The Great Taboo

(If you want to purchase these cute little monkeys they are just $9.95)

On Friday's ATC Mara Liasson says one of the stupidest things I've heard on NPR in a while - which is saying something! Talking about the waning popularity of the BushLite Obama administration among more left leaning and progressive Democrats Liasson states,

"And there are other disagreements. On Afghanistan much of the Democratic base is opposed to the President's troop increase although the Christmas bomber may have taken some of the heat out of that sentiment."

In Liasson/Foxworld one's thinking seems to be limited to rather primitive stimulus/response equations, such as

Terrorist attempt [X] against a US target [Y] = more US military action [N] in Afghanistan [or Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan].

How else to explain the utter nonsense of her claim that progressives - who know that the Obama Afghanistan War is immoral, stupid, and ultimately destructive of real security - would change their minds based on one terrorist's attempt to bomb a US airliner? If Liasson had any clue about progressive/leftist voters she would realize that the attempted Christmas day attack contradicts the supposed rationale for stepping up the US war on Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, Liasson's comments reveal not just Foxified thinking but that of the mainstream media - and especially highlight its refusal to ever consider what creates and motivates acts of terrorism and/or violence against US assets.

After the Christmas Day bombing attempt, probably the biggest story of the week was the bomber who attacked the CIA in Afghanistan. Any curious person would want to know what motivated the apparently trusted attacker to infiltrate the US base and lethally target US/CIA operations. However, the stunning fact is how little attention is given in the mainstream media to the factors that motivate terrorists and irregular fighters who attack US forces. Glenn Greenwald has covered this taboo recently in two articles: the first regarding the Christmas Day bomber and the second on the CIA base bomber. Regarding the CIA bomber there's nothing unclear or hard to discern about his motives:

• Time magazine notes "The Jordanian intelligence sources who spoke to TIME speculate that al-Balawi had become enraged at the Americans for killing a high number of civilians in their hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders."
• CBS reports that the wife of the bomber stated that he "was outraged over the treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."
• The New York Times reports that the bomber's brother explained "that his brother had been 'changed' by last year’s three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians."

So how does NPR cover this? Try a little searching and see if you can find any NPR news stories relating Abu Ghraib, civilian deaths, or the Gaza massacre to the actions of the CIA bomber who attacked the CIA. Here's what you'll find:

• Search "cia afghanistan" - lots of coverage of the attack.
• Search "cia afghanistan civilian casualties" - nothing regarding the attack.
• Search "cia afghanistan abu ghraib" - nothing regarding the attack.
• Search "cia afghanistan gaza" - nothing regarding the attack.

I guess these details don't quite fit in with the "they hate us for our freedom" conventional wisdom or with NPR's recent adulatory coverage of the CIA.

Q Tips

Happy New Year all. NPR related comments are welcomed as always.

Civilians, Terrorists, and Cold-blooded Killers

(Image by wordle.net - click here for original)

I guess it's a challenge for a CIA-friendly news organization like NPR to decide how to report on an attack on a military base that kills CIA operatives. When the story broke in the evening on Dec. 30th the first reports out of Afghanistan referred to civilians being killed on a military base (which did seem odd). By Thursday morning, the BBC was already reporting that the dead were not "civilians" but CIA operatives. Given the CIA's history of murder and assassination, and its current role in military operations and extrajudicial killings in Af-Pak, you might expect that they would be referred to as paramilitary or irregular forces or simply CIA agent/operatives.

On Thursday morning, NPR's mouthpiece in Afghanistan, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson still hadn't figured out that no civilians were killed in the attack on the military base in Khost. She told Steve Inskeep that the suicide bomber

"ended up killing eight American civilians here, killing one Afghan and wounding up to a half dozen more."

As the day wore on NPR's top-of-the hour (TOTH) news bulletins had stopped calling the dead civilians - but now the lethal suicide-attack inside a heavily fortified military base housing CIA operatives was transformed into...a terrorist attack! Newsreader Lakshmi Singh, at midday was stating,

"The CIA says 7 of its employees were killed and six others wounded in a terrorist attack yesterday in Afghanistan. The officers were working in a base in the southeastern province of Khost."

