A headline on the front page of the Business section of the New York Times recently caught my attention. Announcing a story in the inside pages, it read “Europe tries to address staggering unemployment among the young.” (i) Since the usual practice of European politicians these days is to compete over who can implement the most sadistic and most unemployment-inducing austerity measures in their country, I eagerly turned to the page in question. Needless to say, the contents of the story did not rise up to its promise.

Indeed, what the story amounted to was an overview of the catastrophic levels of youth unemployment in much of Europe as well as the fact that politicians are paying lip service to the gravity of the issue. As the article points out, the unemployment rate for European workers between 15 and 24 years old has climbed up to 24%, while hovering around 60% for countries, like Greece and Spain, which have been hit especially hard by European politicians’ “valiant” attempts to resolve the crisis and reduce unemployment. Faced with these levels of unemployment, European policy makers assure everyone about their concern regarding the dismal state of affairs that is developing under their watch, while also expressing their worry over the effects that this state of affairs is having on the faith of European citizens in the European project. Incidentally, this worry is certainly justified, given the fact that, as a poll by the Pew Research Center has just found, the social and economic fallout from the euro crisis is already undercutting European citizens’ support for the European Union. (ii)

In any case, the article’s main piece of evidence regarding Europe’s effort to address youth unemployment is a proposal, published in the online version of a German newspaper, to subsidize private companies that hire young workers. It is only towards the very end of the article, and after paragraph after paragraph of European politicians lamenting the gravity of the youth unemployment problem, that a patient reader finds out that the European efforts that this article is supposed to be about, add up to very little. As the authors of the article, Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy, are forced to admit, even if such a proposal were to be adopted, it wouldn’t make much of a difference for two reasons. First, the amount of money envisaged (6 billion euros or $7.8 billion) is too paltry to make a difference. Secondly, such a program would not touch the main source of youth unemployment, which as the article (despite its obligatory neoliberal bromides regarding the obstacles to employment that “inflexible labor regulations” supposedly pose) is forced to admit, is the deep economic crisis that has descended upon much of the continent. And as readers of this column are aware, nothing fuels this crisis as intensely as the austerity policies pushed through by the very politicians who now profess their concern over youth unemployment.

It is interesting, therefore, to ponder for a second the ideological function of this story. Its self-contradictoriness (consisting in the fact that the so-called efforts to address youth unemployment hardly deserve the name, as the authors themselves end up admitting) is not innocent. Given the fact that most of the readers of the NYT’s business pages are probably too busy to read an article on European policies regarding youth unemployment from beginning to end, it is reasonable to assume that most of them will not even get to the part of the article that discloses that what they are reading is really a story about nothing. Instead, they are likely to get the impression that European politicians have recognized Europe’s youth unemployment problem and are starting to do something about it. Thus, an ideological reversal is produced whereby the same political elites that are robbing young Europeans of their future emerge as beneficent figures that are doing all they can to make things right. So the story about nothing is about something after all: false reassurances for those watching the European tragedy from afar and false promises for those unlucky enough to be its victims.

Costas Panayotakis is Associate Professor of Sociology at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology and author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy (Pluto Press).

Notes:

(i) See Jack Ewing and Melissa Eddy, ‘European Leaders Grapple With Youth Unemployment,’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/global/14iht-youthjobs14.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print .

(ii) See James Kanter, ‘Grind of Euro Crisis Wears Down Support for Union, Poll Finds,” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/business/global/poll-shows-european-union-loses-favor-in-europe.html?ref=business&_r=0 .

The front page of the May 14, 2013 edition of The New York Times says, “Phone Records of Journalists of The Associated Press Seized by U.S.,” and includes this paragraph:

The development represents the latest collision of news organizations and federal investigators over government efforts to prevent the disclosure of national security information, and it comes against a backdrop of an aggressive policy by the Obama administration to rein in leaks. Under President Obama, six current and former government officials have been indicted in leak-related cases so far, twice the number brought under all previous administrations combined.

Nearly everything you need to know is neatly compacted in those two sentences. The “collision” between the media and the federal government and their “aggressive policy” to stop whistleblowers is not new. In fact, the seizure of AP records is only the “latest” development.

In the NYT article we read a statement by The Newspaper Association of America which said that, “Today we learned of the Justice Department’s unprecedented wholesale seizure of confidential telephone records from the Associated Press. These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Earlier today CNN published their piece “Why you should care about whistleblowers,” in which Robert Greenwald gets space to discuss his new documentary: “War on Whistleblowers.” The CNN article includes a quote from the film. It comes from Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. Brian says: “The impact of this administration’s aggressiveness in the national security arena has had an extraordinary chilling effect. The number of people who have indicated to us that they wish they could talk but they can’t because they’re afraid of what could happen to them is a terrible thing for our democracy.”

And just last month The Huffington Post published their article “Obama Whistleblower Prosecutions Lead To Chilling Effect On Press,” which began with the following:

NEW YORK -– On April 9, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay reported that the Obama administration has “targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified ‘other’ militants” in drone strikes, a revelation that contradicts previous administration claims of pursuing only senior-level operatives who pose an imminent threat to the United States.

It was an investigative story clearly in the public interest, shedding new light on the government’s long-running targeted-killing program in Pakistan. But now Landay, a veteran national security reporter for the McClatchy newspaper chain, is concerned that the Obama administration could next investigate him in hopes of finding the sources for “top-secret U.S. intelligence reports” cited in the story. “Do I think that they could come after me?” Landay asked, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Yes.”

Moving further back in time is the Mother Jones article “Obama’s War on Whistleblowers,” that has this chilling introduction:

White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to pummel leaks that do not favor him. Watching their boss, bureaucrats act on their own, freelancing the punishment of whistleblowers, knowing their retaliatory actions will be condoned. The United States rains Hellfire missiles down on its enemies, with the president alone sitting in judgment of who will live and who will die by his hand.

