A Tale of Two Cities - NPR and US Exceptionalism

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, I heard the following:

"...but the fact is...this is all unconfirmed. We know the government...has lied on several occasions about civilian casualties and strikes and damage, and frankly, we only have their word so far for what happened."

Isn't that the standard that ought to apply to all reporting? It seems reasonable that when a government has been proven to have lied about civilian casualties (e.g. here and here), lied about its reasons for going to war, and lied about the torture and murder of detainees then shouldn't all unconfirmed claims by that government be treated with skepticism and always be prefaced with the qualifiers included in the quote above. The answer is a rather obvious, "Yes." But on NPR there is one standard for countries and forces that the US government opposes and a completely different standard for the US government and its closest allies. Despite a long record of systematic lying about war, civilian deaths, and the abuse of detainees - I have - over the past five years - documented how NPR consistently grants official US statements the weight of confirmed evidence (or simply ignores stories where the evidence points to systematic lying and wrongdoing).

The quote above, from Sunday's Weekend Edition, is about the war in Libya and the lying government in question is the government of Libya's Gadhafi. The war in Libya - and especially the siege of Misrata - offers a unique opportunity to highlight NPR's embrace of American exceptionalism.

The forces of the Libyan government have attempted to destroy the rebel forces in Misrata in operations that are chillingly similar to the US military's destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. Misrata and Fallujah have about the same population size, about half-a-million for each. In April 2004 in Fallujah, as documented by the intrepid Dahr Jamail, the US used cluster bombs, indiscriminate sniping of civilians, and attacks on medical facilities. George Monbiot documented further war crimes of the US November 2005 assault on Fallujah - including the use of white phosphorous, thermobaric weapons, and the refusal to allow males of "fighting age" to flee the city. As in Misrata, US forces illegally focused their operations on hospitals and medical facilities. In spite of these illegal and barbaric tactics, you can search NPR in vain for stories on these crimes (cluster bombs- nothing, white phosphorous - mentioned after Pentagon admitted it, sniping civilians - nothing, attacking the hospital - nothing). Not only has NPR never reported the US war crimes against Fallujah, it has actually celebrated the assault.

Consider that NPR's censorship of the US horror show in Fallujah is now into it's eighth year, but in the less than two months of Libya coverage we have been given extensive coverage of every crime that the Gadhafi forces have perpetrated on Misrata. For example, in just this one Morning Edition report from April 13th, we hear the following from refugees:

• "We heard the Gadhafi troops were kidnapping people."
• "The Gadhafi forces aren't differentiating among their targets. They're attacking the young, the old, women, dragging people from their houses."
• "In the streets of Misrata I've seen bodies, I've seen them burned. The snipers are shooting people at random."

And a few days later on April 17th Lourdes Garcia Navarro reports on Misrata,

"From rebels that I've spoken to, Gadhafi's forces are shelling civilian areas - we are talking grad missiles, mortar fire, tank fire. A few days ago came the first reports of cluster bombs, which are banned by international law for use in civilian areas."

It's too bad that it is really impossible to imagine NPR ever providing such immediate reporting on US military actions and their impact on civilian populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, etc... or to imagine that they would ever give such well deserved qualifications of the lack of credibility that should always be given to any official statements issues by the White House, the US military, the State Department, NATO, etc.

Libya: The Narrow View

(Source of image)

With the cruise missile attacks and subsequent airstrikes in Libya, the US is now in it's third active war in a Muslim country (and second in a oil rich nation), and I listened to all of NPR's programming from Saturday's All Things Considered - which was packaged as "special coverage of the military situation in Libya" - and then Sunday morning's Weekend Edition.

It's truly astounding that we live in a country where the engagement in war is strictly prescribed by our Constitution to our House of Representatives. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent summary of how the US participation in the war on Libya defies any adherence to the Constitutional constraints on war-making powers of the President. It seems that some liberal Democratic Representatives are also angered at the dismissal of Constitutional concerns by our Constitutional Professor in Chief, but not NPR. You can listen to all the stories in these crucial NPR news shows from the first day of US participation in the war in Libya and never hear one word about the Constitutional issues raised by US military action in Libya. This is especially striking since on All Things Considered, Tom Bowman made a point of noting that War Secretary Gates made it very clear that this action in Libya "meant going to war."

