Do You Feel Your Strings Being Pulled -- Again?

The media branch of the Great American War machine has just dropped a bunker-busting propaganda bomb.  The New York Times Magazine virtually declared war against Iran on behalf of Israel in this week's cover story by  Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist.

"Israel vs. Iran," the cover graphic shouts, and the subtitle asks not "if" but "When will it erupt?"  Bergman's answer: sometime in 2012.  Why? Because, according to Bergman, Israel's leaders believe that the three conditions for attacking Iran have been met.  The conditions are (1) that Israel is capable of "severely damaging Iran's nuclear sites" and of withstanding the inevitable counterattack; (2) there is at least tacit support from the international community, especially the United States and (3) all other possibiities for "the containment of Iran's nuclear threat" have been exhausted; war is the last resort.

This comes immediately on the heels of a magazine piece by the Times's former executive editor, Bill Keller, headlined "'Bomb-bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb-Iran?'"  The Times's main news section has published, often under misleading headlines, stories by  David Sanger, Erick Schmitt and Steven Elranger that contained distortions, questionable interpretations or outright falsehoods.  For just one example, on Jan. 4, Erlanger wrote:

"The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign."

Twice on the main page introducing Bergman's article last Sunday, Times editors used  the phrase "Iran's nuclear threat" as if it were an accepted fact.

It is not.  Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton: "The IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multi-year effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb." William O. Beeman, professor and chair of anthropology and specialist in Middle East studies at the University of Minnesota: "Israeli and American officials state flatly that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and is not likely to have one soon. There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature."  Ira Chernus, author and professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado: "The myth of 'poor little Israel, surrounded by fanatic enemies bent on destroying it' is so pervasive here in the U.S., most readers might easily take this Iranophobic article at face value, forgetting the absurd premises underlying all arguments that Israel 'must' attack Iran."

Early in the Times magazine article, Bergman quotes Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak: "The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map."  This is quotational abuse equivalent to "hoist on his own petard" (Shakespeare wrote "with") and "play it again, Sam" (Bogart said, "Play it, Sam. Play, 'As Time Goes By.')  Dead wrong, but in the language to stay.

Beeman again: "The quote about wiping Israel off the map is inaccurate. It was an old quote from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978. It is a wish or desire expressed in the subjunctive, and there are several possible translations, but none of them call for wiping Israel off the map. Here is the original Persian: een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad::

"One translation would be 'The regime occupying Jerusalem should (eventually) disappear from the pages of time.' Because it is subjunctive, it could also be seen as a wish or a hope: 'May it be that the regime occupying Jerusalem disappear from the pages of time.' However it is translated, it is not a policy or directive or anything that could be seen as a threat or a call to action. This is one of the most abused and misused pieces of propaganda for the last six years. I am thoroughly sick of hearing it misquoted by people who obviously know better, and more importantly being used as an excuse to justify attacking Iran. Shame on everyone, especially Ehud Barak, for indulging in this ongoing lie."

Last night, CNN rejoined the war chorus, with a "special report" on Iran full of dire language, which even trotted out one of those retired military officers who are paid by the Pentagon to lobby for war.  During the segments I saw there was no one who represented the views of Beeman, Chernus or John Glaser of the Anti-War Forum.

Beeman did score several important points in a recent debate on Real News Radio with Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. It was a wide-ranging discussion, rich in technical detail.

After raising the straw man of what Iran "could do" with its current uranium enrichment program in terms of "possibly" developing a weapon, Spector acknowledged that "Mr. Beeman may be correct that by the letter of the law, perhaps they are within bounds in some of these areas, but when you see all of these things piling up, nobody can be comfortable about it."

Beeman responded that  "the letter of the law, is precisely the point. And what Iran is saying to the world community is, we are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and you are not allowing us to exercise our rights; you are forcing us to do something that no other signatory to the treaty has been asked to do, and that is to stop enriching uranium, which is our inalienable right--and I use that word very carefully, because it's in the preamble to the NPT: it is their inalienable right to enrich uranium, or to do anything, really, for peaceful purposes.

