Fair and Balanced from 1% Radio

Last Monday (3/19/12) on Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep and Sylvia Poggioli presented a casebook study in NPR's contempt for popular democracy and its use of false equivalency to smear leftists.  I heard this report last Monday, but was headed off for a vacation and so am posting on it late.

Poggioli was reporting on the economic crisis in Greece and how it has upended the political system there.   Inskeep introduces the report with this little frame:

"the old political system is collapsing and extremist parties are rising in popularity."

Early in the report Poggioli reports on a demonstration by the police officers' union against the austerity measures approved by the Greek Parliament.  She comments,

"They ominously waved their handcuffs at Parliament, shouting take your bailout plan and get out of here."

She does tell us that the head of the union "accused Greece's international lenders of plundering his country and even called for their arrest." Yes, so extreme and unhinged; why would anyone think that the international financiers are plundering Greece?

Poggioli presents poll results showing that "the four small leftist parties are ahead by 43 percent and could win a majority and in theory form a governing coalition."  Poggioli then states the following completely antidemocratic idea as if it were basic commonsense: "That terrifies Greece's creditors, some of whom have questioned the wisdom of holding elections."

Apparently, "the four small leftist parties" are the left side of the "extremist parties" that Inskeep warned of in the opening.  Equating these leftists with the extreme right, Poggioli states,

"And it's not just the left that's gaining popularity. So are two new far-right movements. One is the ultranationalist and neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which preaches the superiority of the white race.....Its bookshop is filled with tracts on Nazism and sells t-shirts of Hitler."

Brilliant really, how a neo-fascist, supremacist party which sells Hitler t-shirts is put on the same footing as leftist parties that oppose the austerity measures.  In case your not convinced that Poggioli and NPR want listeners to equate leftist parties (and individuals) who oppose 1% predatory, job-killing rule with Nazi-loving genocidal rightists, here's Poggioli to hammer home the point:

 "At the other end of the political spectrum, one of the parties doing well in the polls is far-left Syriza that wants to re-negotiate the terms of the bailout."

Indeed, the oh-so-scary leftist SYRIZA party which wants to "re-negotiate the terms" (such extremism!) of the rapacious and suicidal "bailout" package being forced on Greece by the international banking community (with Germany in the lead) is on the other end of the spectrum from a genocidal, Hitler adoring party!

NPR Covers(up) Torture...Again

When hard evidence of the criminality of US officials in torturing, disappearing, and torturing to death human beings falls into the hands of the so-called journalists at NPR, you can be certain that every effort will be made to obscure (or completely ignore) the laws that were broken, the horrors that were committed, and the guilt of US officials.

Two recent stories highlight NPR's longstanding commitment to the enabling of US torture policy. In the first, a civil lawsuit in New York State exposes details of the CIA's longstanding rendition/torture program.   The second story - which is creating headlines and investigations in the UK - involves the discovery of documents in Libya's Intelligence and Foreign Ministry offices which clearly show that the CIA was sending kidnapped suspects to Libya to be tortured.

The first story is dispensed with on ATC on September 1, and features NPR's intellectual heavyweight, Robert Siegel interviewing WaPo reporter, Peter Finn about the "details."  There is a lot of discussion about the millions spent on the CIA's rendition (kidnapping) flights and the focus of the story is Siegel's amazement that the US government even allowed this case to come to light: 

(Siegel) "Now, the mystery in all this is the absence of mystery. You quote the lawyer...as saying that he kept on waiting for the government to step into this case. Don't they usually do that, and why didn't they do it in this case?"

What is completely absent is any indication that kidnapping people and flying them around the world to be tortured and disappeared is completely illegal (and morally reprehensible). 

The second, more recent story - coming out of Libya - reveals documented evidence that the CIA flagrantly violated the US Convention Against Torture.  On Weekend Edition Sunday, September 4, NPR runs cover for the US/CIA.  There is no gray area in the law - unless one supports the the US being able to torture suspects: 

"It shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States."

NPR is well aware of  Libya's systemic use of torture: 

(Melissa Block on September 1) "Under Moammar Gadhafi's rule, tens of thousands of people disappeared into prisons. According to human rights groups, the Libyan state security apparatus tortured detainees and held them without due process."

If it's common knowledge that Libya, under Gadhafi, tortured prisoners, that means there are "substantial grounds" for believing anyone handed over to Libya then would be tortured, and therefore makes the US and CIA officials guilty of violating both US and international law, right?  Not on NPR.  It's worth reprinting Sunday's interchange between Cornish and coup-cozy Beaubien:  

Cornish: "And, of course, we're seeing reports about files uncovered in the Interior Ministry and the Foreign Ministry." 

Beaubien: "Yes, that's right. And actually Human Rights Watch got a hold of an entire batch of documents....And these documents show that clearly, you know, from what was in these documents, apparently the CIA was using Libya as a place of rendition; to move the suspects in, have them interrogated in Libya." 

Cornish: "And, of course, at this point these documents have not been authenticated. But the idea that the - that even the idea that the U.S. might be having suspects moved to this country with the traditional - with a tradition of brutal questioning is something that's raising a lot of eyebrows. 

Beaubien: "Yeah. And I should add that in these documents it does explicitly say - these communications between the CIA and the Gadhafi regime, it does say that Libya, you must respect the human rights of these people. So I should add that. But it certainly does raise questions about who the U.S. and the British intelligence services were using to interrogate terror suspects in (t)his global war on terror."

How's that for hedging, qualifying, minimizing, and excusing? If torture weren't such a perverted, disgusting, pornographic, and pathological practice, then Beaubien's straight-faced assertions that the CIA-linked document "does explicitly say...it does say...'you must respect the human rights of these people'" would be laughable naivete, instead of what it is: an intentional and ethically bankrupt attempt to obscure the fact that the US and CIA willingly participate in the torture of human beings. 

Tough Minded Hope and Faith from Rev. Ron Elving

If you've ever wondered why - when it comes to economic issues - NPR's content almost always echoes the Washington Consensus favoring the wealthy and privileged, you need look no further than Ron Elving, "the senior Washington editor for NPR News, where he directs coverage of the capitol and of national politics."

