[Peace-discuss] Lies of our Times

[C. G. Estabrook]

Anyone who wants to know why Americans are so ignorant about their government's 
policies need only look at the lead stories in the NY Times yesterday and today 
(and recall that even for those who never read the NYT, it still sets the agenda 
for what the rest of the US media covers, and how they do it).

Yesterday the paper featured a "human interest" story about Somalia, with never 
a hint that the US overthrew the only popular government that area -- of 
interest to the US because of its proximity to ME oil -- has had.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/africa/17somalia.html?scp=5&sq=somalia&st=nyt>

Today the paper fronts a "human interest" story about Lebanon -- with no hint of 
American machinations (which a real newspaper would work to uncover) or even the 
policy that the US has followed literally for generations in the region.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/world/middleeast/18lebanon.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin>

US policy is so consistent that even the editors of the Times (the agenda is set 
by the managing editor, Bill Keller, a Clinton-DLC type) can't claim they can't 
see it.  Forty years ago liberal Democrats started a war that killed four 
million Asians because the country of South Vietnam wouldn't accept the 
government we'd picked out for them.  (After all, Latin American countries had 
been doing it regularly for some time, with only a modicum of subversion and 
torture exported from the US.) The issue is much the same in Somalia and 
Lebanon, different as they are: the US has arranged biddable governments for 
both places, and the locals are too obtuse to accept them, so they must be 
killed. And we're responsible for the killing.

If you'd like a example to how the Times covers sin with smooth names, see the 
note (it can't be called a review) on p. 20 of today's Book Review by the chief 
of the Times' Washington bureau, on a (slight) bit of political myth-making by a 
opportunist neocon.  --CGE