eleven. we were going to invade a country that had no connection to the nine eleven hijackers and that we were going to do it under the pretense of combating international terrorism most people would have thought you were crazy but we were able to sell that idea relatively easily to the entire american population this is fox news and fox news channel continuing coverage of the campaign which now has begun to liberate and disarm iraq but all they really needed was a few key voices among the highest opinion makers in the country and on t.v. the read we get on the people of iraq is there's no question but what they want to get rid of saddam hussein and they will welcome as liberators the united states when we come to do that and we were able to sell that war pretty easily.

i think sourcing is actually perhaps one of the most interesting food does that you talks about i think sourcing is something. this have to think a lot of boat. we should think very hard to vote which are what are the sources that we give credence and balance to. which are the sources that we give importance to and which of the sources we don't give importance to. so who decides about the hierarchy what is important what is not important very often they realize that if you have information that is official this is called into investigative doing that but if you actually talk about the made the same think it is from the most of the people themselves let's say about then juries of a water contamination in gaza if it's the people themselves this is not seen as a serious or as serious information as when it comes from an official.

i come from a family of journalists my father was a reporter dating back to the sixty's when he started in the business reporters tended to come from more humble origins a lot of people didn't go to college they entered the business as paper kids or as printers when they were sixteen or so but in the seventy's after all the president's men there are actually. journalism became sexy became a thing for upper class ivy league kids to do and by the time i was in the business and um you know i'm partly representative of the of this problem because i came from that class myself we all live in cities we represent a certain point of view we hang out with politicians and their aid. we are part of the ruling class and our failure to recognize that it's not you know it's not necessarily through any fault of our own but we're very separate and distinct from

. the ordinary person chomsky's mordieu produces a sense of inevitability which is wrong even if i see that i have the freedom to very devote whatever i want to read the book chomsky would say yeah that's because there's or do you feel it in front of you when you don't even know what you can create a book how can you how could you know that i'm self-centered i think you know there's a journalist mystery and truly believe everything but what i'm saying is if you believe something different when you see that it's easy to see that people would believe would be believed because they consent has been unaffected but what if people knew exactly what's going on and still believe what they believe that and that set of facts and i think that's what even maybe chomsky himself look at. the fact that if people see i don't care about the. i still believe that this should happen. and what do you see about the whole formulation of manufactured goods in

the book and the concept of relevant because they offer. to every jew in the least kind of lighthouse it involves people's kept a season and this is always important though as i said before i think that the problems are there to day we have so much access to information in other ways that we are in a could lesion with the fact that people are not interested in what does not immediately their interest and this is a very said realisation so i think the legacy all of chomsky's book in that sense is that it provides us with a manual of calm when we need mistakes and so i think it's something that makes us think about what we're doing and makes us more mindful of june. when you wrote this book in one nine hundred eighty eight roughly fifty corporations controlled every single mass media outlet in the united states now

there are just six time warner viacom news corp disney among them what effect is that had do you think on democracy america all of that cheapens and reduces the access to information and understanding well there is a way to compensate for the the internet does allow us to reach to if people organize form collectives to interact with one of them over it's possible to use the enormous resources that are available to overcome the impact of the concentration of media and be done pretty effectively earlier this year american television viewers were treated to the spectacle on since the sinclair broadcasting system which is not that well known a company but which owns hundreds of local affiliates in the united states the sharing of biased and false news has become

a call to comment on those who know more than they put out of an editorial and an editorial where the same words were read by hundreds of different news anchors small cities from kansas to the florida panhandle what did you make of all those and whose anchors in all those markets mouth thing those same words and reading those same script remember compelled to do so they didn't have a choice you want to stay in. keep your job you read with big brother told you to read this is a mode of propaganda that we associate with to tell the parents that the fact that it's done private to renee which is what a corporation is doesn't change the character of and it's kind of interesting that in actual to tell of her and state say the old soviet union the people.

