Herewith my letters to the media – New York Times Public Editor, unless otherwise noted. They are aimed at three audiences: the interns in that office, who might read them and learn something; you the public who might read them here or on Facebook or in some cloud somewhere; and myself, to keep myself thinking and looking for new ways to express things, even without rhymes.
12-30-16
Regarding American Jews Divided Over Strain in U.S.-Israel Relations, nowhere do you quote anyone who acknowledges that the two-state solution is a dodge perpetrated by the Israel’s successive governments to delay and ultimately prevent the restoration of Palestinian rights in their own land. The American Jewish community you have allowed to be heard here is so narrow as to be laughable in the rest of the world, which acknowledges that Israel has stolen a country to create another one on top of it. My Jewish people here and in Israel need to wake up to what Palestinians know, or they will continue to sow their own destruction. Dispossession has a price on all sides.
10-6-16
Editor:
Regarding “United States Criticizes Israel Over West Bank Settlement Plan,” two small corrections. One, you omitted that the U.S. government funds the settlements by subsidizing Israel. Any talk by the US against settlements has had no effect, which is fine with Washington since justice for Palestinians has no constituency here. And two, Shimon Peres was not a “champion of peace,” he was a champion of expansionism, while talking of peace. His motto was “settlements everywhere.”
9-13-16
Editor, The Times,
Re: Benjamin Netanyahu Draws Fire After Saying Palestinians Support ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Ms. Kirschner manages to get through this travesty of journalism without noting that the actual ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel is the root of the conflict there. Ilan Pappe lined this out in a book based partly on contemporaneous Israeli government documents of the 1948 conquest. Netanyahu’s lie is redolent of the charge that Palestinians wanted to throw Jews into the sea, when in fact Israel did just that to Palestinians at Jaffa as part of its cleansing. If this gambit is in fact “the best settlement argument,” then we must reflect that he who turns an argument on its head most likely doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
And to the public editor:
I wish to draw this glaring omission to your attention. To report that a nation’s leader has made a charge against Palestinians (that anti-settleent sentiment is anti-Jewish, and ethnic cleansing to boot) which not only has no basis in fact but is a direct inversion of the primary practice of Israel itself, i.e. the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine by Israel, is anti-journalism. If I have to say this, we are at a sorry journalistic pass: The settlements ARE the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
It seems the reason we have “investigative journalists” is that the rest of the pack are not doing their job, which is to investigate. This is no surprise when we consider that your writers are burdened with conflicst of interest not disclosed to readers – conflicts which really should disqualify them from presenting their work in a news section. See this, from 2012:
Kershner has a record of misleading reporting (Extra!, 7/10, 4/11, 1/12) that reflects the New York Times’ bias toward the Israeli government perspective…
Her husband, Hirsh Goodman, works for the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) as a senior research fellow and director of the Charles and Andrea Bronfman Program on Information Strategy, tasked with shaping a positive image of Israel in the media. An examination of articles that Kershner has written or contributed to since 2009 reveals that she overwhelmingly relies on the INSS for think tank analysis about events in the region.
The close family tie Kershner has to the leading Israeli think tank, a branch of Tel Aviv University, has never been disclosed to readers of the New York Times. The paper did not return requests for comment. http://fair.org/extra/new-conflict-of-interest-at-nyt-jerusalem-bureau/
Here’s a token non-media letter, sent to the NY City Council. 9-9-16
With Resolution 1058-A, the Suppression of Conquered Peoples Resolution, you are directly and loudly supporting colonial dispossession. Is that your intention? Why would New York City do that? It’s supposed to be a progressive city. Does progressive mean closing off all avenues of redress by the powerless? I’m confused. When Palestinians resisted violently, it was condemned. Now that the resistance is non-violent, it is still unacceptable. Does that mean that you wish them to continue to live in an open-air prison, subject to the violent whims of the occupying force?
The boycott in question aims to penalize companies profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation, which has been condemned by the International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council and, even the High Court of Justice in Israel on occasion. Is New York now a rogue entity flouting the wisdom and empathy of the world’s people’s and courts?
When I encounter our representatives in public I do not let them off the hook. When I question them about their unconscionable pandering to one section of the city’s populace – a slap in the face to the rest of us – they smile and turn away. But I am not alone. All of us active in progressive causes are increasingly fed up with the irresponsibility and callousness of these supposedly democratic-minded politicians. They will not be having a free ride.
If you persist in making a travesty of democracy by ignoring and suppressing those who stand up for the conquered people, supporting the immoral destruction of a nation with the use of our taxes, and pretending to be even-handed and righteous, your meetings and public appearances will not be smooth, polite affairs. You will be confronted with your deeds, and you will have an increasingly difficult time appearing as a moral person. Drop the charade of defending the Jews: this Jew says ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is vile, and if you support this resolution against boycott and divestment, you are an enabler of that cleansing.
9-8-16
Re: Acknowledging Thorny Issues Abroad, Obama Reframes American Power
In acknowledging the President’s one-step-forward acknowledgment, Max Fisher takes three steps back. He brazenly fabricates that the US “image as an intrinsic force for good” developed “as a way to overcome the country’s physical isolation.” No, it developed to justify to the American people the continuing imperial status of the United States.
We have been the premiere overthrower of democracies and maintainer of dictators throughout my 66 years, and longer, and the consistency is evident to the rest of the world, as the article properly points out, but not evident here. Why? Because of articles like this one.
Our actions in Vietnam, Laos, Argentina, Guatemala, and Cuba are not “mistakes” or “missteps.” They are a feature, not a bug. As was Hillary Clinton’s approval, under Obama, of the Honduran pajama coup, which goes unmentioned by Obama and Fisher. Ditto our repeated thwarting of democracy in Haiti.
Continued soft-pedaling of the reality that non-Americans know all too well is likewise a feature of our national discourse. Not, unfortunately, a bug.
8-10-16
Re: Students and the Middle East Conflict, by Linda Wertheimer, 8/3/16
This article about conflict between Palestine and Israel supporters on campuses is not journalism. It reads more like an AIPAC think tank piece. Some examples:
“…Jewish students’ fears that their culture is under attack.”
– It’s not their culture, it’s their alternating between the destruction of and the theft of someone else’s culture. They’re celebrating “Taste of Israel” with pomegranate seeds, hummus, falafel and pita. Taste of Palestine, anyone?
“…separation barrier running through the occupied West Bank, which Israel built to thwart Palestinian suicide bombings and shootings…”
– No. To seize land. You just quoted their rationalization, which was always a lie. Don’t do stenography for ethnic cleansers, please. It’s not kosher.
“…he heard an S.J.P. member speak about what Palestinians lost when Israel became a state in 1948.”
-What did they lose? Some paintings? Their dog? Maybe their whole country?
“…a panel discussion on cultures affected by colonization…”
– affected – is that a synonym for demolished?
“…kaffiyehs, the iconic symbol of Yasir Arafat…”
– No, of Arab culture, and specifically in this case, of Palestine. When you distort the truth about a people in order to destroy their peoplehood, you are engaging in genocide. Lying about the culture of a people whose land you are taking, appropriating both the land and the culture for yourselves – how is this not genocidal?
“To leaders of Jewish organizations, those lines are frequently blurred. They equate supporting the B.D.S. movement to supporting Hamas and the destruction of their homeland.”
