Category: Politics

Today [actually it was yesterday] our intrepid columnist asks the question: Why is the BBC generally regarded here, in Britain and around the world as a critical and impartial source of news, while the American media is considered a flag-waving cheering section for a regime?

A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view — something they couldn’t find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC’s director general, “wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality.”
Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government’s policies. In fact, however, it tried hard — too hard, its critics say — to stay impartial. America’s TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state-run media.

After discussing the paradox, Paul Krugman concludes his column with a warning.

We don’t have censorship in this country; it’s still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.

For those who wish to contact Reza, this is the best email address for the purpose: rbaluchi@yahoo.com
And no, I don’t think he’s running with a cellular modem, but I’m pretty sure he’ll get your message eventually.

Now that we’ve started three wars, destroyed any hope for our own security or that of any part of the planet, can we please listen to a question first asked September 11, 2001? And that is, “how did this happen?”
The White House has never been interested in the question, and to this day it has done all that it could to silence any person or institution which was.

In fact, NEWSWEEK has learned, President Bush’s chief lawyer has privately signaled that the White House may seek to invoke executive privilege over key documents relating to the attacks in order to keep them out of the hands of investigators for the National Commission on Terror Attacks Upon the United States—the independent panel created by Congress to probe all aspects of 9-11.

What may be a coverup with enormous political and national security consequences might finally be about to unravel.

Sen. Bob Graham on Sunday accused the Bush administration of engaging in a “coverup” of intelligence failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks to shield it from embarrassment, and said the war with Iraq has allowed Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to become a greater threat to Americans than ever before.

[Cursor, in its “Media Patrol” column today, assembled the two links included in this post.]

Reza Baluchi has now left Los Angeles, and this time he’s travelling on foot on his long journey to New York City.

So this morning, Mr. Baluchi began the fulfillment of that jailhouse promise. Wearing new shorts, new running shoes and a bad haircut, he said he carried no hard feelings, no chips on his shoulder, only a knapsack filled with a tent and reflective vest, nylon leggings, a sleeping bag, food, water and an A.T.M. card.
“I go by I self,” he said in self-taught English. “New York. Everybody wait me there. Soon. Soon. I come. Peace. No war. American people very good.”

New York City has spent $1 billion on antiterrorism efforts since the Sept. 11 attacks. But the city says it has yet to receive a dollar of antiterrorism money from the federal government. Washington has provided millions to help clean up the damage. But an estimated $44 million in antiterrorism money now in the pipeline has apparently not reached New York, the city that bore the brunt of the most disastrous terrorism strike in American history.

So begins an editorial in the NYTimes today. The remainder of the argument is basically an indictment of the cynical political calculations which continue to determine the disbursal of antiterrorism funds.

It is a flawed formula, which seems to focus less on places directly threatened by terrorism than on areas that are of importance in next year’s election. City officials figure that compared with New York City’s $44 million, North Carolina will get $51 million, Ohio $64 million and Florida over $86 million. On a per capita basis, the latest allocation gives New York State residents about $3 per person, while Iowa gets $6 and Wyoming $22. Certainly these states need resources to combat terrorism, but it is hard to argue that they stand as high as New York, Washington or Los Angeles on Al Qaeda’s potential hit list.

See an earlier post for more on the heavy defense responsibilities of the federal government as spelled out in the Constitution.

The Iranian cyclist arrested and held by our immigration authorities for about four months this winter is now in California and about to begin his last sprint to New York City, completing an odyssey of six years.
The short message below, which probably went to an enormous number of friends and supporters, doesn’t indicate whether he will be running on foot, as he had earlier indicated he would, or on the two wheels which have carried him around the world.