studies showed that people tended to distrust the media who was so obvious that was coming from the state authorities i was found it interesting that after the wall came down all these western journalists were sent in by various western foundations to train journalists from eastern europe warsaw pact countries but what i knew of those places was that their news consumers were far more discerning about what information they were taking in and i thought rather than sending western journalists to quote unquote train you know russian or polish journalists we should sand news consumers from those countries to come west to train us what i think of that idea well the studies of the old soviet union which were intensive showed that a large part of the population recognized that what they're getting is controlled . authoritarian centered propaganda the

western system propaganda is nowhere near the crude looks in the pen there is a certain amount of variety when sinclair sons of a demand that everyone read the same editorial that's unusual it's not the kind of thing that's done in the western system in the eastern system it was done and that does lead to a healthy skepticism that's exactly what you notice we don't. to go back far to the days the house and days of social media the arab spring two thousand and eleven so much optimism in the air and a belief that there rise of these alternative voices on these platforms would have a democratizing effect on governments turns out that that was misguided what happened well first of all there is a positive aspect to the social media. almost all of its

movements rely on them to bring people together and so on so what happened in the first months the arab spring was very exciting. for you you may recall that at one point. the dictator moved burrup close the internet to try to prevent the social media from functioning what happened is that activism increased. instead of sending messages out electronically people actually talk to each other that's the base the central way to organize and. curried a kind of culture of what i call collective so you couldn't have foreseen the emergence of the tech giants who are such a big part of the global news media today and they're rise has made than unwieldy purveyors of power they brought rich at the expense of many media outlets has

anyone come up with useful ways of how and what to do how to deal with them and what to do with really remember that these are not the sources of news like the facebook doesn't have bureaus around the world what these have created is the. array of social media which are double edged sometimes they're used for constructive purpose but they have also become a major. force for undermining democracy everywhere right now brazil for example wrote the correctly. before that billions of dollars were spent to produce defamatory information on the social media against the. p.t.

the work of support to support the. literally do you know that one of the. so many one example of these things are no happening over and over and it's a very dangerous for the moment you've written a great deal about latin america and a few years back leaders such as cha vez in venezuela morales in bolivia the kirshner's in argentina in ecuador they were all pushing for some form of media reform to spread ownership to limit the power of conglomerates in latin america their critics then accuse them of basically trying to usurp the powers from the political right and drag them off to the left did the critics of those leaders who were trying to reform media in latin america actually have a point in fact the problem of in all of the countries you mentioned is they didn't do any were near enough to try to set up alternative independent

public publicly controlled media that would counter the high concentration of all to write media love america which has been a scandal for years manufacturing consent is considered a seminal work it's not an easy read for people it's and it's a difficult area to explore and dissect on television in particular because of its limitations and the limited attention spans of some of the people who are watching this program in conveying some of these ideas have you ever thought of taking some of those media training courses that those corporate executives take the train them to speak in soundbites. probably not i remember one so that was a program called the nightline bill of a.b.c. . they got a lot of criticism because i was never on them to direct it to i'm not the kind of person they could have on because i don't understand consideration. namely

saying two sentences between us that's a terrific form of propaganda so for example if your us is a run a terrorist state you can see yes they do this and the other thing if you're if your rest is the united states a terrorist which scores way beyond iran you can't say that two minutes because first you have to break down the prejudices and assumptions of the old the united states being a force for freedom and democracy can't do that between two so the very idea of concision is a fine technique for imposing the propaganda of the power over those who are powerful they can say anything they want against enemies and to minute but they can't be exposed to the. final question for you when you get up in

the morning where do you go to get your news first thing i look at is the new york times still it still with all of its flaws of the real it still has the broadest of the most comprehensive coverage of i think any newspaper in the world and then where do you go from there than many other places. washington post the business press foreign press which is your. biography you know many other sources. noam chomsky thank you so much for joining us the listening post that. one of the last points the chomsky made about starting his news day with the new york times we included that because we found his response telling noam chomsky is among the times is sharpest critics but he doesn't simply dismiss the newspaper he doesn't as so many people suspicious of the mainstream media have cut the cord and live in a world devoid of conventional news outlets he goes there but he considers the

source he does the diligence shops around gets other views sometimes from outside the american news bubble he co-wrote the book thirty years ago but there's a lesson in there for news consumers trying to make sense of the media today you've been watching a special edition of our program we'll see you next time here at the listening post . ok ok. we are everyone all together right now cats aren't going places together. they wanted forty three billion dollars

worth of weaponry that was six billion pounds in commission. there's no hope and a more because there's always a small bowl of people for really really good business. in essence we in the united states have privatized the ultimate public function more shadow on al-jazeera. we're going to have a shutdown is nothing we could do about that the u.s. senate has failed to reach a deal to pay for donald trump's border wall forcing a possible government shutdown.

