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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
L.W.M.
Published Letters: 6225 Editor's Choice: 5
I'm not sure that one could call Ahmedinajad rational. Like Chavez, Kim Jong-Il, or George W. Bush, Ahmedinajad is a strutting, paranoid, deeply insecure bully who can only hang on to power by positing a powerful, secretive enemy and declaring himself the only one who can keep his people secure. The world would be better off without these kinds of leaders.
Never underestimate an opponent, or just the man sitting across the negotiating table from you, and never buy into your own government's hype and spin that is disseminated for the specific purpose of demonizing that opponent in the public's eyes. It is usually a gross over-exaggeration if not an outright lie. As Martin van Creveld observed, "Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy."
To suggest that the Iranians do not have more to fear from our current regime than we from them is "crazy".
Google van Creveld.
He's too young to have been one of the young turks who started out in the mail room there in the 60s, however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris_Agency
Originally published in Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up
BY CARL BERNSTEIN
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.
The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception...
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc...
The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by.
http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/cia_press.html
If you don't feel like you were sold a pig in a poke, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to talk to you about. How about some beachfront property in AZ. I got it from straight-talkin' John "The Last Honest Man" mcCain?
This is particularly obvious to anyone who has marvelled at how "the media" can be "too liberal" for viewers of Fox and nothing more than administration shills for readers of many blogs, and not just "left-leaning" ones. I leave it to you to decide who has a better grasp on the facts. Fox News' audience or readers of most blogs.
About how the media can legally lie to you...
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/11.html
I don't know what Hankest's issue is...
As a reader of blogs I have seen dozens of polls over the last few years that bear Glenn's assertion out. And this is nothing new. The right has been sowing the seeds of distrust in "the media" for almost 30 years now, over an imagined bias or the perception of one. What is unusual is how that breaks down by political affiliation. As Colbert said, "Reality has a liberal bias."
This is the latest polling I have found on the matter.
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1262
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
