Latest news with #ClaudCockburn
Sydney Morning Herald
29-07-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
The bonkers story of how a prank created America's conspiracy culture
POLITICS Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy Phil Tinline Bloomsbury, $34.99 The famed 20th-century British foreign correspondent Claud Cockburn was known to use the pithy phrase, 'Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.' It had a ring of truth, especially when he dealt with duplicitous government officials during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and World War II. It's equally relevant today when lying administrations manipulate intelligence in the service of illegal aggression. Think the criminal Iraq invasion in 2003 and Israel's exaggerated claims that Iran was weeks away from building a nuclear bomb. Cockburn warned that far too many journalists were willing dupes of this system and preferred to be close to power rather than an active check on it. But what happens when the truth is revealed and too few people believe it? This is the story behind the remarkable 1967 book, Report from Iron Mountain, written by New York intellectuals who claimed to be revealing a top-secret government report into how the US would react if permanent and irreversible world peace broke out. The authors posited that the US military was the glue that held American society together and without it, chaos was inevitable. Washington's focus on endless war, the authors wrote, allows a nation to maintain the class system, back scientific discoveries, keep unwanted populations under control and maintain societal allegiance to the flag and a common cause. If war suddenly ended, the report feared, there would be a need to find alternative career options for the hundreds of thousands of men no longer in the armed forces (then fighting an immoral war in Vietnam). 'Blood games' was one suggestion.
The Age
29-07-2025
- Politics
- The Age
The bonkers story of how a prank created America's conspiracy culture
POLITICS Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy Phil Tinline Bloomsbury, $34.99 The famed 20th-century British foreign correspondent Claud Cockburn was known to use the pithy phrase, 'Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.' It had a ring of truth, especially when he dealt with duplicitous government officials during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and World War II. It's equally relevant today when lying administrations manipulate intelligence in the service of illegal aggression. Think the criminal Iraq invasion in 2003 and Israel's exaggerated claims that Iran was weeks away from building a nuclear bomb. Cockburn warned that far too many journalists were willing dupes of this system and preferred to be close to power rather than an active check on it. But what happens when the truth is revealed and too few people believe it? This is the story behind the remarkable 1967 book, Report from Iron Mountain, written by New York intellectuals who claimed to be revealing a top-secret government report into how the US would react if permanent and irreversible world peace broke out. The authors posited that the US military was the glue that held American society together and without it, chaos was inevitable. Washington's focus on endless war, the authors wrote, allows a nation to maintain the class system, back scientific discoveries, keep unwanted populations under control and maintain societal allegiance to the flag and a common cause. If war suddenly ended, the report feared, there would be a need to find alternative career options for the hundreds of thousands of men no longer in the armed forces (then fighting an immoral war in Vietnam). 'Blood games' was one suggestion.