By Thursday afternoon (Dec. 31), the reporting on the attack had morphed into a somber tribute to the noble CIA and all that sacrifices if has made to keep the world safe. Mary Louise Kelly was given the assignment for ATC and she talked to Robert Siegel about it.

Siegel: "And what kind of work were they doing in Khost province?"

Kelly: "Well, the agency is not confirming any specifics....But it's safe to assume that they were doing what CIA types do in remote areas of the world, which is help identify enemy targets, also help recruit locals who can serve as CIA agents, perhaps what was they were trying to do here." [Silly me, I thought they tortured and killed people, propped up dictators, and helped overthrow democratically elected governments.]

Kelly later goes on to note that seven is a very high number of fatalities for the CIA to have in one day:

"...And it's interesting, you know, you walk into CIA headquarters today, walk into the original headquarters building and on the big wall on the left, as you enter, is a wall of stars. Each star representing one of the CIA officers who gave their life in service - was killed in action. Now on that wall there are 90 stars. Remarkable really when you think about how dangerous that line of work is and how long..." [I'm just guessing that Kelly is very familiar with the inside of CIA headquarters.]

Siegel interrupts, "It's a very small number for all these years."

Kelly responds, "Exactly. They've been doing it for six decades now. So, that helps, I think, give some perspective on how devastating it is to have lost seven in one day." They definitely have been doing it...and if there were one star for every poor soul killed as a result of CIA "service" there wouldn't be a wall big enough to put them all on.

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.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

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...]

Q Tips

All precious NPR related comments are welcomed.

Pottersville Redux - Happy Holidays

(click to see the original still)

My, my, how things change. Seems like it was just yesterday (ok, 2006) when I posted my holiday greeting card featuring Cheney and Bush bringing us our Wonderful Life. Well there was a big election since then, and - what with the Bankster bailouts, the GITMO shuffle [hello Illinois], the expanded secrecy acts, the Afghanistan Surge™, the Health Care Reform Christmas present to the Insurance industry, it only seemed fair and balanced to reissue and update my holiday howdy featuring our new POTUS and his loyal assistant Timmy Geithner - oh yea, Change We Can Believe In.

BTW - It seems like I'm managing about one post a week, which seems about right. The help from readers in the Q-Tips section has been great, and I'll post a new Q-Tips tomorrow.

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.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

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.

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?"

Let's Have a Tea Party

In case you missed it last Wednesday's ATC gave a whopping 12.5 minutes of airtime promoting the sophisticated political maturation of the Tea Party movement - especially in Texas. Bob Siegel was hosting...
(cursor over each frame and click the hyperlinked ones you want to follow - nos. 1,2,3, 10, 13, & 14)

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

And From the Left

NPR's supposedly liberal, left-leaning Dan Schorr weighs in on Obama's escalation of the war and occupation of Afghanistan on Weekend Edition Saturday:

Simon: "President Obama appeared at West Point, send 30,000 or more U.S. troops to Afghanistan by next fall. How would you characterize the speech?"

Schorr: "I would characterize it as being a statesmanlike speech trying to deal with two disparate problems. One of the problems is they need to send more troops to Afghanistan. The other problem is that that does not go down very well with a great many liberals in the Democratic Party [seriously, click on this link to see my Republican representative's stand on Afghanistan]. And what he's done in effect is to say here we come and there we go, 18 months later, hoping that he managed to get both groups. He may succeed, but not entirely.

Simon: "Of course the concern was raised by a number of people this week - in Congress, commentators - that if you a put time stamp on a commitment, it doesn't impress anybody and it allows the Taliban to say we'll just hold onto the ropes for 18 months, and for that matter, as some people suggested, it's hard to ask U.S. troops to risk their lives for that kind of exit."