"There are about 20 other nations who have exactly the same capability. They've been doing exactly the same things. Japan  . . . is developing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. They declare it. They're quite open about it. And the United States doesn't worry at all about Japan's capacity to build nuclear weapons, even though they're even far more advanced in this than Iran. But I wanted to go back to the question about the enrichment of uranium. You're talking about an enrichment to 20 percent of uranium. And Iran several years ago . . . said that they were running out of uranium, running out of isotope generators for the treatment of cancer. You may not know this, but Iran is a major provider of medical services for the entire region. There's medical tourism going on to Iran all the time, because their treatment of medical problems is superior to almost everybody in the region. They declared to the United States two years before they began to enrich uranium to 20 percent that they were running out of these isotopes, which had been provided . . . by the United States many years ago. And so the United States said, well, we're not going to give you any more enriched uranium. And so the Iranians started to do it themselves. Iran has a few thousand centrifuges. They need sixty or seventy thousand centrifuges in order to be able to enrich things to (weapons grade) 90 percent. We're talking about something that is theoretically way down the road."

The Times magazine article generated a huge barrage of comments before the comments were cut off.  One commenter wondered what section of international law entitles one country to wage war upon another because of what it  "could" or "might" or "might become capable of" doing ?

There is no such law, of course.  But neither is there an iota of law to support many other wrongful aspects of American foreign policy under Bush II or Obama.

American media, resuming their enabler role in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, don't want to raise the difficult questions that Beeman, Chernus, Glaser and many others are raising about Iran's alleged nuclear program.

What folly.  What madness.

She Came of Age Recording the Human Toll of War

Pakistani militants are held in a makeshift prison after being  
captured for illegally entering Afghanistan. They came intending to  
attack American soldiers, but couldn't find any and tried to turn back.  
Afghan authorities later released them on a Ramadan amnesty.

(Photo Copyright Kate Brooks)

As long as they can hide behind their slogans and flag decals and not have to think about it, war is just fine with Americans.  Endless war? Hey, it creates jobs.  Support our troops!

A new book by an American photojournalist makes you think -- think hard -- about the realities of war, which perhaps is why it's selling better abroad than here in the United States of Indifference. Kate Brooks has spent virtually her entire working life recording the collective face of war in images so powerful they will make you weep. Or cry out in anger.  Maybe even take to the streets demanding change, for mankind's sake.

In the Light of Darkness: A Photographer's Journey After 9/11 (http://www.amazon.com/Light-Darkness-Photographers-Journey-After/dp/9053307583) is not orthodox "war photography," although it contains  images of combat and chilling accounts of Brooks's experiences getting to where the fighting was. But actual combat, Brooks herself acknowledges, is not her forte as a photojournalist.

She's at her best recording the brutalized bodies of what our military calls "collateral damage," the sick and starving orphans, the widows, the victims of mass rape, the homeless -- the reality of war.  Walker Evans's images said more about the reality of the Great Depression than a thousand pages of tables and statistics; Brooks's pictures of the victims of modern war speak comparable volumes.

Interspersed with the photographs is her personal narrative of coming of age while recording great and painful truth.  She was 23 when she set out right after 9/11 for Afghanistan with a backpack, a camera and $800 on what was to be a four-day assignment.  It was the beginning, she writes, of "a ten-year journey through a region colored by war."  She rode "a current of news" from Tora Bora to Benghazi, through Iraq, Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Libya.  In each of these places, she writes, "I left a part of myself behind, like a ghost in one of those buildings in Beirut."

