Month: June 2010

Helen Thomas’ Watergate scoop

by FRED GARDNER

The White House put out the story that Martha was about to be institutionalized. Back at the Newport Inn, her guards wouldn’t give her food but plied her with liquor. She eventually negotiated the right to fly back east. She checked into the Westchester Country Club and called UPI to declare, “I’m leaving him until he decides to leave the campaign. It’s horrible to me… I’m not going to stand for all those dirty things that go on. If you could see me you wouldn’t believe it. I’m black and blue. I’m a political prisoner… They don’t want me to talk.”

In his famous comeback interview with David Frost in September ’77, Richard Nixon said, “If it hadn’t been for Martha, there’d have been no Watergate, because John wasn’t mindin’ the store.” Nixon told Frost that Martha was mentally unbalanced and that “John was practically out of his mind about Martha in the spring of 1972. He was letting Magruder and all these boys, these kids, these nuts, run this thing.”

It was a total lie. In the spring of 1972 Martha Mitchell was a highly active, visible and popular member of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. They turned her into a crazy drunken dame.

Counterpunch for more

Who is Thomas Houlahan?

PAKISTAN MEDIA WATCH

Last week The News published a column titled, “US asked to stand by forces of law in Pakistan” that calls on the US to oppose the present government. Aside from the obvious problem of publishing an obvious opinion piece as “news,” the article raises several questions about whether The News is acting as a political propaganda machine.

Pakistan Media Watch for more

(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)

The New York Times as war mongers

by EDWARD S. HERMAN

The New York Times is a war-mongeringnewspaper,because its government is an aggressive imperial power that makes war on a continuing basis and the Times is an establishment institution that reliably follows the party line brought forth when the warfare state moves into action. Sometimes the paper’s closeness to the warfare state is so gross that its editors should be embarrassed at its failure to maintain even nominal independence and at its propaganda role. In 1945, New York Times reporter William L. Lawrence bragged in print about”the honor, unique in journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release [announcing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and deliberate slaughter ofmany more civilians than were killed in the Bosnian ‘genocide’ of 1992-1995] for worldwide distribution. No greater honor can come to any newspaperman” (quoted in the important but neglected book by Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, 2004). Violating well-established ethical rules, Lawrence took money from both the government and the New York Times, without public disclosure. Violating still other ethical rules, the Times published as news articles Lawrence’s writings that were prepared explicitly for government use, without identifying the underlying source. In the process Lawrence and the Times helped disseminate important disinformation (e.g., on the alleged minimal radiation threat from atomic bombing), and they helped prepare the ground for the huge postwar investment in nuclear weapons.

Z Magazine for more

What the eye did not see

by ARDESHIR COWASJEE

We have seen over the past three decades how impossible it is for the minorities to truly ‘freely’ practise their religion. How many minority citizens of Pakistan have been killed or persecuted, through bigotry, intolerance and Zia’s iniquitous blasphemy laws. And on May 28 of this year, how many members of the minority Ahmadi community were massacred in cold blood by the ‘student’ fraternity upholding their version of the religion of the majority? The official reaction: silence. Unforgivable!

Dawn for more

States and social contracts in Africa

by PAUL NUGENT

The central question that underlies most of the literature on African states is why they have proved to be such weak Leviathans or, phrased in more normative terms, why they have failed to generate meaningful public goods. The answer is typically sought in some combination of historical and structural factors. On the resolutely historical side of things, Jean-François Bayart seeks an overarching explanation in a history of African ‘extraversion’ dating back to the era of the slave trade, which warped African institutions in fundamental ways. [9] Whereas his account takes the long view, many still continue to insist on colonialism as the operative watershed. Hence it has been argued, in a stronger and a weaker version by Basil Davidson and Patrick Chabal respectively, that pre-colonial traditions of statecraft were fractured during the colonial takeover. [10] The result was that imported institutions lacked basic legitimacy, while the indigenous forms that were permitted to continue were stripped of their mechanisms of accountability—coming to embody what Mahmood Mamdani has described as ‘decentralized despotisms’. [11]

New Left Review for more

Afghanistan: The longest lost war

by JAMES PETRAS

On the military front, the Pentagon launches one “offensive” after another, announcing one success after another, followed by a retreat and return of the Resistance fighters. The US campaigns disrupt trade, agricultural harvests and markets, while the air assaults targeting “Taliban” and militants, more frequently than not end up killing more civilians celebrating weddings, religious holidays and shoppers at markets than combatants. The reason for the high percentage of civilian killings is clear to everyone except the US Generals: there are no distinctions between “militants” and millions of Afghan civilians since the former are an integral part of their communities.

Eurasia Review for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork)

Kashmir

by YASMIN QURESHI

I had wanted to go to Kashmir ever since I visited Palestine in 2007. There are many similarities in the nature of the occupation as well as the struggles, both being nearly 63 years old. One difference is that while Israel is seen as an external occupying force in Palestine, the Kashmir issue is considered an ‘internal’ matter or a conflict between Pakistan and India and the voice of Kashmiris is often lost. As a result there are fewer international organizations monitoring the region and little information about the extent and impact of the occupation gets out.

Z Net for more