Most serious students of current events still feel it necessary to check daily what international news has made it into the pages of the NY Times. But nowadays that is usually after we have opened our computers to seven or eight Yahoo News article headlines on our home page. Various articles will be AP releases less than an hour old. Next we look at our favorite on line news sites by geographical focus, maybe a South African newspaper, an Asian news site, Council On Hemispheric Affairs, before bringing up favorite in depth progressive (read honest) sites like CounterCurrents.org, CommonDreams.org and scanning other newsletters like OpEdNews.org. After the above, we pick up the Times and maybe find one or two news articles with information we have not already become conversant with. The Times Op-ed pages have long ceased to be relevant, or worth the time to glance over. Anything of import, like a letter from a person of consequence will be all over the Internet anyway.
Basically, one feels the need to know what kind of a new elite consensus the influential NY Times is slanting its news interpretations toward. Its well done arts, science and culture articles are to Times readers, what the sports section is to tabloid readers – the baited hook or attraction which makes the paper seem honorable and allows the political columnists and op-ed writers to preach capitalism and war as necessary for America.
With search engines like Google able to bring up, in two seconds, articles on precisely what we would like to know about, the NY Times is fast becoming of marginal usefulness. Once a student catches on to the Times agenda to denigrate, black out, or put in a bad light, honest criticism of America’s corporate governance and imperialist intentions, the Times merely becomes something to watch in suspicion for an expected journalistic try to bend and warp actualities - Chavez being a current target and example of not so clever attempts at belittlement that actually backfire on Times credibility and usefulness.
However, the NY Times, being the leading US media along with CNN are still the prime forces for lethally dangerous distortion to be reckoned with. Forget the sick people of the war factions in the White House, Congress, churches and in board rooms. Their murderous insanity could not proceed without the ignorant acquiescence of the general public manufactured in corporate media, with the Times as academic credentialed mother of all disinformation. Honest action must therefore confront the dishonest press, for the politicians in office are unapproachable even in election years as bought and paid for media are an impenetrable wall between the people and their ‘elected’ ‘public servants’. If all the white-collar criminals of government, media and corporations could be brought to court, a plea of insanity would be perfectly appropriate and provable.
The brave boys pulling the trigger on the bombsights are merely ignorant of the true and larger picture, and have been deceived by the criminally insane media fronting for a criminally insane government under the mindless momentum of profits for the military-industrial complex. The boys in service are most certainly not insane; yet, ignorance of the law is no excuse. The position in the court of their own conscience is more sticky and uncomfortable to say the least, than that of the simple insanity of the media and government people above them giving the orders.
That leaves the ‘innocent’ masses of ‘what me worry’, ‘what can I do’ millions and millions of sane everyday American and European citizens, who regardless of their indifference and acquiescence, or perhaps because of it, sense that their world is not so civilized, not so fair and not so sane. They wouldn’t know where to start to change things for the better, except by perhaps reading the elite’s newspaper. The last thing most of these good people would suspect was that NY Times was their nearest enemy – right there on the newsstand or close held in one's hands.
“Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said, “In these times, silence is treason!!” King would mean treason to your country, treason to your conscience, treason to your children and those beautiful Iraqi, Afghan and Somali children wounded and dying from U.S. air strikes. But how to break the silence? – if not to begin by condemning the NY Times for continuing by subtle nuance to trick the people skim-reading it into continuing the wars of occupation.
“Albert Einstein said, “It’s not the murder and criminality in high places, it’s the indifference that permits it, that is basic.” The whole world is hating Americans (mostly, white Americans) for their indifference to their armies’ mayhem. Many in the US and abroad hate the selfish American lifestyle fostered unapologetically by the NY Times leadership of an American media promoting indifference with its commercial I, Me, Mine, selfish consumerism messages while obsequiously praising every Iraq, Afghan and Vietnam war veteran as a hero.
The Italian poet Dante wrote, in his “Inferno”, ‘”The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis maintain neutrality.” Dante would mean the hottest fires are not for those who pull the triggers in ignorance, obeying their elders, nor the criminally insane who order the triggers pulled, nor the criminally insane of the media who falsely justified the pulling of triggers, also not the gung ho that the media managed to mislead, convince and arouse, but rather all those (in America, a multitude), who simply watch and know the triggers are being pulled and yet take no side either way.