In Afghanistan she drank sugary tea with Afghan men known as "grey forces," that is, double agents.  One of her hosts offered her candy while another threatened her with a grenade.  Near Kandahar, she requested assignment to the lead car of a convoy to a combat zone, but then was seized by a powerful wave of intuition.  She rode in the second car instead -- and saw the vehicle ahead blown to smithereens by an IED.  She played tape recordings of Indian pop music on a harrowing ten-hour drive across icy mountain passes. Adroit skirters of regulations and procurers of essentials called "fixers" populate her narrative; one of them saved her life, then groped her when she was nearly comatose with fever; another made it possible for her to continue working even while she was blacklisted by the forces in control of the region where she was on assignment.

Through all of this and more she documented the human toll of war:  a one-legged man playing the flute in an arboreal field strewn with the detritus of combat; the silhouette of an Afghan woman harvesting opium in a poppy field;  captives huddled in a makeshift prison, praying for repatriation; a teenaged boy lying in a pool of his own blood on an emergency room floor; body parts, bereavement, stunned children in the bombed-out shell of a dwelling where their parents died.

"Have my images made a difference?" Kate Brooks asks herself in this book.  "At times," she answers. "Every once in a while, someone I've never met sends me an e-mail thanking me for what I do.

"I don't believe a single photograph is worth dying for, but the total of what we produce in our lifetimes justifies that risk.  If we don't get close enough to see, there is no way to tell the story for those who can't see at all. If I didn't tell these stories, would they go untold? No.  But if we all stopped going, there would be no one left to bear witness.

"Given the chance, I would do this journey all over again. I can only say that, though, because I am still alive."

Every member of Congress should have to read this book the next time a war appropriations bill is about to be voted on.Then again, maybe it would be wasted on those who lack Kate Brooks's kind of courage, or the sagacity gained only from risking your life for a purpose.

We are all the richer because she lived to write about it, and share her images.

Haunting images, like the ghosts of Beirut.

*    *    *

A gallery of images by Kate Brooks can be found at  http://www.katebrooks.com/

Tennis Down Under: Another 'Greatest Match Ever"

Who, I wonder, will write the "greatest match in history" book about the Australian Open tennis final I just watched?

Someone has to do it.

Novak Djokovic of Serbia defeated Rafael Nadal of Spain, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 7-5 in just seven minutes less than six hours.  It was the longest championship match in a Grand Slam tournament since the phony line between "amateur" and "pro" was erased in 1968.

Searching for a metaphor as I watched, I kept reaching into the history of warfare. I imagined HMS Prince of Wales and the Bismarck side by side in the Atlantic firing every weapon they had at one another for nearly six hours.

But that doesn't capture it, either.  These battlers -- and battlers they are -- were motivated not by warlike animosity but by a fierce desire to be No. 1 in their sport.

Djokovic took that ranking away from Nadal last year, and now retains it. "Congratulations to Novak and his team," Nadal said afterward. "They deserve it. They are doing something fantastic, so congratulations."

Both players did "something fantastic" over and over again in this wonderful match that began in the dead of night and ended well past sunrise for watchers in the United States.  Nadal, whose ground strokes are so powerful that his fellow pros nicknamed him "Popeye," was hitting the ball three m.p.h. faster in the final set than in the first.  Djoklovic was hitting the ball just as hard, and deeper.  Nadal returned balls that no other human who plays the game would even have reached. Time and again the ultimate winner was caught by the TV cameras wearing a look of incredulity that seemed to say, "what kind of Superman is that?"

Was it only four years ago that the last "greatest match in history" was played on Centre Court in Wimbledon?  Nadal was there, too.   Roger Federer, then the No. 1 player in the world, and winner of five Wimbledon championships, lost in five sets and nearly five hours of incredible tennis. L. Jon Wertheim, a writer for Sports Illustrated magazine, wrote the book on that one, Strokes of Genius. Wertheim described the match as "a festival of skill, accuracy, grace, strength, speed, endurance, determination, and sportsmanship."