Schorr: "Well, you're right. It's not really a very wise thing to do if you want to get the Taliban and al-Qaida out of there. You don't say just hang around, we'll be leaving in 18 months, it's not a very good idea. But he had a very sticky problem that what would work internationally would not work with public opinion at home, and he tried to straddle that.

With "liberals" like these who needs conservatives?

Q Tips

Ok, I'm still on break - notwithstanding the post below - so swing away.

Propaganda Squared

A reader noted in the Q Tips section below that Tuesday's ATC featured Pentagon propaganda on the Green Berets. It's no secret that NPR do love it some counterinsurgency, including the Green Berets.

The piece from Jon Kalish was an unabashed, uncritical advertisement for a Green Beret commercial called Why We Fight Now. There was no critique of the Green Berets, just positive comments, an "explanation" of the filmmaker's motives, and a handy link to the 10 minutes of the film on YouTube (watch it if you can stomach it - it's a lazy, stupid, paean to warriorism).

Here's a taste of the NPR feature:

Kalish: The film is titled Why We Fight Now, a nod to the World War II series Why We Fight, produced by Hollywood filmmaker Frank Capra for the U.S. War Department.....Why We Fight Now has no narration and consists mostly of Green Berets talking about their work. It was directed by Mark Benjamin, a 62-year-old Manhattan filmmaker who might seem an odd choice for the job." [Actually there is nothing but narration, provided by Green Berets parroting a simple-minded world view and the worship of war and counterinsurgency which in NPRspeak is "talking about their 'work.' "]

Benjamin: "I've always been anti-war and never thought I would ever work for the military."

Kalish: On the wall in Benjamin's office is a poster of Che Guevara, but there's also a picture of a Green Beret handing a piece of food to a child in Afghanistan. Benjamin's political evolution is due in no small part to the terrorist attacks of September 11. He knew people who died and has made several films dealing with the day's repercussions."

Benjamin: "Because of 9/11, I became this liberal hawk. My own political perspective on global conflicts, democracy, capitalism, human rights everything changed. I certainly became more militant. I think we should go after terror wherever it is."

That's all we get. Not one bit of intelligent information or analysis. There is some chatter from an ex-Green Beret who now is a fellow at NPR-favorite war-tank, Center for New American Security, who liked the film (surprise!) and seemed surprised that the military is airing this pro-special forces rubbish (because it favors the Green Berets over other special forces!)

As always there was no mention of the sordid history of the Green Berets supporting dictators and torture states - such as the disgusting Karimov of Uzbekistan or the torture deaths of Green Beret prisoners in Afghanistan (yawn...) or the usual trail of torture, blood, and repression that US special forces leave in their wake all over the world.

In the comments section below the story Boulder Dude nails it: "So, what does one call Propaganda of a Propaganda film? Double Plus Good news?" Or as I see it propaganda squared.

Q Tips

I'm on break, but NPR related comments are still welcomed.

Taking A Break

Hi folks. I'll be taking a bit of a break from blogging on NPR. Honestly, I'm a tad sick of listening to NPR news and documenting the same distortions, omissions, and flat out lies over and over again. Also my hands have to get some time away from the computer.

With the holidays approaching, this seemed like a good time as any to take some time off. If anyone wants to start their own NPR monitor blog, please do and send me the link so I can prominently post it.

My intention is to take a month or so off and then only post intermittently.

Peace and cheers,

Matthew Murrey (Mytwords)

Some Families are More Equal Than Others

(click the photo for the 9/11 families that NPR omits)

If you've listened to NPR's coverage of the Obama/Holder decision to send just five 9/11 suspects to New York for civilian trials, you've probably heard something about the families of 9/11 victims.

Wednesday's (Nov. 18th) ATC featured this clip:

Senator Jon Kyl (R., Arizona): "How could you be more likely to get a conviction in federal court when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before a military commission and be executed?"

