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There's No Place Like Home

(That's Keene helping Liasson Get Home)

Mara Liasson got back to Kansas CPAC on Friday morning. Surrounded by kindred spirits, she apparently felt no reason to even pretend to be a journalist - instead just reiterated the talking points of the speakers and organizers of the event:

• "The keynote speaker at CPAC, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was attacking the stimulus bill, or what he called the 787 billion dollar monstrosity."
• "....indeed Keene [President of the American Conservative Union which sponsors the CPAC event] says, conservatives are feeling liberated because George W. Bush - who many on the right felt undermined their cause - was out of office."

No real surprise, but it's worth checking out the comments to the story on NPR's site:

• Mark Ace (Poldark) notes how in spite of conservatives running the country for at least the last 14 years, Mara didn't ask one challenging question. He asks, "How about assigning an interviewer who actually asks a material question rather than just transmitting the talking points of the conference?"
• Grumpy Demo (Former NPR member), who has posted here, provides two links that reveal the rather nasty side of the CPAC which, of course, Mara didn't note in her report.

Shell Game

(that's Inskeep on the half-shell and Odum blowing)

Inskeep takes on Marvin Odum, Shell Oil's president of operations in the Americas. Yeah, Inskeep was really tough on this guy - he asked him about a House committee investigation into Shell and Interior department improprieties (and the letter Odum received from Rep. Markey); he pointed out that wind (and solar energy) could provide all US energy needs if the commitment were made to the infrastructure needs; he brought up Shell's dismal ethical rankings on Covalence; he even brought up Shell's involvement in human rights abuses in Nigeria. Just kidding.

Really Inskeep had a cozy, comfortable (oily, odious) schmooze session with Odum. Inskeep is just so curious as to how the Shell's Angels are going to deal with rising demands for oil, and if more offshore drilling really will provide enough oil for our needs. If you ever wondered what Inskeep's moral vision of Corporatism is, he lays it out in this interview. He asks Odum,

"...but if you think of us as a leaky ship, let's say, I mean do you worry as a corporate executive, that you'll do some well-intentioned things and you'll have the right motivations, and you'll plug a few leaks in the ship...but in the end the ship is still sinking."

Why of course Shell Oil does "well-intentioned things" and has "the right motivations," after all they have the profits to prove it.

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Hoisted by His Own Petard

Steve Inskeep arriving at the airport in far away Tehran had a big insight:

"I regretted abandoning them [three books about Iran] as soon as my turn came in line, because my bags weren't searched after all. That's the genius of certain governments: They get you to censor yourself."

Oh my God! Imagine censoring yourself so as not to offend those in power!

• Media Bloodhound notes that NPR's own On the Media bemoaned the utter lack of coverage regarding the Russell Tice bombshell revelation that journalists have been the targets of NSA spying. Gladstone might want to start her critique right at home!
• This past Sunday night BBC radio was constantly headlining Amnesty International's denunciation of Hamas and Israeli war crimes and its stunning call for an arms embargo against Israel. Here's NPR's coverage of this story.
• On Monday Binyam Mohamed, victim of extraordinary rendition and horrendous torture at the hands of the US and friends, was released back to the UK. And NPR's coverage?

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Blood & Gold

BLOOD

Yesterday on ATC Jason Beaubien's piece on El Salvador's coming election features the usual erasure and distortion of history. Block introduces the feature with this winner:

"In the 1980s, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front drew the U.S. into a bloody Cold War conflict in Central America."

And were the Serbs "drawn in" to the bloody war in Bosnia or Kosovo? Were the Janjaweed "drawn in" to the conflict in Darfur, etc?

From Beubien we get the usual blather about El Salvador being a "front" in Reagan's "battle against the spread of communism in the Americas." Oh, and by the way, "more than 70,000 people died in the war, " though he fails to mention that the vast majority were atrocities against civilians carried out by the US backed government.

GOLD

This morning Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is on for a reprise of her previous cover-up of civilian deaths in Iraq (remember the "Gold Standard"?). There's no mea culpa in this morning's report. More of the same about how unknowable the death count in Iraq is and how "controversial" the Lancet report was - although it's a bit better than her previous report in that it conveys how completely death and violence have touched virtually everyone in Iraq.

