N.Y. Times End of Year Editorial - Bush et. al. Fail.

Pangloss

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If only the Times had maintained its neutrality and independence this editorial might have the effect it ought:


Editorial

Looking at America


Published: December 31, 2007

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.
The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

- 30 -


So, what do you think?

Pangloss
 
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gopher

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What the hell are those traitors in the NYT complaining about? If they hadn't spread so much pro war hysteria, there would never have been any torture in the first place.
 

Pangloss

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C'mon Gopher - you mean to tell me that you don't remember their multiple apologies to their readers for that mistake? They said in print that they were fooled (or fooled themselves) into going along with the arguments of the Bush/Cheney/Blackwater/Haliburton/whatever other *****s you want to name White House.

They did a huge mea culpa over that one.

Now, back to the substance of what they wrote today. Anyone?

Pangloss
 

gopher

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Jun 26, 2005
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``multiple apologies``

What multiple apologies?

When have they called for impeachment? for withdrawal? for reparations? for the arresting CIA and other personnel at Abu Ghraib??


cite specific editorials
 

TomG

Electoral Member
Oct 27, 2006
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“We are all ******” --- Ghost Boy

Not an excuse though.

During 2002 many people arrived at the NYT revelations independently, and with no resources other than their own minds and refusal to accept truth that didn’t feel like truth. The NYT’s truth was arrived at by supposition. What we were told by our leaders never did make sense, and still doesn’t.

But the NYT was fooled. The fools still have their well-rewarded positions I imagine. Why would anybody listen to them now except to wallow in the painless risk-free orgy of guilt and self pity that is likely to unfold? They apologized. What does an apology cost, and what does one buy?

The NYT’s nation is likely to wring their hands and scrub like Lady Macbeth; and some people might come to a conclusion. There is no freedom without courage; there is no truth without art; there is no forgiveness without atonement; there is no winning without integrity; without integrity, there is no courage. It’s circular as are reflections.

The NYT gave us a typically sappy wad of dross, and through their reflections they deliver the weak message that it’s Okay to shed a tear and then go forth as usual. The NYT would do well to examine their true reflection of America before recommending it as a model. The NYT’s mirror is not the reflection I see. I see a face where comfort is confused with beauty and beauty confused with entitlement; and entitlement confused with power; and power is confused with art. The face I see has the dead eyes of one who does not know art, and does not know that the true purpose of art is truth, integrity and honesty (borrowing from Rilke). Without art there is no courage, no freedom, no atonement, and without atonement those who sought comfort will be left with nothing.

We have imprisoned art and truth along with it, and unless we change only bitterness will remain.

Like in Pete St. John’s song:

“, , , Fare thee well sweet Anna Liffey,
I can no longer stay,

And watch the new glass cages, that spring up along the Quay.
My mind's too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes,

I'm part of what was Dublin, in the rare old times.

Ring a ring a Rosie, as the light declines,
I remember Dublin city in the rare old times.”

At least the voice in the song recognizes his own bitterness. If you hold to memories of the past and imagined truths and glories as reflections of the present, bitterness seems inevitable.

The NYT needs a better mirror; a mirror that truly reflects that love may be our only remaining prayer to our vanished gods (more borrowing from Rilke). When we see that reflection, we might again find our courage and recover our own lives. Comfort mistaken for love, if that is what is done, renders a poor reflection.

Happy New Year.

As a first step, turn off the TV, desert it entirely, and then we might find our own lives and take pleasure in them again. Well, it has been about eight years now since my wife and I deserted TV.
 
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Pangloss

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"Shoot the messenger"* is tiresome, the opposite of illuminating, and the easy, lazy way out of substantive, intelligent analysis.

Yawn.

Pangloss

*The messenger being the NYT, not me. In case you think I took this adolescent response personally.
 

darkbeaver

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Thank-you Tom G, you answered my question artfully and completely. I asked in honesty because I'm not an adherant to the main stream news outlets and haven't been for decades. Anything I previously understood about the NYT's was condemnation from the observations of others. I trust your contributions.
 

darkbeaver

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Jan 26, 2006
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DB:

"Anything I previously understood about the NYT's was condemnation from the observations of others." - DB

A dangerous policy.