That was a match between contrasting styles: Federer, the ultimate master of the old tennis, graceful, deft, elegant -- Baryshnikov in Nikes.  Nadal, the new, strong, tireless hitter of topspin rockets and returner of unreachable shots with unmatchable force.  New won and Nadal became king of an era of the new kind of tennis.  No longer would the "T" of Wimbledon's grass be heavily worn over the fortnight by the split steps of the serve-and-volleyers.  Now the grass would go bare behind the baseline, where the New Breed with ever lighter but more powerful racquets slugged both backhands and forehands with bewildering spin and velocity.

Today's was a match between masters of the new tennis and the old king was banished, as Nadal banished Federer.  Djokovic beat Nadal at his own game, pinning him behind the baseline and grinding him down with a relentless barrage of deep, penetrating strokes.

How could they fire those cannons at one another and both remain standing after so long?  While the tennis popinjays in their linen suits prattled on and on before the trophy presentations, I suffered sympathy pains for the two contestants, squirming and stretching to battle fatigue and muscle cramps.  Finally someone brought them chairs and water.  Then, at last, they claimed the rewards for all their suffering.

If I had to wager, I'd bet the two will meet again in the finals in Paris in May, and Nadal will take his revenge on the court that he rules as Pete Sampras once ruled Wimbledon.

And then will come Wimbledon, the royal and ancient pinnacle of tennis.

Don't write that book yet, whoever you are.  The real new "greatest match in history" is yet to come.  I can't wait.

Scenario of the Nuclear Option -- Revisited

Among the trove of unpublished works in my captain's trunk is a novella in which the former United States is ruled in nuclear winter by President Gingrich -- called "Eft" in my story.

Without imposing the burden of further details (there's a reason these things didn't get published), I simply want to raise the worrisome thought that that part of the novella may have been prophetic.

Ye gods!

Even as South Carolina Republicans cast their primary ballots today, there is evidence of a last-minute Gingrich surge that will end the Romney candidacy and leave the Grand Old Party with a choice among Newt, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul.

Ye gods!

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Nixon administration official turned pundit, recently devised a scenario in which the U.S.-Israel belligerence toward Iran inevitably leads to war, which ensnarls China, and leads to the Nuclear Option.  Roberts, who is always more right than wrong, does tend toward extremism to make some of his points, and I thought that was the case with this scenario.

Now I'm not so sure.  With a President Obama, the Roberts scenario seems possible -- remotely.  With a President Gingrich?  Big bang!

The mainstream media are already neck-deep in another Iraq-style Big Muddy.  The New York Times has been in Judith Miller mode for several weeks.  Whether the CIA is in cahoots with the Israelis in the targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists is immaterial.  Consent, tacit or active, is still consent.  The drums of war are beating and for the nonce, only Obama's desperation for re-election can mute them.  He'd rather not have more American blood spilling in a new venue when America goes to the polls next November.

But if Newt's the Republican nominee, the contest for the presidency will be a far different horse race than Obama v. Romney.  The Mittster is simply less bellicose -- much, much less bellicose -- than Newt, and would be far less likely to nudge Dr. Kidglove into another ill-advised war during the campaign. 

Afterward, I doubt that a President Romney would risk the horrors of Nuclear Holocaust.  Same for a re-elected President Obama.

But Gingrich!

Ye gods.

In my unpublished novella, President Eft bullies his weapons scientists until they develop a heat-seeking, guided, bullet-sized projectile to target individuals in combat. * It leaves a very small entry hole, destroys the target's inner organs and leaves an intact body "so there'll be no more Unknown Soldiers," as President Eft puts it. In the novella, he baits his rival for power into the open, then orders the military to use it to kill the guy.

Just imagine what a President Newt could do with all those lovely drones.

*Postscript (2-2-12)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- (AP) -- Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories say they have developed an inexpensive,  miniature guidance system for a  bullet that directs itself like a tiny guided missile and can hit a target more than a mile away.

Photo Quiz: Which General Actually Fought, and Won, a War?

