Thomas Friedman on The Huffington Post

David Whyte: The Poetic Narrative Of Our Times

2009-12-03T11:22:30Z

Night mist hangs on the Conamara mountainside above Mameen, hiding the immensity of its sleeping, background bulk and at the same time magnifying its presence, bringing out its depth and making known to us its essential rough, unspeakable mountain-ness even as it veils and takes full sight of it away from us. Over stone precipices, the lazy movement and hanging drifts of fine-silvered water vapor outline and enhance what we call the beauty of the mountains, by enabling us to see them again and again, as if new and reborn through each shifting pattern. We are strangely delighted by our imagined fears of what it would be like to be abroad in the dark and the mist and the stones, out on their ridges and peaks, in that night where so much is hidden. Then, above the ridgelines, a full moon suddenly appears from between clouds, accentuating its own luminosity and the luminosity of the mountains by its swift appearance, seeming to demonstrate its very essence through a sheer, round, isolated contrast with what it looks down upon.

Looking up from the lit door of Keanes's Pub in the heart of Conamara, these clouds, landscapes, and even the Irishness of the night seem fuller and more essential through their disappearances as much as through their appearances. Human beings stand at the center of these sometimes swift, sometimes slow, always moving patterns of presence and absence, but rarely intuit their own essence might be revealed and magnified by what is veiled and hidden, or by what has been taken away. Yet this form of subtraction may be the very hallmark of our time. At the present time we are asked to live in companionship with patterns and dynamics that are either disappearing, have not fully emerged or can never be fully named; patterns perhaps already changing into forms for which we have yet no language.

It is tempting, in this limbo time between the traumas of a world once said to be in ceaseless war with terrorism and a not yet fully formed future ideal, to feel righteously lost. Everything seems to be paused and hanging in a mist- wrought, barely moving dance. The world's economic systems, the world's ecological systems, the relations between haves and have-nots, the sovereignty of nation states upon which many millions of individuals have based their identities, all these are taking forms which we cannot quite recognize, and in that movement through form seem to be on the verge of disappearing. Even the recent worldwide enthusiasm for the American presidential elections has waned, as the poetic narrative that put Obama so enthusiastically in the White House is dissipated by the cares of office and the sense that he is already half-captured by the very denizens of Wall Street that brought everything so dangerously to the brink. The problems seem immense; the forces at play absorbing and able to deflect the need for reform.

Little wonder then that if we prefer the appearance of stability or clear unobstructed vision we will manufacture fake narratives to replace the complexity, changeability and raw beauty of real ones, especially if the stories we always wanted to be true seem to shimmer and disappear. The flat earth vision of Thomas Friedman is well articulated, but ultimately based on a human identity parsed solely through economics, as if human life can be defined by whether one is more productive or educated than the next person. It is the task of poetry, and the poetic narrative, to bring our eyes to bear on the raw immensity of these patterns and the heart breaking nature of our disappearances, which are unavoidable no matter our economic standing or our education; what Yeats called the terrible beauty that is a consequence of being alive in this world, no matter how relentlessly positive we may be. It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life. A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain. A good poem brims with reflected beauty and even a bracing beautiful ugliness. At the center of our lives, in the midst of the busyness and the forgetting, is a story that makes sense when everything extraneous has been taken away. This is poetry's province; a form of deep memory; a place from which to witness the intangible, unspeakable thresholds of incarnation we misname an average life.

I think of a good friend, once robustly healthy, adventurous, hard working, inventive and entrepreneurial, now confined to a wheel chair and barely able to function intellectually after a terrible accident. His wife and children have lost many of the outer stories they had told themselves about their future but the central story, the one that lives under the busy surface of a family's life, the one that was always there, still remains clearly, luminously at the center. His wife has spoken many times of the essence of his spirit and the essence of her love for that spirit, which remains as a thing of beauty in and of itself, informing all the work that must be done to adjust and adapt to the new outer narrative.

It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living. What is real can never be fully taken away; its essence always remains. It might set us a little freer to believe that there is no path in life - in the low valley, in the shelter of Keane's comfortable bar, snug by a turf fire or abroad in the mountain night, that does not lead to some form of heartbreak when the outer narrative disappears and then reappears in a different form. If we are sincere, every good marriage or relationship will break our hearts in order to enlarge our understanding of our self and that strange other with whom we have promised ourselves to the future. Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of the same heartbreaks we have traversed. Following a vocation or an art form through decades of practice and understanding will break the idealistic heart that began the journey and replace it, if we sidestep the temptations of bitterness and self-pity, with something more malleable, compassionate and generous than the metaphysical organ with which we began the journey. We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming; as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.

It may be that we live in a time of collective heartbreak, where for the first time in history we are being asked to witness the disappearance and reappearance on a global scale of what it means to be fully human; to give away our identity and see how it is returned to us through a sincere participation in the trials and necessities of the coming years. Part of that heartbreak is the sense that we might not be equal to the ecological, political and economic transitions that are necessary, that our own selfishness may be writ too deeply into our genes and that the future is therefore untenable and unreachable. We do not as yet know if this is true, but the old humanistic story around ourselves as a successful species, always on the up and up and appointed to some special destiny, is fading and silvering into the night air, and we are left, at this point in history, contemplating the unknown immensity of the night behind it.

MAMEEN

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.

- David Whyte
from RIVER FLOW: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007
Copyright 2006 Many Rivers Press

Tom Friedman: Why I Can't Support The Afghan Surge

2009-12-02T09:46:12Z

Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can't agree with President Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I'd prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.

Tom Friedman: 'After 9/11, I Overreacted' (VIDEO)

2009-12-02T09:31:15Z

On "The Daily Show" Tuesday night, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman admitted that he "overreacted" to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

When host Jon Stewart made the case that invading Iraq had a detrimental effect on the war in Afghanistan, Friedman seemed reluctant to respond.

"I feel like you -- you are holding something inside you about Iraq. I feel like you supported that. Are you upset with yourself about supporting that tactic and supporting that war?" Stewart asked.

"Yeah, my criticism of myself would be that after 9/11, I overreacted. and I think as a country we overreacted," Friedman said.

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Sharmine Narwani: Thomas Friedman -- Hasbara GrandMaster Or Elitist Dupe?

2009-11-30T11:18:12Z

Hard as I try, my mouth is fixed in an unattractive gape -- unable, it seems, to correct itself. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his usual clumsy attempts to suggest liberal sympathy while in fact propagating many, many Mideast myths, has caused this unfortunate disfigurement.

In his most recent column on Saturday, Friedman decided to help us understand a phenomenon sweeping the Arab and Muslim worlds, and was generous enough to coin an actual phrase to simplify this concept for the benefit of all Western civilization -- he calls it "The Narrative."

According to the New York Times columnist, "The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11." Yes, he capitalizes it. Like "The Donald." Or "The Treaty of Versailles."

Kind of him to generalize this way. It would have been far more difficult for me if I actually had to think about the Arab-Muslim world as a diverse grouping representing real-life individuals from varying cultures, histories, religions, political persuasions and stages of social, political and economic development.

In his column, Friedman expands on his "The Narrative," saying these Arab-Muslims feel that "America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand "American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" to keep Muslims down."

I don't suppose that our declaration of a grandiose "War on Terror" which refused to distinguish between extremist Salafi militants and legitimate resistance movements -- dubbed a "mistake" by no less a figure than British Foreign Secretary David Miliband earlier this year -- had anything to do with that perception?

Miliband wrote in the Guardian in January that the term "War on Terror" is "misleading and mistaken," and that efforts to "lump" extremists together had been counterproductive, playing "into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common."

How positively Friedman-esque.

He might further note that the current Obama administration has also ceased to use such terms because they have been singularly divisive and entirely unsuccessful.

But I digress. My mandibular deformity was actually caused by Friedman's pronouncement that for at least two decades...

"U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny."

Where does one begin, pray tell? Tyranny, might be a good starting point. Friedman may care to note that two of the most tyrannical governments in the Arab world -- Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- are, in fact the US's closest allies in the Arab Mideast. Egypt has been ruled with an iron fist by President Husni Mubarak for three decades, a man who hits slam-dunks every election year by garnering an eyebrow-raising 90% of the popular vote -- and whose prisons are notorious torture cells for political dissidents. The theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia doesn't even try to feign democratic trappings. No elections, state-controlled media, zero tolerance for dissent -- women forbidden to drive by religious mandate.

So let's count the Egyptian and Saudi populations out from Friedman's description, because they probably don't feel like they have been "freed from tyranny." Let's instead turn our conversation to his "rescuing Muslims" scenario.

Hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim men, women and children ceased to exist after our onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. US politicians cheered on Israeli troops as they decimated entire civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2009, destroyed non-military infrastructure vital to these areas and killed over a thousand innocent civilians in each place. Israel fired off one million cluster bomblets in Lebanon, most of these in the war's final three days while ceasefire agreements were being negotiated - knowing full well that 98% of victims are civilians, a third of them children. Says Friedman:

"Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11...primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes -- the Taliban and the Baathists -- and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders."

Forgive me, but is Friedman saying that our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were about regime change? I foolishly thought we had sold the notion to the global community that this was about bringing Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to justice for their role in 9-11. If this is so, Arabs and Muslims should forgive us for being liars as well.

"A million acts of kindness?" Name three.

And then Friedman posits that "most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia..." Tell you what. Name three Americans who can read and do not know that the US government funded, groomed, armed and created the jihadists we are fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq today.

"You need to tell us what it (Islam) is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques," Friedman urges Arabs and Muslims worldwide. Perhaps if we ceased our efforts to block the popular and balanced coverage of Al Jazeera's English channel from being broadcast on our television screens, we would get a clearer picture of the Muslim word, Tom.

Most galling, however, is Friedman's attempt to coin a phrase and insert it into our own nation's narrative. It smacks of Hasbara, a Hebrew term -- often interpreted as 'propaganda' -- used by Israel and its supporters to direct the Middle East debate and reshape public opinion abroad.

This is a matter of significant priority for the Israeli government, and it has at its disposal a veritable army of Hasbara activists in all the important international capitals and campuses. For an unusual -- meaning, available to the public -- example of Hasbara in action, one need only look to the 116-page document "The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary" published on Newsweek's website, with talking points for Hasbara activists on everything from Iran's nuclear energy program to the Gaza War to illegal Settlements in the West Bank.

I can only imagine that Friedman wrote this column at 3 am one morning in a full-flegded Jerry McGuire moment that he will hopefully come to regret. He has no facts whatsoever to back up his assertions, and his only source for information on this supposedly widespread "The Narrative" that has infiltrated the collective Arab-Muslim brain is -- wait for it -- the claims of an anonymous "Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert."