Ari Shapiro: "In the audience, families of 9/11 victims applauded. Kyl's questioning became more pointed and for the first time in the hearing the perpetually cool attorney general seemed to get upset."

In case you missed the importance of the 9/11 families Dina Temple-Raston was hard at it the next morning.

Thursday's (Nov. 19th) ME:

Senator Jon Kyl (R., Arizona): "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already asked to plead guilty before a military commission and be executed. How could you be more likely to get a conviction in an Article 3 court than that?"

Temple-Raston: "Families of the 9/11 victims in the audience applauded quietly before they were shushed by the chairman."

Kind of leaves the impression that all the 9/11 families want are the extralegal military commissions and some sort of hurried executions.

As in its coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, NPR is careful to avoid families who break from the official US/Pentagon script. I guess that's why - during the coverage of the proposed New York trial venue for the five suspects - we'll never hear from 9/11 families who WANT trials that uphold due process and the rule of law.

Given the rest of NPR's coverage of this Holder/Obama decision, the exclusion of critical 9/11 families is no surprise. NPR - as a proudly mainstream news outlet - has failed to put the Holder/Obama decision in its proper context. As Glenn Greenwald has so cogently noted, the Obama/Holder decision is little more than the "show trial" feature of a multitiered, irregular system of justice featuring some civilian trials, irregular military commissions, and Orwellian indefinite detention.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

More from the Stupid Aisle

How would you complete the following sentence:

For nearly two years the US economy has been battered by a recession brought on by _________________.

I would guess most semi-informed people would mention the housing bubble and mortgage backed securities (unless you are so completely incompetent as to not know about the $8 trillion dollar housing bubble!). Somewhere in the discussion one would hope to hear about the sub-prime lending spree that hugely profited unscrupulous mortgage brokers and victimized many borrowers. Right?

Not if you're Liane Hansen chatting with Marilyn Geewax (get out the Q Tips!); according to Hansen the recession was brought on by "excessive borrowing - millions of people took on far too much mortgage debt or maxed out their credit cards." Yep, it was all those foolish Americans frivolously maxing out their credit cards and buying houses willy-nilly. At this point you hopefully gave NPR one of its well deserved Dial-away™ moments and switched to some other station, otherwise you were subjected to even more astute economic insights about Americans and their savings.

After Geewax explains that a study found that "about half of all Americans said they couldn't scrounge up $2000 even if they turned to their relatives for help," Hansen asks, "Why do so many people live on the financial edge?" A reasonable question. You might expect to hear something about depressed wages, exhorbitant health insurance fees, predatory lending, skyrocketing college expenses, union busting, etc. or as one of the commenters on the NPR site writes,

"This was a very poor presentation of the issue by NPR. Despite an introduction, followed by an interview, not a thing was said about American wages. They mention how generations ago, we had a greater savings rate, never mind that back then, families could live well on one income."

Geewax is not about to answer the question, but continues on with scolding the current generation of Americans,

"We've just sort of step by step, generation by generation, gotten more accustomed to this idea of easy credit...has lead to a kind of financial illiteracy, we don't read the fine print, we don't really think about compounding interest and so people kind of lost track of the financial risks..."

If all this weren't bad enough, Geewax and Hansen then turn the whole story into a condescending commercial for NPR. Geewax explains that to save up $2000, all a couple has to do is each "put $20 in a cookie jar every time they listen to Lianne Hansen on Sunday mornings, by the end of the year that couple would have $2000." Wow why didn't I think of that? Better yet, if everyone put a dollar in the cookie jar every time they heard something stupid on NPR news, we'd all be millionaires by years end!

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

I'm In the Stupid Aisle

Okay, Chana Joffe-Walt actually said, "I'm in the the soup aisle" as she spoke to her partner in inanity, David Kastenbaum on their Planet Money story on this Friday's ATC. NPR Check reader, Grumpy Demo, picks apart the Planet Monkeys latest effort in the Q Tips below and in the comments section of the NPR story:

I don't think NPR has ever packed more stupid into any single story, here's just a sample:

No. 1 There is no "Rule" that the same goods have to have the same price. This is not taught in ANY economics or business class. If you reporters weren't apparent economic illiterates and had attended at least one economics class you would have known that price is a function of supply and demand. In fact, this proves this imaginary NPR "Rule" is nonsense.

