utmost suspicion and have tremendous difficulty passing successfully through this filter.”[36]

“To consolidate their pre-eminent position as sources, government and business-news promoters go to great pains to make things easy for news organisations... In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become ‘routine’ news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.”[37]

“This filter was developed extensively in the 1970s when major corporations and wealthy right-wingers became increasingly dissatisfied with political developments in the West and with media coverage… While ostensibly antagonistic to the media, these flak machines provide the media with legitimacy and are treated quite well by the media.”[39]

VI. Filter 5: Elite Ideology

The fifth filter essentially follows from the other filters. Since the corporate ideology dominates the media by way of being almost institutionally assumed, all ideologies that are in fundamental opposition to the corporate ideology must similarly be institutionally assumed incorrect. In this context, nationalist social movements around the world that threatened the international capitalist system under US hegemony were construed as totalitarian Communist movements. The final filter is thus the ideology of anticommunism, a stance that has become integral to Western political culture. According to McChesney: “Anticommunism has been ingrained into acceptable journalistic practices in the United States, to the point that even in periods of ‘détente’ it is fully appropriate and expected for journalists to frame issues in terms of ‘our side’ versus the communist ‘bad guys’,” even when Communism is not the real ‘threat’ at all.[41]

We can recall evidence for this when we compare the orthodox interpretation of the Cold War espoused by most academic and media commentators with the fact that there was no global Communist threat. Major covert operations, such as the installation of the Shah in Iran after the elimination of the democratically elected government of Mussadeq, or the intervention in Nicaragua to overthrow the popular Sandinista Front, were undertaken on the pretext of preventing the violent rise of totalitarian Communism and protecting the independence of local populations. Herman and Chomsky observe: “when anticommunist fervor is aroused, the demand for serious evidence in support for claims of ‘communist’ abuses is suspended by the media, and charlatans can thrive as evidential sources”.[42]

Conversely, when journalists or editors attempt to challenge the prevailing anticommunist assumptions as well as pass through the other four filters, they “must meet far higher standards; in fact standards are often imposed that can barely be met in the natural sciences”.[43] This filter is, however, not limited to anticommunism, but rather is related to the prevailing pretext for Western policy at the time. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the noble fight against the non-existent international Communist threat could no longer be pinpointed as a pretext for Western military operations that had actually been undertaken for far more familiar reasons of economic domination. Thus, other diverse ideological threats to be similarly exaggerated, distorted or even fabricated, have had to take its place; a particularly pertinent one in the present day is the alleged threat to the United States and the West due to Islam and global Islamic terrorism - which has been similarly exaggerated[44] (See Chapter VIII below for further discussion).

Apart from this, it is clear that the fifth filter is essentially synonymous with the elite/corporate ideology in general, and it is in the context of this ideology that social movements and ideas in opposition to the dominant ideology are interpreted within the media. Other elements of the final filter will therefore include the benevolence of one’s government, the universal merits of private enterprise, the benign character of corporations and their activities, and so on. All of these inherently imply the deionization of the perceived threat to US hegemony with respect to these aspects.

VII. Institutionalized Elitism

Summarising the politico-economic structure of the media, former business executive David Edwards writes that “powerful state and business elites seek to determine the basic framework of modern social goals: maximum economic growth generated by maximised corporate profit, fuelled by mass production, fuelled by mass consumerism…

“By ‘pouring’ news, information and ideas into this basic economic framework, a version of reality progressively suited to the requirements of the framework is inevitably produced... [while] conscious design is not required beyond the initial framing conditions (which... business elites do consciously try to maintain: any threat to compromise the basic, unchallengeable goal of maximum economic growth from maximum corporate profit is vigorously and consciously opposed at home and abroad). So long as the basic framework is maintained, the pyramid will simply ‘build itself’. Thus supportive media, editors and journalists will find a stable place in the economic pyramid, while their unsupportive counterparts will either be moved, or will bounce out (of business).”[45]

The result is that the media effectively serves elite interests by the appropriate selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, disparity in emphasis, and the filtering of information. Lee Bollinger, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, comments that:

“The press can exclude important points of view, operating as a bottleneck in the marketplace of ideas. It can distort knowledge of public issues not just by omission but also through active misrepresentations... It can also exert an adverse influence over the tone and character of public debate in subtle ways, by playing to personal biases... or by making people fearful... It can fuel ignorance and pettiness by avoiding serious issues altogether, favoring simple-minded fare or cheap entertainment over serious discussion... Of course, all these concerns become more serious as the number of those who control the press become fewer.”[46]