There'll Not Be Another Culloden, David Cameron!

A few years ago we pitched our gear into the back seat of a Bo Peep blue rental car in Newcastle and hit the high road for Scotland.

The last town on the English side of the border, along our route, was a bland little agricultural village named Wark.  Honest.

We crossed the border.  The very first town on our route, a charming village with an old, old kirk and ancient walls of stone and tilty cottages with thatchen roofs was named . . . Wark. Honest.

A short walk back toward the border stood the remains of the castle of Wark. (Not to be confused with Warkworth  castle 40 or so kilometers northeast.) In the days of border wars and black helmets a noble scoundrel  who occupied the Wark castle was known to have a keen sense of which monarch -- England's or Scotland's -- had the stronger army and greater support abroad.  It  was that monarch to whom the sire of Castle Wark swore his loyalty, an oath worth exactly nothing since he hopscotched his fifedom and fealty back and forth across the border according to how the winds of power blew.  Thus the two villages Wark, one on each side of the border.

I invoke all of this to substantiate my right to speak out on the matter of a referendum on Scottish independence, which boils on the political stove in the United Kingdom at the moment.  In further support thereof, I am a member in good standing of the Clan Sutherland Society through marriage to a rabid Scot whose forebears lived in the shadow of Dunrobin, the Sutherland castle overlooking the sea outside Golspie, near Dornoch. Need I sing a rousing chorus of Loch Lomond to further bolster my claim?  Nae.

So hear this, David Cameron: Back off!  You're perilously close to igniting another Hanoverian v. Jacobin conflict and, by the Mighty, we Scots will win this one. 

Never mind that the issue of Scotland's independence has been around since almost forever.  The point is that now the Scottish National Party has sufficient clout to demand a referendum on the question.  All of Scotland seems to support the idea of a referendum.

David Cameron, the Tory British P.M., and his Labour lapdog, Ed Miliband, oppose the idea, insisting that the U.K. can only remain strong by remaining united. Since the Scottish government claims an electoral mandate to hold a referendum, Cameron says he'll let them have one, but only on his timetable, and only if its outcome is binding rather than advisory.

He said, "I sometimes think it's not a referendum (the Scottish National Party) want, but a never-endum."

Angus Robertson, an SNP member of the British parliament, retorted, "The Scottish Government was elected with an overwhelming mandate to deliver an independence referendum in the second half of the parliamentary term. The Conservative Party has less Members of parliament (in Scotland) than there are giant pandas in Edinburgh Zoo."

The core issue is a constitutional one.  The Scots say they have the legal right to call a referendum on their own terms and timetable.  The Brits say the Scots can't act without permission of the national government in London.

Although I know haggis about the Brits' constitution -- haven't read a word of it! -- I'm with the Scots on this one.  Alex Salmond, the SNP first minister, insists  there is a strong legal case for Scotland being able to hold a referendum without asking London first, and hasn't relaxed his view that the vote should be held in the autumn of 2014.  He said Cameron "suddenly this week decided to start pulling strings and setting conditions."

What Scot worthy of the kilt would stand by and let a Brit pull his strings? To the bridge, I say, with dirk and broadsword!

Sarasota Update: Halifax Backs Off

Here, courtesy of various correspondents, is an update on the Sarasota Herald Tribune situation that was the subject of a recent Pianist post:


Following a 45-minute meeting between Michael Redding, chief executive officer of Halifax Media Group, and Sarasota Herald Tribune staffers, publisher Diane McFarlin announced that the controversial non-compete clause in new employment agreements would be scrapped.


From: McFarlin, Diane
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2012 6:04 PM
To: !STHQ-Sarasota Users
Subject: good news

Everyone:

Michael Redding has decided to waive the non-compete clause and the family relationship policies for all existing employees. In other words, you have been “grandfathered in.” This means you do not have to sign the non-compete agreement and, if you are working in the same department as a spouse, sibling or other immediate family member, you can continue to do so.