and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up two explosions in somalia can at least six people near the presidential palace. half use a state of emergency and more school closures in sudan as people protest against rising prices and corruption. and we speak to the guatemalan family whose hopes for an american dream ended in tragedy but others are not giving up. a partial shutdown of the u.s. federal government has begun the political stalemate follow its president on trump's refusal to back down on funding for his border wall forcing congress to a john without a deal on spending the impossible as hundreds of thousands of federal workers facing christmas without pay mike hanna reports from washington on this vote the yeas are forty seven as evening fell it was clear there would be no agreement to

the senate democrats adamant they would not vote for any bill that included funding for the border wall and the senate majority leader knowledge the inevitable hope democrats will work with the white house on agreement. both. receive the president signature democrats have offered three proposals to keep the government open including a proposal offered by leader mcconnell that passed the senate unanimously only a few days ago we are willing to continue discussions on those proposals with the leader the president the speaker of the house and the leader of the house all five are necessary to get something done a procedural bill was passed that essentially places the onus on congressional leaders to strike a compromise with the president we're not voting on anything else in this chamber. relative to this issue until

a global agreement has been reached between the president and these two leaders and the leader of the house on thursday the house passed a funding bill that included five billion dollars for president trump's border wall or fence but without a vote in the senate the bull remains in limbo and funding still not there for what president trump described as a beautiful wall tweeting out the image earlier in the day the president insisted he would not compromise and here we're talking about five billion dollars so it's a tiny fraction but unfortunately. they've devoted their lives to making sure it doesn't happen but then he sent a team to negotiate with congressional leaders which included his chief of staff close adviser jared and the vice president house members went home for the night as did many senators they hope that the president will back down and that the partial closure of government will last a matter of hours rather than days or weeks the president confirming in

a tweet that he's canceled his shed jule trip to florida adding while we wait to see if the democrats will help us to protect america's southern border. washington well the departments and agencies now left unfunded make up about a quarter of the u.s. government more than four hundred twenty thousand civil servants across numerous agencies will work without being paid on time that includes fifty four thousand customs officers responsible for securing the u.s. the southern border with mexico another three hundred eighty thousand federal workers are expected to be placed on temporary leave without pay all of that lost work could cost taxpayers billions of dollars nine federal departments including homeland security and the state department will close from saturday dozens of agencies will also be closed for business trump turned to social media after the shutdown became inevitable tweeting this edited video statement we're going to have

are shut down there's nothing we could do about that because we need the democrats to give us their votes call it a democrat shutdown call it whatever you want but we need their help to get this approved so democrats we have a wonderful list of things that we need to keep our country safe let's get out let's work together let's be bipartisan and let's get it done the shutdown hopefully will not last long well wolf street had its worst week of losses in years ahead of the u.s. government shutdown investors are worried about slow economic growth and prosecute a recession all major u.s. indices lost sixteen to twenty six percent from their summer and autumn highs the prospect of a government shutdown also triggered a sell off around the wild ivory johnson from dilantin investments believes the u.s. will start to feel the effects of a slowing economy next year. we've had nine straight quarters of g.d.p.

growth on a rate of change basis that's impressive the it's never happened before if you go to quarter one we had two point two percent growth it jumped to four point two percent in the second quarter and then three point four percent was just revised downward so essentially what's happened is we're going from great to good which is bad we're not just decelerating on the g.d.p. front but also inflation has peaked we had inflation peak at two point seven percent it's a three year higher so anytime you have growth and inflation decelerating at the same time you'll see that's why you see the growth stocks the technology stocks get get get beat up pretty bad is because you know companies are predicated value of a company is predicated on future earnings and so those are earnings don't look as robust when you start to global economic slowdown. the headline rest notwithstanding i don't think it's as much to do with trump or the fed or these other issues it's just we're at the end of a business cycle we've got we've growth at two point nine percent and that's