Pangloss

I understand what you mean but I have a mix of information and I rarely trust just one perspective. I think trust is important as ever so I use my distrust of all authority and systemic thought as a personal censor. I'm not always entirely correct but I can still learn. I'm not dead yet.
 

TomG

Electoral Member
Oct 27, 2006
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The NYT is not a messenger, it is an iconic American institution that reports as well as creates news and opinion. The NYT might even be found frequently in the bibliographies of more or less scholarly works.

Rest assured that I am disinclined to address anybody who styles themselves after Pangloss or criticism them in anyway. I do enjoy the irony of a person who crafts a screen personality after a name that suggests it is nothing but a surface gloss suggesting that others are superficial and adolescent, and also indulges in references to substantive analyses. I meant no harm nor intended no slight, but the response was poor.

Now, I will continue with the fun I started for myself earlier. Anybody might join in, or not. Pangloss is almost certainly taken from a rather fluffy, if not adolescent, play by Voltaire. Pangloss is so called because in the face of the most horrible circumstances he spouts optimism: It may seem awful, but God made the world and God is perfect so therefore this must be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire was satirizing the von Lieibnitz’s Philosophy of Optimism. Pangloss: everything glows with a surface luster, and nobody known if there’s anything more.

Even so, how much more appealing is Pangloss the character than our present screen personality who abounds with hectoring, criticism and negativity. Our screen personality seems much more like the Rabelais character Panurge. Panurge, who successfully debated on behalf of his master Pantagruel against the English scholar who argues with signs.

But I write only in the interest of improving the screen character. And so now time is short and I must prepare for the revelry of The Twelfth Night. And, since we both know of Candide, we might expect to be invited to a banquet of Cunégonde. There I may find myself reduced to a lord-a-leaping, but should the character not be attended to, you may find yourself served up as the main course and relished by all in troubled times. Do try to be more like Pangloss, Pangloss.

And now I take my leave. I am gone sir, and anon sir I shall return, in a trice, like to the old vice, your surfeit to suffice—The Twelfth Night. Surely somebody such as yourself might find wisdom even in the words of a fool such as myself. I remain resolutely superficially and adolescently yours,
 
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Pangloss

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I understand what you mean but I have a mix of information and I rarely trust just one perspective. I think trust is important as ever so I use my distrust of all authority and systemic thought as a personal censor. I'm not always entirely correct but I can still learn. I'm not dead yet.

Well said, DB.

Pangloss
 

Pangloss

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TomG:

Faux eloquence, and a quiver of rhetorical arrows that all seem to veer just before the target. Plus, you read too much into my screen name. It's just the name of a character in a book I like.

"Shoot the messenger," as you well know if another term for ad hominem attacks.

As an aside, a newspaper (even the NYT) is very much a messenger. Content is generated by others, and is relayed (or analyzed) by the media, with varying degrees of accuracy and bias. Sure sounds like a messenger to me.

Other than that, your post is a tad incomprehensible.

Gopher, I took a back seat to see if anyone else wanted a whack at answering the "cite examples" request - and it was ably done. I also feel no need to get the last word in.

I didn't post the NYT editorial because I agreed or disagreed with it - I posted it because it was interesting and (I feel) discussion-worthy.

Nobody as yet is discussing the content of the editorial. This, to me, is even more interesting.

DB:

Candide is a very good, very funny read (and a mediocre Broadway musical), and a light, but bitter attack on the prevailing religious philosophy of Voltaire's time.

Pangloss
 

TomG

Electoral Member
Oct 27, 2006
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Ah Dark, I too read Candide a long time ago. It had some appeal for me way back then in my adolescence.