A few months prior was the article “In Washington, Fear the Silence, Not the Noise,” which published by TomDispatch:

On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaida suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

And least we should forget, it’s not just the mainstream media who is threatened by President Obama’s War on Whistleblowers. There is the targeting of Wikileaks as well. As Michael Brenner wrote in December of 2010 in his HuffPost article “Obama’s War on WikiLeaks — and Us”:

The Obama administration’s extrajudicial assault on WikiLeaks and the person of Julian Assange is the most frightening. Federal officials have put the muscle on private businesses to deny their services to both Wikileaks and anyone who wishes to extent financial support to them. The fact that PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard, Visa et al are de facto public utilities underscores the abuse of governmental power.

The writing is on the wall. The man who campaigned on “transparency” is not tolerating dissent. And as this unfolds President Obama’s Press Secretary is cynically telling reporters to their faces that this White House is “a strong defender of the First Amendment.”

I would like to think that my column for The NYT eXaminer has provided countless examples of the mainstream media acting as a parrot for the United States government. So when various news agencies sound the alarms, we should take it serious.

Dear Margaret Sullivan,

In a recent column (4/12/13), you observed:

Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters. When news organizations accept the government’s way of speaking, they seem to accept the government’s way of thinking. In The Times, these decisions carry even more weight.

In light of this comment we encourage you to compare The New York Times’s characterization of the leadership of the late Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo in Honduras.

In the past four years, the Times has referred to Chávez as an “autocrat,” “despot,” “authoritarian ruler” and a “caudillo” in its news coverage. When opinion pieces are included, the Times has published at least fifteen separate articles employing such language, depicting Chávez as a “dictator” or “strongman.” Over the same period—since the June 28, 2009 military overthrow of elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras—Times contributors have never used such terms to describe Micheletti, who presided over the coup regime after Zelaya’s removal, or Porfirio Lobo, who succeeded him. Instead, the paper has variously described them in its news coverage as “interim,” “de facto,” and “new.”

Porfirio Lobo assumed the presidency after winning an election held under Micheletti’s coup government. The elections were marked by repression and censorship, and international monitors, like the Carter Center, boycotted them. Since the coup, Honduras’s military and police have routinely killed civilians.

Over the past 14 years Venezuela has had 16 elections or referenda deemed free and fair by leading international authorities. Jimmy Carter praised Venezuela’s elections, among the 92 the Carter Center has monitored, as having “a very wonderful voting system.” He concluded that “the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” While some human rights groups have criticized the Chávez government, Venezuela has had no pattern of state security forces murdering civilians, as is the case in Honduras.

Whatever one thinks of the democratic credentials of Chávez’s presidency—and we recognize that reasonable people can disagree about it—there is nothing in the record, when compared with that of his Honduran counterparts, to warrant the discrepancies in the Times’s coverage of the two governments.

We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use, particularly as it may appear to your readers to track all too closely the U.S. government’s positions regarding the Honduran government (which it supports) and the Venezuelan government (which it opposes)—precisely the syndrome you describe and warn against in your column.

Sincerely,

Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT
Edward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University
Sujatha Fernandes, Professor of Sociology, Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center
Corey Robin, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY Graduate Center
Adrienne Pine, Professor of Anthropology, American University
Mark Weisbrot, Ph.D, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor of History and Latin American Studies, Pomona College
Katherine Hite, Professor of Political Science, Vassar College
Steve Ellner, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, Universidad de Oriente
George Ciccariello-Maher, Professor of Political Science, Drexel University
Daniel Kovalik, Professor of International Human Rights, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Gregory Wilpert, Ph.D, author of “Changing Venezuela by Taking Power”
Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, Vassar College
Nazih Richani, Director of Latin American Studies, Kean University
Steven Volk, Professor of History, Oberlin College
Aviva Chomsky, Professor of History, Salem State University
Keane Bhatt, North American Congress on Latin America
Chris Spannos, New York Times eXaminer
Michael Albert, ZNet
Oliver Stone, Film Director, “South of the Border”
Michael Moore, Film Maker and Activist
Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Translations: Spanish Below / French

Noam Chomsky y un grupo de intelectuales le piden a la editora del NY Times analizar el enfoque parcializado en opiniones sobre Venezuela y Honduras.

La siguiente petición, firmada por más de una docena de expertos en el tema de América Latina y los medios de comunicación, le fue enviada hoy a Margaret Sullivan, editora del New York Times:

14 de mayo de 2013

Estimada Margaret Sullivan,

En una columna reciente (12/4/2013) Usted comentó:

Aunque ciertas palabras y frases no tienen mucha importancia dado el gran flujo diario que se crea, el lenguaje importa. Cuando las organizaciones de noticias aceptan la manera de expresarse del gobierno, ellas parecen aceptar la forma de pensar del gobierno. En el Times, estas decisiones tienen aun más peso.

A la luz de estos comentarios, nosotros le pedimos a comparar la caracterización del New York Times al liderazgo del difunto Hugo Chávez en Venezuela con aquella de Roberto Micheletti y Porfirio Lobo en Honduras.

En los últimos cuatro años, el Times ha tildado a Chávez como “autócrata”, “déspota”, “gobernante autoritario”, y un “caudillo” en sus coberturas de noticias. Si incluimos los artículos de opinión, el Times ha publicado al menos quince artículos empleando tal lenguaje, describiendo a Chávez como “dictador” u “hombre duro”. En el mismo período —desde el golpe militar que derrocó al presidente electo hondureño Manuel Zelaya el 28 de junio de 2009— ningún colaborador del Times ha utilizado esos términos para referirse a Micheletti, quien encabezaba un regimen golpista tras el desposeimiento de Zelaya, ni se refirió así a Porfirio Lobo, quien lo sucedió. En cambio, el periódico los ha descrito en sus coberturas de noticia como “interino”, “de facto”, y “nuevo”.