The Constitutional issues are one point that any thinking US citizen should wonder about regarding the war in Libya. Another obvious question would be the rather gross hypocrisy of launching military action to "protect civilians" when the US is massively arming Saudi Arabia, one of the most radically repressive fundamentalist Islamic states in the region - a state that has helped murder unarmed protesters in its occupation of Bahrain.

To find any alternative views on the supposed "humanitarian" view of US warmaking in Libya, you'll have to go to The Independent, Chris Floyd, Common Dreams, or Al Jazeera - but if you want the Pentagon/White House presentation of this latest US military action then stick with NPR...you won't be disappointed.

Good JSOC Monkey

On Thursday morning our favorite sock monkey had this to say about the US war in Afghanistan:

"Administration officials say this review isn't a referendum on the strategy itself, but a close look at how it's being implemented; a gut check on what's working and what's not. And there are things that are working. U.S. led operations in the southern part of the country have pushed insurgent groups out of key areas. Special forces raids have captured or killed hundreds of insurgent leaders in the past few months."

Yes, there are things that are really working in Afghanistan: airstrikes are working wonders, civilians are benefiting immensely, operations in the south are clearly driving somebody out, and JSOC (special forces) raids - well they are definitely working. Astounding really. And the evidence offered? Martin says,

"Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says some progress was inevitable."

This is the same Anthony Cordesman who weighed in on Mr. Holbrooke on Tuesday's ATC and summed up his work in Af-Pak as follows:

"Mahatma Gandhi, had he been involved, could not have done better."

Now why didn't I think of Mahatma Gandhi when I thought of Richard Holbrooke? I guess that what experts like Cordesman are for - and why NPR returns to him again and 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!

You Got Punk'd

I had to post this because - to their credit - on Thursday's ATC, NPR had on Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation to give her reaction to Obama's War-You-Can-Believe In rubbish Nobel Peace Prize lecture. Here's what she said:

"President Obama is an ethical realist....a speech grounded in realism with elements of idealism ....could see why the Nobel committee awarded him this prize....had a humility and grace while confronting the paradoxes."

Even Bob Siegel had to ask, "But you seem to be resolving this conflict between the wartime president, who's escalated the U.S. operation in Afghanistan and the peace prize winner, and the speech about peace rather easily. I'm surprised. I'm surprised you're not more stuck on that one." [Yeah, me too!]

Vanden Heuvel simply took another sip o' the Kool-aid and added,

"And I think it is up to the people, not only in the United States, but this world, to push him to live up to the words he spoke in the speech which was a complex speech. It was a, kind of a speech that could be taught in a college course on just war and America's role in the world."

Wowzer! Even the pathetic Juan Williams was more articulate on Saturday's Weekend Edition:
"Well, I think it was a very militaristic speech....how does that relate to eight years of war that was based on weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist? And what does it say to us about dealing with Iran and their difficulties today?....here's a president who is advancing war - two wars at this moment - where is the peace? You know, where is the Martin Luther King? Where is the Mandela? The commitment to non-violence?"

NPR and the Resistence of Memory

Monday's Morning Edition featured another NPR exclusive on Afghanistan. Mary Louise Kelly was on to explain all about the Two-Clock Theory of War. Opening the report Renee Montagne explains:

"We begin this morning with Afghanistan and a story about two clocks: one ticks in Washington, the other in Kabul. They measure progress in the war. The challenge: they are moving at very different speeds" [notice the bloodless euphemisms - "progress" and "challenge"].

All perspectives in the story are provided by war advocates [Peter Feaver -Bush speech-shaper, warmakers Petraeus, Gates, and Mullen - and Steven Biddle, CFR fellow, who Kelly notes is "part of a team advising General Stanley McChrystal...on his war strategy"].

According to Kelly and all her experts, there are always two clocks in US warmaking: the grown-up, big-boy clock of the presidents, generals, and admirals as they bomb, occupy, kill, and destroy. This serious and mature clock ticks very slowly and takes years to produce progress and - ultimately - victory. Opposed to this is the childish, impatient clock of the American public which whizzes away at double or triple time and leads the uninformed masses to reject the wisdom of the wars that the serious grown-ups are running. Kelly's guest Feaver states that "A longstanding criticism of democracies, but especially the American democracy, is that Americans are impatient. They want to see success sooner than later."