– Their homeland? My Palestinian friends who grew up there can’t go there. Any Jew from anywhere can move there, myself for instance, while Palestinians continue to be evicted.
“…a survey of 3,199 Jewish students and recent graduates from some 100 universities. A quarter said they had been blamed for actions of Israel…”
– Israel claims to speak for all Jews. Unless Jews repudiate Israeli colonial demolition of Palestine, they are implicated. Silence is complicity. Anyone knows this.
“…in March, protesters marched to the front of a classroom and loudly chanted, “Israel is an apartheid state.” The guest speaker was an Israeli diplomat whose topic was the art of diplomacy…”
– Key anti-apartheid South Africans will tell you that it is a worse apartheid state than South Africa was. When Israeli diplomats speak of the art of diplomacy, they are lying. They are engaged in Brand Israel, a project of the Israeli Foreign Ministry dedicated to whitewashing Israeli dispossession of Palestine – kind of like what the Times does in this article.
“Northeastern University’s chapter was suspended for the remainder of the school year after its members slipped 600 strongly worded mock eviction notices under dorm room doors to mirror the eviction of Palestinians. The notices reminded some of the expulsion of Jews during the Holocaust.”
– The irony is that the mock evictions are based on real ones that Israel issues to the indigenous people of the land. But those who “love Israel” can only think of their own people, and not what those people do to others. But let us not point that out in a “news” paper.
“Both sides lay claim to the land. Both sides have been victimized.”
– Equalization of unequal things. One stole the land from other. Look it up. It’s called the Nakba. It was terrorism, and it continues. Anyone knows this, except people who read the mainstream press. Jews were victimized, but not by Palestinians.
Conclusion:
“It pains me,” she said softly, “to see events in the world dividing communities that are meant to be together.”
– That’s your conclusion? Reminds me of things I wrote for my high school paper after they were dumbed down by the advisor. The “events” “dividing” “communities” are colonial domination and decimation. Say their name! Or turn in your journalism license.
8-8-16
to Samantha Bee, Full Frontal (TBS)
As a faithful fan of your show, I wish to communicate my disappointment with your decision to direct your considerable snark at the Bernie Sanders delegates and supporters. It constituted a decision to punch down instead of up.
Your decision to ignore the salient facts of the situation is clear from your focus on the reluctance of the Sanders delegates to fall in line with the Clinton machine; your refusal to attend to the truth of their claims that her victory was illegitimate is unfortunate.
A few facts:
Sanders went from 2% to 45% of the votes during his campaign, which captured the support of the vast majority of young voters, and motivated the registration of a large number of new voters. It represents the future.
The campaign stood for social justice, which explains the high energy of its supporters, the tens of thousands attending each rally (compare with the paltry and stage-managed insider events of Clinton).
The party machinery and the Clinton campaign were indistinguishable, which resulted in an Undemocratic process.
The Clinton group spearheaded the turn of the party in the last 20 years into a centrist, corporate, Wall Street-aligned and pro-war organization. The Sanders campaign represented an insurgency aimed at restoring and revitalizing the progressive aspects of the party. One might compare these activists to those who supported the party during the Roosevelt era – who in fact pressured that administration to enact its progressive reforms.
The emails leaked from the party committee, which you ignored, showed what Bernie had said along: that the system was rigged.
You also ignored the many polls indicating that Sanders was a much stronger candidate against Trump than Clinton. The Hillary group had two adversaries: left progressives and right thugs. Naturally they chose to maintain control of the party at all costs. They may pay a price for that. But they cannot maneuver to squash diversity of opinion and then demand unity and expect to be taken seriously.
The Sanders campaign is closely aligned with social movements that make actual progressive changes in society, historically and today. The Clinton machine opportunistically tags along, at best, changing positions as needed. When you criticize the Berners for their lack of satisfaction with having influenced the platform, you paint over the untrustworthiness of the Clintonites and the probability that the platform will not be fought for.
This is not a spat between two ambitious politicians and their acolytes. Wall Street/Wal-mart/War proponents like Clinton are more likely to stay the course of the present unjust system than to fight it. As for Bernie or Bust, failure to jump on board a train that promises to run over one’s friends and families hardly seems like a decision worthy of ridicule. Hope you’ll try again.
7-10-16
Andrew Higgins’ article “Class Anger Fuels Town’s Pro-‘Brexit’ Defiance” (7/6/16) is threaded through with an outrageous attack on the working class, starting with his insertion of this common demographic description inside quotation marks. He asserts that these poor misguided wannabe-class members see themselves as “downtrodden” and “put-upon.” The logic behind his attack on the notion of such a class existing is that the jobs it was traditionally based on have left the country. (So, insult to injury: not only have we taken your jobs from you, but you don’t exist.)
Yet he goes on to note that one informant’s take-home pay had been halved. So what precise class do these poor victims of capitalism’s caprices belong to now, with your kind permission? According to the Guardian, it is the working class, and we are allowed to read a quote from that paper without having to see quote marks around working-class or downtrodden.
We finally get a class reference without any quotes at all in the context of George Orwell’s discussion of the very town under examination. So that class apparently no longer exists, but we never get to find out who those people and their descendents have become. Are they among the owning class now? Pink-collar? Techies? Or, if they are unemployed, are they of the no-work class? Why do I feel somehow disempowered and rendered invisible or nonexistent by this level of politicized snark?
And once again, is this the best we can do, folks?
6-19-16
Regarding “Commitment to Class Conflict Drives Leader of French Labor Unrest”
Once in a while I see something in the Times that renews my faith in its journalistic endeavors. This is not one of those times.
A notorious proposed labor suppression law is referred to repeatedly as making it “slightly easier to hire and fire workers” – yet the French public, as you report, are against it. So the union leader is referred to as pugnacious and as having a view of “unending worker exploitation” – ask workers if it’s ended, by the way – as “yelling,” as using “old-fashioned language of class struggle” – as they say, it’s only class struggle when the workers do it, not when the owners struggle to make lots of money at the workers’ expense.
Meanwhile you characterize Hollande as trying to “move France to the center;” proposing a ban on demonstrations is the center? Really? Sounds like the Right to me. As you know perfectly well, the center moves all the time – since Reagan/Thatcher, it’s moved well to the right, and that is well-disguised by calling the right the center, so if disguising things is your goal, then go into the advertising business, not news.
When the union federation was founded, you note, its goal was to bring down the state. Yes, in 1895, they seemed to have a clearer view of the state’s primary use by its owners, that being the suppression of workers’ rights. We’ve lost that a bit, haven’t we, due to the suppression of that clarity by our media. The invisible and denied bias of the media in favor of the status quo, i.e. the state’s permanent violence against the workers, is essential to the maintenance of that status. So when the workers rebel, by all means condemn their violence and hide the daily violence that provoked it.
If you wish to see how folks outside the US bubble cover these issues, see http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/french-labor-law-reform-not-supported-by-economic-evidence or http://www.jacobinmag.com .
I have been assured by one of your interns that these letters find their way to all the appropriate desks. I wonder how many letter-writers it takes to convince Times writers that their worldview is actually observable in their writing, that it is having adverse effects, that there are other views being slighted and ridiculed and buried alive by your paper, that this is part of the purpose of the paper, and that, like Smedley Butler and Edward Snowden they should get outside their daily grind and seek alternative views and, having found them, expose their previous work for the bubble it was.