Porfirio Lobo asumió la presidencia luego de ganar las elecciones que tuvieron lugar bajo el mandato del gobierno golpista de Micheletti. Dichas elecciones fueron marcadas por la represión y la censura, y los observadores internacionales, como el Centro Carter, las boicotearon. Desde el golpe de estado, las fuerzas militares y policiales hondureñas han asesinado a civiles con asiduidad.

En los últimos 14 años, Venezuela ha realizado 16 elecciones o referéndum. Jimmy Carter alabó las elecciones en Venezuela, entre las 92 elecciones que el Centro Carter ha monitoreado, y las describió como “un magnífico sistema de votación”. El concluyó que “el proceso electoral en Venezuela es el mejor del mundo”. Mientras algunos grupos por los derechos humanos han criticado el gobierno de Chávez, las fuerzas del orden en Venezuela no tienen un historial de haber asesinado a civiles, como es el caso en Honduras.

Cualquier cosa que uno piense sobre las credenciales democráticas de la presidencia de Chávez —y creemos que personas razonables pueden debatirlas— no hay nada registrado, al compararlo con su contraparte en Honduras, que justifique las discrepancias en la cobertura del Times hacia cada gobierno.

Le instamos a examinar esta diferencia en las coberturas y el uso del lenguaje, particularmente porque aquella puede darle una impresión a sus lectores de la parcialización a favor de la posición del gobierno estadounidense con respecto al gobierno de Honduras (al cual apoya), y el gobierno venezolano (al cual se opone) —precisamente el síndrome que Usted escribe y advierte en su columna.

Sinceramente,

Noam Chomsky, Profesor Emérito del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts
Edward Herman, Profesor Emérito de Finanzas en la Wharton School, Universidad de Pensilvania
Greg Grandin, Profesor de Historia en la Universidad de Nueva York
Sujatha Fernandes, Profesor de Sociología en el Queen College y del Centro Graduado de la Universidad de Nueva York
Corey Robin, Profesor de Ciencias Políticas, Brooklyn College
Adrienne Pine, Profesor de Antropología en la American University
Mark Weisbrot, Doctor en Filosofía y codirector del Centro para el Estudio de la Política y Economía
Miguel Tinker Salas, Profesor de Historia y Estudios latinoamericanos en el Porma College
Katherine Hite, Profesora de Ciencias Políticas en el Vassar College
Steve Ellner, Profesor de Asuntos Internacionales y Públicos en la Universidad de Columbia y la Universidad de Oriente
George Ciccariello-Maher, Profesor de Ciencias Políticas Universidad de Drexel
Daniel Kovalik, Profesor de Derechos Humanos Internacionales de la Facultad de Derecho en la Universidad de Pittsburgh
Gregory Wilpert, Doctor en Filosofía, autor de “Cambiar a Venezuela tomando el poder”
Joseph Nevins, Profesor de Geografía en el Vassar College
Zazih Richani, Director de Estudios de América Latina, Universidad de Kean
Steven Volk, Profesor de Historia en el Oberlin College
Aviva Chomsky, Profesora de Historia en la Salem State University
Keane Bhatt, Congreso norteamericano para América Latina
Chris Spannos, analista del New York Times eXaminer
Michael Albert, ZNet
Oliver Stone, cineasta, “Al sur de la frontera”
Michael Moore, cineasta, activista
Vincent Warren, director ejecutivo, Centro de Derechos Constitucionales

Supporting Documentation

Below is a list of 16 Times articles compiled by Keane Bhatt that served as the basis of an analysis piece from which this petition was derived. None of the terms below (autocrat, despot, authoritarian, ruler, strongman, caudillo, dictator, tyrant, sultan) have been applied to either of Honduras’s post-coup regimes:

News:

“Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg, 2/16/11: “Autocrats abhor Mr. Sharp. In 2007, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela denounced him.”

“The Arab Spring Finds Itself Upstaged by a New Season,” Neil MacFarquhar, 9/22/11: “In fact, this year’s gathering was suffering from something of a despot deficit, or at least the ranks of haranguers raging against the evils of capitalism and the West have been drastically thinned by revolutions or disease. President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, undergoing chemotherapy treatment in Cuba, literally mailed it in . . .”

“Charges Against U.S.-Aided Groups Come With History of Distrust in Egypt,” Scott Shane and Ron Nixon, 2/6/12: “Authoritarian rulers from Caracas to Moscow and beyond have long viewed pro-democracy groups financed by the United States with deep suspicion, regularly denouncing them as meddlers or spies and sometimes harassing their workers.”

“A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement,” Simon Romero, 3/5/13: “He maintained an almost visceral connection with the poor, tapping into their resentments, while strutting like the strongman in a caudillo novel. . . . He grew obsessed with changing Venezuela’s laws and regulations to ensure that he could be re-elected indefinitely and become, indeed, a caudillo.”

Opinion:

“The Winner in Honduras: Chavez,” Alvaro Vargas Llosa, 6/30/09: “The United States’ more measured response [to Honduras's coup d'etat], and the low-profile stance taken by some South American governments, have been lost amid the high-stakes campaign launched by Venezuela’s caudillo.”

Real Men Tax Gas,” Thomas Friedman, 9/19/09: “Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by . . . increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.”

“As Ugly as It Gets,” Thomas Friedman, 5/25/10: “[Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva] regularly praises Venezuela’s strongman Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator — and now Ahmadinejad — while denouncing Colombia, one of the great democratic success stories. . .”

“Wallflowers at the Revolution,” Frank Rich, 2/5/11: “More damning, Morozov also demonstrates how the digital tools so useful to citizens in a free society can be co-opted by tech-savvy dictators, police states and garden-variety autocrats to spread propaganda and to track (and arrest) conveniently networked dissidents, from Iran to Venezuela.”

“Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal,” Bill Keller, 7/24/11: “And autocrats will be autocrats, with or without our bad example. Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chávez would be just as hostile to an unfettered press if no British journalist had ever hacked a phone.”

“The Stomachs of Strongmen,” Ann Louise Bardach, 8/21/11: “Ironically, the hemisphere’s most indomitable strongmen and determined foes of the United States and free market economics have both been felled, at least for now, by abdominal woes . . . The symbiosis between Cuba’s emeritus or former (and in most ways, still de facto) commander in chief and the Venezuelan colonel-turned-oil-sultan is the most powerful and fascinating political alliance in the Americas.”

“The Realest Reality Show in the World,” Rachel Nolan, 5/6/12: “[I]t’s hard to imagine another political figure with the combination of manic exhibitionism and entertainer’s stamina required to star in this sort of show, never mind the autocratic control required to make it, literally, must-see TV in his home country. . . . ‘Aló Presidente’ has that same wacky quality. The difference is that Mrs. Mouth wasn’t the autocratic leader of an oil-rich country of 29 million people.”

“Velvet Gloves Over Iron Fists,” Dwight Garner, 6/10/12: “The neo-authoritarians, from Vladimir Putin in Russia to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to China’s more faceless technocrats, are still brutal, but they have learned to adapt.”

“How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant,” Francisco Toro, 10/5/12: “Mr. Chávez’s autocratic excesses came to look unnecessary and inexcusable to Venezuelans. . . . With oversight institutions neutered, the president now runs the country as a personal fief . . . Chávez-style socialism looks like the worst of both worlds: both more authoritarian and less effective at reducing poverty than the Brazilian alternative. . . . Mr. Capriles pitches himself as an ambitious but pragmatic social reformer committed to ending the Chávez era’s authoritarian excesses.”

“The Missing President,” Alberto Barrera Tyska and Christina Marcano, 1/22/13: “In the name of the dispossessed, he revived the ghost of the South American military caudillo, creating a new version of that traditional strongman. … There is one element of the Chávez leadership, however, that is no different from any of Latin America’s other personality-driven authoritarian regimes: its messianic nature.”

“Hugo Chávez,” Editorial Board, 3/6/13: “Hugo Chávez dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years with his charismatic personality, populist policies and authoritarian methods . . . his legacy is stained by the undermining of democratic institutions.”

“Death of a Strongman,” Jonathan Tepperman, 4/5/13: “Finally, after years of riding the sugar binge of Chávez’s populist politics, which left the country “flabby, enfeebled and import-­addicted,” much of the public lost enthusiasm for their latter-day caudillo. . . . efforts to underscore the inherent absurdity of autocrats and their personality cults are nothing new.”

Keane will update this list on his NACLA blog “Manufacturing Contempt“.

By Michael McGehee:

One page SR3 of Monday’s The New York Times is a peculiar opinion piece by Feisal G. Mohamed, a professor at the University of Illinois, with the title “In Syria and Beyond, the Tyrant as Target.”

It starts out with a quote from “Hercules Furens,” a play by the Roman philosopher, Seneca:

There can be slain
No sacrifice to God more acceptable
Than an unjust and wicked King

It is an opinion piece arguing for assassinations of leaders, particularly those the Western establishment finds to be “tyrants.”

Mohamed wastes no time displaying irony when he writes, “The brutal civil war in Syria — and in particular the numerous crimes against humanity committed by President Bashar al-Assad — have many people in the United States and elsewhere asking a familiar question: Are we morally obliged to intervene when a political leader is slaughtering civilians within his own territory?”

But there is an “alternative” to consider as well: “killing the tyrant.” To which Mohamed asks: “Why shouldn’t this be preferable to war?”

Mohamed reaches into the classics to entertain his thoughts. From Seneca to Plato to Aristotle to Cicero to Kant to Milton.

Of course the obvious irony all but escapes Mohamed. The most he can offer in recognition that the Syrian “opposition forces”—whom are backed by the US and its allies, have also committed “numerous crimes against humanity,” and that the “brutal civil war in Syria” has gone on for more than two years now because of this foreign direction and involvement—has blood on their hands is to write that, “when we hear news of extreme violence committed (or, in recent reports, claims of the use of chemical weapons) not just by government forces but by opposition forces, too, we must be led to wonder if the latter aim to replace Assad’s tyranny with one of their own making.”

That is it. We should “wonder” what they would do once in power. From there Mohamed returns to insinuations that Assad should be the victim of “tyrannicide.”

The return volley to Mohamed is: What are the moral obligations when it is our political leadership that is slaughtering civilians within some other country’s territory? What of the tyranny of backing foreign terrorists to destabilize and overthrow a government, a process which involves the killing of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians? Is The New York Times inadvertently advocating the assassination of President Obama, and the allied leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc?

Of course not, that would be criminal and foolish.

Even though Mohamed defines a tyrant as “a leader who rules by force, who has an incontrovertible record of directly ordering large-scale murder, and who is actively using a position of authority to engage in the slaughter of innocents.”

From direct wars in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; and through proxy forces in places like Nicaragua, Kosovo, and Syria; and even aerial bombardments of countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya, the United States government, the nuclear-armed state with a “kill list” and nearly one thousand foreign military bases around the world, has shown to be the largest tyrant in the world.

That this escapes Mohamed and the “paper of record” is indicative of the efficacy of the propaganda system. By the nature of imperialism, which always sees itself as benevolent or above and beyond such judicial consideration, our deeds don’t register. That is why the laundry list of criminals who have gone through the International Criminal Court system have never been anyone on Washington’s side. And of course this is also why it is dangerous to entertain these criminal thoughts at all. Unless we are willing to allow ourselves to be subjected to the same extra-judicial measures, then we should cease any considerations of applying it to others.

