Morning Edition first ran a piece about Cambodia and the brutal Khmer Rouge years. Funny, I never once heard any questions about the US aerial slaughter unleashed on Cambodia that helped create the conditions for the Khmer Rouge takeover. And, handily, it never came up how the US backed the Khmer Rouge once the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and ousted them. (It's interesting how this twisted version of history so resembles the text that Bush is reading from.)But heck, that was 30 years ago and the memory does get a bit fuzzy. How about something more recent, like say the joint US-Ethiopian invasion of Somalia way back in December 24th of last year (kind of a little Bushist Christmas present for the people of Somalia).
Listen, if you can stand it, to Gwen Thomkins give her report of the sad plight of Somalis streaming out of Mogadishu. It's one of those Africans as poor, herd-like, violence-prone, hungry, diseased folks pieces that is pretty revolting - especially coming from Thomkins who was complicit in running propaganda operations for the US aggression against Somalia in January of 2007. This kind of "Ministry of Truth" trimming of history is typical NPR fare; in fact just three short months after the US and Ethiopia helped install the "transitional" regime in Somalia, NPR had already erased the US from the list of armed parties involved - imagine that!
1 comment:
There's nothing worse than the US mucking about in Asia for catastrophic results. The runner up though, is Africa, where the bungling isn't even Keystone Kops quality. Life is cheap and tragedy is generic.
Mytwords, many thanks for sorting out this intentional tangle of deceptively-edited NPR meddle-talk. I have to confess, all the 'explanatory' and 'interpretive' NPR-speak that supposedly provides a digestible package for the listener not only disgusts me, it dizzys me up. Clarity is not the point here. I detect undertones of cooperation with covert agencies. Gwen Thompkins surely moonlights for CIA or more shadowy organizations, then covers up with her jazz-lite funnybone features from the quirky corners of the dark continent.
More and more, I'm hearing this authoritative kind of talk on NPR, which purports to summarize murky situations throughout the world. Again, I'm talking about the generalized bridge-talk that we're all very aware of. Who exactly ARE these NPR people to speak so authoritatively and condescendingly? All part of Cheney's 'Dark Side'. NPR is no doubt more than enthusiastic to be a player in this drama. It gets darker and darker.
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