Forgive me for saying this because I actually think well of Jordan and its resourceful citizens. But, the current Jordanian establishment, like many other Arab and Muslim elitists, is so far up the collective US, Israeli and Saudi arse, it would take major surgery to find it, let alone free it. Find some new friends, Friedman.

"Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves," concludes Friedman.

Tom, look honestly at yourself. Do you really think that if Arab-Muslim societies were free of external interference and able to elect their leaders in democratic elections, they would hold these alleged grievances?

I suggest that our double standards in dealing with the Middle East and our many, many failed policies there, including propping up brutal leaders to do our bidding, justifiably engenders resentment and anger, not just in the region, but globally too. You ought to have passed by Europe during Israel's Gazan military adventure earlier this year when hundreds of thousands of Europeans in all their major cities protested angrily against the IDF's killing spree. Then again, maybe we would have been forcibly subjected to another one of your columns on the Misinformed European Narrative.

James Boyce: What's Up With the Rainforest: Stopping Rainforest Destruction Can Cut World Emissions By 17%

2009-11-17T13:33:25Z

Around the world rainforests are hurting. The deforestation of vast tracts of these precious lands does more than just ruin local ecosystems. The health and vitality of rainforests help maintain life for everything on the planet. Reason enough for all of us to contribute to ending their destruction and encouraging their growth. This is why, working with The Rainforest Alliance, we helped create The Rainforest and The Rainforest NewsLadder. Every couple of weeks I will check in to see what's buzzing in The Rainforest providing you with the latest news and media surrounding this priority issue.

There was a lot of chatter this week in The Rainforest about the role economics plays in deforestation.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times resident globe trender, recently opined about how we could eliminate 17 percent of all global emissions if we could halt the cutting and burning of tropical forests. In his recent trip down to the Tapajós National Forest in Brazil, Friedman imagined what would happen if you took all the planes, trains, and automobiles out of use. He came to the conclusion that the emission reduction would still be less that if we just stopped cutting down the rainforests. Easier said than done though. How do we get poor, forest-rich nations to stop cutting down trees? Secondly, how do we create markets that reward poor countries for not making the furniture richer countries desire?

Another story gained a lot of attention for the frugality it pinned on Mother Nature. Germany and the European Commission commissioned the 3-year-long study that concluded that protecting the environment and allowing it to regulate life sustaining systems is cheaper than destroying them for profit and trying to concoct man-made solutions to replace them. It's a shame it took 300-pages to come to that conclusion.

How much would it cost for you not to burn that rainforest? That is the question Damian Kahya of the BBC is asking world leaders this week. Answering the question are some of the largest energy companies in the world - BP and American Electric Power. With EU cap and trade already in effect and the US looking for a scheme of its own, companies are looking for a way to keep old polluting habits alive by throwing money at the problem. Deforestation agreements might end up being the only thing agreed upon at Copenhagen.

We came across a really inspiring video about a biologist who used his love for the orangutan to regrow rainforests in Borneo AND provide a stable economy for the native people.

Bottom line is "the bottom line" plays a part in the rainforest conversation. As Willie Smits in Borneo showed us, a sustainable future does not have to come at the costs of a stable economy. What is needed is more thinking and more dialouge. You can get involved immediately by contributing your own ideas into the conversation by visiting The Rainforest or contribute a newsworthy story on The Rainforest NewsLadder.

David Halperin: To Do Nothing Is an Insane Policy

2009-11-11T16:04:18Z

When President Obama appointed former Senator George Mitchell as his Special Envoy for the Middle East Peace Process on only his second day in office, one cannot imagine he envisioned the region being mired in a painful stalemate less than a year later. On the contrary, his early engagement was designed to keep such an impasse from occurring.

 Unfortunately, mistakes were made. The U.S. went too far in demanding nothing less than a complete settlement freeze, ensuring that the Palestinians could demand no less. The popular right-wing government in Israel remained obstinate on the freeze; the U.S. then backtracked, causing the Palestinians to cry foul and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to threaten not to run in the next election. In the process, Israelis have lost trust in Obama (if they ever had any to begin with is debatable), and the Palestinians have lost their once high hopes.

 In the past, when similar Arab-Israeli stalemates have gripped the region, and a void of creative ideas has caused an upswell of hopelessness for any "peace process," many have turned to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to suggest new ideas or support thoughtful policy approaches for overcoming such a deadlock.

 While his ideas have by no means been flawless, they have stimulated fresh thinking, encouraged creative problem solving and, at times, inspired a degree of hope.

 So, it was especially disheartening to read Thomas Friedman's latest missive on how to overcome the current stalemate, "Call White House, Ask for Barack,"in which he argues that in the absence of strong prospects for any real movement toward a two-state solution the United States should "take down our 'Peace-Processing-Is-Us' sign and just go home."

 Friedman sums up what he calls a "radically new approach" for U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy in these four sentences: "When you're serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix."

 Friedman may be correct that rising above the current stalemate requires a radical new approach. The U.S. certainly needs to reassess its expectations and recalibrate its approach to diplomacy in the Middle East. But abandoning efforts entirely - essentially having a policy based on doing nothing at all - would be incredibly irresponsible.

Here's why:

"Give us a call" ... after another round of violence

As Friedman might say "we've seen this movie before." Violence sparks in the region when 1) rejectionists fear progress in the peace process (see: Hamas suicide bombs, Rabin's assassination) and when 2) political progress appears hopeless (see: first and second intifadas).

The absence of any meaningful gestures to support Mahmoud Abbas, and the recent prisoner release to Hamas in exchange for a videotape of captive Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, have seemingly added further strength to the perception that violence, not diplomacy, produces results.

And in the absence of any prospect for political progress, we have already heard growing warnings that a third Palestinian intifada could be sparked.

If diplomacy were abandoned entirely, violence could very likely ensue as the alternative. Some fear that a third intifada would be even more violent and deadly than in the past. There is no way of knowing whether such violence could spin out of control, bringing on a wider, and deadlier, regional conflict.

One cannot imagine this is the "pain" that Friedman has in mind when he writes: "Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other..."

It is hard to understand how abandoning a conflict, and thereby potentially sparking exactly the kind of violence - and possibly regional warfare - we hope to avoid, could be in the interests of the United States.

It's not our habit--it's our interest.

Friedman ridicules hope for peace in the Holy Land as merely "our habit." He likens U.S. Arab-Israeli diplomacy efforts to "a callisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen."

This is likely news to George Mitchell, who stepped out of retirement to take on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, stating "There is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended." Surely, at 76, and with his legacy of success mediating a resolution to the Northern Ireland conflict intact, Mitchell doesn't need the exercise.

Mitchell knows it won't be easy. Recalling his experience in Northern Ireland, he told reporters upon his appointment as Mideast envoy that "we had 700 days of failure and one day of success. For most of the time, progress was nonexistent or very slow."

It is also hard to imagine that National Security Advisor Jim Jones was doing the diplomatic equivalent of jumping-jacks when he recently said that if he could tell President Obama to resolve one conflict it would be the Arab-Israeli one.

The reality is that the United States may indeed want peace more than the parties seem to--because it is critically important that it be achieved for our national interests as well. If we sit around and do nothing, the parties will not be the only ones to suffer. Our challenges to stabilize the Middle East, combat violent extremism, strengthen moderates, and halt Iranian nuclear ambitions would become far more difficult. Even more, when there is a vacuum in the region, someone inevitably steps in to fill the void.

Who will be calling?

On Monday, Ethan Bronner of The New York Times reported that unlike in the past, Mahmoud Abbas' threat to not run in the election called for January 24th is being taken seriously by his colleagues. Furthermore, some believe that Abbas may resign before that date and his colleagues may go with him, effectively dissolving the Palestinian Authority.

Then what?

"Let them call us when they are ready," Friedman seems to say. But the key point is who will be the "them" on the Palestinian side?

Without the Palestinian Authority, it is likely we would see the end of the so-called "Fayyadism," the growth of the West Bank economy under Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, coined by Friedman just three months ago as having the potential to "start a trend in this part of the world -- one that would do the most to improve Arab human security -- good, accountable government."

In addition, without the P.A., it is questionable what would become of the U.S.-trained Palestinian National Security Force, also hailed by Friedman just months ago. In an interview last month, Major General Diab el-Ali, a commander of the force, warned that the security progress in the West Bank "is still very fragile and very much connected to a political solution. If there is no political horizon, we're all likely to suffer a serious regression."

If Abbas, whom former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh recently described as "the most courageous partner we have had," cannot manage any significant achievements via diplomacy, it is difficult to imagine a new, even more moderate Palestinian leadership emerging in his place. Rather, it is more likely that Hamas or other more radical factions would work to fill the void.   The United States cannot afford to gamble against such a possibility. But quitting now - even for a short time - would be the equivalent of doing just that.

Indeed, we have seen this movie already.

Friedman writes that "This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel." In this regard, he is absolutely right. We have already seen an ineffective U.S. laissez-faire approach to Arab-Israeli peacemaking--it was called the George W. Bush administration.

But don't take my word for it. In January 2004, Friedman wrote:

"These two nations are locked in an utterly self-destructive vicious cycle that threatens Israel's long-term viability, poisons America's image in the Middle East, undermines any hope for a Palestinian state and weakens pro-American Arab moderates. No, you can't draw any other conclusion. Yet the Bush team, backed up by certain conservative Jewish and Christian activist groups, believes that the correct policy is to do nothing. Well, that is my definition of insane."

On that I couldn't agree more.

Cross-posted from the The Mideast Peace Pulse Blog

Tom Friedman: "It Is Time For A Radically New Approach" Toward Israeli-Palestinian Peace

2009-11-08T10:36:23Z

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clich�s -- and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency -- not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit.

It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our "Peace-Processing-Is-Us" sign and just go home.

Harvey Wasserman: Is This Tom Friedman's "Walter Cronkite Moment" on Afghanistan?

2009-10-29T14:41:18Z

The Iraq war's chief New York Times cheerleader has reversed field on Afghanistan. Does it mean there will be no escalation?

In early 1968, after the devastating Tet Offense, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite pronounced the Vietnam War unwinnable. Lyndon Johnson knew he had "lost middle America" and soon declined to run for a second term. The war dragged on for seven more hellish years. But the hearts and minds of the American public had been lost.

Tom Friedman is no Walter Cronkite. His Times column is influential in certain circles, but has nowhere near the nationally unifying force as Cronkite's evening broadcasts.

On the other hand, his admonition to "Don't Build Up" in Afghanistan indicates that the Pentagon PR blitzkrieg demanding more troops has failed in key corporate circles.

Friedman's arguments are both strategic and monetary. "We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interest to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan," he warns.

Ceding (finally!) the inability of the United States to dictate to countries that don't like us, Friedman manages to make the whole argument without mentioning Vietnam. He never even hints at the possibility that the US might not actually have the RIGHT to interfere in the politics of other nations.