On Weekend Edition Sunday I was listening to Liane Hansen discuss what she called "twin burdens of the federal deficit and debt" with Ron Elving when I heard him make a remarkable statement. Hansen has just asked him, "And what about the other group, the senators who had a bipartisan group looking into what, a long term global deal on the deficit...?" To which Elving replied:

"Yes and a lot of us were holding out a good deal of hope and faith in that group, but this week the so-called "Gang of Six"...suffered a major blow, a perhaps crippling blow. They lost one of their members, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma."

It is truly a remarkable statement. Notice that Elving didn't say "a lot of people" or "many politicians" etc., but included himself in the congregation of those who held out "hope and faith" in this senatorial "Gang of Six."

Well, that got me wondering just what is the take on "this small group of senators [that] has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings" on budget issues. No surprise: the group is not progressive and not interested in representing the poor or lower middle classes; its range of "acceptable" options for the budget lies somewhere between Paul Ryan's extreme-right gutting entitlements and Obama's center-right hopey-changey death by a thousand cuts for entitlements.

Amazingly, Reverend Hope and Faith Elving isn't done preaching his articles of faith. Speaking of Paul Ryan's intellectually vacuous rip-off-for-the-rich budget plan (which NPR blessed as inspired long before it landed fresh and steaming on the House floor), Ron Elving says "what Paul Ryan has done,...come forward with something tough-minded, something politically unpopular..."

Lastly, when Liane Hansen asks Elving if he sees any hope on the horizon for the budget, he shows where his treasure lies:

"This week on Wednesday, there is a public event in town sponsored by the Peter Peterson Foundation - this is an anti-deficit outfit, private informal group. And it is billed as the Fiscal Summit 2011. It will bring together the remaining Gang of Five from the Senate, and also Paul Ryan - the man from the House - and also former President, Bill Clinton..."

There you have NPR's senior editor giving his endorsement to a conference organized by the Slash-Entitlements-for-the-Benefit-of-Billionaires Institute (aka Peter Peterson Institute - whose success shaping NPR (and mainstream media) coverage of the deficit "crisis" I've posted on before.

Of course listening to NPR, you would NEVER know about the People's Budget from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Something that actually represents the polled opinions of the people Congress is supposed to represent, is workable, and threatens the the most wealthy and privileged in Rev. Elving's congregation is simply heresy for NPR. Don't believe it? Check out NPR for the proof. Search NPR's on-air content for the following and see what you get:

• People's Budget Progressive Caucus (0) [BTW, that's a zero - zilch, nada...]
• Ryan Plan (35)
• Peterson Institute (79)

Amen! Church dismissed...

It Was the Dirty Hippies Again

Thanks NPR for this Wednesday morning gem of a statement regarding the arrogant, patriarchal, sexually stunted and twisted, and rabidly misogynist leadership of the child-raping Roman Catholic Church:

"A five year study of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Church in the US concludes that neither celibacy nor homosexuality was the prime cause. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports the study focuses blame instead on poorly trained priests swayed by the sexual freedom of the 60s and 70s."

Craig Windham read this tripe during the top of the hour news bulletins this morning.

Zone of Cooperation

On Thursday's ME, finishing up a series (see Tues. ATC & Wed. ATC) of cooperative reports on "enhanced" and "harsh" interrogations (known under US domestic and international law as torture) - Tom Gjelten was on with his handler, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, to set the record straight on the "debate" about "enhanced interrogations."

In the Thursday piece, Gjelten is explaining how some of the first leads in tracking down Osama Bin Laden's courier came "from detainees who were interrogated while in CIA custody." Gjelten tells us that "about a third of the CIA detainees were subjected to what the agency euphemistically called enhanced interrogation techniques." So far, so good. It's helpful that he describes CIA spin as euphemism. A listener might expect that the next step would be to have someone from the ACLU or Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch come on to detail just what these now-admitted techniques (and unadmitted ones) were and how many detainees didn't make it through the enhanced care of the CIA.

The CIA and US military need not fear that Tom Gjelten or NPR would dare shed any light on the gruesome details of US torture. For an unbiased description of the techniques, Gjelten turns to - guess who? - former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, who gently explains,

"They range from something as innocuous as something called the attention grasp or the facial grasp. You know, grabbing somebody by the lapels or grabbing them by the chin, to a variety of things that had to do with sleep and diet or stress positions."

God, and to think I used to think that US POWS in Vietnam were tortured...silly me, now I know they were just subjected to "a variety of things" like "stress positions."

Just to be sure that you can't accuse NPR of not being "fair and balanced," Gjelten tosses out that old NPR sop of some say: "Critics of enhanced interrogation techniques say they're tantamount to torture." See, it has nothing to do with law, treaties, or actual facts - it's just some anonymous "critics" who allege that its kind of like torture. In case these unnamed "critics" might undermine the very serious and important Michael Hayden, Gjelten notes that critics have also pointed out that real information came from detainees "after the harsh interrogations stopped. And General Hayden says he wouldn't be surprised by that."

And here's where Gjelten really enters his zone of cooperation, handing the microphone to the good General Hayden himself: "

I'm willing to concede the point that no one gave us valuable or actionable intelligence while they were, for example, being waterboarded. The purpose of the enhanced interrogation techniques was to take someone who was refusing to cooperate with us and to accelerate the process by which we would move from a zone of defiance to a zone of cooperation."

Well, I hope NPR will now do a piece (or two or three) debating the positive and negative effects of the enhanced interrogation sessions that the North Vietnamese applied to US POWs. Given that the civilian slaughter waged against Vietnam by the US military makes the events of 9/11 look like nothing more than a disturbing footnote in the history of atrocities, and given that the North was successful, then maybe all that enhanced treatment to move US prisoners from "a zone of defiance" to "a zone of cooperation" helped them win the war and was justifiable after all.

Tea & Sympathy: NPR Newsbaggers

The post below shows the disproportionate and favorable coverage that a puny rally of 100-200 Tea Party rightwingers generates on NPR. So what happened when, this past March, hundreds of anti-war protesters showed up at the White House and over 100 were arrested - including Daniel Ellsberg? On NPR, the public news outlet for the Ministry of Truth, it never happened. And what about when 27 anti-SOA protesters are arrested after a march of 100-200. Want to guess where that one goes on NPR? Memory hole again. All right, so maybe hundreds just doesn't show up on the radar when you're busy bootlicking the far right; how about thousands marching against war? Are you ready? Yep, NPR goes 0 for 3 when it comes to antiwar activism, even when it includes very large numbers, committed civil disobedience and large arrests.