Listening to this report, I realized that there is something grimly comical that Kelly has forgotten to tell us about: The Third Clock.

The third clock is the one that doesn't tick at all. In Kelly's report she notes something I've been hearing a lot about since Obama took over the Afghanistan War: the 12 to 18 month "window of opportunity." In Kelly's report we hear Admiral Mike Mullen state

"I do believe we have to start to turn this thing around from a security standpoint over the next 12 to 18 months."

Kelly reiterates this by noting, "So, progress within the next 12 to 18 months. But is that on the Washington clock or the Kabul clock?"

The date of Kelly's report is September 14, 2009. Let's see how the NPR clock ticks out this magical 12 to 18 month time frame.

THREE MONTHS ago, General McChrystal told Tom Bowman, "So, we see it as very, very important, probably over about the next 12 to 24 months, that we absolutely get a trend where we are clearly winning....I think that the next 18 months are probably a period in which this effort will be decided."

TWO MONTHS ago Robert Siegel talked to Sir Jock Stirrup [not joking], head of the British war staff, who stated, "Well, I think our judgment is probably the same that has been reached here in the United States, which is that over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, we need to be able to demonstrate convincingly to our people that we are making the right degree of progress."

ONE MONTH ago Inskeep chatted with Anthony Cordesman of CSIS about the coming victory in Afghanistan. Speaking on the US war policy in Afghanistan, Cordesman claimed, "If these tactics are to work, we'll know in 12 to 18 months."

Holy smokes! NPR's clock must be an Einsteinian relativity clock that appears to be moving normally to everyone at NPR, but in the real world is virtually standing still. What do you want to wager that next summer NPR will still be dutifully reporting on the need to show progress in Afghanistan within the critical 12 to 18 month time frame? Who knows, by then maybe they'll have dropped this catch phrase about Afghanistan and be explaining how the US has "turned a corner."

More Warrior Worship at NPR

(photo of a Vietnam era soldier reading a Navy antiwar newspaper - from Sir No Sir site)

In November of 2007 NPR's Allison Keyes trotted out the tired old myth about Vietnam vets being assaulted, harassed and showered with hate on returning from the war. The editors at NPR apparently felt like it was time to drag this corpse of a lie out again - so this afternoon they turned to Blake Farmer of WPLN in Nashville to report on a Vietnam veterans propaganda event being hosted by Fort Campbell in Kentucky. Siegel opens the report by claiming that returning vets "were often greeted with anger about the war," then Farmer takes the baton and is off and running:

• "....and for some the only greeting as they walked off the airplane was from angry war protesters - until now."
• "....says he was lucky, lucky he wasn't tossed into the hostility that awaited other discharged service members."
• "Larry Hamm from West Chester, Pennsylvania recalls angry crowds lining the airport fence, throwing rotten eggs..."

There are a few little problems with Farmer's reporting. To start with, that bit about "until now" overlooks the 200,000 Vietnam Vets and 500,000 adoring spectators who turned out in Chicago in 1986 to honor the vets and pretend that the US military didn't actually slaughter about 4 million Vietnamese. The exaggeration of "crowds lining the airport fence" and "throwing rotten eggs" would be hilarious if it weren't being reported as fact. Jerry Lembcke carefully researched the claims of Vietnam Vet abuse and could find no substantiated evidence of their veracity - not one article, photo, or news broadcast. You probably can guess how interested NPR is in Lembcke's work.

UPDATE:

I posted the following comment Monday afternoon on the NPR site for the story and had it removed as "inappropriate":

What a load of historical erasure this story is. NPR continues to cover up the active role Vietnam Vets played in ending the Vietnam War and their role in the "angry" antiwar movement. Frankly, the people claiming the nonsense about "spitting on vets" have no evidence to back up their claims and - in fact - a Vietnam vet, Jerry Lembcke, exhaustively researched the claims and found no evidence - none.