11-3-15
In regard to “Battle in San Francisco,” you say the two important factions in the city are “moderate Democrats and the far left.” Whoa baby. Stop in your tracks and look at what you just wrote and then look in the mirror. Now flip ahead in the article to your quotes from those far lefties who call themselves and each other “progressives.” How did progressives become far left? Are the centrists actually pretty far to the right, by the standards of the Left?
Would it perhaps be more accurate to refer to the “centrists” as the pro-development camp and the “far left” as the pro-tenant or pro-resident faction? This might be more fair, as the term centrist (along with that immoderately used compliment, “moderate”) is freighted with positivity, while “far left” is weighted to sink in the East River.
Or you could just refer to the factions as the 1% and the 99%. Or, less numerically, the oligarchy vs. the democracy we like to think we have. But no, that would be a different bias.
Could the American political spectrum itself be skewed in favor of developers at the expense of people who need a place to live? Maybe for your Upper East Side readers, but why drag the rest of us down into the disgusting elitism that refuses to see things from the point of view of those suffering from this system of non-thought in the service of pirate enterprise?
The Times, an integral part of the American system of thought, non-thought, and elitist domination, is bound, in both senses, to use language that perpetuates that very system. Why would it do otherwise? And given my opposition to such manipulations, why would I critique or even read such a source? Simply because it claims otherwise. It claims to be a voice for objectivity or at least multiple views. Bosh. It colonizes the public mind with gooey befuddlement, and decolonization is the responsibility of anyone who can view it from outside its invisible bubble.
8-25-15
Re: Putting an Old Model of Policing to the Test
J. David Goodman revisits Far Rockaway and manages, without even trying, to bleach out the gory details of how our society maintains the subjugation of its less-privileged human demographic categories. What’s amazing is that he can put the “Robert-Moses era public housing” right up front without ever noting why that housing was put there – to put those second-class citizens out of the way of the rest of us so we can get on with living more privileged lives without having them underfoot. Ghettoes, anyone?
Not even trying, section two: lamenting that it’s hard to “break through the walls of silence and suspicion that keep officers at a distance” without observing that it is the fabled wall of silence of the officers themselves that keeps them at a distance – not far enough – from the warehoused populace they control. The officers close ranks around the transgressions of their own, so why should civilians open their hearts to them?
Trying, in the tried and true way: Times-speak. “The fact that most residents are black or Hispanic and most officers white adds an undeniable hint of distrust.” No sir, not a hint. Not even a hint of a hint. It is the essence of an occupying army. Say the word, sir. Or quote a black or Hispanic person saying it, if it would be too forthright, or controversial, or too much the other spin than the one you’re hiding, to say it yourself.
William Bratton is trying to implement “community policing.” That’s somehow different from Stop and Frisk, same Bratton, but let’s not mention that here. But community policing is hard, because “Most people do not become police officers to do social work.” Well, does that maybe mean that the system is structurally unworkable, that it cannot do its work, but only occupy and suppress, because it hires people to sit on other people, not to work with them?
Joanne Rebollo moved here with her four kids “to escape rising rents in Bushwick.” Gentrification – the constant re-segregation of society through the use of demographic tool sectors like hipsters – does not rate a mention here – that would be mixing up the issues so that people might accidentally understand the big picture. Which would be bias, I guess.
People despair of “making it out” of poverty. Is that something individuals do? Are there no social solutions to poverty, where groups can rise and right the social ship together? Is this a hidden bias of the writer, or am I just overly sensitive to the limitations of reportage written from within the systemic bubble?
Pay no attention to the systemic forces behind the curtain. If we don’t know about it, it doesn’t happen.
8-17-15
re: Sanders Fights Portrait of Him on the Fringes
I appreciated Jason Horowitz’ hit piece on Bernie Sanders. What I most appreciated was how it reminded me of what we all have to keep learning, which is that systems are self-sustaining. For instance, when one reads a piece titled “Sanders Fights Portrait of Him on the Fringes,” one hardly notices that it is the piece itself that keeps him on the fringes. From the description of him “bellowing” to his being “more of an outlier than a leader,” the writer never questions what it means that other politicians are “moderates” – what do these moderates stand for? Compromise? Selling out? Structures of economic inequality? Perpetual war? Never made clear.
Sanders, we learn will be denied his earned leadership of budget negotiations. Why? Is it because he doesn’t understand the mechanics of caving in to the soak-the-poor crowd that runs the government? He “rails” against the influence of money – how quaint and outlie-ish of him. He “grumbles” at the “political nature” of reporters questions – does “political” mean asking him if he’s running, or how many votes he thinks he’ll get on some bill, instead of what he’d like to do about the plunder of the poor by the rich or the purchase of the government by same? Hard to say.
The reason it’s hard to say is that this is a reverse puff piece, which means no substance, no information on this weird duck in the Senate with his “holier than thou” approach to principles.
What is the message here? Fringe candidates are not deserving of respect because they don’t have support because the press doesn’t treat them with respect? While mainstream candidates are reasonable, respectable people, because they are “considered” mainstream by the press? And by the people who bought and paid for their careers?
Oh wait, they’re mainstream because they get a lot of votes, which they get from having a lot of money and support from the media.
Now remind me, how is this democracy? Or journalism?
answer to this and related letters from Margaret Sullivan:
Here’s my take: The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders’ campaign by any means but it also hasn’t always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories does seem regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of it is focused on the candidate’s age, appearance and style rather than what he has to say.
and…
The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, told me recently that he wants to focus more heavily on issue stories in the coming weeks and months. Candidates like Mr. Sanders – no matter how electable they prove to be – can and should be a part of that. Times readers are completely within their rights to expect and demand it.
My answer:
Having admitted that the Times skewed its coverage to belittle the “outsider” candidate, Ms. Sullivan persists in justifying it because Sanders is “significantly left of center.” Later, she says it was wrong anyhow. Let’s move on to discuss why this not only occurred, but occurs repeatedly. It is due to the invisibility of the bubble inside which insiders make their judgments about the system they work within. That’s exactly how systems self-perpetuate.
8-7-15
Re: “Optimism in Cuba, Except Among the Young”
Having been to Cuba recently, I can corroborate much of this article’s dismal portrayal of the expectations of the youth there. I cannot, however, lower myself to the use of words coded to reinforce unquestioned, unconscious stereotypes and prejudices that persist in the Times, all in the service of maintaining not only ignorance but an inability to think about what has been going on in Cuba all these embargoed years. Well, that and the codes reproduced by calculated absences.
To wit:
• There is no mention whatsoever of the effects on the economy of being blockaded for over 50 years by a powerful and pernicious neighbor intent on destroying any effort to set a different example than capitalism. Apparently that never happened. Implication: the evident poverty is evidently the fault of the Cuban government. Period.
• Shoe on the other foot: If Russian or Iranian media ran a story about how much American youth distrust our government, would we spot the untrustworthiness of the source? It’s more so in this case, where the Times represents the country that has attempted to destroy its neighbor’s wayward regime, and consistently erased these efforts from the first draft of history.
• The government’s “determination to maintain control” seems to imply an illegitimacy on their part – what could that be? Control of dissent? Control of private enterprise? It isn’t said. All governments maintain control, what else is new? Give us some info, not sly innuendo.
• Nowhere is there mention of government provision of free health care and education as priorities, remarkable under dire conditions.