I did go ahead and drop a comment on the NPR site beneath the story. I'd recommend occasionally reading listeners' comments - as they are often quite pointed and astute.

Morning Edition in America

Like Obama, Reagan Faced Harsh Economic Times

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Of Extremists and Militants

(source of graphic)

Seriously, if you were a reporter and you found out that a "Christian" film festival featured an independent "Christian" film that was the largest grossing independent film of 2008, and you found out that this film festival was offering a grand prize of $100,001 - wouldn't you be curious to know more about the groups and people organizing and funding such things? Not NPR, and definitely not Barbara Bradley Hagerty who apparently has never heard of Google or Lexis Nexis or investigative journalism.

She tells us that the festival is called the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival and that Doug Phillips is its organizer. I'd call those leads, and with just a little research you can find some very interesting things about them.

Take the festival for example. Here's it's website, and you will notice in its header it states that it is a project of Vision Forum Ministries. Do a little poking around this "Christian" film festival website and you'll find some fascinating movies on the program page, including this culturally sensitive gem of a film set in Togo which "begins with the meeting and marriage of a young man and woman. After multiple miscarriages, the family asks for help from the local charlatan."

Don't stop at the festival site, though. Take a gander at the Vision Forum Ministries site and be sure to see what these "conservative Christians" (as Scott Simon calls them) believe about biblical patriarchy. And don't miss out on festival organizer and Vision Forum Ministries president, Doug Phillip' biography. If you still don't quite get what these Christofacists are up to you might want to read Doug's blog post from June 2004 where he notes - among other things -

• "Vision Forum opposes the pagan notion of pluralism....America should serve only Jesus Christ and acknowledge Him alone as the true lawgiver."
• "...we seek to drive from the land every manifestation of homosexuality. Furthermore, Sodomy was a punishable crime at common law and should remain such."
• "The Bible makes no distinction between homosexuals, pedophiles, bestials and rapists. All are criminals, the toleration of which brings judgment on the land and devastation to children."

You have to wonder whether Hagerty is just lazy or if she and NPR are sympathetic to these kinds of Christian extremists. It's really a disservice to Christians to call them conservative Christians, especially when every other report on NPR regarding the US "war on terror" mentions Islamic militants and Islamic extremists.

Talking Swat

Last Tuesday on ATC I heard a rather typical Jackie Northam piece regarding the Pakistani truce with TNSM in the Swat valley. She interviewed the usual smorgasbord of CIA, US State Department, and National Security Council shills and - what do you know - they all had basically the same opinions, or as Northam so pointedly stated:

"....none of the analysts interviewed for this report thinks that the truce in the SWAT valley will hold for long."

Honestly, I just didn't have the time, stomach or basic knowledge to sort out Northams lousy (and lazy) journalism, so I emailed Manan Ahmed who posts at the informative ICGA (associated with the other Informed Comment) and who produces the really fine blog, Chapati Mystery. If you haven't visited it, don't let it remain a mystery for too long. I asked him if he'd be willing to post on the NPR piece and allow me to cross-post it here, which he kindly agreed to. Well, he went above and beyond the call - putting NPR in the context of the other rather poor coverage of the Swat valley story. Here's the opening of his post:

READING SWAT

Increasingly, I am convinced that the discourse on Pakistan within the United States needs some major intervention. My fear, or maybe paranoia, is that Pakistan is en-route to be declared "mentally incapacitated" by United States aka "failed state". The impact of such a declaration (whether stated or not) would be that US will need to put a "care-taker" in charge of the mess. The rising frequency of the drone attacks, the extension of missile strikes, the troop "surge" in Afghanistan read as concrete steps towards a radically intrusive strategy towards Pakistan. I will have more to say on this. But I wanted, for the moment to simply bring to your attention some recent writings on Swat.

1. Jackie Northam, "Pakistan Deal With Taliban Draws Critics", All Things Considered, Feb 17, 2009.
Perhaps the worst of all recent pieces - NPR could only find 1. CIA Station Chief, 1. State Department Official and 1. NSC Official to declare that the Swat deal basically meant that Afghanistani Taliban have basically invaded and taken over Swat and that this means the Pakistani army is ridiculously weak. Between the lines, you should understand that the nukes are about to fall into the Taliban hands. Also al-Qaeda. Thank you, NPR.