No. 2 The reporters compare prices of canned pasta and announce that a price of $1.00 is pretty close to a price of $1.09. NO IT'S NOT. There's a 9% difference in price, which is a significant difference (Would your reporters take 9% less in pay because its "pretty close"?) Less than a minute into the report, and the "Rule" doesn't work.

No.3 Most hospital are not businesses, they are non-profits, so contrary to your reporter's contention, their goal is to serve the public not achieve maximum profits.

No.4 Why does no one on Planet Money have the foggiest grasp of the concept in "inelastic demand"? Which proves that comparing health care to canned pasta is bogus.

No.5 Why does Planet (worship the)Money ALWAYS frame health economics terms of Right Wing Freeper world view? On Planet Money (and NPR) there is absolutely no moral component to health care. Which seems to explain your reporter being perplexed as to why an emergency room can't turn anyone away.

Please, please find someone at that understands basic math, I've given up on any hope of you finding someone that understands economics.

Doesn't NPR have editors?

Ouch...

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

A Safe Port for Wade Goodwyn's Determination

Wade Goodwyn is NPR's point man for covering Tuesday's ceremony at Fort Hood. On Tuesday's ATC, Goodwyn does some creative reporting. In answering Melissa Block's question about what struck him most about the ceremony, Goodwyn reflects on the emotions of the event, offers praise for the stock patriotic sentiments of President Obama's speech, and then states,

"And for the soldiers, I think, renewed determination. They got hit at home and that has made plenty of these men and women angry."

Block asks if he spoke to any of the soldiers attending the ceremony and Goodwyn responds,

"I mean, there used to be a sense that this was a safe port; that's gone now. People here have a feeling that something valuable was stolen from them, like coming home and finding a thief rifling through the house, who has taken some of your most precious possessions."

Finally, Block asks about the issue of the accused shooter's Muslim faith. Goodwyn notes,

"certainly this kind of thing does not help our Muslims in uniform. Who knows what Major Hasan allegedly was trying to achieve with this act, but whatever that might've been, it did the opposite. It seems to me this has just hardened the Army's determination to achieve the missions. The shooting only facilitated the Western character of Muslims as violent extremists...."

Two issues in Goodwyn's comments really stand out. The first is his trumpeting of determination and missions. He claims that the massacre at Fort Hood has produced "renewed determination" in the soldiers. Determination to do what? Continue with the six year old supreme international crime called the Iraq War? Continue waging war and occupation in yet another country that doesn't want our troops there? Goodwyn conveniently never explains what this vague "determination" is for, but he returns to it and amplifies it as "the Army's determination to achieve the missions." Missions? Missions to do what? Are we supposed to believe that our nation's permanent war syndrome actually has some kind of missions (besides enriching the war industry and rotting away whatever liberal democratic principles remain)? Goodwyn's absurd logic would be laughable if it weren't so perverse: after admitting that Hasan's motive is unknown, he then proceeds to conclude that "whatever that might have been, it did just the opposite."

The second issue is Goodwyn's ridiculous assertion that Fort Hood was "a safe port." What planet has Goodwyn been living on? Did he do ANY research about Fort Hood (in Killeen, TX) - which has experienced previous carnage and - like all of the US military - is not a safe port for women. It's not surprising that Goodwyn ignores rape and sexual assault in the US military, since NPR news has not covered it (though the subject was featured on one NPR's Day to Day show in 2007 and found its way to NPR's website via The Nation).

Pierre Tristam, a writer for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, notes that

"The reality is that what Hasan did is a more American act than anything else. Killeen, of all places, has a history of violence, the kind of violence that is more essentially American than Arab or Muslim, just as terrorism's ground zero in the United States, before the World Trade Center, was Oklahoma City."