NPR could do us all a favor and cover the real heroes of US wars - people like Camilo Mejia and Victor Agosto who have shown the true courage of exposing US wars for what they are. Of course that would take some courage on NPR's part - something noticeably lacking these days...

I have no idea what made it "inappropriate," but I went ahead and posted this similar but revised version:

This report is full of hearsay and debunked inaccuracies. First, there was a huge Vietnam Vet welcome parade in Chicago in 1986. Second, many Vietnam Vets played an active role in the "angry" antiwar movement of the 60s and 70s. And third, people claiming the abusive treatment of vets have NO evidence to back up their claims and - in fact - a Vietnam vet, Jerry Lembcke, exhaustively researched these kinds of claims and found no evidence - none.

It would be great if NPR could even once seriously cover the war resisters - people like Camilo Mejia and Victor Agosto who have shown the courage of exposing US wars for what they are. I won't be holding my breath though, since I don't think NPR has the courage to challenge the militarism and worship of war that is so pervasive in the US...

We'll see how it fares.

Same Slaughter, Same Reporter

I think it's time to drug test JJ Sutherland - the man seems to be hyped up on testosterone in a big way. I was going to pass on last week's clipped-sentence tough-guy narration of an Air Force Cross won by a US airman for a firefight and assault in Afghanistan - until I heard him again this morning using the uber-macho style to sing the praises of the the US air-war machine again.

Here's a sample of last week's Sutherland:

"They came in at first light. Giant helicopters swooped into Shak Valley....'kind of trapped ourselves,' he says. Their mission had changed; now it was all about getting out alive....calling in air strikes from above: F-15s, Apaches, A-10s; it goes on for hours....had to call in air strikes practically on top of his own position: rockets, cannons, bombs. Nothing worked. Finally, they had only one option left....a TWO THOUSAND POUND BOMB."

Interestingly, in Sutherland's wargasmic homage he didn't mention a bit of information I found buried in an Air Force write-up of the attack:

"By the end of the fight, between 150 and 200 insurgents were killed, according to reports." We all know how accurate the US military has been about killing "insurgents" (i.e. If they kill you, you're an insurgent).

I also found that Afghans had a bit of a different take on the "mission."

That was last Tuesday, and then there was this Monday morning's quasi-religious worship of the fighter pilot, or as NPR titled it "Same Swagger, Different Jets."

Sutherland was at it again, chopping his sentences into manly Hemingway-size chunks:

"Fighter pilot: confident, swagger, ego...those who survive the competition are supremely confident. Ask any fighter pilot and he'll tell you a dogfight is no place for self-doubt. Results are what matter. Everyone in your squadron knows whether you succeeded or choked....the swagger's the same as it was when Yeager was flying P-51 Mustangs over Germany....at 9-Gs the blood is forced from your brain. It's hard to breathe, let alone talk, let alone be twisting around in your seat looking for someone trying to kill you....It's hard to imagine hearing this ['I feel the need, the need - for speed - ow!'] coming from a cubicle."

Yeah, nothing like all that supreme confidence when you're napalming peasants, cluster bombing Afghan villages, and flattening cities in Iraq. No place for questioning orders, no place for morality, just swagger - like JJ, radio warrior.

America's Fighting Prowess

On Wednesday morning, NPR's Tom Bowman covers two military advisers to McCain and Obama, Richard Armitage and Richard Danzig respectively. After describing Richard Danzing briefly, here's Bowman talking about Armitage:

"...by contrast Armitage is a blunt and forceful man with a shaved head, a Vietnam combat veteran, who lifts weights and runs an international consulting company. Armitage and McCain share a bond of military service - in an earthy sense - of America's fighting prowess [voice of Armitage comes in] 'notwithstanding high tech weapon systems, it's only an infantryman with a bayonet who can take and hold ground and bend an enemy to our will' and it's that infantryman - rather 150,000 of them currently holding ground in Iraq that separates McCain and Obama more than anything else..."

It is a telling piece of "reporting" - more for what we don't find out than for what we do. First, there is no mention that Armitage most recently was in the news because he was at the heart of the Plame leak scandal. That's just the start, though. Notice the euphemism of "runs an international consulting company." That's the polite way of saying he's a blunt and forceful war profiteer, and part of his long lucrative career was his connection to CACI, identified as one of the main operatives in the Abu Ghraib scandal. There is no mention of his active role in the Project for a New American Century, and - further back in time - his involvement in Iran-Contra and possible connections to covert action related drug-dealing.