FAIR has just done a great job pointing this out and suggests that you sign their petition. I have to add that NPR takes the general media's blackout of antiwar activism to a truly perverse level - not only do they newsbag the important stories of antiwar activism - they have the gall to take their own erased-news as evidence of a dead antiwar movement and pass it off as journalism.

Bad Fears, Good Fears, and Radio Activities at NPR

I promise to keep this short, but I just had to post on NPR's interesting take on fear. Given that the energy industries have a history that...well...let's just say puts profits before people, and given that the worst nuclear accident on record killed at least tens of thousands (if not a million people)... a rational person might consider the public's fear of nuclear energy - especially in light of the ongoing disaster in Japan - as reasonable. On the other hand, given that the likelihood of being a victim of terrorism is extremely small - along with the ridiculously low number of estimated al-Qaida fighters - a rational person might consider the US obsession with fears of al-Qaida to be bizarre at best and, at worst, a sham used to shred Constitutional guarantees, expand the US Security state, and benefit war profiteers. Want to guess what NPR's take on these two fears is relative to the Japanese nuclear disaster and the uprisings in the Middle East?

On the nuclear radiation fears, NPR is generally dismissive:

(from the National Archives - view b&w version here)

• On March 22nd ME, NPR highlighted psychiatrist, Dr. Robert DuPont who, as Steve Inskeep explained, "told our own Renee Montagne that the American response to the nuclear threats has been way out of proportion."
• On March 26 Weekend Edition Saturday, Josh Hamilton opened his report with: "Well, I'll start with the good news, which is that there hasn't been any major release of radiation in actually quite a few days now. The bad news is that there are still a lot of problems at the plant." Later in the show, Scott Simon's main question was, "Do you contain the fear of radiation or does that spread all over the country?"

On the uprisings in the Middle East - fear is in the air:

• On February 26 Weekend Edition Saturday, Temple-Raston blows the al-Qaida fear trumpet regarding the uprising in Libya.
• On March 19 Weekend Edition Saturday, Temple-Raston is back to warn us that, "The general turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa has provided political vacuums al-Qaida can exploit."
• On March 24 ME NPR warns about al-Qaida opportunities in Yemen. Discussing a defecting general gives us this interchange between Linda Wertheimer and her guest Robert Powell:

Wertheimer: "How seriously do we take the reports that he is a very conservative person, that he is an Islamist,...?

Powell: "Well, you can bet that the U.S. State Department's alarmed...He has a history that goes back to the 1980s. He used to recruit Islamist fighters to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the mujahideen, and most vividly to fight with Osama bin Laden. And more recently there has been accusations that he has been recruiting al-Qaida to fight against the Shia in the north of the country."

NPR Drones and Disappearing Civilian Casualties

It took awhile, but on Tuesday morning (3-22-11) NPR finally got around to covering (covering up) the March 17th drone-slaughter of civilians in AfPak. On the positive side, the report did feature the dire mental health effects that drone strikes have on residents of the area, and Julie McCarthy did contact a shopkeeper who ends the report by explaining:

"If anyone thinks that people here are happy over the drone strikes, they are foolish....In fact, the drones are fomenting hatred against the government and turning the people against America. We are killed by drones and then labeled as terrorists."

However, the story is undermined from the start. Steve Inskeep kicks things off this way,

"An attack last week reportedly killed at least 40 people. Some WERE militants but most are DESCRIBED as tribal elders." [No mention of where the confirmation of "militants" came from or why those other dozens are only "described" as elders.]

From this modest beginning, Julie McCarthy goes full-in:

"The U.S. has been conducting a covert program using unmanned drones to target militants in Pakistan since 2004. According to the Long War Journal, an authoritative website, the large majority of the 2,000 killed since 2006 were from the Taliban, al-Qaida and affiliated groups."

This statement tells you a lot about the rigor of NPR's standards. If thoroughly enmeshed with US state security/military institutions means authoritative - then the Long War Journal (LWJ) is very authoritative. Take a look at its website where you'll find out that its managing editor Bill Roggio has close ties to the conservative Hoover Institute and The Weekly Standard, frequently embeds with the US and allied militaries, and "presents regularly at the US Air Force's Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School on the media and embedded reporting" (oh, and he also "served as a signalman and infantryman in the US Army and the New Jersey National Guard from 1991 to 1997.") As the LWJ masthead indicates, it is a project of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies - which a glance at its "Who We Are" section (rogues gallery) reveals what kind of "authoritative" viewpoint one can expect from the LWJ:

"Our Leadership Council of Distinguished Advisors includes former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former State Department Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes, former National Security Advisor Robert “Bud” McFarlane, former Ambassador Max Kampelman, Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey."

No surprise then that the LWJ's snappy charts claim - absent of any hard evidence - that in 2010, US airstrikes killed 801 Taliban/al-Qaeda operatives and only 14 civilians. In all the searching I've done it is clear that hard evidence is extremely difficult to come by - and that estimated of rates of civilian casualties in US drone strikes range from very high (over 90%) to high (about 30%) to low (3.5% ) to the LWJ's very low 1.7%! Given that the US and Pakistani governments have every reason to low-ball civilian casualties - and given that the US military always denies civilian casualties unless confronted by hard evidence - only a propagandist for the US military would claim a source for the lowest number as "authoritative."

This opting for the lowest numbers of civilian victims of the US long, long, long war is nothing new on NPR, in fact it's their gold standard.

Steve Inskeep - More Tortured Distortions

On Tuesday Morning Steve Inskeep did an interesting story about a popular Egyptian singer who was recently [after the overthrow of Mubarak] detained and tortured by the Egyptian military. Inskeep's direct and moving reporting on the singer, Essam's, torture prompted The Modest Egotist to post the following comment on NPR:

This part of Modest Egoist's comment -

"But, how come when Inskeep/NPR describes the same treatment of prisoners by American troops at Gitmo and Ab Gruib it's only "harsh interrogation"?