Tristam's work is what journalists are supposed to do. In contrast Goodwyn (as he did three years ago) does just the opposite: parrots the empty patriotic cliches of the Pentagon and the President, while ignoring relevant history and the underlying issues that really threaten what's left of our democratic principles.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

(Be sure to notice the 2009 Weblog Awards link in the sidebar - any assists are appreciated!)

OMG! Only 45 Shopping Days Left

Monday meant that there were only 45 shopping days before Christmas, and NPR was in crass commercialism high gear.

If you were casually listening to Morning Edition, you might have thought NPR was reporting on its own newsreader stars - Montagne, Inskeep, Siegel, Norris, and Block -

"[They]...have names like Mr. Squiggles, Chunk, Pipsqueak....[and] are embedded with a computer chip so they can squeak, chirp and respond"

- and not the $10 MUST HAVE TOY of the season - computerized hamsters:

By the time All Things Considered [emphasis on Things] rolled around the cost level of the embedded commercials had gone up a notch.

Melissa Block spent more than 4 minutes with Omar Gallaga going over stuff like Motorola's Droid phone

[Gallaga]"...it's a very kind of masculine metal dense in your hand, kind of feel, not curvy like the iPhone. So, I think it's definitely a good alternative to the iPhone. If I were shopping for something outside of the iPhone universe...."

Dell's newest thin laptop

[Gallaga] "I got some cuddle time with it as I like to call it....It's very, very thin....there's some very interesting design things going on...It all sounds good so far. But the downside is that it starts at $1799."

And a new video game starring Mickey Mouse

[Block] "Disney is going to be a using a video game to help reinvent, re-imagine one of its most beloved characters. The game is called Epic Mickey. What can you tell us about it?"

Fortunately Americans now have some way cool stuff to spend those unemployment benefits on. Are we feeling stimulated yet?

I see the product placements continue this morning (Tuesday) with Inskeep hawking Call of Duty 2 (No, not Obama's supposed Afghanistan war plans!), the video game.

Q Tips

NPR related Precious Moments™ comments welcomed.

Election 2009 Trash Talk

If NPR's Repulican dominated discussions of the 2009 elections (e.g. Inskeep's Nov. 5 ME schmooze with Mike Murphy, Don Gonyea's afternoon friendly with Murphy, and Fox New/NPR "analyst" Liasson's lie fest with Frank Donatelli) have you scratching your head - it's nothing new. The 2006 national elections should have removed any doubts about NPR's rightwing tilt when it comes to electoral coverage; in 2006 NPR hammered away at the made-up claim that the clear repudiation of Republicans was actually a national call for bipartisanship.

I've posted below on Inkseep's pathetic interview with Murphy, and I was pleased to find a withering post at Daily Kos concerning Mara Liasson's hackery. Beyondleft writes,

"I didn't know it was possible to pack so many lies into a 5 minute radio report, but Mara Liasson surpassed my expectations."

Indeed! Besides flogging Liasson the dKos piece contains a link to Randy Lobasso's Philly2Philly.com wrap up on the elections. It's about the best summary I've read. After reading it you can't help notice the utter lack of NPR/corporate media coverage of the John Garamendi victory in the CA-10 House race where a progressive democrat won a seat formerly held by a rightwing democrat. Guess that kind of result just doesn't fit in the GOP landslide - warning to Democrats spin that NPR and other conventional press outlets are trying to sell.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

Inskeep Works Hard for the Money

On Thursday morning, Inskeep interviews Mike Murphy (the classy Republican strategist) about the huge, massive, overwhelming Democratic gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday evening - oops, that was in 2001 - I meant the similar 2009 Republican triumphs in those states that are a "slap in the face" to Obama and the Democrats.