Today Candide seems as worn and effete as just another post hoc dump on George and crowd. What many people knew four years ago is about as interesting as yesterday’s news. The editorial is as courageous and insightful as just another weak rendering of the American myths of power, greatness moral goodness, the purity of the American people and the corruptness of government. It doesn’t help yesterday’s news to package it in the weak metaphor of a mirror’s reflection. The NYT still plays at the philosophy of optimism that is spoofed in Candide. God is perfect, god made America so America must be the best of all possible worlds. Terrible things may seem to have happened, but when the real American stands before the mirror then we’ll again see the purity and goodness of our perfect world. Bunk. There is little that’s interesting enough in the editorial to support a weighty discussion of substantive analysis, which is why I turned to deconstruction and entertainment.

I had meant to be entertaining but now stand accused of personal attacks by one whose first reply was:


"Shoot the messenger"* is tiresome, the opposite of illuminating, and the easy, lazy way out of substantive, intelligent analysis.

Yawn.

Pangloss

*The messenger being the NYT, not me. In case you think I took this adolescent response personally.



I can see that I failed at entertainment, but perhaps I can be forgiven. It might be thought a reasonable assumption that a person who takes a screen name from a character in literature might have a grasp of the story and possibly similar literature and lore of the time. I can see that I’d best desert entertainment and leave those offended to their own incomprehensions.

So, perhaps I’ll have a fling at substantive analysis, but first a context is needed. For a context, I’ll return to the NYT’s reflection metaphor. Nothing seems likely to change much until the true reflection of the real American is examined critically by Americans themselves. Societies and cultures are complex structures that exist in both time and place. Presenting such a thing as a refection requires huge reductions in the dimensionalities of time, space and place to project the thing onto a reflective Cartesian space. The reflection conceals many layers of time that are needed for the reflection to have anything but impressionistic abstract meaning, Perhaps I’d like to begin a reflection of the true American with a corruption of a Renaissance liberal philosophy of individualism into a justification for unbridled commerce and greed, and then to a schematic for governance to support the corrupted philosophy. I might continue with a layer that saw the armed conquest of lands occupied by traditional peoples and their slaughter since they proved inconvenient to profit followed by many chapters of the same layer. Perhaps I’d continue with the commerce in human bodies, since they proved convenient to profit, and their eventual abandonment to the comfort of Jim Crow laws when they proved inconvenient.

Many succeeding layers might seem only simple theme and variation on the original corrupted Renaissance philosophy. Huge power and wealth was amassed, and eventually we arrive at globalization and the NYT’s true American in the mirror. Why does the NYT see nothing but the optimism of the character Pangloss. Why aren’t a people seen who treat their prosperity and power as an entitlement due them for their unquestionable good and purity? Why aren’t a people seen who hold high-minded noble values almost universally and consistently prove incapable of applying those values.

A reflection might see a people who refuse to examine what their government does in their names that earn the prosperity they enjoy; who refuse to take responsibility for their government of the people and also refuse to give up any of their comfort and prosperity: A reflection might see a people who maintain the concept of inherently corrupt governments, since without the concept they’d have to confront themselves. Why?

Such a reflection is of course only one of many possible interpretations that might provide essential context for substantive analyses. But, the NYT choose the single most aggressive same old same old re-bagged myths for its reflection metaphor. Other equally powerful competing myths must be recognized and reconciled if change is likely. The world does seem to need change, and depends on America for that change for lack of an immediate alternative. However, little change seems possible unless Americans come to see more complete reflections of themselves. For this reason, the NYT editorial seems utterly uninteresting and possibly quite harmful; and it also seems quite incapable of providing adequate context for a substantive analysis.

And well, an IN discussion group doesn’t seem like an appropriate place for conducting substantive analyses. It is the contexts that are always difficult, The stuffing of the fabric from the warp and weft of the abstractive logical rational deductive method with numbers and measurements usually is simple donkey’s toil. And in the end, only an abstraction of how something works is usually grasped. What something is, its nature and it values usually are among the missing.

Metaphorically, an ocean might be stuffed with water given a lot of work. But, if the meaning of an ocean is its shape on a map, the ocean doesn’t need to be stuffed with water. The shape of an ocean is defined by its shore, which can be easily known beforehand without all the stuffing. As William Carlos Williams observed, the edge of the sea is involved with itself. No doubt the sea is completely unaware that it depends on context, the shore, for meaning. Storms blow and waves crash on the shore rocks without effect. None of us have any meaning independent of our contexts, which are in the public domaine.