• Nowhere is there mention of the current government drive to facilitate worker-managed cooperatives to (a) devolve state enterprises and (b) offer an alternative to the growth, through private enterprise, of a business class that wields undue power and exacerbates inequality (the U.S. economic model). So the reader is meant to identify with the plight of pizza entrepreneurs but remain unaware of the community-minded folk who try out a different business model.
• Concocted debates: The alternative to lamentation that nothing will change is presented by a young man who maintains that each generation is less revolutionary than its parents, and therefore things will change. Implication: revolution bad, apathy? capitalism? (fill in the blank) good.
• Examples of progress cited include high-end private restaurants, with prices out of reach for Cubans. How is this progress? For tourists, perhaps. Let’s watch tourism warp the country back to where the U.S. had it when it owned most of the land and dictated who governed; when the U.S. enforced corruption, brutality, and vice. Oh, no mention of that either.
• Concluding human-interest note: A teenager says she and her friends disdain politics, preferring to just have fun. All well and good to have teenage fun, sure. Implication: human nature is to consume, so come liberate us somehow from these dour dictators.
Hit pieces like this, with no acknowledgement of conflict of national interest and precious little content, are not journalism. That, I’m still awaiting.
7-14-15
re: Video in Death of Palestinian Seems to Rebut Israeli Military
Setting to the side similar cases of hidden acceptance of false norms (or in Times-speak, “dubious norms”) in articles in the same pages on Bernie Sanders and the ongoing coup against Greece, among others, we encounter
a seemingly hope-inspiring article on yet another lying public agency being caught out by the greatest detective tool since DNA: video. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, soldiers who shoot civilians in the back are probably not fearing for their own lives at that moment.
The spokeswoman for B’Tselem is quoted as saying that West Bank Palestinians perceive military investigators as part of an occupying army. She notes that the investigators serve as part of a “whitewash mechanism.” To use an academic term, duh. The constant confrontations between soldiers and residents result from an occupation. This is a bit difficult to find in the article, but it is there, hidden as usual in sub-clauses quoted from “one side” of a discussion carefully convoluted to obscure the essence of the situation, lest the Times be accused of clarity, which is to say bias. One must always soften the edges of the reality in order to leave it to the reader to decide whether the occupier or the occupied is more justified in their actions. Clearly labeling the occupation as the problem would foreclose free thought for the reader. Just as your writer’s reference to attacks on “civilians on the West Bank” by Palestinians omits the fact that these civilians are illegal residents, occupiers of illegal colonies planted to seize someone else’s land. In short, settlers are nominally civilians; they are primarily the front line “troops” in the ongoing land theft. And they do venture out from their gated communities to attack shepherds and farmers – usually with army support – in the hope of gradually seizing the rest of the land as well.
I imagine that all these buried facts will surface some years after the situation is resolved, let us say dreamily, in favor of indigenous rights. By then the Times will have moved on to the obfuscation of someone else’s plight, repeating the pattern indefinitely as those who obscure reality so that US funding of these atrocities may continue somehow miraculously never end up in court for doing so.
7-9-15
Nicholas Kristof:
Your column on President Carter deftly dodges the international third rail of US politics, omitting his signal achievement in clarifying that Israeli domination of Palestine is a form of apartheid. He defied conventional cowardice; why can’t you?
6-17-15
Re: Burnout Forces U.S. to Curtail Drone Flights
Perhaps this article could be nominated for Front Page Article That Makes Us Stupider Than We Ever Were. Or maybe it’s just me who thinks something should be revealed by the press rather than obscured. I’m funny that way. The basic problem, it seems to me, is that the “pilots” – button pushers in air-conditioned trailers, actually – have a conscience. They have a hard time reconciling their killing of civilians with their caring for their own children 30 minutes after “work.” There’s an opaque reference to this problem near the end of the article, where the gist of things tends to show up in the Times, if it shows up at all.
Not mentioned (absent without leave, we might say) is the racism that enables this sort of Kill At a Distance with no risk whatsoever to Americans, as well as the class question – that of fighting for elite Western society’s control of other people’s resources. Heaven forfend we should be so biased as to bring up the truth – or context, or whatever it’s called in polite Upper East Side circles (the base of the NYT- just check the adverts to see that).
Further robotization of war might solve some of these problems. Remove the human element on both sides. But the essentials of this article are Missing In Action. Or at least they are well hidden. The Times is quite good at Hide and Seek. You hide, we seek. Spend our whole lives that way. Meanwhile, wars continue, with the aid of these clever Government Stenographers masquerading as journalists. I wonder how you look at yourself in the mirror when you sleep at night. Oops, that was rude. Not as rude as mass murder abetted by anti-journalists, perhaps. But rude, nonetheless. I get that way from having been betrayed by the Holy Grail of Grey Lady Objectivity I was raised on.
6-2-15
“Abu Dhabi Museums Invoked in New Dispute”
The Times has, however shocking this may seem, fallen down on the job of truth-seeking.
The Guggenheim builds a museum in a luxury enclave in Abu Dhabi, knowing full well that the workers are imported into slavery-like conditions. If art is meant in part to sensitize people, where is the sensitivity here? Or is that reserved for luxury-class people only?
Then the Gulf state bans critics of its labor policies from entering the country. Does the Guggenheim object? The Guggenheim proceeds to lie twice in a row. They say they have no role in immigration or visa policy in the UAE. Wrong: by threatening to withdraw their elitist, anti-worker museum from the country, they could force a change in policy, or at least make a strong statement on behalf of art as a liberating force. They add, “we are convinced that our presence in the Gulf region has benefit.” That’s boilerplate distraction, unless they care to back it up. By accepting the statement as Fit to Print, the Times perpetuates the industry of smokescreen-blowing PR flacks who obscure the truth of their actions in support of repressive regimes. Exactly the opposite of what journalism exists to do.
The Times article mentions that the banned activists want “better conditions for workers.” Better than what, it doesn’t say. Yes, it is a quote from the organization’s letter. Dig around for three or four minutes and you’ll find their petition, specifying “unlawful recruiting fees, broken promises of wages, and a sponsorship system that gives employers virtually unlimited power over workers.”
So how can we be sensitized to the actual plight of the workers, short of reading an actual news source, instead of the Times?
5-18-15
Re: “Middle Class Is Disappearing, at Least From Vocabulary of Possible 2016 Contenders” by Amy Chozick (5-11-15). The author references “working class” a total of once, noting that “once associated with manufacturing jobs, [it] now mostly connotes low-paying service jobs.”
Actually, you never hear the term, except in socialist newspapers or from the occasional maverick unionist. Why? Because it was “once associated” with the idea that workers are exploited by the owning class (which, not incidentally, rules, making it the…something class, one does forget these things…), and the idea that workers must band together to change such a system. Ever wonder why Wal-Mart calls its workers “associates”? To prevent worker consciousness, of course.
I was raised to think of the Times as a medium for social thought at a college level. But college folk are supposed to know something about history and society. How does the Times manage to perpetrate a version of social history that stretches all the way back to the previous election, obliterating everything before that? Could it have something to do with the class basis and bias of this very organ of social consensus? Hard to imagine that there might be a hidden allegiance to the prevailing social order on the part of its premier journal. But still, one wonders….if one remembers…
4-29-15
Re: Teenager Makes First-Ever Charge From a Yeshiva to West Point”:
This young woman’s inspirations include her father, who participated in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon that featured Israeli army-facilitated massacres in refugee camps. If readers of the Times don’t know that, it’s because it went unmentioned when it reared its ugly head – namely, in this article.