For those of us living in the reality-based sphere, we recall that Obama and Democrats made all kinds of concessions for the stimulus bill - only to get NO Republican votes in the House. We remember that team Obama squelched single payer and backed corporate insurance "reform" only to have the Republican nihlists savage these timid reforms. And any of us who give a crap about the Constitution, are seriously disturbed by the extremist Bush-Obama efforts to enshrine the absolutism of the security state.

Keeping these troublesome facts in mind, consider the statements that were made by Mike Murphy as Steve Inskeep interviewed him this morning:

"...hopefully to have some Democrats now start thinking about a bipartisan approach, where they can sit down with Republicans and actually compromise, rather than asking Republicans to vote 99 percent Democrat and call that compromise."

Inskeep's challenge to this nonsense: "We'll talk about that a little bit, but I want to ask a little more about these elections...." When that "later" roles around, here's his big confrontation,"Why do you think, as you suggest, that these election results would cause Democrats in Washington and Congress to work a little more collaboratively with Republicans?" Yes, Inskeep just rolls over, and accepts the lie that Democrats have been obstructing bipartisanship and running roughshod over Republicans.

Seeing that Inskeep knows how to "work collaboratively" with him, Murphy states,

"Because I think the great mistake of the Obama presidency...is they were elected as a bipartisan problem solver, almost a post-partisan politician. But from the day they've been in, they got a little drunk on the power and they've governed as a one-party liberal party....the Democrats, in my view, are governing too far to the left. They're losing the middle of the country...."

Drunk on power? One-party liberal party? Too far to the left? Seriously, did I miss the Democrats pushing for a Roosevelt-style jobs program? Was I sleeping when the Democrats insisted on pursuing single-payer health insurance, or a full public option open to all with no "triggers" or provisos attached? Are the Democrats seeking to have the Bush torture architects and practitioners investigated and tried? Did the banks get nationalized? Did the Pentagon budget get slashed?

And Inskeep's rejoinder? - "Now, when you say the Democrats should learn a lesson of not being too focused on health care, I mean, they're in it. I mean, they're going to try to pass a bill. How should this affect the health care debate for them?" In other words, NOTHING - no challenge, no fact check, no mention of the recent past. I guess that's how Inskeep earns that whopping $353,390 a year salary (+ $38,698 to "employee benefit plans") *[from page 57 of the NPR FY 2008 IRS 990 filing.]

*Or simply click on graphic at the top of this post to see the 5 highest paid NPR employees in 2008 - how Alex Chadwick fits in there is anybody's guess.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

Bend It Like Beck - Ahem

"I've said it before, and I will reiterate it. NPR is a mainstream news outlet." - Alicia Shepard, Nov. 2, 2009

I have to hand it to NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, when she posts on her blog, she really knows how to put ugly out there. This was manifest in her June21, 2009 defense of not calling torture torture and her similarly enhanced defense of the same on June 30, 2009. If you've not read Glenn Greenwald's critique of Shepard on this matter, it is well worth the read.

On her Monday, Nov. 2 post, Shepard's back with a doozy, distorting her critics' positions and selectively misquoting herself in order to defend her stated desire to have MORE conservative voices on NPR news.

Shepard is writing about a complaint she received regarding comments she made on the Kojo Nmadi show on the Washington, DC public radio affiliate, WAMU. A caller had just hung up after noting - with examples - that NPR's usual range of experts/pundits ranged from the hard right to slightly left of center at best. Shepard's response (starting at about the 42 minute mark) was telling:

"Public radio listeners are very passionate about what they hear...people hear things selectively....people hear groups that they think shouldn't be on NPR and then they latch on to that and I think that's just how we're wired as human beings..."

and then comes

"...do I think NPR could do a better job? I think of having more conservative voices on NPR ah, you know rather than saying that they pander to conservatives, I just think some of the conservative names Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck. I mean when Glenn Beck is on NPR I can be assured that there will be a lot of emails about that, and I feel like, 'Hey you should hear what Glenn Beck has to say. You know, like it or not, he is influential.' "

It's crucial to note that there is absolutely nothing in Shepard's on-air comment indicating that she thinks it's important to report on the views of people like Beck and Limbaugh - to hold their statements up to facts and to explore the phenomenon of the popularity of hate and misinformation news-opinion shows. Is there any other way to interpret Shepard's remarks, except to conclude that she believes more conservative voices such as Beck and Limbaugh should be on NPR?