Mohamed also writes that, “Cases in which tyrannicide seems an especially appropriate remedy will be those where the tyrant is a chief source of destructive commands in the polity.”

You can rest assured the members of the United National General Assembly and the organization’s Security Council jaws have dropped to the floor with that statement.

The history of abuse of veto powers by Washington at the United Nations Security Council, or ignoring the votes of the General Assembly, is long. On issues ranging from the Cuban embargo to nuclear disarmament to the Israel-Palestine conflict and beyond, Washington has proven time and time again to be “a chief source of destructive commands in the polity” of the council.

Mohamed begins his closing paragraph with writing how “Domestic and international law do not look kindly upon the assassination of a ruler,” and explains this as being due to “law and policy are created by political leaders, who rarely warm to ideas that might place them in the line of fire.”

But it is Mohamed’s last sentence on tyranicide which carries the most weight, but so long as we recognize that Bashar al-Assad is a victim of Washington’s imperial plans in the Middle East: “That sense of compromise [between “military intervention” and “humanitarian values”] is more pronounced still in light of the tradition urging us to take aim at the tyrant rather than his victims.”

It is as if Mohamed sees international affairs as a hierarchy of geopolitical power, but the top rung of the ladder are the leaders of the states opposed by Washington, and that the rung above them, which includes Washington, is invisible, and the “tradition” of justice cannot reach. The apologetic cookie crumbles to crumbs when light is shone on that top rung, and how it has been conveniently excluded in the murderous consideration. Were the leaders of Washington considered in Mohamed’s argument the opinion piece would never had been published.

And speaking of philosophy and the classics, Mohamed’s limited perception is not without further irony: Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” It is in this classic story from Plato’s The Republic where we are presented with an explanation of the efficacy of propaganda: We are prisoners in a cave, chained to a wall, and what we see before us are the shadows of images flashed on to that wall by a fire behind us. Sometimes a prisoner breaks away and looks up and is blinded by the truth of the light. The light is painful. It is disorienting. It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust. But once they do we see that what we thought was the truth was nothing but shadows provided to us by those that enslaved us, and fed the fire. We may try to reach out to the other prisoners, but until they free their own minds they will likely go on believing in the shadows. And for them, those shadows might be presenting them with the argument to kill the leaders of Washington’s enemies.

By Richard Falk:

There are widespread reports that President Obama had not fully appreciated the political consequences of responding to a question at an August press conference that asked about the consequences of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Obama replied that such a use would be to cross “a red line“. Such an assertion was widely understood to be a threat either to launch air strikes or to provide rebel forces with major direct military assistance, including weaponry.

There have been sketchy reports that Syria did make some use of chemical weapons, as well as allegations that the reported use was “a false flag” operation, designed to call Obama’s bluff. As the New York Times notes in a front page story on May 7, Obama “finds himself in a geopolitical box, his credibility at stake with frustratingly few good option”.

Such a policy dilemma raises tactical issues of how to intervene without risking serious involvement in yet another Middle Eastern war. It also raises delicate questions of presidential leadership in a highly polarised domestic political atmosphere, readily exploited by belligerent Republican politicians backed by a rabid media that always seem to be pushing Obama to pursue a more muscular foreign policy in support of America’s global interests.

Debate on Syria: ‘Missing red line’

What is missing from the debate on Syria, and generally from the challenge to foreign policy, is a more fundamental red line that the US at another time and place took the lead in formulating – namely, the prohibition of the use of international force by states other than in cases of self-defence against a prior armed attack.

This prohibition was the core idea embodied in the United Nations Charter, and it was also consistent with the prosecution and punishment of surviving German and Japanese leaders after World War II for their role in “Crimes against Peace“, that is, aggressive warfare. The only lawful exception to this prohibition was use of force in accord with a prior authorisation given by the UN Security Council.

The key hope for world peace was this consensus among the winners in World War II that in the future aggressive war and acquisition of territory by force must be outlawed. This happened in the Gulf War of 1991 and again in the NATO Libya War of 2011, but in each instance there were problems with whether the military operations exceeded the UN mandate.

Actually the Charter red line has been surprisingly well respected over the period since 1945, at least in clear instances of border-crossing sustained violence. The UN authorised the defence of South Korea in response to an armed attack by North Korea in 1950.

It even exerted effective pressure in 1956 on the United Kingdom, France and Israel to withdraw from territory seized after their attack on Egypt, and then in 1991 the UN successfully restored sovereignty to Kuwait in response to Iraq’s aggressive occupation and annexation of the country.

The UN red line held up reasonably well until the end of the last century, although all along its interpretation was subject to geopolitical manipulation by reference to a variety of loopholes associated with claims of humanitarian intervention or a variety of strategically motivated covert interventions (for example, Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954).

This pattern of evasion was a prominent feature of the Cold War as both sides intervened in foreign states or in their respective spheres of influence to uphold their ideological alignment with one or the other superpower. Such uses of international force without engaging the UN framework definitely eroded the authority of the anti-aggression red line and its stature in international law, but it did not produce any call for its abandonment.

What weakened this red line even more decisively was undoubtedly the US-led coalition of the willing attack on Iraq in 2003 after an American plea for UN permission had been rebuffed by the Security Council despite a concerted effort to convince its members that Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction was a menace to the peace.

Iraq War: Death of the UN?

The undisguised defiance of this most fundamental red line of international law by the US also defied world public opinion that had expressed itself in the most massive anti-war demonstrations in all of history held in some 80 countries on February 15, 2003, a little more than a month before the “shock and awe” start of the Iraq War.

Richard Perle, often touted as the most astute of the neocon intellectuals who fashioned American strategic policy during the Bush years, was exultant about this breach of the red line, celebrating American aggression against Iraq in a Guardian article provocatively headlined, “Thank God for the Death of the UN”.