But in this case he says the military's plan to pour troops into "stabilizing" Afghanistan "is a 20-year project at best, and we can't afford it."

This stunning admission comes alongside Friedman's signature assertion that "we are the world. A strong, healthy and self-confident America is what holds the world together and on a decent path."

What he fears is that "a long slow bleed in Afghanistan" could doom the United States, and thus the planet. "Shrinking down in Afghanistan will create new threats," he concedes. "But expanding there will too. I'd rather deal with the new threats with a stronger America."

Above all, we "desperately need nation-building at home."

Thomas Friedman is nothing if not a megaphone for the corporate elite. He supports atomic power and consistently pumps global trade agreements, US military adventurism and top-down decision-making in ways that can draw howls of outrage with a single smarmy sentence.

His Times cohort Roger Cohen has been selling the war as hard as he can. Puff pieces on hawk General Stanley McChrystal's global campaign to build military support for a massive escalation have been filling the Times's pages for weeks now. It recently concocted a non-story about the "impatience" of the military brass awaiting tens of thousands of new troops. It gave front page billing to McChrystal's completely inappropriate campaigning with NATO commanders who love McChrystal's demand for more troops but likely won't be sending more of their own any time soon.

It's impossible to assign tangible value to Friedman's loss of faith in escalation. But those of us hoping to avoid a catastrophic dive off the Afghani abyss have expected nothing but grief from this mainstay of the Iraqi catastrophe.

That a key cheerleader for that war is now waving his editorial pompoms for de-escalation can only be good. Let's make sure the White House gets the message.

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

McDonald's Pulls Out Of Iceland

2009-10-27T17:07:37Z

I learned from Matthew Yglesias that McDonalds is pulling out of Iceland, victims of that nation's currency collapse. The BBC has more:

McDonald's is to close its business in Iceland because the country's financial crisis has made it too expensive to operate its franchise.

The fast food giant said its three outlets in the country would shut - and that it had no plans to return.

Besides the economy, McDonald's blamed the "unique operational complexity" of doing business in an isolated nation with a population of just 300,000.

It should be pointed out, however, that while Iceland will have to do without packaged, low-grade meat products infused with artificial aromas to make them stomachable to the human palate, it does not necessarily mean Iceland is doomed. While Thomas Friedman observed, in The Lexus And The Olive Tree, that "no two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's," his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention was disproven when Russia rolled into South Ossetia last year. [Or rather, disproven again, as there was a McDonalds in Serbia at the time of NATO's bombing in 1999.] So, Iceland needn't necessarily fear that they will soon find themselves in the midst of armed conflict. Besides, I think that there are faeries that protect them, or something. Anyway, good luck, Iceland!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Mike Ragogna: How Sweet The Sound: An Interview With Joan Baez

2009-10-14T05:36:45Z

For most of the fifty years since she debuted at the Newport Folk Festival, Joan Baez has dedicated her life and music to fighting for equality and social justice, and for bringing about positive change in the world. On Wednesday, October 14, PBS stations nationwide celebrated her life, music, and activism in the American Masters documentary How Sweet The Sound that was released Tuesday on DVD with a companion CD retrospective. In addition to rare footage and Joan's narrations, the broadcast also featured reflections by musical peers including Bob Dylan, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Steve Earle, and political and religious leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bishop Ernest Palmer.

Mike Ragogna: What music have you been listening to lately?

Joan Baez: Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.

MR: Which operas?

JB: I listen to different voices, like Jonas Kaufmann. I just sort of discovered him. And my favorite is Swedish, Jussi Bjorling. Most people don't know about him, but to me, he's the greatest tenor that ever lived.

MR: Was your voice classically trained?

JB: Well, when I discovered I was mortal in my mid-thirties, I had to go into training or I wouldn't be singing now. I have to work very hard to keep this (voice), and the people I've worked with have all been opera trained. That was a big shock to me, that I'd have to train like everybody else in the world.

MR: Did you get your musical talents from your mother's or father's side?

JB: I'm not sure, maybe a little from both? Neither of them went into it in a big way.

MR: Did you have an influence on how your sister Mimi, also a performer, looked at music?

JB: Probably. We were very close. And the reason in the movie I say that I told her that I didn't think she should be a singer was that I was afraid she'd be in my shadow. She was a worthy singer, but I didn't want her to just be Joanie's little sister. She was a better guitar player than I was, always. When we were in Cambridge, we were a duo, and she began to sing on her own and then with Dick.

MR: After growing up on the r&b that played on your bedside radio, what got you into folk music?

JB: It was genuine and I couldn't stand anything that wasn't. Early on, it was the fusing of politics and music.

MR: But your music wasn't always socially conscious.

JB: During the "ballad" years for me, the politics was latent, I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs. But that was just a couple of years, then I was into putting both hats on which, I think, was just such a perfect fit.

MR: In 1959, after you played the Newport Folk Festival in front of 13,000 people, didn't they start calling you the "Queen Of Folk"?

JB: Yeah, I can't really remember, I was 17, 18 years old at the time.

MR: Did you become committed to the equal treatment of African Americans during your '64 tour of the South?

JB: No, it was way before then, because in '62, I went down there and--shock of shocks--realized that my audience was, by contract, segregated. That just added to my confusion and frustration and resolve.

MR: What are the roots of your philosophy of non-violent protest?

JB: My father becoming a Quaker when I was eight years old. My mother had taken us to Quaker schools, and she was the one who, when my father was searching for something meaningful, took him to Quaker meetings. And that's where he found some resolve and some peace. So we were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.

MR: Was your escorting the children to school in Grenada your first intervention?

JB: I don't think so, but maybe it was as far as going into the churches and being liable to be arrested. I think I'd been to the Birmingham Church before, and sung at Miles College when there were a lot of arrests going on. But Grenada was pretty hands on.

MR: Martin Luther King, Jr. himself called you on the phone for help, right?

JB: Yeah. He communicated with the school, I don't remember if I got that call directly.

MR: Performing at the March On Washington, you were in attendance when King gave his famous "Free At Last" speech. Did you think, as you were watching, that it was an important moment in American history?

JB: I don't know how far ahead one looks. But, at least, at my age, it was completely overwhelming. We were all sort of under a spell at that moment, and I don't know exactly what I was thinking. I know what I was feeling, that it was beyond glorious. But I don't know that I was thinking about American history.

MR: So you already have established yourself musically and as an activist, then the music of Bob Dylan comes to your attention.

JB: Let's see...somebody said to me, "You've gotta hear this guy," though I don't remember who that person was.

MR: During your documentary, you say this is where you saw the junction between music, politics, and the world.

JB: Yeah, all of it. I hadn't known that that was what was missing, but I knew it when I heard it.

MR: You've recorded a lot of Dylan's material. As you were giving weight to it, you were also establishing his career. It seems as though you not only were his champion, but also his in-tune, beautiful sounding voice.

JB: (laughs) Well, you know, it was something pretty extraordinary, pretty special. I think perhaps because of my already well-founded politics that I used the songs--I don't think Dylan had much interest in doing the politics. I backed up what I did with his arsenal of music. So I used it to its best advantage, and I also used what was not political, what was just beautiful. I mean, it's all poetry.

MR: When asked how you choose your songs, you've answered that they choose you. Do you remember how The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" chose you?

JB: I don't remember, I just remember that it was fun. It really was fun. You know, I'm not a "hit-maker," and I don't think I had any idea that it would do what it did. I was delighted that it did, I mean, I still sing it. People are so thrilled (by it), though, in some countries, it never took. But here in England, people come out of their shells and have a wonderful time singing it. So, I don't know what that magic is that makes those things happen. (Note: Joan graciously gave this interview while on tour in the U.K.)

MR: "Diamonds And Rust" was another magic moment. You've said when you began writing the song, it started as something else until Dylan phoned you. Then it became about him. That must have been one helluva call.

JB: He read me the entire lyrics to "Lily, Rosemary, And The Jack Of Hearts" that he'd just finished from a phone booth in the Midwest.

MR: What was the song about originally?

JB: I don't remember what I'd been writing about, but it had nothing to do with what it ended up as.

MR: After a decade of hard work and intensity, it seems like your touring with Dylan and his "Rolling Thunder" revue was a much-needed break. When you listen to a couple of the tracks from the tour, it sounds like you guys had way too much fun.

JB: Oh, I don't know, it was just crazy and wonderful. The first (tour) was just beautiful to look at. I kind of watched the whole thing and took part.

MR: The caravan included folks like Joni Mitchell and David Mansfield...

JB: ...yeah, he was quite a wizard.

MR: Getting back to your activism, your celebrity helped bring attention to the antiwar movement, and your arrests and activities were often nightly news. What gave you the strength to get through it all?

JB: There was this Swedish ambassador who did some extraordinary things during the coup in Chile. He walked in front of a bunch of tanks with his flag in order to bring people--I think it was a Mexican embassy--across the plaza to safety. It was a very, very dangerous thing to do, and when I met him, I asked him what helped him do that. He said, "I can't tolerate injustice." And I thought, "Oh, there's the phrase I've been looking for." Whatever that (feeling) is, it's just there, and I can't stand it. It's not like I don't like it, it's that when I see it, I'm just driven to doing something about it, and I'm fortunate enough that because of the fame, doors open to me, a lot of them. So I use that, and as I said in the documentary, these are not sacrifices for me. The sacrifice would be if I couldn't do that.

MR: You've performed all over the world and have continued fighting for social justice and equality in places like Chile, Thailand, Bosnia...can you link some of the positive changes to your appearances there?

JB: Well sometimes, there are some blatant ones that are so pleasing, like the Velvet Revolution. (Vaclav) Havel said the last drop before it spilled over was my singing that song to him in Boinaslava. When he wrote that, I was knocked out. You know, you're only a part of something that never feels as though it's part of that larger part of something that made such a big change. But if that led into the Velvet Revolution and the guy says so, then that's something to really be proud of.

MR: And all your activism in the South had to have helped make a difference.

JB: When I talked with Bishop Ernest Palmer in Tuscaloosa about the changes that we made in the college that day, then yeah, I know that there were some irreversible changes that took place on that evening during that concert. So, I know there are some things that have happened as a result of what I was up to, always with other people. I had the tools and I used them.

MR: Did you love it when Havel joined you on stage with your guitar case during one of your concerts?

JB: (laughs) That was so sweet! Yeah, it's a joke now, he's always said he's my roadie. I'm going back at the end of this tour for a celebration for him. The Prague Symphony Orchestra has arranged "Swing Low..." and "Imagine" for me to sing with him.

MR: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the U.S. right now?

JB: Aw, Jesus. I just read the Thomas Friedman article about the three bombs as he calls them--the nuclear one, the debt, and the other is climate. So, it's not just the U.S., although we proudly lead the way as usual. It's very clear to me that if we flunk out on climate change, we really don't have to worry about all the rest of it, you know? We won't have a chance to be quibbling about anything else because it's just all over.