Guess I just don't like my morning coffee with big spoonful of hypocrisy.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2009/06/torture_round_two.html

Ahem, who has been training the Egyptian military of the past decade?

- drew the following reply from Steve Inskeep:

So Inskeep claims,

"As for the 'Modest Egotist' question about why we don't refer to torture by Americans as torture. Actually, we do, and I have. Not room enough for all the links here, but many examples are searchable at npr.org at any time. Thanks again, Steve."

Sounds like a challenge for the NPR-BS detector to me. I spent a bit of time looking on the NPR site and on this blog, and if I were using the truth-o-meter from Politifact, I'd give Inskeep's claim a "barely true" - and I mean barely. I'll quickly list the evidence I could find:

• Probably the strongest case for Inskeep's claim is in one report in November 2009, which describes extensive waterboarding as torture. Here's his interchange with NPR's Temple-Raston:

  Inskeep: "...this is a man [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] who was waterboarded 183 times. What difficulties are raised by bringing in a man to a civilian court when some of the evidence against him would appear to have been obtained by torture?"

  Temple-Raston: "...No, you are exactly right. And this is one of the really big issues here, although in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he actually admitted, before being tortured, that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So that makes him slightly different than some of these other detainees who have been tortured, who maybe only admitted to something after they were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture."

• Also back in May of 2006 Inskeep gets credit for using the word torture in an interview with Alfred McCoy. He asks McCoy, "Can we set aside a moment, questions of morality, and just talk about practicality. Many people have said that physical torture does not produce good information, that people will say anything to get it over with. What about psychological torture? Has it ever been shown to be useful, whatever you may think of it?" Given that McCoy was talking about the use of brutal isolation, nakedness, sleep deprivation, etc., the fact that Inskeep calls it psychological torture is exceptional for NPR.

Far more common when the word torture is used for US practices, are qualified uses of the term.

• In August of 2009, discussing revised interrogation standards, Inskeep makes this statement about CIA torture of detainees, "In addition to the moral objections to what many would define as torture, is there now a consensus among people who do this work that it also wasn't practical to be abusing prisoners?"

• In "Torture Issue Won't Die Down" from May of 2009 - even though photos showing "nudity, guns being aimed at detainees, people in shackles" are being discussed along with previous photos from Abu Ghraib, there is only ONE reference to torture when Inskeep says "the so-called torture memos."

• In a June 2006 interview with Alan Dershowitz who wants to prescribe and legalize "limited" torture, Inskeep says about Dershowitz - and a doctor who will be the next day's guest, "Yet, the doctor and Dershowitz agree on one thing. They say the United States is, indeed, practicing torture." Again it's distanced and qualified by "they say."

That's about as much evidence as I could find supporting Inskeep's claims. If I missed something significant, I hope someone will email me or post it in the comments section so I can update this post. As you can see, this supporting evidence is pretty thin and is swamped by NPR's and Inskeep's overall tendency to use euphemisms for torture - or to imply that abuse of detainees is not such a bad thing after all. For example

• In June of 2006 Inskeep interviews an Army torturer and NEVER once mentions torture, even when the interrogator describes prisoners who were forced to crawl across gravel being unable to walk afterwards, or when he details subjecting them to hypothermia, dogs and months of complete isolation. In fact this treatment was not apparently brutal enough to intrigue Inskeep's moral instincts and he asks, "Did anybody ever ask you to go beyond the kinds of - well, let's call it abuse, if you don't mind, the kind of abuse that you have described..."

• In February of 2007 Human Rights Watch issued a damning report on US torture of detainees, and Inskeep presented a short blurb on the report which featured more Bush-spin than report - and featured Inskeep noting that in the report is one "Jihadist" who "claims to have been tortured."

• In December of 2008 when a damning Senate Report on US torture of detainees was released not only did NPR not cover it, they had Inskeep conduct an interview with a "good guy" Army interrogator who worked in Iraq. Inskeep never mentioned torture, but did find time to wonder if uncooperative prisoners ever got the interrogator to the point "where you really wanted to hit the guy."

I could go on and on (search this blog's label "torture" for example) about the direct and indirect ways that NPR's coverage or outright censorship of the US torture of detainees has greatly enabled the establishment and legitimization of formal US torture and detainee abuse practices. A record that makes Inskeep's claim all the more hollow, and of course, I've not even touched on the fact that NPR's ombudsman has asserted that calling waterboarding torture reflects bias and that the policy of NPR is to refrain from the use of such language - a fact that Modest Egoist referred and linked to in his original post.

Got History?

This past week NPR had Quil Lawrence providing us with "history" lessons on Afghanistan - always a dodgy prospect on NPR. This series features a major hole in the narrative; the active, long-term role that the United States played in bringing Islamic extremism and terror to Afghanistan is both ignored and covered up.

On Monday's ATC Quil gives us the long history of imperial adventures in Afghanistan. He says this:"In 1978, a communist coup installed a pro-Soviet president. The tribes rose up, and the Soviets invaded. Andrey Avetisyan is Russian ambassador in Kabul....By the mid-'80s, the United States was aiding the Mujahedeen to the tune of half a billion dollars...." [This "mid-80s" claim is furthered with a time-line on the web version of the story.]

Then on Tuesday's ATC - in a report that does at least note that many of the depraved warlords of the post-Soviet civil war are now in the government that the US is backing - we hear only that

"The mujahedeen, a patchwork army of Islamist guerrillas, bolstered with copious funding from Washington, defeated the Soviet army in 1989. What they couldn't do was unite to govern Afghanistan."

There are several problems with the NPR narrative:

• It places the beginning of active US involvement in stoking conflict in Afghanistan in the mid-80s, when in fact the US was actively assisting Islamic extremists there starting in the early 1970s. As Robert Dreyfuss has documented, this policy was just one part of the US government decision to encourage and promote Islamic fundamentalist movements as a counterweight to nationalist movements in the Middle East and Central Asia.
• The NPR version also ignores the role the US played in luring the Soviets into the Afghanistan trap (as recalled by Robert Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski), leaving listeners to conclude that the US was simply reacting to events that were out of its control.
• Finally, NPR presents the US as simply funding what mujahedeen forces existed, instead of accurately exposing how the US recruited, organized and supplied the most ruthless, criminal and fanatic elements for fighting in Afghanistan. The idea was to foster these Islamic terrorists as a way of attacking the Soviet Union. The fate of the Afghan people never figured into (and still doesn't) the geopolitical maneuverings of US foreign policy players. As this pre 9/11 article from The Atlantic notes:

  "...the CIA began providing weapons and funds -- eventually totaling more than $3 billion -- to a fratricidal alliance of seven Afghan resistance groups, none of whose leaders are by nature democratic, and all of which are fundamentalist in religion to some extent, autocratic in politics, and venomously anti-American."