Yes, I know this all does take a bit of the shine of that imposing skinhead of his. And that BS about "notwithstanding high tech weapon systems" and "an infantryman with a bayonet" - I think we know which one Armitage has parlayed into his tidy millions. Frankly there's something uber-creepy about that "bend an enemy to our will" stuff - a whiff of the waffen (if restricted try here, and scroll down near the bottom) in that one might say. But that's not going to stop Tom Bowman from linking it right up with the "150,000 of them currently holding ground in Iraq." Zounds! Holding what fricking ground, if I might be so bold to ask?

Addendum:

• Another drawback of NPR's scant use of substance in its reports is how a little research might actually make a story more nuanced and interesting. Given that the thrust of NPR's report is how different Armitage/McCain and Danzig/Obama view the idea of withdrawing US troops, Bowman could have asked Armitage about his new change of views (a little over a year and a half ago, he was leading the call for withdrawal and stating his mea culpa on starting the war). That would be interesting.

• Also, in spite of all the warrior-tough guy persona, Armitage has enough of a moral center (unlike some news outlets) to call torture torture and demand that it not be condoned.

Breakfast of Champions

Today's menu on Morning Edition was remarkably similar to yesterday's menu. There's more patriotic feasting on the war dead and their relatives served up yet again with gobs of syrup. But wait, today's offering had a bit of a twist: a bit of pungent sausage starts things off. Renee Montagne was waiting tables and though it was the same old rotten sausage as before, we got a a real Support for the Troops™ treat!

Montagne: "We begin in Bangor, Maine where American soldiers have stopped as they head overseas...At the terminal in Bangor the outbound soldiers have a last chance to call loved ones. It's also an opportunity for a group of volunteers to show their support for the troops™....Bill Knight and his fellow volunteers have greeted more than 670,000 troops in the years since the Gulf War began. He's a veteran and he remembers soldiers being heckled when they returned from Vietnam; now he says he's there to give soldiers top notch treatment.

If this tasty brunch left you hungry, don't worry; at NPR's Homeland Buffet it's all you can eat, all the time.

Schmaltz and Schlock

It's kind of interesting to look up the meanings of schmaltz ("mawkishness, oversentimentality") and schlock ("of low quality or value"). Then take a listen to NPR's piece this morning on mothers who have met in Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery where war dead of Afghanistan and Iraq are buried. Here's a sample of the report where Ari Shapiro plays it up as reporter-counselor-chaplain-sensitive guy:

Shapiro: "You must all feel like you know each others' kids by now?"

[general positive reaction] One of the women says, "My husband said, 'Isn't it so sad that we never got to know Brian, and we never got to know Justin and Dylan and Eric' and I said but I feel like I know them so well."

[to which Shapiro replies]: "And if it hadn't been for Brian and Justin and Dylan and Eric and Nicholas, you all would never have met each other."

[Group reacts sympathetically, agreeing]

Shapiro concludes: "I mean what a gift they could give to you that you all now have this group these connections...."

Honestly, I hate posting when the NPR vultures settle in on the war dead, because I don't want to offend anyone who has lost a loved one in a war. It's a horrible thing, but this syrupy grief voyeurism and pseudo-counseling is really shameless. Listen to the piece and ask yourself if there even one provocative question? (e.g. "How does it feel when you hear someone like Scott McClellan now confessing that the war was sold on misinformation and was unnecessary?" or "Do you ever think about the families of the one million Iraqis or the tens of thousands of Afghanis killed in this war?") There is not a single challenging question.

It's telling to see what a news organization can do with its resources (e.g. McClatchy painstakingly putting together the big picture of the torture state that the US has become) and to compare it to the fare that NPR offers.

Can We Please Take "On the Table" Off the Table?