As Anthony Bevins, political correspondent of the respected British newspaper The Observer (but who also worked for The Sun, the Daily Mail, The Times and The Independent) testifies:

“Journalists cannot ignore the pre-set ‘taste’ of their newspapers, use their own news sense in reporting the truth of any event, and survive. They are ridden by news desks and backbench executives, have their stories spiked on a systematic basis, they face the worst sort of newspaper punishment - byline deprivation.”[47]

Similarly, Gene Roberts, former executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of the New York Times, affirms that though corporately owned newspaper chains “will tell you they don’t interfere with local coverage, they simply insist that each newspaper return an ‘acceptable’ level of profits to the central corporation... This alone is enough to cause newspapers... to weaken their coverage by slashing newsholes [i.e. the amount of space devoted to news as opposed to ads] and newsroom staff. But there are problems even beyond these.” Due to the overall corporate domination of media-entities, “News coverage is being shaped by corporate executives at headquarters far from the local scene.”^[48]   

That the mass media therefore amounts to a propaganda system for Western elite interests; its framework of investigation and understanding having been established from the outset by the elite due to their institutional power over the media; is in light of this analysis hardly a very unreasonable or shocking concept, given the very nature of the media’s relation to domestic and international politico-economic structures. It is due to the media’s structural subservience to corporate control in accordance with the institutionally established filters just discussed, that the media becomes generally unable to question the corporate ideology. Accordingly, Western policy, which is formulated to meet the corporate/elite interests who have the greatest leverage on the state, generally cannot be widely disclosed in a way that reveals its anti-humanitarian character. Structurally-induced filters cause the media to convey Western policy in a way that will not generate fundamental opposition to the elite interests behind policy formulation. In this way, while specific policies may or may not be criticised, elite interests will rarely be exposed for what they are and will furthermore not be questioned as to their legitimacy. Thus, debate over policy will only rarely be capable of criticising elite interests. That necessarily involves disinformation, misinterpretation and often fabrication. As the internationally acclaimed political scientist Michael Parenti observes:

“The news media’s daily performance is not a failure but a skillfully evasive success. Their job is not to inform, but to disinform, not to advance democratic discourse but to mute it. The media gives every appearance of being vigorously concerned about events of the day, saying so much, meaning so little, offering so many calories and so few nutrients. When we understand this, we move from a liberal complaint about the press’s sloppy performance to a radical analysis of how the media serve the ruling circles”.[49]

VIII. America in Terror: The War on Islam

In the space of an hour, the United States faced a sample of the same brand of terrorism that has been inflicted on vast swathes of the world’s population throughout the twentieth century by its own military forces. The destruction of the World Trade Centre, the explosion that racked the Pentagon, and the plane crash near Camp David have left America in shock and on high alert. The attacks have resulted in thousands of deaths. Innocent civilians have been killed and injured. Many states throughout the country have declared states of emergency.

What has happened is an atrocious, but predictable, backlash rooted in decades, and indeed centuries of oppression. And if the world is genuinely interested in averting future acts of terrorism such as this, then the causes of this backlash in the West’s ongoing terrorization and repression of the majority of the world’s population must be understood. For it is that sort of intolerable matrix of policies, which produces people desperate enough to carry out such intolerable atrocities as were carried out on the 11^th September: people who have been driven by their circumstances of hopelessness, terror and impoverishment to the point of insanity.

The media has labeled Black Tuesday’s crisis as the worst act of terrorism in history, yet this is not true. It is certainly the worst of act of terrorism to be committed against the United States. But few have paused to consider that the United States itself has carried out and supported some of the worst acts of terrorism. The 11^th September attacks, horrendous as they were, can barely be compared to the scale of atrocities carried out, for instance, by US-backed terrorists in South America to secure US interests, resulting in the mass murder of hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians. The internationally acclaimed American political analyst Michael Parenti provides a particularly acute overview:

“Since World War II, the US government has given more than $200 billion in military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million troops and internal security forces in more than eighty countries, the purpose being not to defend them from outside invasions but to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic anti-capitalist insurgency. Among the recipients have been some of the most notorious military autocracies in history, countries that have tortured, killed or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their citizens because of their dissenting political views… US leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected reformist governments… were overthrown by pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the US national security state.”[50]