Some might argue that NPR's oversight is not all that important to the current complications that the US/NATO finds itself entangled in. But understanding the cold-blooded, ruthless arc of US foreign policy is essential to a critical assessment of the current US occupation of Afghanistan. By ignoring this, NPR can present the current US mission in Afghanistan as having only noble aims, allowing Quil Lawrence to make this closing statement in his Friday ATC report on "the mixed report card" from Afghanistan:

"And many of even the harshest Afghan critics of the Obama policy think it would be a disaster for the U.S. to leave Afghanistan in the state it is today..."

Really?...

[click picture to view the original WWI version]

Good Sock Monkey

NPR has been sending crack reporter Rachel Martin to Afghanistan to accompany military bigwigs so that she can dutifully repeat what they say. And she doesn't fail.

On Tuesday morning she provided a positive account of her trips in Afghanistan with "Major General John Campbell...the U.S. commander in charge of the area in the eastern part of Afghanistan right along the Afghan-Pakistan border." She stated:

• "So as you can hear, clearly this is an issue that gets under Campbell's skin: corruption. And it's another part of the war that commanders are trying to get a handle on." [Of course, as always on NPR, the corruption they're talking about is Afghan corruption - since the Americans involved in the Afghanistan War are above reproach.]
• "But in other places where Campbell's troops are operating, they seem to have captured the momentum at least for the time being."
• "General Campbell is adamant. He says that they are making progress every day. He sees examples of this progress, but it's really a mixed bag."

On Tuesday afternoon she was reporting on her travels with an upbeat Secretary of War Gates, and all his remarks were supplemented with other military spokespersons: Lieutenant Colonel Vowell, Major General John Campbell, and General Petraeus. Here's a sampling of Martin's critical input:

• "Vowell says part of the reason violence is up is because the Pakistani military has pressured insurgents on its side of the border, and now they're being pushed over here into Afghanistan. Stirring up the hornet's nest is what some military officials call it. And Secretary Gates told U.S. soldiers in Kunar that it's working."
• "The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, said the Taliban still has areas where it can operate freely, but there have been gains."

In case you didn't appreciate positive spin on the war being promoted by Sec. Gates, Martin was on one more time Thursday morning to give airtime to the optimism of military geniuses of the Afghanistan War and then to restate their remarks. This report featured this truly astounding segment, where a sound bite of Gates recounting the "successes" and rosy future of the US war effort is followed seamlessly by Martin - to the point where it is hard to tell them apart:

[Gates]: "...And as a result, more and more Afghan people are able to live without being terrorized."
[Martin]: "That is just the first step. The next goal is getting Afghan forces to take responsibility for providing security one province at a time, and ultimately for the Afghans to take full control of the security situation by the end of 2014."

See, the first step of saving the Afghan people has been accomplished with the gentle boots on the ground of the super-careful, relationship-building US military. Good thing the US isn't leaving Afghanistan anytime soon - otherwise the poor Afghans would be terrorized all over again.

Never Too Late to Plug the Leaks

(Yes, that is Michele Kelemen, though I provided the fetching cap.)

The dike of secrecy ain't just leaking; it has collapsed, thanks in large part to WikiLeaks. But NPR's Michele Kelemen still thinks she can channel the little Dutch Boy and plug those holes. A news agency's first story on any major event can be quite telling; consider NPR's initial story on the latest WikiLeaks document release that ran on Sunday's ATC:

Audie Cornish: "Michele, there's a lot to cover, but let's talk about that last cable we just heard. That is a directive to essentially spy on other diplomats at the United Nations. And what have you learned about that?"

Kelemen: "....The U.S. government apparently wants these diplomats to learn about potential links between U.N. organizations and terrorist organizations and to learn about corruption in the U.N."

It funny how the Guardian had a few other truthy ideas about what the US was up to in spying on UN officials and provides a healthy context for the likely criminality of such actions.

Noting that reported harm and danger from previous WikiLeaks have been proven to be lies, Glenn Greenwald asks today, "Will that prevent media figures and many other people from running around this week mindlessly parroting the Government's claim -- without pointing to any specifics or other evidence -- that WikiLeaks has endangered lives with this latest release? Hmmm, let's see how NPR answers the call,

Kelemen: "...the White House was reminding people today that these are not expressions of policy. It's just field reporting....That said, the U.S. does worry that these disclosures could put diplomats at risk, as well as their sources, you know, human rights activists, journalists, bloggers."

Bloggers? Uh oh!

Finally, there is Iran. Ah yes, there is always the boogie man of Iran. Juan Cole points out that the released cables reveal how much BS the Bush/Obama warministrations have foisted on the public - especially in relation to the absurd idea that Iran has been helping out the Taliban [something old Fair and Balanced Sorya Sarhadi Nelson has been commended for]. Seems like Kelemen couldn't help but sing about the evil TENTACLES of Iran:

"And the ambassador, Stephen Beecroft, writes that the metaphor most commonly deployed by Jordanians when they talk about Iran is that of an octopus whose tentacles reach out insidiously to manipulate, foment and undermine the best-laid plans of the West and regional moderates. It says that Iran's tentacles include its allies Qatar and Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories."

Oooooh, so scary!

Extreme Home Makeover: the NATO Edition

(For source of photo, click here.)

Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry. This morning Scott Simon was checking in with NPR's Afghanistan bureau chief, Quil Lawrence. After hearing from Lawrence how "Afghan military commanders and government ministers...seem to be on the same page as the generals and the NATO officials..." Simon asked a good question, "And can you give us any insight into how regular Afghan citizens might be viewing this debate now?" That led to this from Lawrence,

"Well, I find that Afghans outside the government or that aren't working with the Americans are living in an absolutely completely different reality from the one that I hear described by U.S. generals, by NATO officials, by congressmen and U.S. senators who come here.

