- According to media scholar/critic Robert McChesney, today's
corporate journalism is co-opted, corrupted, gutted, and virtually worthless
as a source of real news, information and analysis.
-
- As a result, a free and open society is at risk because
fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully managed. Dissent is marginalized,
and supporting wealth and power interests replace full disclosure and accurate
reporting. No wonder imperial wars are called liberating one. Civil liberties
are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with
lawless governments. America's under both parties certainly qualifies.
-
- A previous article explained that for many decades, The
Times has been America's closest equivalent to an official ministry of
information and propaganda, masquerading as real news, commentary, analysis
and opinion.
-
- Its long history reveals a record of suppressing truth,
supporting powerful interests, backing corporate predators, and endorsing
imperial wars, no matter how much killing, destruction, and human misery
they cause, let alone why they're waged.
-
- In Times logic, America's are legitimate, liberating
and just when, in fact, they're lawless, brutal, exploitive wealth and
power grabs, intolerant of democratic values, including at home.
-
- As a result, an April 7 editorial headlined, "Keeping
Ahead of Qaddafi" doesn't surprise, saying:
-
- America should use A-10 Warthogs to attack tanks and
armor and AC-130 gunships to escalate killing on the ground, explaining
they "can fly slow enough and low enough" to destroy targets
better than "highflying supersonic French and British jets."
American ones as well still participating.
-
- In fact, AFRICOM's General Carter Ham, commanding the
Libyan war, not NATO, said these and other strike aircraft are deployed
and available to provide close air-ground support. Recent bad weather and
threats from Gaddafi's mobile surface-to-air missiles restricted their
use so far, he explained.
-
- Claiming this will avoid civilian casualties, Times reasoning
ignores the historic record that democratic and authoritarian governments
willfully kill large numbers of civilians strategically to win wars at
all cost, especially imperial ones to colonize conquered foes, control
their resources, and exploit their people ruthlessly for profit.
-
- During and since WW II alone, America killed millions
of mostly civilian Japanese, Germans, Italians, Koreans, Southeast Asians,
Central Americans, Africans, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and now Libyans.
-
- In fact, its rules of engagement (ROE) stress one strategy
only - win without restraint. All targets are fair game to defeat adversaries.
In other words, civilian lives are of no consequence, and at times become
strategic targets.
-
- "Wars are messy business," said The Times,
a disdainful comment mindless of the cost as long as not to Americans,
at least not enough to make headlines.
-
- To remove Gaddafi and control the entire Mediterranean
Basin, expect a future Times editorial to endorse ground troops, suggested
by General Ham before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
-
- Asked if deploying them was planned, he said:
-
- "I suspect there might be some consideration of
that. My personal view at this point would be that that's probably not
the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American
boots on the ground would entail."
-
- Unmentioned was UN Resolution 1973 prohibiting their
use, besides Obama and Defense Secretary Gates repeatedly saying no ground
forces will be used. Nonetheless, credible information revealed that US
and UK Special forces, as well as CIA and MI 6 intelligence operatives
have been there for weeks or months as well as Egyptian commandos, arming
and training so-called rebels.
-
- They include elements of popular resistance, Gaddafi
defectors (perhaps bribed and/or intimidated to switch sides), and violent
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) insurgents, the same or latter day
ones who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and Americans in Iraq, ideologically
allied with Al Qaeda (in fact, a CIA creation).
-
- In December 2004, the US State Department designated
LIFG a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), accusing its members of being
allied with "Usama bin Ladin and believed to be part of al-Qaida's
leadership and structure or active in the international terrorist network."
-
- In August 2007, the State Department said "Libyans
associated with the LIFG are part of the broader international terrorist
movement. The LIFG is one of the groups believed to have planned the Casablanca
suicide bombings in May 2003....The LIFG constitutes a serious threat to
US interests and personnel."
-
- The State Department also said they were responsible
for a 1996 failed Gaddafi assassination attempt, and during the 1990s clashed
with Libyan security forces.
-
- They're not people readers would invite to dinner or
want in their neighborhood, let alone running their country. Quite the
opposite.
-
- In three decades, they shifted from US allies to enemies
to again allies, and perhaps enemies ahead when their usefulness ends,
and they're abandoned or used short-term repressively to solidify control.
Not freedom fighters or democrats, they're, in fact, cutthroat killers
used by America exploitively to win at all costs for imperial, not liberating
reasons.
-
- New York Times Downplays Fukushima's Threat
-
- Numerous previous articles explained the grave danger
from Japan's nuclear disaster, accessed in chronological order at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
-
- Nonetheless, since the March 11 earthquake/tsunami caused
it, Times reports and editorials supported the notion that damage is contained
and Americans face no threat when, in fact, quite the opposite is true.
-
- Its April 8 editorial continued the subterfuge headlined,
"How Much of a Threat? saying:
-
- "People in Japan and in this country are rightly
concerned. But, as of now, potential health risks appear to be limited
in Japan and virtually nonexistent in the United States."
-
- False and Times management knows it, willfully lying
to readers to support a dangerous technology and nuclear proliferation
previous articles called ticking time bombs, assuring inevitable new Fukushimas
or worse.
-
- Japan's disaster will persist for months or years. Two
distinguished nuclear experts, Marion Fulk and Chris Busby, publicly said
northern Japan (one-third of the country) is uninhabitable and should be
evacuated.
-
- Moreover, Europe and North America are affected. Sampled
San Francisco rainwater showed Iodine-131 readings 181 times normal. Measures
up to that level also showed up in Idaho, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania
and Massachusetts. It's also showing up in milk, but not in Times reports,
suppressing vital information everyone needs to know.
-
- Instead, The Times said:
-
- "Top officials from American health agencies said
this week that Americans are in no danger from trace amounts of radiation
being detected in this country's air, water or food supplies."
-
- According to Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC - one of many US corporate controlled
agencies):
-
- "There is no threat to health in the US from radiation
from Japan," when, in fact, the threat is real and increasing the
longer the crisis persists.
-
- A Final Comment
-
- Times reporters and management represent wealth and power,
willfully lying to suppress vital information detrimental to their interests,
no matter the harm to readers who rely on journalism for truth.
-
- Unfailingly, the "paper of record" won't provide
it, nor does the entire corporate media establishment and other sources,
co-opted by dubious funding to buy their cooperation, selling their souls
and honor for a buck.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays
at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs
are archived for easy listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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