Manufacturing ignorance

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/28/2011



The term agnotology is gaining more usage. I heard it used on television for the first time last week, on the program of Max Keiser on RT (Russia Today, on Global News Network, Destiny Cable). His partner Stacey Herbert described as agnotological capitalism American neo-conservative newspaper and TV (Fox News) pundit Ann Coulter’s rejoinder to the anti-nuke wave in the wake of the Fukushima nuke disaster. Coulter said on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News that radiation in some dosage levels can be beneficial to humans, i.e. the hormesis theory, citing without naming “a stunning number” of physicists reported on the New York Times and some other papers. Of course there is no “stunning number,” but Coulter added that to create an antologic situation in the minds of audiences who may not be alert to the ploy. Keiser cited this a “manufacture of ignorance,” the same way the tobacco industry has tried to convince people smoking is good for the health.

Agnotologicism or manufacturing of ignorance is an important rephrasing of the old terms misinformation and disinformation, expanding the meaning to include the idea of deliberate, systematic, structured creation of gaps in information and understanding in the public’s mind. The neo-conservatives in the US are often identified with the far right, ultra-capitalist causes, which include the nuclear and defense industry lobbies. Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reily rooted for every American and Nato wars, and they are now for the attack on Libya. The nuclear lobby is a lobby for the uranium based nuclear power because it is also adjunct to the nuclear weapons industry. It all ties in, including their desire to downplay the terror of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The Thorium nuclear reactor has no such lobby as it does not produce the weapons grade byproducts.

Manufactured ignorance can also serve the interest of the complete opposite pole — the solar and wind power lobby. These two lobbies are having a heyday nuking nuke power and selling themselves as the only alternative; but they are not telling anybody that their options simply won’t supply the base load power requirements of modern society and standards of living. We can take from the nuclear lobby the truth against the other side of the issue, writing in Forbes magazine March 18 on “Options for Replacing Japan’s Busted Nukes” or the Fukushima plants Christoher Helman says “Solar — Right now, the Mojave Desert is home to roughly 400 mw worth of solar projects, the biggest concentration in the world. To get 6,000 MW from solar power would require Japan building more installations than currently exist in the entire world — about 50,000 acres covered with parabolic troughs at a price of some $24 billion.”

Even then, Helman says, “the generation capacity would not be baseload, only on when the sun shines…. the long-term cost of solar power comes to 25 cents per kilowatthour.” On wind power to replace the six Fukushiima power lost he says, “You’d need something like 4,200 turbines covering well more than 60,000 acres at a cost of $11 billion. Again, this would not be reliable baseload power. Wind costs roughly 10 cents per kwh.” These solar and wind advocates don’t allow the public to see these, creating an agnotologic situation by glossing over these. Helman, who seems to be of the nuclear lobby, makes an agnotologic move when he describes nuclear power as costing only 11 cents per kwh — which does not include the astronomical costs of storing radioactive waste and the unlimited potential for financial disaster from accidents like Fukushima; financial forensic analyst Hiro Vaswani estimates it would really cost $ 5,000 per kwh.

In our Philippine media setting, agnotologic situations are created every day. One example of this is a recent exposé Quezon City’s councilors’ “ghost employees” by a ratio of 10 to 1 favoring ghost employees: thousands of the walking, salary collecting dead. However, the report omits something. In the last Quezon City elections reform candidates running on a platform to expose former Mayor Sonny Belmonte’s corruption presented facts and figures taken from QC Hall documents. It exposed thousands of ghost employees in city hall itself. This was not cited in the recent exposé as the writer is said to be friendly with Sonny Belmonte. Corruption during the Belmonte nine-year era is very vital because his city administrator is now sitting in Malacañang. If such corrupt officials are riding high and more powerful than an Ombudsman, how can there be a “matuwid na daan?”

The Libyan situation presents agnotology cases galore, such as the admission by the anti-Gaddafi opposition leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, in remarks to the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that he recruited al-Qaeda fundamentalists to fight in Iraq. Likewise, that the CIA has been funding al-Qaeda from its very inception. Mainstream media, especially Al Jazeera, hardly report these; especially Al Jazeera, funded by the Emir of Qatar and backed by the Western powers, US and British; now at the forefront of the attack on Libya (Qatar the only Arab country providing planes). Agnotology or the manufacture of ignorance is the groundwork for manufacturing consent for war and other unsavory things.

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