I am sure there will be more information forthcoming, but I wanted you to receive this news immediately.

It should be noted that these policies will apply for all new hires going forward.

Thanks to all of you who participated in today’s town hall. Clearly, Michael heard your concerns and considered them carefully.

Onward!
Diane

     *     *   *

Redding met with the Sarasota staff for 45 minutes and plans to visit the three other Florida papers now owned by Halifax tomorrow.  The first question he took up, as relayed to him by Publisher McFarlin:  What about the non-compete clause?

"We want to pour money into your career," Redding said, "and as you get better, what we are not interested in is you becoming our competition.  We want you to have long careers . . . and I'm sure many of you have been here 10, 20 years.  It isn't that you don't trust us, that isn't it at all.  To the point that someone who is here now, and let's say in the next 30 days or the next 60 day you sign the non-compete and then for some reason your job isn't here, the last thing we're going to do is tell you that you can't go get a job here.  We're going to rescind that non-compete.  That's just not fair, that's not how I would do it, that's not how we think."

Half an hour later, clarification was sought that the contract would be waived for the first 60 days (Halifax is also installing a 60-day probation period for all employees).  "We have agreed with the [New York] Times that anyone no longer with the company within a certain period of time that they will receive a severance package paid in the same manner as the folks that we didn't hire at close.  So that piece is there.  The second part is, as we are evaluating this, we're getting questions and we want to be responsive to those questions.  We want to re-evaluate if 60 days is the right number, maybe it is 90 days, maybe it is 120 days.  We're looking at that.  We want to make sure that you have confidence in what you are signing.  This is not a grab people, pin them to the ground and take advantage of them -- that's not the purpose of this document.  I'm looking for feedback . . ."

     *   *   *

OK. FEEDBACK: Odd, isn't it, how a bit of light in a dark corner causes creatures of the night to scurry?

Why Do 'Progressives' Want to Silence Ron Paul?

Somewhere in space over America lurks a satellite with a giant vacuum machine that  sucks the brains out of most of us during the ever-longer, ever more asinine political campaigns. 

It is utterly non-partisan, this machine; its work is evident not just in the Republican presidential debates; not just in the work of the right-wing unthink tanks; not just in the voting patterns of  recent presidential elections; but also in all the spin-off prattle that  these things generate.

When Republicans seeking the presidency felt the hot breath of Ron Paul, who takes libertarian leaps away from party orthodoxy, they ganged up on him as a kook and crazy man. 

This prompted a few progressive pundits to write that Paul had worthwhile views on a number of extremely important  issues, and that he was the only voice addressing those issues during the political season.  President Obama wrongly (in my opinion) opposes those views, which puts him essentially in the same corner as Romney, Gingrich and (yes) George W. Bush.

But Glenn Greenwald and other progressives who wrote favorably about Paul's views on these issues have been subjected to vicious assaults by other so-called progressives who accuse him of advocating Paul for the presidency.  As Will Rogers once put it: "I am a member of no organized political party.  I'm a Democrat."

For the record, Mr. Paul opposes our  wars;  opposes imperialism; has called American corporatism a route to “soft fascism;” supports Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks; has praised Occupy Wall Street; opposes the Patriot Act and the surveillance and police state it has engendered; opposes the war on drugs, which wastes money and perpetuates racism; opposes unilateral foreign interventions; and has expressed views on banks and the financial system that the esteemed economist Simon Johnson says "should be taken seriously."  Indeed, in 2009, Mr. Paul teamed with a Democrat, Alan Grayson of Florida, to sponsor an amendment to the sweeping financial overhaul legislation that aims to regulate the industry for systemic risks.  It subjects  the Federal Reserve to greatly intensified audits and oversight. The amendment advanced on a 43-26 vote of the House Financial Services Committee with both Democratic and Republican support. The vote reflected the widespread and bipartisan populist anger at the central bank's policy decisions and secretive methods of operation.