Although the authority of the UN was definitely flaunted by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the UN is far from dead as an organisation addressing the concerns of the world, and even its red line, although covered with dust, has not yet been erased.

What is baffling about the Obama approach is that it purports to be very mindful of the importance of exhibiting respect for international law. Just last September, in a speech to the General Assembly, Obama said: “We know from painful experience that the path to security prosperity does not lie outside the boundaries of international law.” In his Second Inaugural, Obama repeated the sentiment: “We will defend our people and uphold values through strength of arms and rule of law.”

And in arguing on behalf of taking collective action against states that violate international law told the Nobel Peace Prize audience in Stockholm, he said: “[t]hose that claim respect for international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted.”

Yet, when reflecting on intervening in Syria or resort to a military option in relation to Iran’s nuclear programme, Obama is silent about the relevance of international law, although neither instance of contemplated uses of force can be remotely claimed to be justified as either individual or collective self-defence.

For obvious reasons, there is also no mention of circumventing the red line by failing to seek authorisation from the Security Council. Presumably, since approval would not be forthcoming due to the anticipated opposition of Russia and China, it was not even worth considering in public.

It is true that the Clinton presidency in participating via NATO in the Kosovo War proceeded also to embark on a non-defensive war without authorisation for somewhat similar reasons as any resolution proposing use of force was sure to be vetoed by Russia and China. The Kosovo precedent evoked concern, but also a sense of achievement.

The Kosovo undertaking was justified at the time on moral grounds of imminent genocide, on political grounds as enjoying support from almost all of Kosovo’s European neighbours and as being militarily feasible at a reasonable cost and productive of zero casualties among the intervening forces, and on historical grounds as having been perceived as generally beneficial to the threatened population.

In effect, the legitimacy of the war was allowed to offset the absence oflegality.

Redrawing the red lines

The question raised is whether from an overall perspective, the red line of international law at stake in Syria is more like Iraq or Kosovo/Libya. It is unlike Iraq in the sense that there is an ongoing unresolved civil war that is actively destabilising the region, severe “Crimes Against Humanity” are being committed by the regime, and no end of the violence is in sight give the relative strength of the two sides.

It is, however, unlike Kosovo/Libya as there are proxy participants on both sides, the Damascus regime despite its behaviour maintains considerable internal support while the opposition is viewed with deep suspicion as to its democratic credentials, its inclusiveness and its respect for minorities.

In a sense, each conflict must be assessed within its own context, which should raise for discussion whether the red lines of international law and UN authority should be crossed in this instance on behalf of the blue lines of legitimacy (saving a vulnerable people from a humanitarian catastrophe) and white lines of feasibility (likelihood of success with minimum loss of life and high probability of positive net effects).

Finally, it can be argued that the changing nature of conflict has made the red line embedded in the UN Charter obsolete, given the kind of terrorist attacks since 9/11 leading to the global “war on terror” waged on a battlefield without national limits and increasingly doing the killing via robotic warfare.

Ideas of deterrence, containment and defence seem almost irrelevant in relation to security polity when the perceived assailants are individuals operating in non-territorial networks and exhibiting a readiness to die to complete the mission. As matters are proceeding, the policy about force is being formulated without bothering with the red lines of international law and the UN, giving us back the world of unregulated sovereign states and extremist non-states essentially deciding on their own when war is permissible.

Such normative chaos in a world where already nine countries possess nuclear weapons seems like a prescription for species suicide. Never has the world more needed red lines that are drawn by major states, and upheld by them out of the realisation that the national interest has also merged with the global interest.

What is strange is that Obama talks the talk, but seems unwilling to walk the walk. Such a disjunction invites cynicism about law and morality and induces despair on the part of those of us who believe the world we inhabit badly needs red lines, but the right red lines.

Redrawing the red lines that fit the realities of our world and keep alive hopes for peace and justice should be the great diplomatic undertaking of our time, the visionary projects of leading diplomats whose imaginative gaze extends beyond addressing immediate threats. The old red lines have been cast aside in contemplating what to do in relation to Syria, but without trying to establish new red lines that can serve humanity well in our disorienting century.

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. 

[NYTX Editors Note: Richard Falk is on the NYT eXaminer Advisory Council]

To: Editor, New York Times

Bill Keller’s simplistic “Syria is Not Iraq” (Times 0p Ed, May 6^th) touches only lightly on his “reluctant hawk” role as a onetime prominent cheerleader in favor of the Iraq War.  Once again, Keller leans on the discredited Cold War model that U.S. military power must always be used whenever our cloistered Washington foreign policy elite and  legion of unquestioning pundits decide that one set of thugs are better than another. Despite his initial support for the invasion of Iraq, Keller unapologetically rejoins liberal and conservative hawks now clamoring loudly for intervention in the complex, confusing Syrian civil war.

Without a shred of concrete evidence Keller writes that, unlike Iraq, the choices “do not include putting American troops on the ground” and “we have a genuine imperiled national interest” in the conflict, conveniently ignoring that no-one knows who, if anyone, is using chemical weapons and the structure of the different groups of Syrian rebels. Could many of them be Islamic extremists? Keller offers no clue.

All sides in the Syrian civil war have committed atrocious crimes but U.S. involvement, which could quickly become military intervention, resembles the familiar “slippery slope” of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and creates a real danger of a catastrophic regional war.

Some pundits will never learn.