significant because that's a lagging indicator and in time you see wages go up go up corporate profits get squeezed and when poor profits get squeezed their turn to lay people off and so that's an indication that going forward in two thousand and nineteen you will start to see average americans start to start to feel the burden of a slowing economy here as president donald trump's decision on thursday to withdraw u.s. troops from syria surprised and angered many in washington and more questions are being raised about his foreign policy after reports of a possible withdrawal of forces from afghanistan she have a talent he has. there's been no shortage of voices in washington expressing dismay at donald trump's decision to withdraw troops from syria and the subsequent resignation of defense secretary james mattis i'm shaken by the news because of the patriot that general secretary models. and now with reports that the president has ordered a withdrawal from afghanistan republican senator lindsey graham has called for

congressional hearings on both decisions the foreign policy establishment is confronting one of its greatest fear is that trump meant what he said on the campaign trail where force in the middle east that we were fifteen years ago i mean right now it's a disaster once trump filled his cabinet with people who did not share that view though the establishment thought it was safe i think it's fair to say that establishment never wanted this moment to come stablish need and that is certainly as a member of that establishment in good standing. is unwilling i think. ask and he's restored it questions about u.s. policy in the region and even if things haven't gone well let me have it there canadian is simply to persist there is skepticism about how deeply geostrategic trumps decision was and whether the president will even follow through. but several issues are reported to have been involved in the syria decision including the primacy of the us a strategic relationship with turkey and the avoidance of mission creep. in the

last few months national security adviser john bolton has made it clear that the us was in syria to confront iran that was a position explicitly rejected in the tweet that announced the withdrawal we have defeated isis in syria my only reason for being the jewel in the trump presidency the president wrote the military itself is divided there are many senior officers in the military which think these serial deployments will improve the time just are working in their eroding or military readiness but it's worth remembering that even with these proposed withdrawals the u.s. still has tens of thousands of troops a massive air power in the region she ever turns the outer zero washington. well fed the details are emerging about trump's decision to pull u.s. troops out of syria since twenty fourteen the u.s. military has been backing kurdish led forces who control much of north east and syria the decision to leave is seen as abandoning the kurds and handing a strategic advantage to iran and russia tekkie has been calling for

a us withdrawal and planning an offensive into the kurdish territory it considers those kaddish fighters as terrorists on friday president ressa type at a one welcome to trump's move calling it an encouraging development now reports are imagining that trump made the decision during a phone call with just days alyea without consulting any military or strategic advisors the white house rejects the decision the description of the cole then honda has more from the tacky syrian border. a recent phone call between the turkish and american president seems to have ironed out a lot of differences between these two countries these two nato allies which have really had disputes over the syria strategy in recent years president ordered on friday in his speech outlining how this relationship has improved and how he sees eye to eye with president trump on issues regarding syria just a few days ago donald trump announced the withdrawal of american troops from

northeast syria this is not just about a pullout this is about america choosing turkey over its ally the syrian kurdish armed group why p.g. that alliance really has angered turkey they've been angry that the u.s. has been giving the white p.g. weapons and training they consider the syrian offshoot of the outlawed kurdistan workers' party or the p.k. k. which has been waging an insurgency against the turkish state for decades now so turkey welcoming this decision and reports that there will be coordination in the upcoming days turkey postponing a planned operation into syria giving time for talks with u.s. officials it seems turkey wants an orderly pullout they don't want the american troops to rapidly pull out because northeastern syria will be up for grabs they don't want to see for example the syrian government taking control of the area without firm guarantees that the y.p. g. presence or the threat according to turkey will be neutralized what turkey would like to see is the united states hand over this area to its local allies in syria.

two explosions in somalia's capital have killed at least six people suicide car bombers attacked a security checkpoint near the presidential palace in mogadishu thirteen others have been injured it's unclear who is behind the blasts. nine people have been killed in sudan during violent protests against the rising cost of food and fuel the government has extended a state of emergency the cities of director are under emergency rule and demonstrations spread to the capital khartoum on thursday schools and universities are closed in at least five states given morgan has the latest from khartoum sudan has we're going to require to be compared to the past three days where it's been seen protests in several parts of the.