This is indeed a pretty article about a bright young woman who wants to seize power in the world, by force, with the best of them: the Americans and the Israelis. There is no critique of the history of aggressions by these two armies, as that would be editorializing, right? Like leaving it out – that’s editorializing too. That’s saying the military is a proper choice for a bright young woman who grew up “enthralled” by Moshe Dayan and Golda Meir, who stole and destroyed a country.
From the point of view of the people whose resources are stolen by the American and Israeli armies, this kind of puff piece is not journalism. High school journalism, maybe. I should know, I did that. School spirit was bad enough for teenagers; grownups need to grow up.
4-24-15
The unintended deaths of an American and an Italian by drone are on the front page, as they should be. Where are the frequent killings of innocent bystanders – wedding participants even – by the same means? Is their non-western-ness part of the reason we allow such arrogant means of war to continue in our name?
4-16-15
Editor, The Times:
Your obituary of Gunter Grass appeared on page A1, while the death of Eduardo Galeano was buried on B10. Why? Are Europeans more important than Latin Americans? Galeano was widely loved and quoted, and Hugo Chavez handed his book to President Obama. Galeano revealed starkly and poetically the hidden history of colonial plunder and brutality, including that of the United States, in Latin America. Is that perhaps a minor topic for your readers?
4/12/15
Editor, The Times:
The April 12 review of an obscure novel by Gore Vidal, under a pseudonym, cites several genres of his work, studiously omitting his crucial historical novels that tore the veil off of bubbly American exceptionalism. This is nothing new: the Times refused to review five of his novels in a row due to a gay-themed 1948 effort, and doggedly ignored or belittled his most important work. In its 2012 obituary for Gore Vidal, the Times noted that Vidal “claimed that the literary and critical establishment, The New York Times especially, had blacklisted him because of the book, and he may have been right.”
When I read his “Burr” in the 80s and became curious about the Times’ reaction, I searched the record and found, if memory serves, the comment that “he seems to take a rather dim view of our founding fathers.” (A quick search of the Times archive indicates that page has been removed.) A major literary figure who tried to save us from our officially-enforced ignorance of our own history deserves better. Apologies, anyone?
4/15/15
Editor, The Times:
“Cubans Eager for Change Find It’s Still Business as Usual” omits an essential point for those wishing to understand Cuba. The entrepreneurs noted in the article wish to build pizza chains and other such businesses, but this is exactly what the Cuban government continues to prevent, on the grounds that it gives rise to a class of business-people interested mainly in profiting from the labor of others. As an alternative to both private exploitation and state control, the government is now pushing worker-owned cooperatives as a business model. The state is divesting itself of enterprises and encouraging them to become autonomous cooperatives, and some private individuals are starting businesses on this model as well. As the government moves away from a command economy, it continues to reject the growth of private businesses into engines of social inequality.
3-10-15
Buried at the bottom of “Obama Order Freezes Assets of 7 Officials In Venezuela” are remarks by an anonymous government official that the imposition of such sanctions requires the President to declare Venezuela a national security threat, which he duly did. The source notes that the declaration “is meant to meet the legal requirement and did not represent ‘a recategorization of the actual circumstances in Venezuela.” I take this to mean that Venezuela is not the “extraordinary threat” the President declared it to be; that the President is lying; and that, because of the indecent burial of this information underneath the Times’ well-worn soft pedal, the U.S. is free to continue its aggressions against our neighbor without undue interference from an informed public.
I had thought the Times might be a bit chastened by its role in helping Dick Cheney lead us into the illegal, mendacious, and disastrous slaughter in Iraq. But then, press and presidents lying us into wars is a hallowed national tradition, going back through the Gulf of Tonkin to Remembering the Maine. When the history books are corrected, they will explain that systems are self-perpetuating, that major corporate media are part of the system, and that to find out what’s going on, citizens must search outside those systems. Alas, foxes do not tell the truth about henhouses.
3-6-15
Re: In a Debate on Campus Over a Jewish Student, Echoes of Old Biases”
Your coverage of the Jewish UCLA student nominated for the student Judicial Board and questioned by her peers about her ability to be unbiased: Ms. Beyda belongs to the campus chapter of Hillel, a national organization that prohibits discussion of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel. The student council of UCLA has adopted a policy urging BDS. As a stalwart member of organizations that boost Israel in its ongoing destruction of Palestine, she is indeed liable to be biased in future cases involving BDS activities on campus.
No one presents this simple equation in this article. Instead we are treated to the usual equation of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli apartheid sentiments. And as usual we find the kernel of hidden truth in the last paragraph, where the president of UCLA Hillel charges BDS activists with “singling out only the Jewish state.” Apparently no one was available to reporters to explain that the Jewish state has singled itself out through its actions, typical of settler states; that the Palestinians, surrounded and denied other recourse, called for the world to implement BDS; and that human rights activists are also active against violations in many other countries.
Hillel wants it both ways: prohibit internal discussion of campaigns to stop Israel’s colonial crimes, and prohibit questioning of its members about their biases. The failure of the reporter/editors to see this does not speak well for our likelihood of learning about the world from our press.
2-23-15
Re: Amid A Slump, A Crackdown for Venezuela”
A few items struck me – and it hurt!
“made attacking Washington and locking up people suspected of being putschists a fixture of his government” – what would you do with people who were plotting to overthrow your government?
“the State Department has disputed Mr. Maduro’s claims, saying the United States is not promoting unrest in Venezuela.” – An actual journalist would add “Of course, the U.S. has always denied its many destabilizing activities in Latin America, before and after the coups they instigated or assisted, and scholars agree that government’s statements are not reliable.”
No mention here of the role of lowered gas prices in the sinking of the Venezuelan economy. The other two economies similarly affected, Iran and Russia, are also US adversaries. No need to mention such things in an article confined to criticism of the Venezuelan government, not of the US one.
“some here remain loyal to Mr. Maduro out of gratitude for a vast array of social welfare programs” – or perhaps another spin would be “the capitalist right wing resents the curtailment of their right to exploit workers and foster suffering by a government that insists that human welfare is primary in a civilized society.” But that would be spin, unlike what we have here.
But then, given the solid history of the Times’ participation in creating a fog around the CIA, NED, US AID, and US world domination generally, what can one expect – journalism?
2-9-15
To the Editor:
Regarding Commissioner Bratton’s proposal to make “resisting arrest” a felony, and Charles Blow’s comment that “few people support resisting arrest,” let’s recall that resisting arrest often means the officer didn’t like the civilian’s attitude or presence on the scene, but had nothing else to charge them with. Sometimes it’s an add-on, to be dropped later in negotiations, and sometimes it’s the only charge. What kind of person gets arrested for resisting arrest? A person living in a corrupted, out of control police environment. You might as well make it a felony to be present at a protest.
Editor, The Times:
Reading “Cuba Seizures Now Present Opportunities” brought me back to 1959, in the sense that it made me feel I was being talked to like a nine year-old. Did it ever occur to the reporter that these companies and US citizens who lost “their” property were engaged in the foreign ownership of another country? That Cubans were impoverished by their predatory economic activity?