MR: Still, you continue the fight.

JB: You know, I've never been an optimist. People say, "Oh, how do you stay such an optimist?" But I never was, I've always been a realist and it doesn't look so terrific right now. I don't see anything terribly helpful as far as climate change goes. We're in too much denial about it. It's like to survive, we stay in denial. But in the meantime, living as decently as possible seems to be incredibly important, you know, not just throwing in the towel and becoming a pig.

Here is the American Masters preview:

Early Joan Baez footage of her performing the folk traddies "I Never Will Marry" and "Barbara Allen":

Joan Baez - How Sweet the Sound

CD Tracks:
1. Man Smart, Woman Smarter
2. I Never Will Marry
3. Barbara Allen
4. Silver Dagger
5. Fennario
6. Oh Freedom
7. With God On Our Side
8. A Song For David
9. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
10. Carry It On
11. I Pity The Poor Immigrant - with Bob Dylan
12. Diamonds And Rust
13. Love Song To A Stranger
14. Day After Tomorrow
15. Jerusalem

Sheri and Allan Rivlin: Can Obama Re-Unite Liberals and Moderates?

2009-10-07T11:01:36Z

The 2008 Political Play of the Year was Barack Obama's ability to unite political liberals and moderates in their opposition to the Bush/Cheney economic policies and military engagements. His short resume and soaring rhetoric (short on specifics) allowed him to maintain appeal to a loyal cadre of liberal volunteers (and many who were not so liberal) knocking on the doors of enough moderate voters to win the presidency and at the same time elect a bunch of new Democratic congressional representatives who were moderate enough to be successful in traditionally Republican districts.

The 2009 Political Play of the Year may turn out to be the Republican policy of "just say no," because it puts maximum pressure on Democrats to keep their two wings flapping in the same direction. The strategy seemed high risk when Obama owned sky high job approval ratings and political momentum, and it may yet backfire, but it challenges Democrats to bridge the span between their most liberal and their most moderate members to get anything done, something that has proved to be a real challenge in the past.

And nowhere is this more evident than on the issue of health care reform, where all of the current discussion focuses on the areas on which Democrats disagree with other Democrats, and very little attention is being paid to the important provisions of the proposals that would do the most to help real people: health insurance reform, health insurance exchanges, and assistance to help people afford insurance.

"The Cause of My Life"

Let's talk about some real people. Shortly before his death, Senator Edward M. Kennedy shared a letter he had received from Mary Dunn, a 58-year-old schoolteacher in Eden, S.D. Mary wrote that she was unable to get health insurance after being laid off from her job due to a pre-existing condition, Type I diabetes. In her letter Ms. Dunn asked, "What am I to do after 39 years of teaching to acquire adequate health coverage?" In his Newsweek essay entitled, "The Cause of My Life," Kennedy asked, "How will we, as a nation, answer her?"

Kennedy raised a second example, Cassandra Wilson, a 14-year-old competitive ice skater, whose parents have run up huge expenses because she suffers from petit mal seizures and can't get insurance. In his Address to the Nation in August, President Obama introduced several examples of his own. Political groups like MoveOn.org and Democracy for America have introduced us to thousands of individual stories of people who are being crushed by the current health care system.

The liberal groups Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America went as far as to run this attack advertisement against Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. In the ad we meet Ralston, NE restaurant owner, Mike Snider, whose health insurance rates are increasing 42% forcing him to consider dropping insurance for his business and his family.

All of these stories have one thing in common; they can be addressed through a combination of health insurance reforms; health insurance exchanges and other efforts to lower the cost of health insurance for families and business that are common to all of the bills in congress.

The health insurance reforms that are part of every bill under consideration will help Mary Dunn, Cassandra Wilson and millions of others by ending exclusions for pre-existing conditions and yearly or lifetime limits on coverage for people with expensive illnesses. For most of the individual who have become discussed by all of the groups supporting health care, these are the protections that will matter most replacing the anxiety of people with illnesses and nowhere to turn, with the security of coverage that you can keep even if you are sick or get sick.

Health Insurance Exchanges, also in every bill that is under consideration, continue to be the most important and least talked about aspect of health care reform. The exchanges are markets for health insurance created by government at the state, or regional, or national level (regional or national exchanges make the most sense, to break up local monopolies and so small states can be part of larger markets) and they offer the individuals and smaller businesses that qualify to enter them a broad range of choices of insurance plans to buy.

Health Insurance Exchanges are modeled after the popular health insurance system all federal workers use and they are just what Mike Snyder needs to keep costs for insuring his workers manageable so he can keep his restaurant business going and create jobs. He would be able to shop among a half dozen or more plans that meet the to-be-defined minimum standard, as well as others that offer stronger coverage for a higher price.

And Exchanges are the nuts and bolts necessary first step toward other insurance options like health insurance coops or the much debated public insurance option. If, like us, you support a pubic option, then you have to strongly support the establishment of Exchanges as soon as possible, because they are the markets in which any public option would compete, and it is likely to take a couple of years to get the Exchanges up and running. Whether some form of a public option makes it into the reform package this year (or in subsequent bills in future years) is a matter of little consequence if the work to build the Exchanges does not get started this year.

The path from here forward could be very easy or very hard.

Thomas Friedman is fond of paraphrasing Golda Meir, in saying that there will be peace in the Middle East when both sides love their children more than they hate their neighbors. Well health care reform would be easy if people wanted their policy proposals more than they want to deal defeat to their enemies.

Nearly every Republican has made their choice; their goal for health care reform is to ensure that Barack Obama does not win. On the other side many Democrats are threatening to withdraw their support from any bill that does not punish the Insurance companies, which many define as any bill that does not include a public option.

The most important elements of health care reform are not the most controversial. As President Obama has noted, eighty percent of the policy proposals are common to every bill. It is possible to see how a bill could get through the obstacle course ahead - pass a Senate floor vote, and a House floor vote, get through a Conference Committee, and then pass each chamber again and then get to the President's desk - fairly easily.

But at other times the path ahead looks too long, steep and narrow. A week ago it looked like any bill without a Public Option was dead in the House and any bill with one was dead in the Senate. Creative people are trying to come up with compromise solutions that try to split the difference between seemingly mutually exclusive principle -- and these efforts may prove successful.

Our favorite contender was recently introduced into the discussion by Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE). We have been calling it the Public Option Option (POO) which sets up Exchanges and lets states decide if they want to add a Public Option or not. Massachusetts already has one, California can't afford one, and other states can decide if they want one or not.
In the final analysis optimism has gained the upper hand over pessimism. Despite Republicans sitting on the sidelines, Democrats have to have "Quote: health care reform, unquote." And there are enough areas of agreement to make compromise possible. But the real reasons to bet on success are Mary Dunn, Cassandra Wilson, Mike Snyder, and all the individual stories of people who need health care reform right now.

Elected officials like to threaten to withhold their vote to gain bargaining leverage, but few who support the idea of health reform will hold out for their ideological principles when it means they would be voting against a bill that helps Mary, Cassandra, and Mike.

This article is the third in a series on CenteredPolitics.com.
Part 1: Compromise Needed to Pass Health Insurance Reform
Part 2: 5 Steps to Major Health Care Reform
This is Part 3: Can Obama Re-Unite Liberals and Moderates?

Frank Schaeffer: Organizing to Stop Far Right Violence

2009-10-05T16:33:20Z

Since President Obama took office I've felt like the lonely -- maybe crazy -- proverbial canary in the coal mine. As a former right wing leader, who many years ago came to my senses and began to try to undo the harm the movement of religious extremism I helped build has done, I've been telling the media that we're facing a dangerous time in our history. A fringe element of the far right Republican Party seems it believes it has a license to incite threatening behavior in the name of God.

They have singled out President Obama as their target. Since the real President Obama is not who they describe -- no, he's not the Antichrist, was born in America and doesn't want to kill your grandmother -- they have resorted to lies and intimidation to try and stop his agenda of much needed change. The problem is that I believe that Religious Right leaders and their Republican base are also potentially inciting violence. Within their numbers are unhinged people who also happen to be well armed.

Rachael Maddow and the readers of Huffington Post and Alternet have heard my warnings and so have a lot of bloggers. However, most of the media have ignored the looming threat of far right violence while conservatives deride those of us who link crazy talk to the potential of crazy actions. (I explain and expose the link between evangelical/fundamentalist "End Times" theology, politics and violence in my new book Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).

Has The Craziness Hit A New High?

What a difference the post-election months of overt thuggery, threatening behavior and outright lying by the right wing horde has made. The village idiot quality of the "Tea Baggers," "Birthers," gun totters, "You Lie(ers)," and the "Let's Secede From The Union(ers)" has made it tougher to discount we who see a looming threat here and a direct line from hate talk to hate actions. It's harder these days to feel sanguine about our prospects for avoiding the calamity spewing from the right's vortex of lies and hate.

The extremism and paranoid delusions of the far, far loony right -- in other words The Republican Party today as led and deformed by Beck/Limbaugh/Fox and the fundamentalist "Christians" --- is now on full display. Even some members of the Republican leadership are beginning to cringe.

Last week Senator Lindsey Graham called Glenn Beck a "cynic" and the Birthers "crazy." Centrists like David Gergen are saying that enough is enough. Gergen said that the racial attacks on Obama are reminiscent of the atmosphere leading to the killing of President Lincoln. Speaking for moderate progressives Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that he saw this same disturbing play of religious hate shortly before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in Israel. And Roger Ebert warned of the rise of the fringe in the GOP and how they are undermining democracy.

And in case you didn't know that the far right, big time hate machine and big time religion link up these days consider this: the giant Evangelical publisher Zondervan is crashing out Sarah Palin's memoir. Zondervan is owned by Rupert Murdoch. No, it's not a conspiracy, it's just that all the bottom dwellers eventually find each other in Crazyland.

Other people, besides former evangelicals like me (who have their ear to the ground and hear what's coming before the uninitiated do), are finally starting to realize that there is a serious problem facing America. I'm no longer one of just a few voices (for instance like Max Blumenthal and Jeff Sharlet) saying that the willfully ignorant far Right (usually religion-inspired) is risking our future.

The question is: What are we going to do about the haters?

Now some of us -- from moderate Independent voters like me to many people on the progressive side of the Democratic Party -- are organizing to do something about this evil (yes I use that word deliberately) trend. We're doing this because more and more of us see that if unchecked the inflammatory garbage spewing from the Right's hate machines will result in tragedy -- in other words violence.

I started pondering the question of what we could do right after the assassination of Dr. Tiller by a religious extremist. I felt that it wasn't enough to call for boycotts of right wing commentators who spew their hate, because that did not really address the core problems. In fact as a former right wing religious "pro-life" leader I felt compelled to publicly apologize (in the Huffington Post) for the "America-is-like-Nazi-Germany" rhetoric that my late Evangelical leader father and I helped create in the 1970s and 80s that inexorably led to justifying violence in the Tiller case.