To continue reading.

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Any Damn Thing Considered

I guess now that President Science himself is gone, NPR feels compelled to take up the slack and give as much airtime as possible to complete creationist BS dressed up as science. For a while it seemed that NPR was expelling some of this Intelligent Design sludge every year or so [e.g. May 2007 and April 2008], but - gad! - it's getting to be a weekly thing now [e.g. Feb. 13th and today]. I guess this is how Fair and Balanced NPR celebrates the centenary of Darwin's Origin of Species.

Today features Jon Hamilton presenting a typical "he said, she said" debate on Intelligent Design and the "problem of the mind." Now, those of us who actually use our minds are well aware that the mind is a complex and mysterious entity, and if you are a believer in God or a nonbeliever like me, hopefully if fills you with wonder and curiosity to know more. But if you are a creationist always angling for a way to present your bankrupt ideas (or a news organization wanting to promote creationists as legitimate skeptics) then the fact that "scientists don't know [exactly] how the brain causes the mind" is a golden opportunity. As Hamilton explains "here's where the Darwin doubters come in." He might as well have added that the doors to NPR studios are also where the Darwin doubters come in.

I don't have a problem with NPR covering the resurgence of creationism under its various guises - it's a sad and important phenomenon in our country. But to treat this warmed-over creationism again and again as legitimate scientific skepticism and to give it equal footing with the the scientific community is both irresponsible and misleading.

You just have to love the neurosurgeon creationist NPR turns to in this report. We are told he believes that "an intelligent designer that had a hand in producing not only the brain but all living things and certain features of the universe." According to Hamilton, this man believes that "without this designer, the brain would be just a meat computer made up of brain cells." Given the content of NPR of late, maybe he's got a point!

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Bling and Style

Glitter Graphics

Newsflash: NPR actually does know how to send reporters out to investigate a story!

On Tuesday's ATC Melissa Block said that "we sent reporter Jesse Baker to the heart of the diamond district in Manhattan" to see what the creepy Lorraine Schwartz was cooking up for the glitterati of the upcoming Oscars. WOW, Jesse was just breathless with excitement for this one:

She confidently states that "If Beyonce wants someone to 'put a ring on it,' that ring had better come from Lorraine Schwartz." And speaking of Beyonce, Schwartz in her best faux artiste voice
croons, "you couldn't aaahhhsssk for a better canvas to show your jewelry on."

Baker notes that "Schwartz put pink diamonds on Barbara Streisand...was selling jewelry to Justin Timberlake back when he was still buying gifts for a girl named Britney...house calls to Elizabeth Taylor..." This aspiring NPRer was practically panting and tried to wax poetic: "...you let the jewels overtake you...it's like opening a treasure chest...pink gold, jade, titanium, gems set in gems....

I'm not sure, but I think Ari Shapiro must have been a bit jealous that it wasn't his assignment to worship at the altar of conspicuous consumption, but he wasn't about to be outdone. He was on this morning interviewing - OMG! - Sally Singer, Vogue magazine's fashion news and features director. Ooh, I just got goosebumps thinking about the fashion shows and all in New York. Ari dives in with just the right mix of shallowness and depth: "...in the shows this week are you seeing fantasy escapism or is it more depression-era chic."

And Singer is indeed up to the challenge of filling NPR's target shoppers (h/t to Juan "Toss" Ensalada) with fashion wisdom: "....style can be a place where you can be exuberant, you can be creative, you can be talented, you can be interesting--that doesn't change....this is a moment to say that times can be tough, but that's exciting, that's what brought on punk, that's what brought on the great kind of fun movements in self-expression that have trickled through you know all the booms and all the busts that have followed...

Are we having fun yet?

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Amnesiastan

A rather major problem with nearly all of NPR's reporting is the "history scrub." You can guarantee that 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. Afghanistan proves no exception on Tuesday's ATC.