All the stuffing of the Icaaruses above who toil at the labors of substantive analyses adds little meaning. When it is context rather than mechanism that is at question, truth comes from arts, music, literature and poetry. The business of substantive analysis is best left waiting, Without context, numbers are numbing.

I have no doubt again waxed incomprehensible, but I remain unapologetically and incomprehensibly at your service.
 

Pangloss

Council Member
Mar 16, 2007
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TomG:

I suspect you will take this as a bossy, patronizing post, but honestly I don't mean it that way.

You want people to read what you write? Try shorter, more to the point posts. I for one, don't come here to read 500 words on how I can be better, or whatever. Think of this as a conversation, and only write longer posts when there is something that needs to be written and cannot be made shorter.

I suspect I'd enjoy, as would many others, what you have to write. Most of us (there are exceptions) however, will skip the essays.

Pangloss
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
Jan 26, 2006
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Don't you dare take Pangloss's advice, as a backwoods backward amateur reader and analist I appreciate the time and effort others take here to educate, it's an easy enough thing to digest a piece of work at ones liesure, I like long windedness, eespecially when it talks sence to me.
Quite the opposite of what Pangloss has recommended he should disregard his own advice and spill his guts so to speak, if you wait to long you'll perhaps miss the chance.We are on the edge of the abyss and I for one would understand why. Those who skip the essays miss the meat in the human stew you can't grow on broth alone you know. There are many skilled writers here, I wish they would get on with it.
 

darkbeaver

the universe is electric
Jan 26, 2006
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CIA-ISI Created “Al Qaeda Network”, Blamed for Pakistan Troubles

By Kurt Nimmo

Global Research, December 31, 2007
Prisonplanet.com

It is a familiar if not worn-out refrain: “The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say.”
If we are to believe the New York Times — you know, the propaganda sheet in large part responsible for selling the “war” in Iraq, that is to say the plan to mass murder of more than a million Iraqis — the contrived terrorist scare crow al-Qaeda has “clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto,” never mind there is absolutely no evidence of this and never mind as well al-Qaeda was in fact created by Pakistan’s ISI, with a large infusion of CIA cash and directives.
“Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,” averred Robert Gates, one of the primary founders of al-Qaeda, a fact he willingly admitted in his memoir, From the Shadows. Of course, no mention of this slimy connection in the “liberal” New York Times, the former home of the neocon disinfo operative Judith Miller.
“The expansion of Pakistan’s own militants, with their fortified links to Al Qaeda, presents a deeply troubling development for the Bush administration and its efforts to stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country.”
And yet few seem to be troubled by the fact these militants were mentored and lavishly funded by the CIA. Long ago relegated to the memory hole are uncomfortable facts: Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rahman, Pakistani ISI’s head from 1980 to 1987, regularly met with bin Laden in Peshawar, Pakistan; the CIA essentially micromanaged Afghanistan’s opium production; the ISI trained “militants” (i.e., patsies and useful idiots) to attack the Soviet Union proper; well over 100,000 Islamic militants were trained in Pakistan between 1986 and 1992 in camps constructed and overseen by the CIA and MI6, with the British SAS training future al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in bomb-making and other black arts, etc., on and on, ad nauseam.
Now we are expected to believe al-Qaeda, appearing out of the mist of amnesia, is a portentous threat to the poor people of Pakistan, as related by the premier propaganda sheet, the New York Times.
Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners but Pakistani tribesmen from border regions, as well as Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. “Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,” he wrote.
Excuse me, but al-Qaeda, the database and perennial boogieman, has always been a “Pakistani phenomenon,” that is with the good grace of the CIA and MI6, with a bit of collaboration from the Mossad and German intelligence.
How long before we are told the U.S. has to send an infusion of soldiers, pronto, the fight the evil al-Qaeda in Pakistan?
Soon. Lest we face the specter of that Muslim atom bomb falling into the hands of al-Qaeda.
Oh please.