Now I want to endorse a campaign to address these issues.

It was launched last week at

http://www.StopDomesticTerror.com

The campaign includes letters from attorney Kevin Zeese and myself to Attorney General Eric Holder asking that he take the issue of domestic terror seriously by investigating and prosecuting threats and acts of violence. I'm working with others on a campaign to reach religious leaders who enable and encourage this violence, and asking for the launching of investigations into the use of the media and web organizations by the right wing to foment violence. It is time to combat hate speech.

We have a long horrible legacy of violence against public figures. The worst chapters in our history have been written in blood by extremists when they felled our moral and political leaders. We must act now to avert another tragedy.

Sign on to our campaign at www.StopDomesticTerror.com.

Thousands have already signed on but we can only make a change through massive collective action. Join us and help build a wall of tolerance to contain the hate.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism)

WATCH: Bill Maher Auditions Sarah Palin's Writers (VIDEO)

2009-10-05T13:40:31Z

It takes a special person to work with a special former governor. Bill Maher shows us who would have been the perfect writer to pair with Palin, and the titles they would have come up with. They're all more apropos than Going Rogue.

Let us know which one you think hits the mark.

David Bromwich: William Safire: Wars Made Out of Words

2009-10-01T18:15:40Z

"There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance." What Mencken said of Coolidge can be reversed in the case of Safire. There were plenty of thrills, and after the thrills, the field was littered with casualties. And he had tons of ideas. He was keen to share them as soon as he thought them up. The career that took him from public relations to propaganda to column-writing was a single seamless progression. He treated these different lines of work as the same work; and under his hand, they were. He was interested in words, yet he has left behind no sentence or sentiment that people will quote in the future merely because it is true.

He never met a war he did not like. He did all that he could to drum up several wars beyond the psychological means of his country and the world; and his disappointment could turn to spite when a war that he wanted failed to materialize. Jimmy Carter's refusal to bomb Iran in the years 1979-1980 was the greatest defeat of Safire's life. His record on Vietnam (both during and after), on El Salvador and Nicaragua, and on Iraq would be worth combing the archives of the New York Times to recover, simply as an exhibition of savage consistency. Safire was not the originator of the psychology of the self-righteous onslaught, "ten eyes for an eye" -- human nature found it long ago -- but he was the American of his generation who almost made it respectable. Did a terrorist set off a bomb in a café and five Americans die? Send in the Air Force and demolish a foreign capital somehow connected with that terrorist. The flash of the violent gesture, for Safire, was more important than the justice of the action.

He became the leading practitioner of the gestural politics of journalism. And in doing so, he revamped the accepted manner of the New York Times columnist. No more the formality and reserve and the magisterial airs of a James Reston; everything now had to be fast and sharp: keep the pot boiling and the gags popping. He was the first man of the right to leaven his moralism with jokes. With fun and "pace," with plenty of euphemisms, and with calculated self-deprecation he did more than anyone else to legitimate a reactionary president, Ronald Reagan, as a new kind of centrist. A considerable sleight-of-hand.

His columns fashioned from dialogues with Richard Nixon when living, and his channeled mock-dialogues with Nixon when dead, were a prodigy of bad taste. A related genre he pioneered, the imaginary monologue of the man of power that aimed to reveal the motives of the powerful, betrayed Safire's curious want of invention. He made no effort to convey the manner and savor of the person he ventriloquized. The monologues all came out sounding like Safire (just as the quoted persons in a Woodward political chronicle all sound like Woodward). But this insider genre fitted the new Times like a glove. Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd picked up the format and both now perform it with as little concern for tone and shading as Safire.

Perhaps the ruling passion of his life was a need for violent stimulants. He sought, and craved, excitement -- the thrill of the battle of everyday politics, the thrill of the slander and smear, the thrill of wars. He was equally drawn to wars of the past, wars simmering at present, and wars in prospect for the future. This love of gross sensations Safire aimed to impose as much as possible on his readers. More important, he aimed to impose it on the men of power whom he wished to influence. And often enough he succeeded. Kenneth Starr, on the brink of quitting the Whitewater investigation, was rebuked by Safire in such humiliating terms that, rather than defy the columnist, he launched the country on the long march toward impeachment.

Safire attended to Nixon's post-retirement fame by shining as decent a light as could be thrown on it, and he kept Nixon's posthumous fame in as good repair as the facts allowed. These exertions suggest a large investment of his own amour-propre. He would not let anyone forget that he was part of the Nixon White House, but he encouraged readers to suppose that time spent there had been happy and not shameful. Among living politicians, he cultivated a particular admiration for Ariel Sharon. Has the oddness of this relationship ever been adequately noticed? A general who became the head-of-state of a foreign power, implicated in a brutal massacre, was puffed as a wise man by a popular American journalist. Safire sought to persuade Americans that the adventurer of the Lebanon War was our old friend "Arik." His reports of phone conversations with Sharon, like the columns he devoted to the elevation of Sharon's achievements, have no precedent in American journalism, not even in the high days of Anglophilia when Winston Churchill evoked sentimental feelings beyond any warrant from his conduct.

In person, it seems that Safire was not a brawler; no fighting stories about him have surfaced. But he had the fondness of the born propagandist for "bloody noses and cracked crowns." He served in the army as a correspondent, during a time of peace, yet he loved the idea of combat. The higher the stakes, the more zest it added to life. He smashed hard without a second thought, and could be wrong with impunity, as Wen Ho Lee, Mohamed ElBaradei, and a multitude of others can attest; and yet we are told that he was a pleasant fellow, and was known in after-years to dine with his victims.

As a writer, Safire is most often associated with the short bursts he wrote in speeches given by Vice President Spiro Agnew, before Agnew was forced to retire under a cloud of charges by the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore: extortion, bribery, tax fraud, and conspiracy. "Nattering nabobs of negativism" was a phrase in a speech of November 13, 1969. It suggested that critics of the Vietnam War were as rich as nabobs and as mindless as chattering apes. A trick from the lower drawer of Kipling, it served its reckless purpose in heating the resentments of the time. Safire's other best-known phrase, "an effete corps of impudent snobs," had been given to Agnew to speak just a month earlier at the time of the October 15 peace moratorium. Here the effect bordered on punning -- a favorite device of his for disarming criticism -- since effete brings elite into the ear without having to pay for the echo. He turned out other squibs in the same mood that helped to corrupt the public mind, and to break the public peace in America at a time of internal strife. His picture of the defense of civil liberties as "pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order" has the true Safire touch -- clever, punchy, alliterative, demagogic.

This pattern, by which zealous accusations are dealt out sharply, but mixed with a vein of buffoonery, is a staple of the far right in America that has never been properly described or accounted for. It has been with us at least since the time of Senator Joe McCarthy; and it would be surprising if William Safire in his early days did not nurse an admiration for McCarthy. More polished than McCarthy or Nixon, and by the time of his death a lion of the establishment, Safire is the link that across four decades connects the political style of Joe McCarthy with that of Rush Limbaugh.

Under the heading "William Safire's Finest Speech," it is now possible to locate, on line, a speech Safire wrote for Nixon which offers the most perverse imaginable illustration of political opportunism.

It was written to order for an occasion that never arose. It said what Nixon ought to say in case the astronauts of Apollo 11 were stranded on the moon. In this counter-factual elegy, drafted on June 18, 1969 and sent to Nixon's aide H.R. Haldeman, the author of Safire's Political Dictionary worked fast to bury the dead while they were living. "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace." Thus, in the time he could spare from enlarging a war half a world away, Safire contrived to speak for the people of the planet in the voice of a truce from outer space: the astronauts would "be mourned by a Mother Earth who dared to send two of her sons into the unknown." A final blessing was uttered on behalf of a species now at last united in our prayers to the sky: "Every human being who looks up to the moon in nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." A superstition, a kind of piety maybe, would have restrained many speechwriters from undertaking a preposterous assignment like this, no matter how warmly it was urged, no matter by how powerful a boss. Yet the dying fall of the final clause epitomizes Safire's facility.

Rupert Brooke, a poet of the First World War, wrote in the opening lines of a poem that Safire must have learned in school, "If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there's some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England." Compare "some corner of another world that is for ever mankind." He fished up the sob of the shining line from his stock quotations to send the astronauts to their eternal rest. But consider the deeper poetry of the moment. The man most gifted in his time at summoning a literate audience to twitch, heave, and submit to the voice in the megaphone without regard to the man behind the curtain, had been asked to bury the first explorers of space. And what came into his mind? A paean of self-sacrifice lifted from the high age of Europe's empires. The astronauts, as Safire saw them, were soldiers of the next empire. It is good that they lived to make this speech unnecessary. But it is good, too, in a way, that we have this speech -- a lasting testimony of the limitless ambition of mere words.

Originally posted at Anti-War.com.

Michael Steele Calls Thomas Friedman A "Nut Job" For His Concerns Over Psychotic Rhetoric (VIDEO)

2009-09-30T12:07:22Z

RNC Chairman Michael Steele appeared on CNN's American Morning Wednesday and was confronted with Thomas Friedman's recent New York Times column, in which he warned that the tenor of critical rhetoric directed at the White House was becoming disturbing.

Friedman wrote:

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, "Should Obama be killed?" The choices were: "No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care." The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly.

To Steele, such concerns were the hallmark of an insane person:

"Where do these nut jobs come from? Come on, stop this...To make those equations, examples and put that out there that way, to me is just crazy and yeah, I'm sorry, but if you're going to approach this discussion, approach it from a rational position," Steele continued. "[They're] saying, because you disagree with the president on policy, that all of the sudden we're going to make this leap into, you know, assassinations and all this other stuff. I mean, at the height of all this stuff on Bush and people complaining and protesting, and jumping up and down, you didn't have this kind of conversation."

Steele went on to write off Friedman's concerns as an attempt to make the "deep-seated frustrations people have" sound sinister. But you know what? Some of the rhetoric Friedman cites is pretty definitively sinister! Take, for example, a now-pulled post on Newsmax from John L. Perry, hoping for a military coup to remove the Obama administration: "There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the 'Obama problem.' Don't dismiss it as unrealistic."

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

Oh, but Thomas Friedman is the nut job, in this equation!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

John Knefel: Has Iran Already Nuked Us!?

2009-09-29T18:16:28Z

Friday morning's newspaper headlines sure were exciting, weren't they?!?!?!?!

The New York Times' headline screamed:

Iran Is Warned Over Nuclear 'Deception'

The Washington Post cried:

Iran Admits Second Nuclear Enrichment Site

Oh no! Drudge took the predictably sober approach and whispered:

CAUGHT BY SURPRISE: IRAN BUILDING SECOND NUKE PLANT[ital. in original]

ACK!