The smallest landowner cited here owned a farm, a factory, and a home big enough to later become the Chinese embassy, and was a speechwriter for Fulgencio Batista, the dictator who killed thousands of Cubans on behalf of the mafia, which ran the island like a fiefdom. Mr. Schechter’s daughter was later forced to go to junior college. Are these the poor people we’re supposed to feel sorry for? Is Cuba supposed to apologize for taking back wealth from those who took it from their people? As Cuba-U.S. relations move forward, the Times would do well to acknowledge the 61 year legacy of US domination of the island, followed by 55 years of trying to retake it.
12-12-14
It might seem reasonable for your esteemed journal to act as a purveyor of the accepted wisdom of the nation, except insofar as that wisdom is determined by government and business elites, including The Times, to the exclusion of disempowered voices, in an arrangement that benefits only the elites and serves to maintain the ignorance of the readers.
Two cases in point from today’s edition: “China’s Defiant Choice for Its Peace Prize: Castro,” in the first sentence of which Castro “was already known for imprisoning political dissidents, facing off with John F. Kennedy…and repelling an invading force.” Apparently he is not known for health care, education, or the repelling of the invading force known as the US-back Batista dictatorship. True enough, he’s not known for those things because you haven’t informed us of them – or certainly not repeated them as you do the negative aspects.
Which leads us to the second article, on President Obama favoring sanctions on Venezuela for their treatment of demonstrators. President Maduro accuses the US embassy of planning to destabilize the country; the embassy says they have acted properly. No mention of the repeated destabilizations of Latin American governments, to the point of dozens of overthrows of democracies, usually through local actors loyal to business, especially US business. That would be slant, wouldn’t it? Or at least context. (As it would be to compare this to the permanent killing spree, with impunity, of black men in the US – also worthy of sanctions, but who will report such calls from abroad? Or at home?)
As I don’t wish to insult your competence as the Times’ guardian of quality and accuracy, I will assume that you are obliged to operate in accord with the assumptions of the blinkered system for which you work, like most people in most jobs. This is the reason I increasingly scan the headlines and then skip to another, less mealy-mouthed source for my news.
10-1-14
Regarding “Kissinger Drew Up Plans to Attack Cuba, Records Show”:
Sometimes the Times walks right up to the kernel of truth in a situation and can’t see it because it is standing too close to focus on context, as when Kissinger was said to be incensed that Castro “had passed up a chance to normalize relations with the United States in favor of pursuing his own policy agenda.” Wow. So that’s the choice in the world where the U.S. so selflessly spreads freedom, eh? You’re either with us, or you’re pursuing your own interests. Hm.
In addition to that moment of political blindness, the writer is able to note Kissinger’s “plans for Africa” without blinking. I guess the guy who runs the world has a right to have plans for any continent, right?
Omissions Department (always a juicy one): No mention that Cuba was a US-backed dictatorship run by the mafia before Castro. No mention that it’s ok for the U.S. to send troops around the world to prop up dictatorships, but not for Cuba to send troops to fight neocolonialism. And no mention that Kissinger, like the other folks who run the world (banksters) has never been charged for his crimes against humanity, certainly never spend a day in jail.
When you’re trying to help people understand events, it’s customary to fill in the facts people may have forgotten since they last read about the issue. Like the overthrow and strongarming of hundreds of governments by the U.S., especially since 1945. That’s not a bias, it’s a salient fact.
When Kissinger dies, the Times will opine that his record was mixed. The record of the Times is not mixed. It is a reliable tool for obscuring the nature of the established order.
9-24-14
New York Times: I would be willing to lend you an ice pick or a straight pin to prick the bubble you live inside of.
Regarding your story on the Arvada, Colorado school board plan to make students more ignorant of history:
Your caption on page one calls it a plan to “promote patriotism.” Opposite day I guess. It’s a plan to whitewash from history class all mention of civil participation outside of voting for bought and paid for candidates. Same mistake again in paragraph one. And you fail to note that what a “conservative” means by “civil disorder” is citizens breaking unjust laws to protest the control of society by wealthy people who break bigger laws – in other words, protesting ongoing daily civil disorder that is referred to by conservatives – and the Times – as “order.” It is not order, it is repression of democracy.
Did the board merely draw praise from the Koch brothers, or were they elected by them? You don’t say.
If the Kochites succeed in painting a one-dimensional (or dementia-nal) picture of U.S. history for our next generation, and they grow up thinking the U.S. can do no wrong, and then vote for further abuses of the world in the name of the Perfect USA, will you blandly, ineffectually editorialize against the new aggressions, and wonder what anyone can do to stop them? Or will you admit you helped cause them by molding citizens into mini-Kochs by ignoring the Kochs and mislabeling civil disobedience as disorder?
It is not possible to figure out from your style of reporting that the battle going on in the schools is not between conservative and liberal but between human rights and the wealthy. To figure that out, one would have to have another news source. One that follows the money and drops the mealy-mouthed false equivalencies that make you so Balanced.
9-5-14
Regarding “Settlement Approved in ’89 Jogger Case; City Deflects Blame.”
It is said that the more one watches Fox News, the less one knows. Perhaps we could also say that the more one reads the Times, the longer it takes to figure out what happened.
While paying the wrongfully convicted defendants $1 million for each year they spent in jail, the city denies any misconduct. The only reason presented in the article for the reversal of convictions is the alleged coercion of confessions. If coercions are not misconduct, what are they? Or what is the reason for the reversal and payout? If not misconduct, did the convictions result from the ethos of the era, making them more understandable? If there was no misconduct, are the police and prosecutors free to repeat their conduct and then have the city deny it again next time they feel like ruining the lives of innocent people?
If I were writing this article, I might have begun with “The city has approved a $41 million settlement for five men who were wrongfully convicted, but the wrongful conviction was not misconduct, according to the city. The American Logicians Association is calling for the United Nations to launch an investigation into the city’s thought processes. Obfuscation in the service of police misconduct is not illegal, but the International Criminal Court is considering a wrongful denial case in which the New York Times could be indicted as a co-conspirator.”
But then, I don’t write the Times. Nor, increasingly, read it.
1-9-14
Regarding “Mayoral Ally Elected Speaker”:
Excuse me a moment while I wipe up the scrambled eggs spewed all over the table. The previous New York city council leadership was “moderate”? Christine Quinn acted as a “tempering force”? Hmm. (Sorry, little more egg over there by the ficus.) Do you mean when she screamed at people who disagreed with her and defunded borough programs when they crossed her? And are higher wages really “viewed warily” by the “business world,” or are they fought against persistently ever since there has been a business world? In a way I guess it’s reassuring to open the Times and find the same damning with faint obfuscation – after all, straight talk on the issue of business vs. labor would be so polarizing, wouldn’t it? One might risk being accused of having a point of view, which as we know the Times does not, not, not. Except for being, as you say of the “moderates,” “establishment.” Running out of quote marks here, must end – but one more thing, did the other councilors really “murmur” approval of Ms. Mark-Viverito’s protests against “the Navy’s use of a Puerto Rican island?” Or did they shout their agreement with her stand against the bombardment and destruction of a colonial possession by the Navy? Ah well, we’ll never know. And never know how to vote, either.
8-30-13
Regarding “New Leaked Document Outlines U.S. Spending on Intelligence Agencies”:
The CIA is referred to as a spying and intelligence gathering agency which “also now conducts drone strikes.” Far down in the article we learn that it spends $2.5 billion on covert action.