US and Western support for terrorism around the world has elicited widespread anger and resentment among the majority of the world’s population who are victims of the policies of military, economic and political repression employed by the powers in their pursuit of profit. It thus seems that the assaults in Washington and New York will be used as a pretext to escalate the West’s crackdown on the Muslim countries of the Third World. World leaders are gathering together and discuss new measures to strengthen their security without compromising their global hegemony. It is no surprise that despite a total lack of evidence that would stand up in a court of law, media and academic commentators prompted by Western government hints immediately speculated about the involvement of “Islamic fanatics”. US officials have spoken of the need to indiscriminately target states where terrorists are suspected to reside or with a record of being implicated in terrorist acts, rather than merely focus specifically on the perpetrators of this particular crime. Countries to be included in this are Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and so on. Speculation by innumerable esteemed personalities including US officials, academics and journalists about the role of Osama Bin Laden and his legendary terror network has also been exploited to fuel a more general anti-Muslim suspicion and hostility. The hysteria harks back to the 1998 bombing of Sudan when the US destroyed a pharmaceutical  factory, killing an unknown number of civilians, on the pretext that it was actually one of Bin Laden’s chemical weapons factories. Not long after this event was it revealed that the factory produced essential medicines for the Sudanese, and had nothing to do with Bin Laden. The US also blocked an inquiry by the UN into the bombing which would have disclosed the exact number of civilian casualties.

The reaction of the United States speaks volumes about the real nature of the new programme of indiscriminate targeting of the entire Muslim world. Former spokesman for the U.S. State Department James Rubin outlined the future vision on BBC 2’s Newsnight: “We lead. We go around the world and we make people be counted whether they’re on our side, or on the side of the terrorists.”[51] In other words, the U.S. solution is to categorise “people” around the world into two types: those who support U.S. and Western terrorism around the world whether they know it or not and who are thus “on our side”; and those who do not, who will inevitably be labeled those “on the side of the terrorists”. And accordingly those who are not “on our side” will be targeted indiscriminately. This view has been adopted uncritically by the media:

“The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift - kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.”[52]

“America roused to a righteous anger has always been a force for good. States that have been supporting if not Osama bin Laden, people like him need to feel pain. If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution.”[53]

“This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”[54]

“There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing.”[55]

Bill O’Reilly: “If the Taliban government of Afghanistan does not cooperate, then we will damage that government with air power, probably. All right? We will blast them, because...”

Sam Husseini, Institute for Public Accuracy: “Who will you kill in the process?”

O’Reilly: “Doesn’t make any difference.”[56]

The baseless, inflammatory and indeed racist reaction of the media mimics its previous response to the Oklahoma bombing which wrongly blamed “Arabs” and “Muslims” for the attack. Although it was eventually discovered that the perpetrator was actually a former US soldier - notwithstanding many months of the unwarranted demonisation of Islam and Muslims – the lesson apparently has not been properly absorbed. We are seeing a repeat of the hysterical reaction of those days. The 9-11 attacks must be condemned in the strongest terms, but they must also be understood. They are the inevitable consequence of successive US administrations systematically pursuing policies of mass murder and pillage throughout the world.

The maintenance of high levels of military spending, of course, has entailed the manufacturing of new threats by which to justify such spending. In the current world order, the Soviet/Communist “threat” has become defunct. One of the major new ideological constructions being highlighted as an alleged threat to national security, and thus being utilised as a pretext on which to maintain massive investment in the military, is ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This phenomenon can be found within the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe.[57] The current crisis has permitted the US to exaggerate the alleged threat of “Islamic terrorism” beyond all proportion to suit its drive towards military escalation to secure strategic and economic interests. Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Francis Boyle, comments:

“According to the facts in the public record so far, this was not an act of war and NATO Article 5 does not apply. President Bush has automatically escalated this national tragedy into something it is not in order to justify a massive military attack abroad and an apparent crackdown on civil liberties at home. We see shades of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which the Johnson administration used to provide dubious legal cover for massive escalation of the Vietnam War.”[58]

VIII.I. The Islamic Threat?

The process of fabricating a new enemy – Islam – was in full-swing by the early 1990s. Former bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post and adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, Leon T. Hadar, documented near the beginning that decade the move of the US towards the demonisation of Islam, among other appropriate “threats”: “Now that the Cold War is becoming a memory, America’s foreign policy establishment has begun searching for new enemies. Possible new villains include ‘instability’ in Europe - ranging from German resurgence to new Russian imperialism - the ‘vanishing’ ozone layer, nuclear proliferation, and narcoterrorism. Topping the list of potential new global bogeymen, however, are the Yellow Per