Behind the Reassuring Words
Back in early August 1945, President Truman had this to say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians."
Actually, the U.S. government went out of its way to select Japanese cities of sufficient size to showcase the extent of the A-bomb's deadly power. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hundreds of thousands of civilians died -- immediately or eventually -- as a result of the atomic bombings.
In the past several decades, presidents have routinely expressed their reverence for civilian lives while trying to justify orders that inevitably destroyed civilian lives. Denial is key to the success of public-relations campaigns that always accompany war.
When Journalists Report for Duty
Exhorting our country to relearn the lost virtues of "self-confident relentlessness" and "hatred," the article calls for "a policy of focused brutality." It's an apt conclusion to an edition of the nation's biggest newsmagazine that embodies the human strengths and ominous defects of American media during the current crisis.
Much of the initial news coverage was poignant, grief-stricken and utterly appropriate. But many news analysts and pundits lost no time conveying -- sometimes with great enthusiasm -- their eagerness to see the United States use its military might in anger. Such impulses are extremely dangerous.
A Unanimous Triumph for Masters of War
This resolution, written as a blank check, is payable with vast quantities of human corpses.
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The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still jumps off the screen -- a portentous clash between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician. On the CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter Lisagor argued with a senator who stood almost alone on Capitol Hill, strongly opposing the war in Vietnam from the outset.
"Senator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy," Lisagor said.
Terrorism, Television and the Rage for Vengeance
At the same time, we're witnessing an onslaught of media deception. "The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing," Aldous Huxley observed long ago. "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth."
Silence, rigorously selective, pervades the media coverage of recent days. For policy-makers in Washington, the practical utility of that silence is enormous. In response to the mass murder committed by hijackers, the righteousness of U.S. military action is clear -- as long as double standards go unmentioned.
Jesse Helms: 16th century thinkin'
-- On the subject of President Clinton visiting North Carolina: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."
-- "I'm going to sing 'Dixie' to her until she cries," of Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun after a debating her on the merits of the Confederate flag."
-- "The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves."
-- "The destruction of this country can be pinpointed in terms of its beginnings to the time that our political leadership turned to socialism.
They didn't call it socialism, of course. It was given deceptive names and adorned with fancy slogans. We heard about New Deals, and Fair Deals, and New Frontiers, and Great Society."
Death, texas style
Here are the numbers according to Amnesty International and some math: In 2000, four countries around the world accounted for 88 percent of all the executions --- the United States, Iran, China and Saudi Arabia. Nobody else is even in the game, though there is no reliable information from Iraq. In 2000, Texas alone, one state out of 50, was responsible for 47 percent of the executions in America. Here are the best estimates for numbers per capita (using the highest guess, not from Amnesty, of 1,700 executions in China -- the number that sent the human-rights people into a frenzy over the Beijing Olympics): Iran executes one for every 874,000 people, China executes one for every 742,000 people, Texas executes one for every 521,000, and the Saudis one for every 170,000. So we're not rock bottom, we're doing better than the Saudis -- a role normally played for us by Mississippi. Let's not try for the Olympics anytime soon.
Globalization, Trucks, and Trade Treaties
I have a dog in this fight: I live nestled on the shores of I-35, the main route north from Mexico, and spend a lot of time driving up and down it. To say that NAFTA trucks are already a problem is like calling a dwarf short. Driving south from Waco Tuesday night, I counted over 300 of them stacked up in one traffic jam.
This silly circus of a debate continues, with charges of isolationism and protectionism being volleyed back and forth, unmoored from reality in the ideological void. Look, if the windmill is running, the wind is blowing. Here's the question: Have you ever spent much time in Mexico? Pretty much answers the Mexican truck question, don't you think?
Freep Heroes - Summer 2001
U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords
Not since the Nazi Party ascended to power with only a third of the vote in the early 1930’s has there been such a shameless political power grab as that of George W. Bush. Despite losing the popular vote, and the appearance that family and friends rigged the results in Florida, Bush embarked on a five-month blitzkreig to make the world safe for fossil fuels and global warming. Under his so-called “charm offensive” that comes across as Jethro Bodine on downers, he undermined the U.S. tax system and was well on his way to building an unneeded and brand new missile defense system. He appeared unstoppable. And then Senator Jim Jeffords uprooted the shrub and moved the country back to the center with his bold and beautiful defection from the Republican Party. Jeffords’ action is not only heroic, it’s historic. Too bad he didn’t get to confront Junior and ask him the same question asked Senator Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no shame, sir?”
THE FREE PRESS SALUTES
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeiffer
Two tome picks for summer
But there are two books I especially want to recommend, both by women I admire and know slightly: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Washington by the late Meg Greenfield of The Washington Post. If you read them in conjunction, it more than doubles the strength of each.
Ehrenreich’s book, it seems to me, is the stronger of the two. She did what reporters used to do before they became so unbearably self-important: She reports what the society actually looks like from the bottom. Starting in 1998, she went out and got successive and sometimes simultaneous no-skills, close-to-minimum wage jobs and tried to make it from one month to the next. She couldn’t do it. As she so painfully shows, the joker in the deck for low-wage workers is the cost of housing.
Overdue verdue: Media scrutiny of the 'White Bloc'
Newsweek responded to the turmoil at the Summit of the Americas with a column by Fareed Zakaria, a favorite policy analyst in elite circles. He declared that “the anti-globalization crowd is antidemocratic ... trying to achieve, through intimidation and scare tactics, what it has not been able to get through legislation.” In recent decades, of course, the same was said about cutting-edge demonstrations for such causes as civil rights, peace in Vietnam and environmental safeguards.