Michelle Norris blandly explains that thousands more US troops are headed off to Afghanistan and doesn't even chuckle in noting that the United States Institute of Peace [tee-hee] released some new policy recommendations for Afghanistan. To discuss the report, Norris interviews Seth Jones, co-author with Christine Fair of the report (both authors are connected with the RAND Corp).

In fairness, a lot of what Jones says comes off as fairly informed and reasonable. His basic thesis is that Afghanistan has been most stable in the past when there were stable functioning rural/regional leaderships that had a lot of autonomy but were connected and cooperative with a central/urban leadership. He even offered corrective to Michelle Norris' knee-jerk assumption that the answer to all problems in Afghanistan is more US troops and military might:

Norris: "...since so much of the problems in Afghanistan are so widespread, this strategy policy would seem to require many more troops, many more advisers to work at the tribal level to gain that trust and build some sort of security."

Jones: "I would actually say it's the reverse....local forces can a) protect themselves and b) provide services."

What I found so stunning is that neither Norris nor Jones ever mentioned that the baseline of stable functioning "legitimate" local leaders was essentially destroyed and replaced by the most ruthless, fanatic and illegitimate leaders that the US could recruit and train in its 1980s campaign to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even US News & World Report acknowledges this basic history. On NPR, though, it's as if this nasty little chapter of US involvement in the sorrows of Afghanistan never even happened - or that it had no continuity with the current configuration of the US-Afghanistan project.

I find it fascinating to occasionally hop into the way-back machine and re-read cartoonist Ted Rall's piece on Afghanistan written at the time when most were crowing about the stunning US victory over the Taliban. His piece in the Village Voice from December 2001 is provocatively called "How We Lost Afghanistan," and it is disturbingly prescient. Consider just this nugget:

"Now a Third Afghan War is wrapping up its final act around Kandahar, and a laughable band of charlatans has lobbied in Bonn, Germany, for the right to rule the unruly. Somehow, if the Bushalopes and the Annanites are to be believed, a New Democratic Afghanistan will be cobbled together from the Hekmatyars and Dostums and Rabbanis, all united under the banner of an 87-year-old king who owes more to Fellini than to Shah Mohammed."

I have a suggestion for NPR. How about airing the views and opinions of people who got it right for a change - instead of only consulting the same old stale bunch of State Department, CIA, and Pentagon lovin' pundits and scholars that you rely on again and again and again.

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No Comment Department

Gregory Feifer during Sunday's ATC reporting on the ground from - Moscow:

"...the Mujahedeen rebels would attack the Soviet forces and then climb into the mountains out of reach, and the Red Army really took out its revenge on the local population that was supporting the rebels. US and NATO forces today are trying to do exactly the opposite."

Going Nowhere with Juan Forero

This morning Juan Forero was on the anti-Chavez beat for the second day in a row. On Saturday he runs a fine CIA-inspired piece about how anti-democratic the Chavez government and its supporters are. This morning he was beating the drum again, but with a twist. In the piece, we hear Chavez supporters chanting "Oooh, aaah, Chavez no se va!" and Forero claims that it translates to "Oooh, aaah, Chavez is going nowhere!"

My Spanish is not fluent, but it is adequate - and I'm confident that "no se va" never means "going nowhere." An accurate translation would be "Chavez is not going away" or "Chavez is not abandoning [the struggle]."

It's no secret that Juan Forero works very hard to discredit and misinform listeners about the situation in South America, but I was surprised that he would employ such an easily discredited mistranslation to forward his agenda. I mean it's not like the mistranslation of Ahmadinejad's Farsi statement about Israel's Zionist government "vanishing from the pages of time" being stated as "wiping Israel off the map" - where hardly anyone in the US speaks Farsi. There are millions of people in the US who speak Spanish fluently and millions of others who know enough Spanish to catch such a crude mistranslation as Forero employs.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to matter how inaccurate and misleading Juan Forero's "reporting" for NPR is, he definitely "no se va" - Que lastima [What a pity.]

Related update: Last week I posted on Forero's nasty piece alledging how anti-Semitic the Chavez government is. I won't be holding my breath for a correction, now that the case has been solved - with aggressive action by the Chavez goverment.