For example, down in Kandahar, where they certainly have seen fierce fighting and killed many, many Taliban fighters down there, but at the same time villagers down there have been evicted from their homes by the violence. They see that their homes are now - and their fields are still so littered with Taliban landmines and booby traps that the U.S. military has actually had to bulldoze or sometimes rocket their houses just to clear them."

Well, dang what do you know, seems like there's a new Nobel Prize winning strategy emerging in Afghanistan - kind of a 21st century update of "destroying the village in order to save it." And Simon's horrified reaction is...

"Might they reflect that the picture the U.S. is presenting at NATO meetings and elsewhere is just a little hopeful?"

A little hopeful? Sheesh...oh well, I guess he was saving his profound humanity for the Afghanistan dog hero that was accidentally euthanized. Notice, too how the web scribes for NPR describe thwarted attackers against NATO combat forces as "terrorists."

A Wolf in Shepard's Clothing - Savaging Zinn Again

(my apologies to real wolves)

I had to post on the Ombudsman's repulsive write-up on NPR's Howard Zinn slander. Alicia Shepard's words pretty much speak for themselves so here they are in order of appearance:

"Horowitz, 71....is also founder of Students for Academic Freedom, a national watchdog group that promotes tolerance of conservatives on college campuses.

[That is some serious tolerance.]

++++

"Many critics pointed to NPR's even-handed coverage of William F. Buckley, "a figure as admired by the right as much as Zinn was on the left," according to FAIR, which gave its members talking points and urged them to contact the Ombudsman.

NPR was complimentary and respectful in memorializing Buckley....The network was equally nuanced in remembering pioneering televangelist Oral Roberts...."

[It's interesting how Shepard conflates giving praise and respect as "even-handed" and "nuanced." She also manages to get a dig in at the NPR critics as being nothing but unthinking FAIR zombies repeating its talking points.]

++++

"Obituaries are news stories that place a person in time and history -- not tributes. For this reason, Zinn's obituary did need to mention that he was controversial and that some historians were dismissive of his work. But, several professional obituary writers said, Horowitz's harsh comments about Zinn were not appropriate."

[How Shepard squares "not tributes" with NPR being "complimentary and respectful in memorializing Buckley" defies logic. She also pulls out the reliable NPR cudgel of vagueness (i.e. some) in claiming validation from those anonymous historians dismissive of Zinn's work.]

++++

"Adam Bernstein, the Washington Post's obituaries editor, also heard the Zinn obit.

....'It seems to me your story would have been better to get a more-neutral authority who expresses why Zinn was influential and helps the reader/listener understand why many scholars -- not just conservative firebombers like Horowitz -- felt Zinn was not a force for good in academia.'"

[The vague cudgel of "some" is now the sledgehammer of the anonymous "many": "many scholars...felt Zinn was not a force for good..." It's also clever - and cowardly - how Shepard slips this in by way of quoting someone else.]

++++

"After the flood of emails, I asked Sweeney [NPR managing editor] to take another listen.

He agreed the Horowitz quote is harsh in tone. 'That doesn't undermine the legitimacy of using his point of view,' said Sweeney. 'If there is a problem with what Horowitz has to say, it's that he's allowed to wield a sharp tongue without providing any justification or evidence to support his words: more heat than light.' "

[See, it was a legitimate point, just should have been backed up by evidence - which Sweeney fails to mention does not exist!]

++++

"I also asked Alana Baranick, author of "Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers," to listen to the story. She wrote obits for the Cleveland Plain Dealer for 16 years. She thought it was fair to use Horowitz to balance out leftist academic Noam Chomsky, who said "Zinn had changed the conscience of a generation."

"If I had been doing that NPR obit, I would not have cited Horowitz or Chomsky," said Baranick. "I would have looked to less controversial figures for comments. [Quoting] historians, who are not considered political activists, would have been more appropriate."

[This is the kind of idiocy that the NPR Ombudsman consults for advice. As if Horowitz "balances out" a quote from Chomsky. And as if being political activists disqualifies a historian from being taken seriously. Especially given that part of Zinn's legacy was as a scholar and an activist for such radical things like civil rights for Black folks.]

++++

"Critics are right that NPR was not respectful of Zinn."

[Respectful?! I could care less about "respectful." If there is truth to a criticism of someone who dies, let's have it - what else is news for? No, the problem is that NPR news aired completely dishonest and unsubstantiated slurs against one of the leading American historians who was also a decent and progressive activist - but when any rightwinger or Christian fundamentalist kicks the bucket, NPR is there to provide "nuanced" "complimentary and respectful memorializing" while refusing to document their shortcomings - something any journalist worth her salt could do both thoroughly and respectfully.]

History Scrub - The Haiti Chapter

(source of graphic)

In February of 2009, FAIR noted my use of the term history scrub regarding NPR's coverage of Afghanistan. As I noted in my post on Afghanistan back then,

"...if the essential background history to a story reflects poorly on the actions of the US government - that history will be deleted, scrubbed, sanitized - sent down the memory hole."

NPR's Haiti earthquake coverage has been as dismally truncated as any of its censored-history stories. Everyone can agree that the earthquake in Haiti is a horror and that immediate rescue and relief is needed. But people do wonder why the devastation was so overwhelming and complete, and it does have a history. If the history is not honestly covered then the answers are provided by the creepy, rightwing fringe (sort of fringe) types like Pat Robertson (not always fringe on NPR either), or the creepy, respectable rightwing sorts like the smirking NPR regular, David Brooks who states in the NYT,

"Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them."

So how was NPR's coverage of Haiti's history?

• On Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Morning Edition Deborah Amos interviewed Miami Herald writer Jacqueline Charles about how great the past year was for progress in Haiti: "I've been reporting on this country for years now and in the last couple of years...in the last two or three years, the country has been enjoying relative stability. I just recently wrote a story about how it was going to get its first international hotel franchise in a decade because investors were starting to feel confident, both Haitians and non-Haitians alike." Ah yes, investors have brought such wonderful benefits to Haiti over the years.