Why, I think we might already be at war with fucking Iran! Or close at least! The Times dutifully contemplated that,

"After months of talking about the need for engagement, Mr. Obama appears to have made a leap toward viewing tough new sanctions against Iran as an inevitability."[emphasis added.]

Fellatio-enthusiast Thomas Friedman wrote this week that we [America!] should threaten Iran with immediate sanctions and the possibility that "Israel might do something crazy." Wow, his compassion for all those Iranian protesters everyone loved a few months ago just leaps off the page. And it makes me wonder what Obama and Friedman talked about when they played Golf the other day.

The Post ledes by raising the prospect of sanctions as well.

"President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain blasted Iran's construction of a previously unacknowledged uranium enrichment facility and demanded Friday that Tehran immediately fulfill its obligations under international law or risk the imposition of harsh new sanctions."

It sure sounds like the media is congealing around this new meme like the unthinking wad of lard that they are. And thankfully, the same horrifying tactics that gave us Catastrophe Iraq! are on full display yet again, for fun.

After reporting that Iran sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency informing them of the existence of the Plant, Politico goes on to say:

""A very cursory admission to the IAEA years after the commencement of construction of the facility whose use is undeniable does not constitute living up to its obligations," an American official said."[emphasis added.]

OOOOOOO!!!!!!! That's so scary, guys! An anonymous source is claiming with certainty that a new enemy can/will/already has killed us all! That sounds like a slam dunk case, right there.

Others have joined Friedman's calls for more human sacrifice to please the God of American Stability. Meat-puppet David Ignatious--who writes about politics with as much insight as John Madden does about Proust--spent his column telling his readers that we are in a scary new cold war, but he and his anonymous insider friends are seriously doing their best to keep us safe, guys. Ignatious writes:

So why didn't the Obama administration lay down an even stronger marker in response to this breakout -- by threatening, say, to intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program?

The answer, explained the senior official in a telephone interview, is that the U.S. wants to preserve consensus among its allies for much harsher sanctions, even as it heads toward a face-to-face negotiating meeting with the Iranians on Oct. 1.The U.S. has privately communicated with the Iranians in recent days that it wants those talks to go forward, the senior official said.

Asking why Ignatious granted anonymity to that senior official is like asking why banks rip people off--no matter how despicable we may find that practice, that's what they think their job is.

But let's back up just a little. Ignatious nobly wonders why the US didn't "intercept ships at sea that it believed were carrying parts for the Iranian nuclear program." That is really a remarkable sentence because it highlights, in a nutshell, how our punditry class thinks, which is to say they are blood-thirsty war-mongers, no matter how banal their demeanor appears. What meat-puppet Ignatious is describing is an act of war. You know, bang bang. Look at how casually he posits this question, the consequences of which would undoubtedly lead to massive civilian suffering and death, both American and Iranian. Yet to Ignatious, it seems odd that America didn't strike first.

For a historical account of how familiar all this Iran scare-mongering is, go here.

Watch out for a ratcheting up of the scary Iran meme this weekend on the Gas-bag Happy Hour with George Stephanopolous, or on This Week with Dickheads. I won't be watching them, but if anything happens let me know if you want to.

Tom Friedman: Red China Is Going Green

2009-09-28T11:45:23Z

Well, folks. Sputnik just went up again: China's going clean-tech. The view of China in the U.S. Congress -- that China is going to try to leapfrog us by out-polluting us -- is out of date. It's going to try to out-green us.

Harvey Wasserman: Tom Friedman's Idiocy Atomique

2009-09-23T12:56:04Z

France's atomic power industry is a failed radioactive flame. Its 58 reactors are unpopular, unsafe, uneconomical, dirty, direct agents of global warming, weapons proliferators and major generators of atomic waste for which there is no management solution.

But self-proclaimed "green advocate" Thomas Friedman seems to think otherwise. In his just published New York Times op ed "Real Men Tax Gas" Friedman applies the term "wimp" to those who fail to fight global warming. But in true corporate style, he can't face the hard truths about France's industrie atomique. To wit:

1) In denial verging on psychosis, Friedman says France has "managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panic." In fact, France's unsolved waste problem has thousands of ultra-hot fuel rods building up at reactor sites, just like here. Its hugely expensive attempts to reprocess spent fuel cause devastating radiation releases into the English Channel and elsewhere, prompting continual demands from around Europe that they stop.

2) Friedman says "France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants." But he ignores "wimpy" French public opinion that has turned decisively against building new reactors while strongly approving new wind production. The big "Non" to new nukes stems in part from massively inefficient, unreliable reactors, some of which have recently been forced shut because they are overheating the rivers meant to cool them. Is this Friedman's "macho" solution to global warming?

3) Friedman complains that the US has "not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors." Friedman misses those 2,400 "wimpy" central Pennsylvania families who sued for widespread death and disease they suffered after TMI's radiation releases showered their homes and fields. The utility responsible quietly paid out more than $15 million in secret settlements.

Friedman has also missed important new findings by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen and epidemiologist Stephen Wing indicating far more extensive TMI radiation releases and far more widespread health impacts than previously believed.

4) Friedman complains that "we're too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada's Yucca Mountain -- totally safe -- at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs." But Yucca's ability to store anything except rusting rail lines is as yet untested. The earthquake fault that runs through it is tangible and visible. So is perched water that threatens to rain down on any radioactive waste stored there. Yucca is surrounded by dormant volcanoes -- and by 80% opposition from "wimpy" Nevadans angry for a wide variety of economic, health, safety and geological reasons. Nobody in France is planning on storing high level radioactive waste in their town squares and nobody else -- here or there -- wants it.

5) Friedman says "the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover." France's first shot at a "new generation" reactor -- in Finland -- is an engineering, economic and ecological catastrophe. French taxpayers are enraged about funding an Olkiluoto project that's years behind budget and billions of Euros over budget. Anne Lauvergeon, the chief of AREVA -- France's nuclear front group -- told me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI) she blames Finland's regulatory framework for her woes. But a parallel project at Flamanville, France, isn't faring much better. AREVA's fortunes have plummeted, throwing the government-controlled agency into deep financial crisis.

6) Friedman goes on to laud "Little Denmark" for imposing "a carbon tax, a roughly $5-a-gallon gasoline tax." He fails to credit its "wimpy" but fiercely effective No Nukes movement, which has kept Denmark totally free of atomic reactors, while moving it further into wind power percentage-wise than any other nation on Earth. Angry Danish opposition has helped force neighboring Sweden to shut its Barsebaeck reactors, upwind from Copenhagen.

Friedman's bizarre reactor advocacy reflects a corporate mindset too wimpy to embrace the true Solartopian solution to our energy crisis. Mycle Schneider, Paris-based author of WHAT FRANCE GOT WRONG (http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2053958) in NUCLEAR ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL, gets it right: "For least cost and greatest security, the energy future lies in affordable, distributed, superefficient technologies, smart grids and sustainable urbanism. France's centralised, autocratic nuclear policy symbolizes the opposite."

The true green technologies of a Solartopian Revolution are proven, ecologically sound and economically essential. They are also ready for rapid installation.

But they are decentralized and subject to community control rather than corporate domination. While Friedman and his moneyed elite continue to grasp at the failed, centralized straw of atomic energy, technology and history have passed them by.

"Real men" -- and women -- know we will never get to a green-powered Earth by trying to ride a dead radioactive horse -- even if it's French.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA: OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at http://solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and senior editor of freepress.org, where this piece first appeared.

Rick Horowitz: Obama's Beach Books -- and Yours

2009-08-25T16:43:34Z

Consider the beach book.

Or do you prefer the term "beach book"? Surrounded by quotation marks, that is, like "fast food," or "date movie." "Beach book," with its suggestion that there's one particular type of book -- and only one particular type of book -- that's supposed to accompany you to the summertime house near the large body of water.

(Sno-Cones optional.)

I don't buy it.

Neither, apparently, does the current president of these United States.

Much interest from the luxury boxes this week, as the White House disclosed Barack Obama's reading list for his family vacation on Martha's Vineyard:

John Adams, by David McCullough.
Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman.
Lush Life, by Richard Price.
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf.
The Way Home, by George Pelecanos.

That's one presidential biography, one pop-wonk call to arms, and three -- count 'em, three! -- novels. So where does it say variety is allowed in a chief executive's reading list? What's the guy trying to do? Enjoy himself?!

Or -- alternative reaction: Five books in seven days? Who does he think he's kidding?

"That's 2,301 pages of recreational reading in a week," the always-sympathetic Wall Street Journal quickly calculated, "sandwiched between tennis, golf, meetings with friends, and possible calls to Congress. Aides say Obama is a speedy reader..."

Aides are missing the point. So is the Wall Street Journal.

The thing about beach books -- or even "beach books" -- isn't the total tonnage of the entire pile. It's the glow of the glorious possibilities.

When we go to the beach -- to pick a typical American non-presidential vacation cluster at random -- we always bring more books than we can possibly read in the time we'll be there. Hauling the book bag up multiple flights of stairs into a house perched high and wobbly on stilts, emptying this year's carefully selected contents onto the dresser top or the bedside table -- that's all part of the ritual. What's never part of the ritual is thinking we'll actually get through all of them.

But this is: Waking up on that first beach morning and saying, "What do I feel like today? A thriller? A tract? A fantasy? A romp?" And then picking exactly the right book to match your mood. It could be Elmore Leonard. It could be Fareed Zakaria.

It's all about having the options.

I've never been one of those "This is the summer I finally read Proust" types.

But I've never been one of those "This is the beach so it has to be mindless" types either.

A perfect beach book is whatever feels right -- serious, silly, sappy -- when you're contemplating spending the next unscripted chunk of time on a porch swing. Or on a beach chair, toes in the sand, happily distracted every few minutes by another set of waves nearing the shore. Or curled into a corner of a nook-filled living room, with others in your ragged band every bit as contented in their own nooks, with their own books.

A perfect beach book is one that doubles down on the place you're in -- geographically, emotionally. A perfect beach book is one that takes you away from all that.

A perfect beach book rewards concentration. A perfect beach book is a dabble.

A perfect beach book is one that, forever after, will remind you of how the rain pelted the picture windows that one dark-gray morning, how the sunlight slanted soft and golden that one luscious afternoon.

Consider a beach book.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.

Todd Palmer and Rob Pringle: Reading Lion Tracks: New York Times' Friedman on Vacation in the Bush

2009-08-24T10:46:31Z

We were encouraged when we started reading Thomas Friedman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times this Sunday. We’ve used this blog to agitate about how little attention politicians and newspeople pay to biodiversity loss, relative to the (admittedly sobering) challenges of minimizing climate change and its impacts. This week, Friedman is on safari in Botswana, and the experience—lions, etc.—seems to have inspired him.