These are positions which, if mainstream Democrats had an ounce of courage, a soupcon of intellectual honesty or a pinch of loyalty to their party's traditional values, every Democrat in Congress would be espousing. 

I do not, repeat NOT, want to see Mr. Paul win the Republican nomination for president. I want to see him remain in Congress where his unorthodox brand of Republicanism probably does more good than his many deplorable views on other issues do harm.

I think it's important to have someone in Congress who will stand up, as Mr. Paul did, during a session of the House of Representatives, and ask questions like the following:

    •    Number 1: Do the America People deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
    •    Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
    •    Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our government's failure to protect classified information?
    •    Number 4: Are we getting our money's worth of the 80 billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
    •    Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
    •    Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
    •    Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
    •    Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
    •    Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

So-called progressives who refuse to recognize the importance of injecting these subjects into the American political discourse do not deserve the appellation they attach to themselves.

The Sarasota Story: Outrage Heaped Upon Insult

Lives there a newsman who has never encountered pressure from the business side to "go easy" on an advertiser which becomes the subject of an unflattering news story?

In the old days, on the good newspapers and magazines, there were strong editors who stood between their reporters and the business side, maintaining a holy "separation of church and state" as one such editor memorably put it.

Now, employees of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sarasota Herald Tribune are being ordered to sign a vile and insidious "non-solicitation, non-compete and confidentiality agreement" that not only signals the end of the superb enterprise reporting for which the paper was esteemed far beyond its geographic boundaries, but also deprives its editors and reporters of their professional personhood.

The New York Times Company recently sold the Herald Tribune, and its other regional newspapers, to an outfit called Halifax Media Group, which previously had only dabbled in media proprietorship. Presumably, Times not only knew what was coming, but assented to it, agreeing, for example, not to hire any Herald Trib reporters or editors in the lifeboat.

The "agreement" being imposed on the Sarasota employees makes all their notes, memos, and related intellectual assets the sole property of Halifax.  Consider:

The Herald Trib last year published a series of articles exposing criminality and fraud in the Florida insurance industry.  It won the paper and its reporter, Paige St. John*, the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.  Now, suppose that project were still a work in progress.  And suppose one or more of the insurers involved were Herald Trib advertisers.  And suppose Halifax -- as one can perceive it would -- ordered the expose not to be printed.  If Ms. St. John and her editors were signatories to the Halifax document, they should, and probably would, resign in protest, but would have to leave behind, in Halifax's basement limbo, their mountains of material for the stories, which of course would never see the light of day.

Under terms of the Halifax "agreement," none of them could work for two years in any media that sell advertising or distribute information in places where Halifax has business interests.  Some of them might find journalism jobs in Latvia or Bangladesh, but even there they couldn't publish what they knew about a story that won America's highest journalism award for serving the public interest.

A majority of Americans, according to Gallup, already distrusts media "strongly" or totally.   With outfits like Halifax taking over one of the dwindling number of exceptions to the taint that leads to such distrust, those poll numbers can only continue to rise rapidly. The likelihood that Times executives knew damned well what was in store for the regionals they sold down the river only compounds the shame.

In addition to the odious "non-solicitation &c." document, Halifax has established draconian new work rules including a reduction in vacation time, on the 16 regional newspapers formerly owned by the Times.

The violation of the personal dignity of a few outstanding journalists is in my opinion criminal; even though the Herald Trib isn't a union shop, its workers are still covered by certain labor laws and regulations.  Fighting to defend themselves will require the Herald Trib employees to organize, hire a good lawyer and resist.  Risky business, and very expensive, especially in these harsh economic times for all Americans except plutocrats like the Halifax ownership.  (The company's foundation is in hedge fund management!) As someone who once sought to litigate against corporate newspaper ownership, I know the odds of taking on their batteries of lawyers with their encyclopedic arsenal of diversions, delays and fancy footwork that militate against individuals or small groups in courts of law. An expert in labor law called the Halifax actions "outrageous" and "offensive" -- but probably "enforceable" in anti-labor Florida.