• On Thursday, January 14, 2010 All Thing Considered NPR turns to Johanna Mendelson Forman - stalwart of the US foreign policy and military establishment - to sing the praises of the UN's role in Haiti. Michelle Kellemen tells us that "she said the U.N. mission in Haiti had a lot of successes in recent years, ....everybody was looking at a 2010 that was going to have a much more significant investment future, a greater opportunity for jobs." That's an interesting take on the UN, because as Peter Hallward notes in the Guardian/UK, after the US-backed coup against Aristide in 2004, "The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country....[and] the same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose."

• Also on Thursday's January 14, 2010 ATC Bob Siegel lets the current IMF chief claim that the IMF is going to help Haiti in a big way. Of course, Siegel doesn't bring up any unpleasant reminders about the IMF's role in trashing Haiti - Got Rice?

• On Friday January 15, 2010 ME Deborah Amos had a friendly chat with former US ambassador to Haiti, Timothy Carney - a fellow with a sordid track record in Haiti. With Amos' able assistance Carney gets away with turning history completely on its head. He tells Amos that, along with aid money, the international community "has to have some expectations of Haitians... an end to the sterile politics of group and gang, with an eye on personal advantage, that has dominated the politics of Haiti for, since its independence." Yes, indeed, groups and gangs (French and US) have definitely been sucking the blood and money out of Haiti since its independence.

• On Friday January 15, 2010 ATC NPR goes looking for a Haitian willing to carve up history, and so heads over to the cynically named right-wing Haiti Democracy Project [which the above Timothy Carney once chaired - surprise!]. NPR finds Arielle Jean-Baptiste who -guess what? - blames Haitians for their disastrous history: "They resign themselves to what they have. They don't demand accountability from their government....So it is frustrating because there is a certain mindset in Haiti where they get together to get rid of a bad government, but they are unable to get themselves together to build." Her answer to "fix" Haiti? Got a guess? "We [the international community] should get more involved in agro industry in Haiti and economic growth." Just like the good old days, I guess. (NPR obviously knows just how unbiased [hee, hee] this "marching with the President Aristide's opposition" Jean-Baptiste character is.)
  

If the scale of this assault on memory and historical accuracy weren't such a potent weapon for continuing the US-led predations on countries like Haiti, the nonsense and myth that passes for coverage on NPR would be humorous. But as it is, this kind of aggressive rewriting of the past has consequences that are as deadly and tragic as the natural disaster it is supposedly trying to explain.

Having Your Yellow Cake and Eating It Too

Itching to repeat the manufacture of phony "evidence" used to engineer the US invasion of Iraq, NPR is working hard to pursue the thinnest bits of "evidence" to get up a war on Iran.

On December 17th Mike Shuster was excitedly pushing documents that supposedly raised "New Concerns." The report was riddled with qualifications of "might be" and "could be" which would be laughable, if the consequences of such fraudulent reporting weren't so dire.

[Renee Montagne] : "The document lays out a series of experiments THAT COULD BE USED to trigger nuclear explosions. IF IT IS GENUINE, some experts believe it could be proof Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon."

[Mike Shuster]: "The document, WHICH APPEARS TO COME from an office in Iran's Defense Ministry..." "the source says the document was written in 2007. IF THAT IS INDEED TRUE, IT COULD BE evidence that Iran is engaged, now, in work on components of a nuclear weapon."

Of course this startling document turned out to be a forgery - though NPR never issued a correction or retraction.

Then - as if completely oblivious to the "Oh My God They're After Yellow Cake"scandal of the Iraq War, on Steve Inskeep was on Dec. 30th's Morning Edition pushing a yellow cake scare story on Iran. The story is based on a single mysterious document that has landed in the hands of one AP reporter. The document has not been subject to any authentication process, but that doesn't stop NPR and Inskeep from hyping it:

[Inskeep]: "The Associated Press obtained a document saying Iran is trying to buy 1,350 tons of uranium ore. Reporter George Jahn has seen the document, and he's on the line."

At the heart of the interview we hear

[Inkseep]: "Now, why would it be important for Iran to get its hands on uranium, and especially this much of it?"

[Jahn]: "Basically, this is the starting block in its enrichment program. Iran needs purified ore, also known as yellow cake or uranium oxide, to enrich, and of course, its enrichment program is the backbone of its nuclear activities, WHICH COULD CREATE NUCLEAR WEAPONS."

In case you tuned in late to the report, Inskeep closes his report with this recap:

[Inskeep]: "George Jahn is a reported for the Associated Press. He has seen a document from the International Atomic Energy Agency that says Iran is close to buying many tons of uranium from Kazakhstan."

Iranian History - the Milani Remix

NPR put history in the blender again - this time regarding Iran. On Sunday, Dec. 27th's ATC NPR's Guy Raz interviewed Abbas Milani in order to obscure and minimize the destructive, anti-democratic role the US has played in Iranian history:

[Raz] : "Let's go back for a moment and talk about, specifically, about the US' role. I mean, the basic narrative is that the United States has always played a key role in Iranian politics. This is the narrative widely accepted among the leadership in Iran and, to some extent, by the foreign policy establishment here in Washington, D.C. What is this information based on? Why is this view so widely accepted?"

[Milani] : "I think it is accepted because, like many myths, it has some base in reality and some base in ignorance. If you, in fact, look at U.S. involvement in Iran, U.S. begins to get involved in Iran after World War II. And the first attempt by FDR, the Roosevelt administration, is, in fact, to create what they call a democratic experiment in Iran. And from Roosevelt to Carter, every administration, with the exception of the Nixon administration, pushed behind the scenes, the shah towards a more democratic, a more open society."

The NPR report is essentially a reprise of Milani's Dec. 8th article in The New Republic. In the article and on NPR Milani points out the truth that Iran's clerics were involved in the 1953 coup against Mossadegh that installed the Shah. He uses this fact to pretend that the US role was minimal and that the US role in the Shah's Iran was to push for democracy. I asked an Iranian friend and scholar - Niloofar Shambayati - if she had any insights into Milani's NPR remarks and she noted that

"The fact is that those of us who have read scholarly works on the subject of 1953 military coup, including Ervand Abrahamian’s books, have known for decades about the controversial role of the clerics in that episode of Iranian politics. We have also known that, without the U.S. planning and full force backing, the idea of a military coup could not have materialized. The fact that occasionally American officials nudged the Shah to loosen his grip on the society and politics in order to ensure the continuation of his rule and U.S. hegemony not only adds nothing to the historical narrative of this period and but confirms the pursuance of imperialist agenda by successive Administrations. "

Arash Norouzi echos this analysis as he dismantles the lies and distortions of Milani in a fine point by point rebuttal. Norouzi writes:

"Milani has chosen to counter the Islamic Republic's disengenuous, hypocritical narrative with his own equally deceptive, revisionist narrative. It's a logically bankrupt essay permeated with misleading, feel-good innuendo, signifying much but saying nothing. Repeatedly, Milani tampers with facts, contradicts his own conclusions, and even betrays his own recent statements."