And so she received an angry email from a listener who wrote,

"I was outraged by your comment today on the Kojo Nnamdi program that NPR should have more people like Glenn Beck who represent a certain point of view not heard on NPR."

Seems like a pretty open and shut case of Ombudsman says something stupid and unethical, gets caught, and should issue an apology/retraction. Not in Shepard's "Beck and Me" land. First she whines,

"Usually I am the one examining those on air, and now I know how it feels to be on the other side of the mic, where it is perceived that I did something wrong."

Then she selectively edits her statement from the WAMU show,

"When Glenn Beck is on NPR I can be assured that there will be a lot of emails about that, and I feel like, 'Hey you should hear what Glenn Beck has to say. You know, like it or not he is influential.' " [Notice how she removes the damning opening to her statement "...I think of having more conservative voices on NPR ah, you know rather than saying that they pander to conservatives, I just think some of the conservative names Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck.]

And finally she distorts her critic's opinion so that it is easier to dismiss,

"That quote does not indicate that I think Beck should be on NPR every day..."

It's worth re-reading the complaint she's referring to: "I was outraged by your comment today on the Kojo Nnamdi program that NPR should have more people like Glenn Beck who represent a certain point of view not heard on NPR." Is there anything in that quote alleging that Shepard wants Beck on NPR every day?

I can't think of a column that makes a stronger case for what I've been attempting to show in this blog - NPR news is indistinguishable from the pandering-to-power corporate/mainstream media news outlets in this country. Alicia Shepard - with her thirty years of journalism experience! - says it better than me:

"I've said it before, and I will reiterate it. NPR is a mainstream news outlet. Its duty is to inform the public of all that is going on - and that means airing voices and stories that many listeners might not like or agree with."

This begs the question of just what unique perspective or qualities NPR contributors are getting for their donations that they can't get on CNN, FOX, etc.

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.

An Afghanistan Strategy That Works

"But the big fool said to push on." - (click photo for graphic source)

Is Sorya Sarhaddi Nelson really and truly in Afghanistan? I've heard her interviewed the last day or so regarding the fortunes of of the US debacle in Afghanistan - in light of the non-runoff runoff and the "victory" of Hamid Karzai - and I can't say I've learned anything from it.

Nelson was on ATC Monday talking to Michelle Norris and this exchange occurred:

Norris: "With Hamid Karzai now declared the official winner of the presidential election, to what degree does that now solve the political uncertainty in Afghanistan?"

Nelson: "Well, for the West it gives them - in particular, President Obama - a green light to move ahead in redefining and setting an Afghanistan strategy that works, in terms of international involvement here. But the question remains whether Afghans will accept this government as a legitimate one. I think much can be forgiven, including the fraud, in a very lengthy and disappointing election process if in fact the new Karzai administration delivers services and delivers security, which is what people here are really wanting."

Keep that little nugget in mind as you read Tony Karon's brutal assessment of Sen. Kerry's mission to Afghanistan where he rather publicly retied the strings to the wayward US puppet - and was hailed as some kind of diplomacy wizard by "the spoon fed media."

Or consider Nelson's open ended optimism ("a strategy that works, in terms of international involvement there" and "whether Afghans will accept this government as a legitimate one") as you read just the first two or three paragraphs of Tom Engelhardt's depressing assessment of where things stand in Afghanistan and how the US is likely to proceed there.

Or consider Gareth Porter's Halloween article in the Asia Times about the US-warlord ties.

Can anyone in her right mind still pretend that there is a US-led Afghanistan strategy that works, or that the Afghan people (whoever that vague constituency is) will come around to welcome the US-Karzai-NATO occupation?