Murray Polner

By Keane Bhatt:

The day after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died, New York Times reporter Lizette Alvarez provided a sympathetic portrayal of “outpourings of raucous celebration and, to many, cautious optimism for the future” in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her article, “Venezuelan Expatriates See a Reason to Celebrate,” noted that many had come to Miami to escape Chávez’s “iron grip on the nation,” and quoted a Venezuelan computer software consultant who said, bluntly: “We had a dictator. There were no laws, no justice.”1

A credulous reader of Alvarez’s report would have no idea that since 1998, Chávez had triumphed in 14 of 15 elections or referenda, all of which were deemed free and fair by international monitors. Chávez’s most recent reelection, won by an 11-point margin, boasted an 81% participation rate; former president Jimmy Carter described the “election process in Venezuela” as “the best in the world” out of 92 cases that the Carter Center had evaluated (an endorsement that, to date, has never been reported by the Times).2

In contrast to Alvarez, who allowed her quotation describing Chávez as a dictator to stand uncontested, Times reporter Neela Banerjee in 2008 cited false accusations hurled at President Obama by opponents—“he is a Muslim who attended a madrassa in Indonesia as a boy and was sworn into office on the Koran”—but immediately invalidated them: “In fact, he is a Christian who was sworn in on a Bible,” she wrote in her next sentence.3 At the Times, it seems, facts are deployed on a case-by-case basis.

The Times editorial board was even more dishonest in the wake of Chávez’s death: “The Bush administration badly damaged Washington’s reputation throughout Latin America when it unwisely blessed a failed 2002 military coup attempt against Mr. Chávez,” wrote the paper, concealing its editorial board’s own role in blessing that very coup at the time. In 2002, with the “resignation [sic] of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator,” declared a Times editorial, bizarrely adding that “Washington never publicly demonized Mr. Chávez,” that actual dictator Pedro Carmona was simply “a respected business leader,” and that the U.S.-backed, two-day coup was “a purely Venezuelan affair.”4

The editorial board—an initial champion of the de facto regime that issued a diktat within hours to dissolve practically every branch of government, including Venezuela’s National Assembly and Supreme Court—would 11 years later brazenly criticize Chávez after his death for having “dominated Venezuelan politics for 14 years with authoritarian methods.” The newspaper argued that Chávez’s government “weakened judicial independence, intimidated political opponents and human rights defenders, and ignored rampant, and often deadly, violence by the police and prison guards.” After lambasting Chávez’s record, the piece concluded that the United States “should now make clear its support for democratic and civilian transition in a post-Chávez Venezuela”—as if Chávez were anyone other than a fairly elected leader with an overwhelming popular mandate.

But there is a country currently in the grip of an undemocratic, illegitimate government that much more closely corresponds with the Times editorial board’s depiction of Venezuela: Honduras, which in 2009 suffered a coup d’état that deposed its freely elected, left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya.

While the Times criticized Chávez for weakening judicial independence, the newspaper could not be bothered to even report on the extraordinary institutional breakdown of Honduras, when in December 2012, its Congress illegally sacked four Supreme Court justices who voted against a law proposed by the president, Porfirio Lobo, who himself had came to power in 2009 in repressive, sham elections held under a post-coup military dictatorship and boycotted by most international election observers.

When it comes to intimidation of political opponents and human rights defenders, Venezuela’s problems are almost imperceptible compared with those of Honduras. Over 14 years under Chávez, Venezuela has had no record of disappearances or murders of such individuals. In post-coup Honduras, the practice is now endemic. In one year alone—2012—at least four leaders of the Zelaya-organized opposition party Libre were slain, including mayoral candidate Edgardo Adalid Motiño. In addition, two dozen journalists and 70 members of the LGBT community have been killed since the coup, including prominent LGBT anti-coup activists like Walter Tróchez and Erick Martinez (neither case was sufficiently notable so as to warrant a mention in the Times).

And although the Times editors decried police violence in Venezuela, the Honduran police systematically engage in extrajudicial killings of their own citizens. In December 2012, Julieta Castellanos, the chancellor of Honduras’s largest university, presented the findings of a report detailing 149 killings committed by the Honduran National Police over the past two years under Porfirio Lobo. In the face of over six killings by the police a month, she warned, “It is alarming that the police themselves are the ones killing people in this country. The public is in a state of defenselessness and impunity.”5 Such alarm is further justified by Lobo’s appointment of Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla as director of the National Police, despite reports that he once oversaw death squads.6

Finally, the Times editorial board lamented Venezuelan prison violence. But consider for context that the NGO Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, consistently critical of Chávez, reported 591 prison deaths in 2012 for the country of 30 million.7 In Honduras, a country with slightly more than a quarter of Venezuela’s population, over 360 died in just one incident—a 2012 prison fire in Comayagua, in which prison authorities kept firefighters from handling the conflagration for 30 crucial minutes while the inmates’ doors remained locked. According to survivors, the guards ignored their pleas for help as many burned alive.8

Given the contrast in the two countries’ democratic credentials and human rights records, obvious questions arise: How has The New York Times portrayed Venezuela and Honduras since Honduras’s 2009 coup d’état? If, in both its news and opinion pages, the Times regularly prints accusations of Venezuelan authoritarianism, what terminology has the Times employed to describe the military government headed by Roberto Micheletti, which assumed power after Zelaya’s overthrow, or the illegitimate Lobo administration that succeeded it?

The answer is revealing. For almost four years, the Times has maintained a double standard that is literally unfailing. Not a single contributor in the Times’ over 100 news and opinion articles has ever referred to the Honduran government as “autocratic,” “undemocratic,” or “authoritarian.” Nor have Times writers ever once labeled Micheletti or Lobo “despots,” “tyrants,” “strongmen,” “dictators,” or “caudillos.”

At the same time, from June 28, 2009, to March 7, 2013, the newspaper has printed at least 15 news and opinion articles in which its contributors have used any number of the aforementioned epithets for Chávez.9 (This methodology excludes the typically vitriolic anti-Chávez blog entries that the paper features on its website, as well as print pieces like Lizette Alvarez’s, which quote someone describing Chávez as a dictator.)