Needless to add, poor Guy Raz is completely inadequate in challenging Milani. Raz asks one challenging [though qualified] question:

"...declassified documents show that the United States helped the Shah create his feared and hated secret police as well. So the U.S. did have a role that could, I think, fairly be described as a meddlesome one at certain points."

Milani simply co-opts the truth and turns it into a bald lie,

"Oh, absolutely. I don't quarrel over that at all. And the gist of the article is that the notion that the U.S. has been only propping up despots in Iran and that the only purpose Iran served for the U.S. was to buy its weaponry and sell its cheap oil does not get to the core of a much more complicated, much more nuanced relationship."

At this point the hapless Raz simply folds and joins in the narrative that Milani is spinning,

"...in your article, you write: This is a seductive narrative, but what's strange is the group that it has seduced, the very meddlers themselves in Washington. What do you mean by that?"

So there it is. The US, the prime engineer of the Shah's installation and supporter of his dictatorship actually was working for freedom and democracy all along. And the proof of this lie? Simply the fact that the corrupt clerical regime in Iran was also complicit in the overthrow of Mossadegh.

Making Lemonade from Lemons [and Cupcakes from Cat Poo]

According to Rene Montagne on Christmas Eve morning, "One thing that is clear is that the U.S. and China are no longer observers in the international climate debate, but leaders." How's that for objective reporting?

I had to hear NPR's spin on the essentially antidemocratic Copenhagen "deal" orchestrated by Obama behind closed doors with China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. The report by Christopher Joyce essentially tries to lay the blame for the Copenhagen Summit's failure to reach a meaningful agreement at the feet of Venezuela and Sudan (seriously!). Here are highlights from NPR's creative take on the imperial arrogance of the US and the irresponsible behavior of rich countries at Copenhagen.

Joyce: "Many delegations did not view the five-nation accord as a step forward....Nonetheless, many in the climate business say it's lemonade from what was a very sour lemon. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, is in the lemonade camp. She says people had pushed the myth that the world was ready to agree on a new binding treaty, and it wasn't...." (Claussen's lemony position is less than unbiased - given that she worked for the US Department of State).

Joyce: "....delegations from countries like Sudan and Venezuela burned up conference time with procedural tactics and, Claussen says, unrealistic demands."

Claussen: "It wasn't clear that anything could get done because some group of countries or some country was trying to hold up everything, which is why I think the approach of just trying to do an accord with a small number of countries was probably the only way to have anything come out of this at all."

Joyce briefly lets Ray Kopp from Resources for the Future [and Member, U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, 1999 - present] note that China is like the US and doesn't want to be pushed around.

Finally Joyce, in typical NPR fashion - after consulting former State Department affiliated opinion - takes a hard right turn so as to use a bit of American Enterprise Institute quackery for concluding remarks. He trots out "climate expert" Dr. Kenneth Green who make these fair and balanced comments:

"Kyoto has been an albatross around the necks of those - of people who are genuinely concerned about climate change. The first thing they have to do is let go of the failed model, because they're pushing for basically two things countries cannot - democracies, especially - cannot do. It's economic suicide and the exporting of massive amounts of their people's wealth to their enemies or competitors." [No mention of planetary ecocide or of just where some of that people's wealth came from...]

Junk in the Air and Junk on the Air

Readers of this blog busted David Kestenbaum (pictured above) for airing crap about climate change during his coverage of the UN Copenhagen Conference. As "doggydaddy" writes,

"This [link to the Tuesday morning story] may help explain my antipathy towards Kestenbaum this AM. Of all the stories one could file from Copenhagen, he gives credence to hack skeptic Lomborg who has been thoroughly discredited. [link to a point by point refutation of Lomborg's "science."] What a doofus and a tool is the Kestenbum."

Given that Bjorn Lomborg has been debunked, refuted and exposed as having only one goal - pushing for "the pressing need to do nothing about global warming" - one can only conclude that Kestenbaum shares this mission. This would explain his 2008 adoring [and shameless] piece on a teen global warming skeptic.

So how does a groovin', Yale-Harvard hipster like Kestenbaum top a scoop interview with Bjorn Lomborg? He does it by using his Thursday morning slot to sneer at and ridicule the attendees at the conference for contributing to carbon pollution by using air travel to get to the conference - how cutting edge! As "Woody" wrote in the comments,

"I nearly went inside the radio this AM, when I heard that lame-ass report on the "carbon footprint" required to host the Climate Summit, and the ever-so-condescending snarkiness of the lazy, smirking, sold-out creeps and asswipes reporting it.

Just once, I'd like to hear some proper context, like what is the size of the carbon footprint of just one day's operations by the USer military in Central Asia."

Ah yes, the footprint of the US military in Central Asia, that would be interesting. In fact would have been great fun to hear Bjorn Lomborg asked about the bloated US military spending that could be used for those humanitarian projects that he supposedly cares so much about.

You Lie!

When I listened to Obama's Nobel Prize war speech and heard him say this

"Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms."

I wanted the blood of the millions of East Timorese, Vietnamese, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Haitians, Chileans and others murdered by the US "strength of arms" to cry out "You Lie!"

Then on Sunday morning I had to hear NPR feature not one, but TWO stories on an assassination carried out under Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. In spite of discussing the dreadful state of repression under Pinochet, neither story made any mention of the strong role played by the United States in instigating and supporting the Chilean nightmare.

This brought me back to Obama's speech. No wonder he can get away with saying something so blatantly and obscenely false. The news coverage of events that would contradict such propaganda disappears down the memory hole again and again.