One of NPR's most crucial roles as an enabler of unchecked power for the US state is to normalize the most grotesque and barbarous activities of the US. The support of torture states in Central and South America becomes a positive "counterinsurgency" strategy - and it's victories are praised as in yesterday's piece and many others. Civilians killed by the US and its allies are barely mentioned, and if mentioned are usually lumped together as "insurgents" or "militants." And of course our torture is never torture, just "enhanced interrogation" or "harsh interrogation."

You'd think there might be limits to encouraging the banality of evil, but not on NPR. The supreme crime of Nuremberg (that quaint trial of the 1940s), as eloquently spelled out by US Justice Robert Jackson in his opening statements was the Crime Against Peace:

"A basic provision of the Charter is that to plan, prepare, initiate, or wage a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances, or to conspire or participate in a common plan to do so, is a crime."

Count 2 against the defendants in the trial included:

"All the defendants with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding 8 May 1945, participated in the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances."

So it is that I am really sickened to hear the matter-of-fact tone that NPR uses in discussing the Bush Administration's threats to wage a war of aggression against Iran. Here's Inskeep and Gonyea this morning:

• Gonyea: "...at a press conference yesterday with European Union leaders - when asked about Iran - the President did not say something he has always said when talking about Iran: that all options are on the table in dealing with the Iranians. It made some of us think that perhaps he had taken the military option off the table. Well, guess what, he was asked about Iran today and he said not once but twice that all options are on the table, so if there was a slight easing of the rhetoric yesterday. It was back in place today.

• To which Inskeep responds: "But wait a minute. One of the questions here is can the US and Europe agree on how to handle Iran? Is Germany saying that all options are on the table?"

Honestly, if there's another war crimes trial in the future, NPR should have several seats reserved - in the docket. Have these mouthpieces for war ever considered demanding from officials EXACTLY what "all the options" are? Do they include surprise attacks, tactical nuclear weapons, terrorist bombings within Iran, assassination, etc? How do military options square with international laws and treaties?

A Tip of the Helmet

Democracy Now! is covering this weekend's Winter Soldiers: Iraq and Afghanistan event organized by the IVAW (and covered succinctly on Wired). This essential story was virtually a nonevent in the mainstream media, but NPR did give it coverage on Sunday's ATC.

Credit where credit is due.

Sexy?

In the Sunday story on the lost hydrogen bomb, Guy Raz is introducing the B-47 bomber:

"It was called the B-47; it was really a revolutionary bomber at the time, a really beautiful plane. Here's how military historian, Doug Keeny, describes it:

'The B-47 was a sexy, elegant looking aircraft. It had swept wings, very stylish, rakish swept wings, it had a swept tail. These were all new innovations. It was a jet engined aircraft with pods, they were in pairs.' "

No comment needed.

King Gagged...Again

I heard a bit of NPR's Martin Luther King Holiday coverage. Man, seems like MLK worked, sacrificed, and organized just so we could get Clinton and Obama (and Romney and Huckabee!) into the race for President! Hello - there is a war on, a violent, illegal, shameful US launched and run war that calls up Kings legacy beyond his "Dream" speech. How about some of his "Beyond Vietnam" speech? Here's an excerpt apropos of our current carnage in the desert:

"They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."

It's sad that this erasure of the King who was antiwar, anti-poverty, and class conscious happens year after year. Consider this oldie (1995) from FAIR; it seems even more relevant today.

Schlock and Awww

How one observes Veterans' Day is a foil that reveals one's worldview. On NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday I waited in vain to hear about how current veterans are honored for their service with the freedom to sleep on the streets. Or how many veterans are speaking out against the war (and slandered for or prevented from doing so). How about the virtual conscription of stop-loss that active military face?

I waited to hear something about who benefits from the terrible sacrifices (the numbers often downplayed in the media) of veterans, instead of the silliness about sacrifices made to "defend us."

Instead of anything shedding light on the exploitation of US military men and women in an illegal war of aggression and consequent occupation all I got was a ridiculous in-depth report on the crack (OH MY!) in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, DC (should it be repaired or replaced?) Yes, I'll be losing sleep over that controversy. This was followed by a long, solemn advertisement for the military-religious music CD being released by Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

All this is especially galling given that NPR does have a reporter who often does right by the issues that veterans face - and that would be Daniel Zwerdling.