The first half-dozen paragraphs are an extended analogy: Friedman out with his nature guide, “reading the morning news”—that is, the tracks and signs of the previous night’s animal activity. The last third of the column is nominally about the need to devise “integrated” solutions to the interwoven problems of poverty, food security, climate change, and biodiversity (the latter word appears six times).

An important goal, and we appreciate Friedman's shining his powerful light on it. But he misfires on an important point towards the end. In outlining his view of an integrated solution, he writes that in addition to preserving forests and other ecosystems as carbon sinks, “we also need to double food production to feed a growing population.” On the same amount of land. With less water.

Sorry. You can’t integrate a bull with a china shop.

In the 1960s and 70s, environmentalists learned what politicians have always known: people hate being told that they can’t always get they want. Unless you’re Mick Jagger, that message won’t sell. Especially when it involves telling people that they can’t have 6.5 billion more babies and still have a pleasant planet to raise them on. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich explained—correctly—that the notion of an infinitely expanding population and economy was an absurdity, and it ignited such a shitstorm that today, more than 40 years later, he and his colleagues continue to be the subject of spittle-soaked and error-saturated polemics on both right- and left-wing websites (not to mention the conventional media).

As a result, many of us have soft-pedaled this essential truth, emphasized the synergies, and inadvertently created a popular belief that we can have our forests and eat them too. Which, luckily, is not entirely false—there are definitely some win-win scenarios out there of the type that Friedman envisions. But we have to dispense with the notion that we can have it all forever if there are 13 billion of us. Or even nine billion. So no, we do not need to “double food production” for a doubled population—and we cannot if we’re going to solve all of the problems that Friedman wants solved.

We also cannot solve the problem of biodiversity loss as long as the ability to “read the morning news” in nature is a luxury that few people can afford and even fewer people ever actually do. As our friend Dan Janzen pointed out, Friedman is not reading the New York Times in the bush. He is hearing the local celebrity gossip—the Okavango equivalent of Us Weekly—and paying $1,000 per night to have somebody read it to him. Is that sustainable?

Don’t get us wrong. We’re the last two people on Earth who would begrudge anybody their luxury safari. But the prognosis for biodiversity will be bleak until biodiversity becomes something that everybody can and does read. As long as we remain a bioilliterate populace of which only the wealthiest 0.1% can afford to have an expert interpret the hieroglyphics, and only lions and other celebrity species attract our interest, then we will continue to turn the dazzling diversity of life into cannon fodder.

Thoughts on what to do about it in a forthcoming piece. Meantime, enjoy your visit to the Huffington . . . Ooh, check it out—Brad and Angelina went gerbil shopping!!

David Sirota: Taboo Alert: The Real -- And Most Disturbing -- News In the Olbermann-O'Reilly Feud

2009-08-03T09:25:54Z

The New York Times story about MSNBC's corporate parent, General Electric, forcing the network to soften its criticism of Fox News has generated a lot of buzz over the weekend. But what's so telling about the story and the residual chatter is that, with the exception of Glenn Greenwald's typically terrific coverage, it largely misses the newsiest -- and most taboo -- part of the whole brouhaha.

What the Times story and the aftershock gossip focuses on is the personality feud and new detente between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. That's supposedly the "news." And yet the real story is the heavy-handed intervention by the CEO of General Electric effectively forcing MSNBC's news team off a crucially important set of stories -- namely, Fox News' politicization/Republicanization of media.

For years, Establishment media voices like Charlie Rose (yes, the same Charlie Rose who the Times story says played a direct role in the corporate parents' intervention at MSNBC and Fox) have insisted that it's a black-helicopter-style conspiracy theory to assert that corporate parent companies pressure/impact/limit the newsrooms they control.

But, of course, the evidence has become overwhelming in the last 15 years.

The three most obvious that come to mind are:

1995: CBS' 60 Minutes backs off it's expose of the tobacco industry, due, in part, to pressure from its parent company and the tobacco industry. This sordid affair was made famous by the movie The Insider.

2001: NBC's president engages in direct political lobbying against a government order that would force NBC's parent company, General Electric, to clean up its mess in the Hudson River. At the same time, environmentalists noted that NBC did not give the Hudson River cleanup story nearly enough attention.

2009: The Washington Post's parent company offers corporations and their lobbyists "off-the-record access" to its reporters and editors in exchange for direct financial contributions of up to250,000.

This, of course, says nothing of the even more nefarious and arguably more widespread practice of these same corporate media outlets promoting as "objective" voices reporters and editorialists* who have secret financial interests in the news they cover -- all without any disclosure. Just a few examples:

Richard Wolffe: This former Newsweek reporter is now a paid corporate PR consultant. Yet, he appears on MSNBC as a disinterested "political analyst," even hosting Olbermann's show. Wolffe, in fact, publicly sells his media prominence on MSNBC as a reason for corporations to hire him. The implicit suggestion is that the corporate client will be able to buy a spokesman who gets to go on television without disclosing his financial interests - that is, Wolffe offers the corporate client the veneer of non-partisan objectivity. I flagged this ugly situation a week ago, and think I was the first to even notice it, despite how blatant a conflict of interest it is. The fact that it has gone on for so many months without anyone -- much less MSNBC's management -- questioning it shows just how mundane this kind of thing is.

Doug Bandow: In 2005, Businessweek reported that this senior fellow at the Cato Institute "resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients." Specifically, Bandow "had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s."

Armstrong Williams: In 2005, this syndicated radio host and columnist took a quarter million dollars from the Education Department to promote President Bush's controversial education policy "on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same," according to USA Today.

Thomas Friedman: This New York Times columnist has become the single most prominent media voice in support of the multinational corporate agenda and the ultra-wealthy - and his credibility is based on the perception that Friedman is a completely disinterested commentator. However, Friedman -- by marriage -- is a member of the Bucksbaum empire, one of the biggest real estate conglomerates in the world.

Former Generals: David Barstow of the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for "reveal[ing] how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended."

A corporate media apologist might try to argue that both the latter and former sets of examples are just the very rare egregious examples and further, that in the case of Wolffe and Friedman, there's no direct corporate control/conflict-of-interest because they don't report on the companies they directly work for. But that's actually the bigger point: A newsroom or an individual reporter doesn't have to be directly shilling for their financial interest in order to be unduly compromised.

Sure, examples like CBS's corporate management backing off 60 Minutes on the tobacco story and General Electric heavy-handedly intervening in MSNBC's news decisions are probably somewhat rare. And sure, Wolffe and Friedman (at least to my knowledge) never shilled directly for a client/business interest they were making money off of. However, the direct connect/interest undoubtedly shapes their content by the silent processes of story selection, omission and tone.

For every blatant example of a newsroom or a journalist brazenly shilling for their corporate master's bottom line, there are infinite examples of those newsrooms or journalists avoiding or omitting stories that might offend those masters' in the first place. Is it, for instance, really just a coincidence that the frightening effects of corporate agriculture have rarely been the topic of all those Sunday "news" shows whose sponsor are Archer Daniels Midland? Is it really just a coincidence that Friedman shills for corporations and the wealthy, when he is member of a billionaire family? Is it really just a coincidence that a newspaper like the Washington Post, which was trying to effectively sell its news coverage to corporate interests, generates stories that tend to be particularly soft on corporations and chock full of unchallenged corporate PR?

The list of examples is endless -- and the obvious answer is that none of it is a coincidence, even if most of these conflicts are kept completely hidden from the news-consuming audience.

But, then, the deception -- and the ubiquity of the deception -- is a big part of the corruption that is destroying journalism. Indeed, the fact that the Olbermann-O'Reilly personality feud was presented as the "big" story -- and not the General Electric intervention -- is a tacit confirmation that corporate-media symbiosis has become such an assumed part of journalism, that many journalists themselves don't see it as any kind of problem, much less news.

Of course, there are certainly some who do. The New York Times' David Barstow did when he reported on the financial interests of former generals appearing on television. Rachel Maddow did when she went out of her way to inform viewers that a supposedly disinterested guest she had on the night before was actually on the board of a corporation the guest was effectively shilling for. And most leading bloggers -- as opposed to most leading journalists who criticize bloggers' ethics -- go out of their way to disclose to readers their personal/financial connections to the news stories they are covering. Those, however, are the exceptions, not the rule.

The victims of this increasingly corrupt media system are both the viewers who are unknowingly fed a steady diet of stealth propaganda, and those trying to build truly independent media. I can personally attest to the latter.

As an independent journalist, I have gone out of my way to avoid financial/personal conflicts of interest, at considerable financial cost to me and my family. That means, for example, turning down various job/client opportunities (even for political groups I agree with), even when money is tight in a recession.

I'm not complaining - I am proud of my independence and I can sleep at night knowing my credibility isn't compromised. However, now that the media ecosphere no longer demands, incentivizes or rewards that kind of independence, that decision to be independent has become purely a decision of personal virtue - not industry mandate. It therefore puts me at a financial/competitive disadvantage in the economy at large.

Like other journalists and outlets who work to protect their credibility, I am sacrificing job/income opportunities in order to preserve my journalistic independence. From a journalism ethics perspective, that makes sense: If I am simultaneously a "journalist" and in the business of trying to recruit corporate clients for, say, a PR firm, the latter business will naturally impact the former. For example, I might be less inclined to write hard-hitting pieces against corporate interests in general, for fear of scaring away potential PR clients.

However, from a career perspective, "ethics" no longer make as much sense. I am going out of my way to preserve independence in a journalism industry that doesn't even pretend to insist on that independence. Indeed, you can be Richard Wolffe and openly get paid by corporations and not risk your place on MSNBC or your billing as a supposed disinterested "political analyst."

The result is a truly corrupt incentive system: the economic incentive now for the average journalist isn't to protect one's independence by avoiding financial conflicts of interest - but to sell out knowing there probably won't be any ramifications for one's journalism career.

Will this ever change? Well, it's hard to know. But I can say this: You can bet that until we build a vibrant independent media and until the news consumers use their economic/audience power to demand more independence (or at least disclosure) from the corporate media, the rule will continue.

* Note: I know that editorialists/opinionists/commentators aren't "objective" in the sense that yes, of course, they have subjective opinions because that's their stated job. But the expectations of professional editorialists/opinionists/commentators is that their opinions are ideologically motivated - not motivated out of a desire to protect their own undisclosed financial interests. So, when I use "objective" when referring to editorialists/opinionists/commentators, I am referring specifically to that kind of personal financial objectivity.

Gershon Hepner: Shaken, Not Stirred

2009-08-01T14:05:42Z

Youth has no age, Picasso said.
In the long run we're all dead.
We can't deny this troubling truth
by claiming everlasting youth
after it has passed us by,
when, unprepared to ever die,
we're forced to turn another page,
yellowed, mellowed by old age.