I wonder what that covert action consists of. The reason I wonder is that you don’t go into it. That is, you stay out of it.
Wasn’t it just the other day that the CIA admitted overthrowing the government of Iran in 1953, at the service of what later became British Petroleum? Yes it was. And as anyone knows if they imbibe some media outside the mainstream US press, the CIA has led the way in the overthrow of 14 governments and destabilized many more over the years, deposing democratic governments that threated the interests of the likes of BP, United Fruit Company, etc. etc., and killing many hundreds of thousands.
Since we pay taxes for this, can’t it be mentioned in the Times? No, that could cause us to turn against it. In the interest of national security, the press must hide these secret operations. However, there’s a drawback: we’ll never know why people around the world hate us. Ah well, can’t know everything I suppose. Perhaps I’ll just continue to pay for it while voting for leaders who kill my friends abroad and bring terrorism to our shores.
For more on CIA history see http://www.alternet.org/story/39416/america%27s_100_years_of_overthrow
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4332.htm
7-12-13
re: “US Is Pressing Latin Americans To Reject Leaker.”
Yeah, here’s that cranky guy again, he’s all over that “Times is biased” thing.
When you say some Latin American governments “make defying Washington a hallmark of their foreign policies,” is that the slightest bit denigrating? Would you say Washington “makes defying Venezuela a hallmark?” Come to think of it, one only defies authorities, not junior partners, right? So the US is like the grown-up, being defied by upstarts, unruly children, right?
Of course, this “region that was once a broad zone of American power” is also a region that has suffered from military coups and land grabs and economic grand theft fostered or encouraged by that very power, the latest being in Honduras, but beginning under Polk, continuing under Theodore Roosevelt and on through Franklin Roosevelt’s support for “our SOB,” Somoza, and on through the Guatemalan genocide Reagan loved so well, and many more. So one can understand why the Latinos might “make it a hallmark” to defend their sovereignty against “what [President Corrrea] sees as excessive American influence in the region.”
And the forced landing of President Morales implemented by European governments most likely acting at the behest of the US is a mere “airborne misadventure”? If Obscuring with Faint Euphemisms were a currency, it would be stronger than the Euro at this point.
After quoting the predictably arrogant US operative Bill Richardson reducing the hallmarky pols down there to jockeying to “replace Chavez as the main U.S. antagonist,” rather than standing up for their countries’ independence, do you proceed to quote a Latin American who might represent another side to this calumny? Oh there it is, in the last paragraph, the President of Venezuela. That’s the usual place to look for the view from outside the Washington bubble. Or sometimes, just after that paragraph, on the cutting room floor.
So, is there a plan to bring the Times into step with the best of the world press, or do we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission first, to kind of clear the air about the alleged history of putative American excessive reach in the region? Would it be within your broad zone of power to do something about this appalling stupefying of the newspaper-reading class?
7-10-13
Regarding Jodi Rudoren’s piece on the appointment of a new Israeli ambassador to the US: Some of us nurtured hopes that Ms. Rudoren would be different, with her seeming attention to the various players in the Israel/Palestine imbroglio. Alas, we now have an article quoting the various pro-Israeli colonialist experts, and no Palestinians, on how this appointment will play out. Do Palestinians have no interest in US-Israel relations? Has Ms. Rudoren lost her ethics, or has she just learned how to write for the Times? Is it responsible journalism to disarm the US intelligentsia so that they can operate free of information about Palestinians’ thinking? The ones I meet daily certainly fit that description, and they all read the Times.
5-9-13
Editor, The Times:
Re: “Some Retailers Reveal….”: the apparel factory situation reveals once again that companies don’t care about their workers’ lives until they’re forced to. However, there are crucial unspoken aspects to this longstanding disgrace. Consumers don’t care either, until forced to by disasters. But why? Lack of interest in others is enforced as the norm by the manufacturing and advertising industries that comprise our culture. The quashing of unions here in Consumerlandia also helps to keep people isolated from collective concerns and collective solutions. Don’t ask, don’t care, that’s the rule. Speaking of rules, nowhere in the article is there mention of rules, or perhaps even laws, to govern those with so much power over workers’ lives that they may as well be called the government. Foxes don’t guard their chicken coops that well, do they?
4-3-13
Regarding “Military Seeks Broader Role for Special Operations Forces,” the first sentence indicates that the US military is planning for “a significantly increased presence in Africa, Asia and Latin America” for Special Forces. Why do those regions sound familiar? Why would the US need to “prevent conflict” and “identify security risks” there? We are working with “allied nations” there – but against what threats? Could there be unrest among the people due to exploitation and suppression? Could their governments be dominated by commercial and financial classes that suppress and exploit the people? Could our government be characterized similarly? Could the commercial interests be the same people, or at least the same logically allied “partners”?
Nowhere in the article is there mention of the history of this indisputable arrangement, including the many overthrows of governments in these regions by ours truly. Nowhere is there any nod to the perspective of the victims of these armed forces, both ours and our “partners.” But then, this is the Times, the essential newsletter for the Washington consensus. No room for criticism, no.
Incidentally, I read that the US ambassador to El Salvador has threatened to cut off aid there if the government does not move to privatize public services. Is this part of “preventing conflict,” or is it part of some obscure effort to, I don’t know, control other countries for the benefit of the corporate class?
How can you permit writing that hews to the narrow perspectives of the powerful and call it journalism? It is stenography for a certain class. It is police work, keeping the chattering classes chattering along inside the US imperial bubble.
Incidentally, by my count this is my seventh unacknowledged letter to your office, including some to your predecessors. When I have sent ten, will I receive a note acknowledging that my critiques are salient and significant and are being carefully studied? Or perhaps a note saying that the Times is what it is, and if I want journalism critiquing US policies I should go elsewhere?
Just sayin’.
2-21-13
Your writer Rick Gladstone observes that both (Presidents) Chavez and Morales “have been strong proponents of nationalizing natural resources, and are highly critical of what they regard as Western-led capitalist exploitation in Latin America.” Nationalization is a logical response to capitalist exploitation, especially that which comes from multinationals based in the United States, which the Times persists in calling “the West.” Anyone in Latin America can tell you about this exploitation – a current example of which is Chevron vs. Ecuador. Ask the families of the hundreds of thousands of people butchered by military dictatorships owned and operated by the US, trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. Ask the nuns and priests of El Salvador: dead, by my tax dollars. Please. Ask the Salvadoran government, which is currently being pressured by the US Embassy to pass a law handing public utilities to US multinationals.
Come on. Let’s do this. Everyone knows it except us. There is no West. It’s called the North, and it rapes the Global South. It’s the continuation of European empires, though no one would ever say the US has an empire, least of all the Times. The South has resources, the North has multinationals and thugs. Please stop keeping people ignorant. If your job is to be the essential newsletter of the wealthy classes to befuddle the middle classes, fine. But say so. Drop your pretense to objective journalism. You choose what to hide with mush-mouthed mis-appellations.
It is only the people of the U.S. who don’t know about “Western” capitalist exploitation (murder) of Latin America. Let’s join the world.
1-14-13
Regarding the News Analysis “In Step on ‘Light Footprint’” (1-9-13, p. 1), I think there are couple of weasel words and phrases worth correcting. First, there is mention of a book that sought to deal with “the challenge of trying to manage the world on the cheap.” Second, there’s a reference to the effort to take the CIA “back to stealing secrets and analyzing intelligence,” as opposed to its present involvement in drone strikes.