Fluff

Help! Yesterday I woke up and it was 1957 again! Instead of young enlisted persons being killed in a foreign land to save a weaselly President's (and a pathetic Congress') botched war, I heard about "noble" sacrifice and patriotic fervor for heroic deeds.

Instead of biting and serious comics such as Get Your War On, or those by Aaron McGruder, Lynda Barry, Ted Rall, or Tom Tomorrow or I got a 10 year send up of "Sluggy"!

Gosh, all I missed was a few cigarette commercials, a car ad, and a stirring rendition of the national anthem.

See the 600-Pound Gorilla

If you suffered through Guy Raz's incredible-shrinking-defense-budget nonsense this morning, check out this Louisiana blogger's sharp critique. Also War Resister's League has been settting the record straight on the "defense" budget shell game for years.

Gold Stars for Scottie and Guy

The disgusting exploitation of Pat Tillman's death -- orchestrated by the US Army (like the dishonest exploitation the Jessica Lynch "rescue") -- gets soft peddled and papered over by Scott Simon and Guy Raz on Saturday Weekend Edition.

These two accept the latest Pentagon versions of events without question. Here's Raz: "...but I should say at the outset Scott, the report found no criminal intent at all among anybody involved. What it did find was a series of mishaps, bad decisions, that led to circumstances where Pat Tillman’s family and essentially the country wasn’t notified about the circumstances of his death..." The report comes from the Pentagon's own inspector general.

What is interesting is that there is no intelligent coverage (such as can be found here) given to the actual facts or context of the Tillman story (and nothing about Pat's antiwar views or his brother Kevin's passionate critique of the current US war policies - in fact there has never been any coverage of this dimension of the story on NPR [see this search and this one]). Still Raz can say, with no embarrassment, "Well, we all know the story about Pat Tillman of course..."

Given that the original story of Tillman's death was a shameless propaganda ploy, what is the main journalistic concern of Simon? He asks Raz, "Does this in any way endanger the Silver Star that he received?" Now there is the question that gets to the moral heart of this sad tale.

Raz assures Simon that Tillman's Silver Star will not be revoked. Whew...I know I was worried. What Scottie and Guy don't tell us is that they have earned their gold star stickers for being loyal apologists for the Pentagon propaganda machine...good work boys.

Blathering of Eagles

Seeing today's post on Informed Comment about continuing, vigorous protests against the Iraq War and seeing this coverage in other outlets such as Iraq Slogger and the BBC got me to reexamining NPR's coverage of the antiwar rallies. Here's what I noted:

This morning, nothing.

On Saturday Morning Rachel Martin spent about 4 minutes covering antiwar Christians gathering at the National Cathedral who then marched to the White House. The report was a reasonable summary of the event and gave a lot of airtime to participants and organizers.

Saturday evening found Jackie Lyden spending about 3½ minutes reporting on the main antiwar march in Washington DC on Saturday. It fairly conveyed the main points of the demonstrators and interviewed a few participants.

AND THEN on the same show there was Allison Keyes' unprofessional send-up of the prowar counter-demonstration sponsored by Gathering of Eagles. Now, if the counter demonstrators were able to mobilize a significant turn-out (which is unclear from other news reports), I don't have any problem with NPR covering it. Putting a mike in front of the leaders of these people is quite informative (on Keyes' report we hear one speaker calling antiwar folks "traitors" and accusing the network media of calling soldiers "mercenaries" and "murderers."). But Keyes makes a telling statement revealing her sympathies:

"...there were a few funny moments as the two sides shouted across wooden barriers at each other. A glaring blond female anti-war protester faced off against a bright-eyed man on the pro-troops side..."

Additionally Keyes dutifully repeats the slander against antiwar marchers by stating that "the anti-antiwar demonstrators were planning to spend the day guarding the Vietnam War Memorial from the antiwar protesters."

Ah ha! So you see - in spite of the larger rally of antiwar protesters, in spite of the rallies occurring in many cities (here and abroad) over several days, in spite of the presence of veterans an military families in the antiwar marches, and in spite of the concern for wounded and killed troops by the antiwar protesters - it is the prowar crowd that is "pro-troops" and while the antiwar marchers are traitors who want to deface the Vietnam War memorial. Unbelievable...

An apology is due.