Got Blood?

On Saturday NPR returned to the scene of the crimes of El Salvador's 1980s bloodbath - a US-nurtured extreme-right orgy of torture and murder against organized labor, the poor, church leaders, and leftists (and their families, friends, associates, or potential associates).

There were a few problems with the report. Jason Beaubien's reporting isn't great; he does a little plastic surgery on history, claiming "The Reagan administration jumped into the Cold War conflict spending billions of dollars to fight the Marxist guerrillas while Cuba and other communist states backed the FMLN." That's a rather tidy and truncated version of the long history of US support for the murderous right in El Salvador - gathering steam and corpses especially in the 1960s. It also ignores the historical record of who killed most of those 75,000 plus civilians in the "Cold War conflict." But the really nasty propaganda is front loaded by Lianne Hansen in introducing the report:

"The FMLN is a coalition of left wing groups, but it's dominated by the communist party. One of the biggest questions after the FMLN victory is how far to the left the President Elect Mauricio Funes will move El Salvador."

Dominated by the communist party? That's a stunning assertion. Dominated by revolutionaries and former guerrillas - okay. But the communist party? In all the articles I found, the communist party is mentioned as important, but not dominant. In the report Jason Beaubien comments that "El Salvador appears at times to be stuck in the Cold War." (Psst, Jason, I think El Salvador's not the only one!)

Finally for Hansen to claim that "one of the biggest questions...is how far to the left...blah, blah, blah" is quite telling. No surprise, but that seems to be the big question keeping some Foxes awake at night. That's definitely the question of the profiteers and oligarchs who have exploited El Salvador mercilessly, but it's not the question troubling the Catholic Church in El Salvador or the progressive movement in the United States.

And That Other Minor Detail

In the wake of the Colombian Army's successful hostage rescue operation the surgery on memory continues. Robert Siegel talks to Professor Marc Chernick who's bio notes "has been a consultant to the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the U.S. Department of State and the government of Switzerland."

Supposedly we are going to learn about the FARC. Siegel asks, "How old a group is this...?

Chernick states, "Well they were founded in 1964. Their leaders first took up arms in the late 1940s...before the group (FARC) existed they were rebels in the mountains, part of a broader struggle and in the 60s they transformed themselves into the FARC."

Siegel asks a reasonable question: "What were they struggling for?"

And Chernick giving a meaningless answer says, "Well, they came out of an intense period of partisan civil war in Colombia called 'The Violence' - 40s and 50s - one of the bloodiest periods in Latin American history, but the main groups there made peace, but a small group of guerillas - liberal guerillas they were at the time - stayed out of the conflict; it's that group that formed the FARC."

I was hoping Siegel would say, "Yeah, but what were they struggling for?" Instead he says, "Then during the years of the Soviet Union...we associated the FARC with being a Marxist group - fair?"

Chernick replies, "No absolutely, the key moment is actually not the Soviet Union, but the Cuban Revolution...when the FARC was formed there was an era of revolutionary groups being founded all over the continent. The FARC became decidedly Marxist, allied themselves with the communist party and were pro-Soviet."

I have to say, that whatever you think of the FARC, this conversation was so mind-numbingly stupid and misinformed that it is impressive in a sick sort of way. Can Chernick say poverty? The UN can - even the World Bank can! And regarding "The Violence" of the 40s and 50s, even the Library of Congress country report on Colombia notes that "the basic cause of this protracted period of internal disorder, however, was the refusal of successive governments to accede to the people's demands for socioeconomic change." How convenient that poverty (and dictatorship and horrific government brutality) never came up in the conversation.

Listening to Siegel and Chernick talk you'd think that it was some Marxist virus sweeping the continent that just made people want to take up arms and head to the mountains for no other reason than having commie or "pro-Soviet" sympathies.

And people wonder why so many Americans are so stupid.

Back from Hungary

(Me in Heroes' Square in Central Budapest)

Hello all. I'm back from Budapest. It was a great experience to see a little bit of Hungary, and was especially nice to not hear one minute of NPR programing. There is a lot to think about visiting a country like Hungary that suffered so badly under brief Nazi domination and then long Soviet occupation. One can't help but conclude that outlets like NPR News would have done quite well, thank you, under the long communist regime. With its shifting relativism, lack of any moral center, fawning to the powerful, and willingness to simply repeat government pronouncements as truth regardless of how blatantly ridiculous - or reprehensible - NPR News would have been right at home.

And so dear NPR loyalists, from Memento Park in Budapest, Vladimir salutes you!

Reagaphilia

Here's a little challenge to any die-hard believers in NPR's liberal (or even balanced) credentials: Find just one progressive, critical piece on the presidency of Ronald Reagan aired on NPR News in the last 5 years.

Tonight on ATC I had to fight the gag-reflex as NPR aired an adoring commentary on Reagan by Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review. The commentary focuses on Reagan's staged "tear down this wall" speech in Berlin. Michele Norris introduces it by noting that "Lowry says if those words don’t give you goosebumps..."

Then Lowry tells us that "beneath Reagan’s sunny exterior was a stern determination and a hatred of Marxism…conflicts with communist-infiltrated unions in his days in Hollywood." He might have also mentioned that beneath that "sunny exterior" was one of the the most dishonest, corrupt, death-squad loving presidents we've had until - well until now! Lowry is also out to conflate revolutionaries like Che Guevara with mass murderers like Stalin by lumping them all under the label of "communism." He tells us about the "tens of millions of dead bodies in the twentieth century" that Communism left in its wake, but nothing about the millions of corpses left by just the US alone.

Well, it's one thing to give airtime to a Reagaphile like Lowry so that he can pretend that Reagan was worthy of anything but disgust or prison, but one has to wonder where any countervailing opinion is? It clearly is not on NPR.

One interesting little exercise is to search "Richard Lowry" on NPR's site (16 hits) or "Rich Lowry" (25 hits) and then search Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation (what do you know, 1 hit!). Twenty-five to one - sounds like a liberal bias to me! Even add in the editor of The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild (3 hits) and you still get a 25 to 4 hit return. I think NPR is trying to make a Bonzo out of all of us...