Hello everyone,
Everything is fine with me. I left Phoenix on Sunday,
April 27th and rode to Los Angeles and I am staying
with a new friend, Dave Hyslop in Marina del Rey,
California.
On May 11th (Mother’s Day) I will start the final leg
of my journey and travel to Ground Zero in New York
City.
Your suport has meant so much to me – thank you!
Sincerely,
Reza Baluchi

The entire text of a letter in this week’s The Nation:

Skokie, Ill.
With the shooting over and the oilwells rescued from a despotic regime, it’s time to consider what posterity will think. An illegitimate President wages an illegal war, hijacks the Bill of Rights and raids the Treasury on behalf of those who already have too much – and a strange silence emanates from the organs of democracy. No debate in Congress, not even token opposition from the “opposition party” and shamefully little real reporting from our “embedded” echo-chamber media. As the Administration executes its program of aggression abroad and repression at home, sheepish acquiescence is the order of the day. What label will historians give this not-so-brave world of ours? May I suggest The Gelded Age?
Hugh Iglarsh

I care less about posterity’s opinion than our own, and I’m bothered by the chauvinist tint in what the writer proposes as a description of our age [The magazine’s editors themselves headlined the letter, OR, ‘THE GUILTY AGE ?’], but Mr. Iglarsh does have the story right.

The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans were defeated (this time) in a rather sneaky attempt to introduce the C.I.A. and the Pentagon into domestic surveilance.

The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas — known as “national security letters” — requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.
The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress.
. . . .
[Democrats and civil liberties advocates] said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.

The proposed measure went well beyond the notorious provisions of the so-called “Patriot Act II” being considered by the Justice Department.

Have any of us been asking the question? It seems obvious one. As of mid-April, 89 people have died of Severe Acute Respitory Syndrome, or SARS, yet you’d think the sky was falling. But, in the now classic formulation of our frustration, what about AIDS?
SARS may turn well out to be this century’s equivalent of the 1918 influenza epidemic, which killed millions. It hasn’t happened yet however, but the world is already on the verge of panic. Precautions are certainly in order, but we note that while tens of millions of people have now died of AIDS-related diseases, there is no concern, even today, equivalent to that attached to SARS. Twenty years ago almost no one really cared about AIDS, and until there were hundreds of thousands of cases and tens of thousands of deaths, and very loud and creative protests from members of the communities most affected, almost nothing was reported and almost nothing was done.
Sure, there are very significant differences in the epidemiology of the two diseases, but we can’t help but suspect that there may be a more important, fatal distinction. One disease is perceived by most people in the West, even today, as a disease belonging to people who are thought expendable, and the other is regarded as a real threat to the kind of people who can make a difference in determining the course of an epidemic.
The current New York Blade has a cover story dealing with these issues. The article, by Winnie McCroy, really only begins to ask some important questions. There will be more questions, we hope, but there may never be good answers.

We’re told the war is over. Well, we’re told that at least this sub-war is over.
Regardless of whether this is the case, we should be asking ourselves certain questions we deferred in our unseemly haste to prove our faux manliness to the world and to distract ourselves from our shortcomings as a people and a state.
Paul Krugman writes a tight essay in today’s NYTimes, in which he asks how we are going to deal with the fact that the Administration’s original case for the war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s posession and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, was defective, and in fact a cynical invention. No WMDs were used in Iraq, and none have been or will be found, at least none of the kind and threat described to us by the White House prior to its pre-emptive attack and invasion of an almost defenseless fourth-rate nation.
Supporters of the war will point to the elimination of a brutal dictator as sufficient justification, at least after the fact, for what we have done, but Krugman asks why we are so selective about freedom, or compassion, when there are so many people suffering around the world. Um, can we say the word, “Africa?”
Americans, apparently most Americans, still believe that Hussein was responsible for September 11, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that we have found them. Each of these beliefs is totally without foundation, but we will never be told this by our government or by the corporate media. How could that happen?
The last question may be the most fundamental. It’s certainly the darkest.

Now it’s true that the war removed an evil tyrant. But a democracy’s decisions, right or wrong, are supposed to take place with the informed consent of its citizens. That didn’t happen this time. And we are a democracy — aren’t we?