For me and many others who served much of their working lifetime in the cause of good journalism, this latest example of corporatocratic villainy is especially painful.  That it's a relatively small part of the strangulation of democracy for the sake of profit in all of the United States doesn't mitigate the pain.

Like the public employees of Wisconsin, and the union workers of Indiana, the journalists of Sarasota need allies.  The war Reagan launched against the American worker has gone too far.

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(*) Paige St. John is my daughter-in-law.

The Web: Democracy's Handmaiden

A friend e-mails another friend to praise his "effort to debunk some small share of the nonsense which is transmitted on the Web and transformed thereby into Truth."

The particular bit of nonsense he referred to emerged from a right-wing (is there any other kind?) radio talk show.  A caller who identified himself as a "brain surgeon" said he had learned that under "Obama's new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care," patients over 70 would be given nothing more than "comfort care."

Like most of the canards that thrive on the 'Net, this one has sore thumbs. First, the host of the radio program is a Limbaugh acolyte; by definition, his audience is made up of kooks, fruitcakes and nuts.  Second,  no self-respecting neurosurgen, even one who specializes in surgery inside the cranium, would call himself a "brain surgeon."  That's a layman's term.  Third, this smells very much like the old "death panel" crap.

The e-mailee bothered to do a bit of fundamental checking and found that the meeting at which the "brain surgeon" purported to learn about the "Obama plan" for 70-year-olds was pure fiction.  There was no such meeting.

Ninety-per cent of the nonsense which is transmitted on the Web is just as easily debunked.  But even if all of the nonsense were clearly labeled "This is a lie!" the poor fools whose biases are reinforced by the lie would propagate it as Truth.

The friend praising the debunker blames the 'Net.  "I think it's possible," he writes, "a generation from now, when ignorance has come to full flower and authority, that the remaining thinkers of thoughts will say that when the Internet killed off the purveyors of mostly reliable information and replaced them with a readily accessible global blackboard of prejudice and stupidity, that whatever chance the democratic experiment had was finished."

I think he's just being cranky. (He has bad knees and so far has resisted surgery.) For all the prejudice and stupidity on the global blackboard, there is also infinitely more useful, reliable information and opinion, more easily accessible, than at any time in human history.

No need to pad down to the local library and pore through two dozen publications to sip the economic wisdom of such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Robert Reich and Simon Johnson, without which mere laymen likely could not savvy the entire venality and wrongness of our leadership's economic policies. Their ready availability on the Web serves democracy far better than, say, newspapers, even when there were still several good ones around.

The Arab spring of 2011 -- the first steps toward democracy for millions -- could not have happened without the Internet. 

The Web gave birth to the Occupy movement, the most promising development so far for the restoration of at least a semblance of democracy in the United States.  It sustained the people's protests against  oligarchy in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.

When even the New York Times lied to us about yellow cake, aluminum tubes and WMDs in Iraq, the only reasonable, experienced and reliable voices of dissent -- real truth, in this case -- were on the Internet: Hans Blix, for example, the Swedish diplomat who was personally involved in nearly a thousand onsite inspections in Iraq; or Ray McGovern, the outspoken former senior CIA intelligence analyst.  In "balancing" her utterly false reports, Judith Miller did not consult either of these legitimate experts.  She knew that doing so would cut off access to her source for the bogus information, "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's errand boy.

ALEC.  The framing of Acorn.  The health threat and unreliability of airport scanners. 
The tentacles of the Koch Brothers.  The real origins of the Tea Party.  For either the first, or the only, or surely the deepest understanding of these compromises of our democracy one had to scour the Internet.

Of course, using a tool like the Internet -- itself a functioning democracy -- demands discretion, care and double-checking.  But then, hasn't that always been true of newspapers?  Magazines? Books?