If the American multitude ever awakens to Dante’s hellfire warning, one expects it will quickly realize that the NY Times has led US conglomerate media in continually deceiving the public to promote unwarranted fears, justify war over and over again, and defend a corrupt and undemocratic corporate governance that blindly relishes war for profit.
That is, if by the time the public awakes, the NY Times still maintains a wide enough readership to still be taken seriously as the most dangerous enemy to peace and justice.
Warn friends of the Times’ blackouts and slant to protect the criminally insane.
Basically, one feels the need to know what kind of a new elite consensus the influential NY Times is slanting its news interpretations toward. Its well done arts, science and culture articles are to Times readers, what the sports section is to tabloid readers – the baited hook or attraction which makes the paper seem honorable and allows the political columnists and op-ed writers to preach capitalism and war as necessary for America.
With search engines like Google able to bring up, in two seconds, articles on precisely what we would like to know about, the NY Times is fast becoming of marginal usefulness. Once a student catches on to the Times agenda to denigrate, black out, or put in a bad light, honest criticism of America’s corporate governance and imperialist intentions, the Times merely becomes something to watch in suspicion for an expected journalistic try to bend and warp actualities - Chavez being a current target and example of not so clever attempts at belittlement that actually backfire on Times credibility and usefulness.
However, the NY Times, being the leading US media along with CNN are still the prime forces for lethally dangerous distortion to be reckoned with. Forget the sick people of the war factions in the White House, Congress, churches and in board rooms. Their murderous insanity could not proceed without the ignorant acquiescence of the general public manufactured in corporate media, with the Times as academic credentialed mother of all disinformation. Honest action must therefore confront the dishonest press, for the politicians in office are unapproachable even in election years as bought and paid for media are an impenetrable wall between the people and their ‘elected’ ‘public servants’. If all the white-collar criminals of government, media and corporations could be brought to court, a plea of insanity would be perfectly appropriate and provable.
That leaves the ‘innocent’ masses of ‘what me worry’, ‘what can I do’ millions and millions of sane everyday American and European citizens, who regardless of their indifference and acquiescence, or perhaps because of it, sense that their world is not so civilized, not so fair and not so sane. They wouldn’t know where to start to change things for the better, except by perhaps reading the elite’s newspaper. The last thing most of these good people would suspect was that NY Times was their nearest enemy – right there on the newsstand or close held in one's hands.
“Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said, “In these times, silence is treason!!” King would mean treason to your country, treason to your conscience, treason to your children and those beautiful Iraqi, Afghan and Somali children wounded and dying from U.S. air strikes. But how to break the silence? – if not to begin by condemning the NY Times for continuing by subtle nuance to trick the people skim-reading it into continuing the wars of occupation.
“Albert Einstein said, “It’s not the murder and criminality in high places, it’s the indifference that permits it, that is basic.” The whole world is hating Americans (mostly, white Americans) for their indifference to their armies’ mayhem. Many in the US and abroad hate the selfish American lifestyle fostered unapologetically by the NY Times leadership of an American media promoting indifference with its commercial I, Me, Mine, selfish consumerism messages while obsequiously praising every Iraq, Afghan and Vietnam war veteran as a hero.
The Italian poet Dante wrote, in his “Inferno”, ‘”The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis maintain neutrality.” Dante would mean the hottest fires are not for those who pull the triggers in ignorance, obeying their elders, nor the criminally insane who order the triggers pulled, nor the criminally insane of the media who falsely justified the pulling of triggers, also not the gung ho that the media managed to mislead, convince and arouse, but rather all those (in America, a multitude), who simply watch and know the triggers are being pulled and yet take no side either way.
If the American multitude ever awakens to Dante’s hellfire warning, one expects it will quickly realize that the NY Times has led US conglomerate media in continually deceiving the public to promote unwarranted fears, justify war over and over again, and defend a corrupt and undemocratic corporate governance that blindly relishes war for profit.
That is, if by the time the public awakes, the NY Times still maintains a wide enough readership to still be taken seriously as the most dangerous enemy to peace and justice.
Warn friends of the Times’ blackouts and slant to protect the criminally insane.
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