Learning from defeat far more
than victories, we call out "Fore!
never ready to retreat,
conceding that we've met defeat
because we've aged and lost our spring,
preparing for another fling,
our senior years a lagniappe
coming without handicap.

Although youth has no age I will
continue to feel young until
the long run catches up with me
and brings me to reality,
for though youth really is confined
to those who're young, the undersigned
will take Picasso at his word,
by life still shaken, not unstirred.

On July 28 Thomas L. Friedman wrote a column in the NYT celebrating the near-victory in the US Open by 59-year old Tom Watson ("59 Is The New 30"):

Watson's run was freaky unusual -- a 59-year-old man who had played his opening two rounds in this tournament with a 16-year-old Italian amateur -- was able to best the greatest golfers in the world at least a decade after anyone would have dreamt it possible. Watching this happen actually widened our sense of what any of us is capable of. That is, when Kobe Bryant scores 70 points, we are in awe. When Tiger Woods wins by 15 strokes, we are in awe. But when a man our own age and size whips the world's best -- who are half his age -- we identify. Of course, Watson has unique golfing skills, but if you are a baby boomer you could not help but look at him and say something you would never say about Tiger or Kobe: "He's my age; he's my build; he's my height; and he even had his hip replaced like me. If he can do that, maybe I can do something like that, too."

On July 31, 2009, Charles Bock responded enthusiastically to Thomas Friedman's article by quoting Picasso, who said, "Youth has no age."

© 2009 Gershon Hepner 7/31/09

Lynda Resnick: Live from the Aspen Institute: Tom Friedman Speaks at The Socrates Society's Annual Fundraiser

2009-06-29T16:24:18Z

Last night the Socrates Society of the Aspen Institute had their annual fundraiser. It was an outstanding success. Founded 13 years ago by Silicon Valley venture capitalists Gary and Laura Lauder, this group is a forum in which emerging leaders from various sectors of society come together to explore contemporary issues through moderated dialogue. The members, who tend to be in their 30s and 40s, form a diverse group representing leaders from all over the globe.

As in previous years, the main attraction was Tom Friedman, who spoke informally with Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson from the stage. Tom is not only one of the world's greatest journalists, he is also a marketing genius. He can take a simple idea for the betterment of mankind and distill it into a brilliant sound bite that communicates in a millisecond.

In the soon-to-be-released paperback of his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, he has added the word "Broke" to the title to communicate what is new in our world since the bestseller was printed. Tom warns us that the market and Mother Nature have hit the wall. The reasons are similar: greed and avarice in the financial community, and abuse of our natural resources, something most Americans are guilty of. In time, Tom warns, we can fix our economy, but we can never fix our ecosystem once we reach the tipping point.

To avoid disaster, the current generation must be followed by the "re-generation generation." Our generation should be called the "grasshopper generation," because we ate through everything put before us. We haven't had a Pearl Harbor wake-up call like our parents or grandparents, but we must consider the crash of 2008 a "heart attack warning" for our time.

I hope Tom forgives me for paraphrasing his words. As always, he is full of hope, which is what makes his messages uplifting in the end. "Remember," he said, "recessions are a time of great innovation." So, get busy. We all must do our part.

Bill Chameides: Cap and Trade Part 2: Walking the International Tightrope

2009-06-10T17:38:06Z

This is the second post in a series on cap and trade.

Suppose the United States adopts a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and China does not? What then?

The international thing: it's a bear. Addressing global warming requires an international effort. Especially critical is the participation of the United States and China -- the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, collectively responsible for some 40 percent of the world's emissions.

Any international climate treaty that omits an eventual cap on China's emissions will be a treaty that fails to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference on the climate. But so will one that does not include a cap on U.S. emissions.

Right now, in the run-up to negotiations in Copenhagen, the two countries look to be far apart. The United States has indicated a willingness to take a declining cap on its emissions but wants China to do the same. China finds the U.S. cap lenient (too small and too slow to reduce emissions) and opposes a cap for itself. China also wants developed countries to significantly fund its low-carbon technological transformation.

In This Series
Part 1: It's About the Cap, Stupid
Part 2: Walking the International Tightrope
Part 3: You Ask, "What?" I Say, "How Wide?"

In reality, the distance between the two countries may not be quite so large.

First of all, it's possible that China's statements do not reflect its actual position but rather an opening negotiating gambit.
Secondly, China has already implemented ambitious mandates for renewables (see here and here) and high-mileage automobile standards (here, here and here), and it has announced intentions [pdf] to significantly reduce the carbon intensity of its greenhouse gas emissions.
Plus, to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference to the climate, it's not necessary for countries like China to decrease emissions immediately but to agree to begin doing so within about 15-20 years.

What's a Country to Do?

Still, China's stated position raises the question of what the United States should do -- go forward or wait?

Some argue that the United States should not enact climate legislation now and should go into international negotiations uncommitted. Under this scenario, America doesn't agree to cap emissions until China does. (I'm reminded of two kids in a fight and the parents tell them to shake hands and make up but they can't because each is waiting for the other to extend his hand first. "You go first." "No, you go.")

Personally, I don't think waiting and allowing international negotiations to frame our climate policy is in America's best interest. For one, we tried that with Kyoto back in 1997 and we saw how well that worked out. Secondly, doesn't it make more sense for America to figure out what we want and then go to the international community to work out a global arrangement that fits it?

But Suppose We Cap and China Won't Play?

Okay, you say, suppose America goes first by enacting climate legislation like Waxman-Markey and then an intransigent China refuses to accept any constraint on its emissions? Here arises what I call the cry of the "cap and ... business wolves." Not only do our efforts to address climate change fail, but all our jobs and industries flow to China with its huge uncapped economic advantage. Right? Maybe not.

One Scenario: United States Wins With a Cap

Some folks, most notably New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, actually see advantages to being a first-mover with climate change legislation. Why? Because it would force us to innovate and develop the new, low-carbon technologies of the 21st century.

In this scenario, America doesn't end up importing products from a cap-less China; instead, China imports from us. The net result: the United States wins economically and China's emissions go down because the Chinese effectively adopt our low-carbon technologies and buy up our low-carbon products.

Possible? I guess so. A slam dunk? Hardly.

Another Scenario: Carbon Tariffs

If countries like China refuse to cap, we can level the economic playing field by imposing a carbon tariff on their imports. The amount of the tariff would be related to the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in the imports and the price of carbon allowances (in the case of cap and trade) or the cost of carbon emissions (in the case of a carbon tax).

This approach, recently mentioned by New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, is in the Waxman-Markey climate bill making its way through the House. (In Waxman-Markey, the president is empowered to impose a carbon tariff on imports after 2025.)

This idea has a lot going for it, given the size of the combined economies of the United States and the European Union. The adoption of a carbon tariff by all these countries could have the effect of forcing hypothetically cap-less countries to adopt a virtual cap or abandon their international trade aspirations. Sort of a win-win.

Which is not to say that a carbon tariff comes free of complications. For one, experts in international relations point out that there are issues relating to trade agreements. It is not clear that carbon tariffs would even be legal under the World Trade Organization (WTO), and if not, changes to the WTO would have to be made. And then there's the specter of a trade war.

There's also the problem of "secondary imports" wherein products from a cap-less country may contain materials originating from the United States. For a tariff to be imposed appropriately, the composition of imported products and their provenance would have to be established.

The Bottom Line: We Have Options

So yes, the international thing is a bear. But it's not at all clear that it should be viewed as a deal breaker to U.S. climate change legislation. Going forward unilaterally with our own climate change legislation will not necessarily leave us powerless and vulnerable to economic exploitation by intransigent nations. And being a first mover may have significant advantages.

Next post in the series comes tomorrow -- what goes under the cap and what does not.

Dr. Bill Chameides is the dean of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He blogs regularly at theGreenGrok.com.

Yvette Kantrow: Friedman and Andrews Play the Clueless Defense

2009-05-28T15:18:08Z

"I just wasn't paying attention."

"It never even occurred to me to mention it."

What do these two statements have in common? They were both uttered by New York Times journalists as they tried to explain away behavior for which they recently came under fire. The first was offered by uber-columnist Thomas Friedman in the public editor's (Clark Hoyt's) piece in Sunday's Times regarding Friedman's acceptance (and later return) of a $75,000 public speaking fee in a violation of the paper's policy. The second was included in reporter Edmund Andrews' explanation, e-mailed to PBS, of his decision to omit his wife's premarital bankruptcy from his (not quite) tell-all about his personal mortgage crisis.

Friedman's and Andrews' remarks are not only oddly similar, but totally Times-like in their haughty cluelessness. Innocuous at first blush, they become much more irritating as you think more deeply about them. Is Friedman so wealthy and so accustomed to attracting big fees and so disconnected from the Times and its policies that accepting $75,000 -- more than most journalists make in a year -- for a single speech doesn't even cause him to blink? And did Andrews, despite writing what's been described as a financial memoir, really never even think about mentioning his wife's earlier financial woes, if only to reject the idea of including them?

Let's deal with Friedman first. His admission of not "paying attention" becomes even more annoying when paired with this choice quote from him in The New Yorker's profile of Carlos Slim by Lawrence Wright, out this week:

"He told me that since taking his current post, in 1995, he has never been asked by [Arthur] Sulzberger what he was planning to write, or how high his travel expenses would be. 'To be able to say what I want to say and go where I want to go -- other than a Sulzberger-owned newspaper, you tell me where that exists today.' "

As Michael Roston writes on True/Slant, "Friedman is boasting that he can go wherever he want, write whatever occurs to him, and spend however much he wants to do those things without any attention to how his profligacy harms the paper's ability to survive." Noting the speaker-fee flap, Roston calls Friedman's boast "one of the worst-timed statements in the history of public relations." Or perhaps Friedman "just wasn't paying attention."

Like Friedman, Andrews also took a turn this week under the public editor's gaze. But, as Felix Salmon writes on his blog, Andrews gets off pretty easily as the Times' public editor Clark Hoyt deals with the real issue at hand -- the omissions of his wife's bankruptcies -- via a tacked-on paragraph at the end of his piece, while spilling much more ink on a comparative nonissue: whether a reporter covering the housing crisis should write about his own, personal housing crisis. Andrews tells Hoyt that he decided to write his book because he "was desperate" for cash.

That makes sense. As Friedman proves, Times journalists can rake in big bucks in the book business. But what doesn't make sense is that Andrews, a veteran Times reporter -- in Washington of all places -- didn't realize that once his "tell-all" hit the pages of the Times, it would become instant fodder for the fact-checking mill. That that didn't occur to him, or to anyone else at the Times, makes both Andrews and the paper appear as out of touch as Friedman. Or maybe they just weren't paying attention.

Yvette Kantrow is the executive editor of The Deal.