Two things are left out here. In the first case, who decided the U.S. had the right to manage the world? Does managing also have something to do with dominating? Does it enforce unjust economic and power relations? Has it been running – cover your children’s ears – an empire of some sort?
My informal study of the elephant in the room that is the U.S. empire shows that the only mentions of it are an occasional nod to the “fact” that it is dying or finished, or, in this case, being “managed” “on the cheap.” It’s kind of like saying a recession is over about the same time you admit that it happened. Smacks of news control, I think.
Therefore it is one of the highest crimes of bad journalism to assert that the CIA existed for intelligence work until it wandered into drones. The agency has for decades had two sides, and the covert operations side – involved in, among other things, overthrowing democratically elected governments – usually goes curiously unmentioned.
I’ve said to your office before that if the paper of record persists in managing the news to smother the most important factors in U.S. international behavior, then the citizenry cannot possibly vote intelligently. The fourth estate has thus reinforced the appearance of democracy while prohibiting its actual existence.
Please correct this tendency at the earliest opportunity.
11-26-12
Your story on Longmont, Colorado’s citizens’ ban on hydrofracking starts right off by mentioning “middle-class” jobs at canneries and sugar mills. How are these middle class jobs? I know we’re not allowed to say working class any more, on pain of being Communists, but really. Cannery work is middle class? Are we currently fighting Eurasia, or Oceania, remind me.
It was amusing how the weary mayor said “I guess you have to respect the people” as he braced himself for lawsuits from the drilling companies. Nowhere do you discuss the unseemly power of these pirate enterprises. I guess that would be a bias, eh? So you leave it at this: the people are kind of ignorant, they don’t know what they’re getting into, as in, the unseemly power of pirate enterprise. But since you don’t say the last part, we’re left with our Times-enforced ignorance of the real actors in society’s struggles. If Colorado goes broke, it will be the fault of the people who voted for that, not of the drillers who went elsewhere. Whatever the outcome, we’ll be unable to understand it, because we read the Times.
Re: “As Scorn for Vote Grows”, 9-28-11:
It might be more accurate to say “Scorn for Sham Democracy.” Is it not possible that “democratic capitalism,” as the writer calls it, is a hollow form that hoodwinks the populace into thinking they have the power to govern themselves, when in fact those with money have the power? Just sayin’. It’s a possibility. But it’s not mentioned in the article, even though it’s an important and major perspective, held by millions of protesters who are the subject of the article. By omitting this perspective and hammering home the marginal nature of corruption – it’s recent, it’s not essential to the system, etc. – you leave the reader with the pre-existing frame of reference erected daily by the Times. Systems, after all, are self-perpetuating. Writers and editors either share the unstated perspective of the institution or do not see it. Or both.
“Responding to shifts in voter needs is supposed to be democracy’s strength.” Really? How about spreading the power around? I suppose not. I suppose if democracy is in fact a veneer, then responding to shifts would be sufficient to make us think we’re governing. Crumbs, that’s what we get from powerful classes who hoodwink us into thinking we’re all in power together.
“Anti-establishment sentiment of Tea Party loyalists.” Really? No mention of their funding by billionaires? Are the funders anti-establishment too? No mention of the history of racist, retrograde populism in the U.S. that is used to divide people and shield the system from fundamental critique? We’re learning what exactly here?
“The political left…is compromised by the neoliberal centrism…” No. That’s not the left. The left is people who reject neoliberalism. The left is not Clinton and Blair. You have turned reality on its head. Unless by “left” you mean the liberal part of the system, in which case it is doing its job, and the people in the street have not deserted them. They have long since been deserted BY them. The people are waking up. Say, that might have been a nice headline.
In short, the article is written from the point of view of fearful rulers, well-meaning or otherwise, who see faith in their system evaporating. It is not written from the point of view of an awakened citizenry who see that the system is not theirs and does not serve them. In line with this, their views are referenced as “some people think…”, while the beliefs in the status quo are given as givens. It is, in short, a hit piece.
November 4, 2010
Dear Mr. Brisbane:
Regarding today’s snarky little dismissal of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for their attack on childhood obesity: Do you remember when the campaign was on to prevent Phillip Morris from using a child-friendly cartoon camel to sell its drugs? Who laughed at that attempt? Calling the San Francisco Board “Dadaist” for attempting to curb the overwhelming power of corporations to destroy our youth is spin journalism worthy of the New York Post. Such mockery of standards is driving me to drink, if not Happy Meals.
6-15-10
Dear Mr. Hoyt:
Regarding “Venezuela’s Military Ties With Cuba Stir Concerns”: when Mr. Romero notes concerns that Chavez is retooling the military “into an institution that can be used to quell any domestic challenge to the president,” is there any mention of the history of Venezuela’s, and Latin America’s generally, militaries being tooled for quelling any domestic challenge – with the assistance and leadership of the US government and military? There is not. Apparently it only matters if someone is in power that these concerned individuals, and perhaps Mr. Romero, don’t like. When the shoe is on the other foot, it’s convenient to forget the history – which is how writers like these help get us into wars, government overthrows, and the like.
The “Cuban regime…wants Chavez to remain in power because Chavez gives them oil.” Again is there mention of all the resource-rich countries that suffer under dictatorships of which the US approves, which the US sponsors or defends, because they give the US oil? There is not.
“Mr. Chavez has already taken steps to politicize the armed forces” – here we have the classic extra definition of “politicize” meaning “someone I disagree with.” Any mention of the political bent of previous militaries, bending the populace under the yoke of state terror? Not. Oh wait, “Mr. Chavez was briefly removed from power in 2002 by a coup.” Yes, but that was no politicized military. Or not that I can get from this article.
The Cuban model is defined as “preparing for an eventual invasion by the United States.” Any mention of the history of US invasions throughout the region, which might render this the ultimate patriotic and sensible model? No.
“Cubans are helping Mr. Chavez tighten his grip on an array of institutions” – formerly in the tight grip of People We Like, therefore we didn’t write hit pieces on them in the Times.
Finally, last paragraph, a quote glancing at the history of military conspiracies. This is balance? Not.
The writer and the Times do a disservice to the cause of independence and equality for Latin America in the face of the US power, and have consistently done so. It appears that an ideological bubble prevents them from doing actual journalism: speaking truth to power and all those long-lost arts. Pity.
6-9-10
Dear Mr. Hoyt:
You and Orwell know the importance of words. Today comes a new one for me, in bold headline type, p. 10: “Pliable Ally.” Turkey “reliably followed American policy.”
Is the US ever a pliable ally?
The assumption that this verbal atrocity feeds is that the US has the best interests of the world at heart. Most Americans assume this, since they are told to by schools and the media, through subtle elisions like this one. Most people in the world assume their countries are the best, or at least are told to. But there’s another possible framework, one borne out by facts: the US wishes to retain power, wealth, and control of resources by running the world. This used to be called empire. After thousands of years of empires, suddenly there aren’t any. The US is instead a benevolent superpower. I noticed the first times I ever saw the word empire associated with the US was when it was said, recently, to be on the wane.
The article on Turkey once again normalizes the idea that countries should behave themselves and stay within the US orbit and do its bidding – while never actually stating it. Is that journalism? Does that call to account those in power? Hardly.