During this period, the paper’s news reporters themselves have referred to Chávez as a “despot,” an “authoritarian ruler,” and an “autocrat”; its opinion writers have deemed him a “petro-dictator,” an “indomitable strongman,” a “brutal neo-authoritarian,” a “warmonger,” and a “colonel-turned-oil-sultan.” On the eve of Venezuela’s October elections, a Times op-ed managed to call the Chávez administration “authoritarian” no fewer than three times in 800 words.10 And Chávez’s death offered no reprieve from this tendency: On March 6, reporter Simon Romero wrote about Chávez’s gait—he “strutt[ed] like the strongman in a caudillo novel”—and concluded that Chávez had “become, indeed, a caudillo.”11

Photo Credit: New York Times Magazine

These most basic violations of journalistic standards—referring to a democratically elected leader as a ruler with absolute power—does not simply end with its writers. On July 24, 2011, Bill Keller, then the newspaper’s executive editor, wrote the piece, “Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal,” which included a graphic of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe side by side with Chávez. Keller referred to them both when he concluded, “Autocrats will be autocrats.”12

But if despotism, defined as the cruel and oppressive exercise of absolute power, is to have any meaning, it must apply to the Honduran government, whose military—not just its police—routinely kills innocent civilians. On May 26, 2012, for example, Honduran special forces killed 15-year-old Ebed Yanez, and high-level officers allegedly managed its cover-up by dispatching “six to eight masked soldiers in dark uniforms” to the teenager’s body, poking it with rifles, and “[picking] up the empty bullet casings” to conceal evidence that could be linked back to the military, according to the Associated Press.13

The paradox of the Times—its derisive posture toward what it considers antidemocratic tendencies in Venezuela as it simultaneously avoids the same treatment of Honduras’s inarguable repression—can only be explained by one crucial factor: Honduras has been a firm U.S. ally since Zelaya’s overthrow.

Photo Credit: SOA Watch

In fact, the unit accused of killing Yanez was armed, trained, and vetted by the United States—even its trucks were donated by the U.S. government. As the AP further reported, in 2012, the U.S. Defense Department appropriated $67.4 million for Honduran military contracts, with an additional “$89 million in annual spending to maintain Joint Task Force Bravo, a 600-member U.S. unit based at Soto Cano Air Base.” Furthermore, “neither the State Department nor the Pentagon could provide details explaining a 2011 $1.3 billion authorization for exports of military electronics to Honduras.”14

The Times’ scrupulous, unerring record of avoiding disparaging characterizations of Honduras’s human-rights-violating government may explain why it has never once made reference to 94 Congress members’ demand that the Obama administration withhold U.S. assistance to the Honduran military and police in March 2012. Nor has the paper reported on 84 Congress members’ letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later that year, condemning Honduras’s “institutional breakdown” and “judicial impunity.”15

When evaluating the newspaper’s relative silence on Honduras, it is worth imagining if Chávez were to have ascended to power in as dubious a manner as Lobo; if for years Venezuela’s government permitted its security apparatus to regularly kill civilians; or if the Chávez administration presided over conditions of impunity under which political opponents and human rights activists were disappeared, tortured, and killed.

As a careful examination of the language and coverage of nearly four years of New York Times articles reveals, concern for freedom and democracy in Latin America has not been an honest concern for the liberal media institution. The paper’s unwavering conformity to the posture of the U.S. State Department—consistently vilifying an official U.S. enemy while systematically downplaying the crimes of a U.S. ally—shows that its foremost priority is to subordinate itself to the priorities of Washington.

Keane Bhatt is a regular contributor to the Media Accuracy on Latin America (MALA) section of NACLA Report and the creator of the Manufacturing Contempt blog on nacla.org, occasionally republished here on NYT eXaminer.

Notes:

1. Lizette Alvarez, ““Venezuelan Expatriates See a Reason to Celebrate,” The New York Times, March 6, 2013.

2. Keane Bhatt, “A Hall of Shame for Venezuelan Elections Coverage,” Manufacturing Contempt (blog), nacla.org, October 8, 2012.

3. Neela Banerjee, “Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters,” The New York Times, March 1, 2008.

4. “Hugo Chávez Departs,” The New York Times, April 13, 2002.

5. “Policías de Honduras, Responsables de 149 Muertes Violentas,” La Prensa, December 3, 2012.

6. Katherine Corcoran and Martha Mendoza, “Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, Honduras Police Chief, Investigated In Killing,” Associated Press, June 1, 2012.

7. Fabiola Sánchez, “Venezuela Prison Deaths: 591 Detainees Killed Country’s Jails Last Year,” Associated Press, January 31, 2013.

8. “Hundreds Killed in ‘Hellish’ Fire at Prison in Honduras,” Associated Press, February 16, 2012.

9. Author’s research, using LexisNexis database searches for identical terms in reference to the two countries. For a detailed list of examples, contact him at keane.l.bhatt@gmail.com.

10. Francisco Toro, “How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant,” The New York Times, October 6, 2012.

11. Simon Romero, “Hugo Chávez, Leader Who Transformed Venezuela, Dies at 58,” The New York Times, March 6, 2013.

12. Bill Keller, “Why Tyrants Love the Murdoch Scandal,” The New York Times Magazine, July 24, 2011.

13. Alberto Arce, “Dad Seeks Justice for Slain Son in Broken Honduras,” Associated Press, November 12, 2012.

14. Martha Mendoza, “US Military Expands Its Drug War in Latin America,” Associated Press, February 3, 2013.

15. Office of Representative Jan Schakowsky, “94 House Members Send Letter to Secretary Clinton Calling for Suspension of Assistance to Honduras,” March 13, 2012. Correspondence from Jared Polis et al. to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, June 26, 2012.

By Michael McGehee:

On page A12 of the May 8, 2013 edition of The New York Times is Steven Lee Myers and Rick Gladstone’s article “U.S. and Russia Plan Conference Aimed at Ending Syrian War,” which opens by stating that, “Russia and the United States announced on Tuesday that they would seek to convene an international conference within weeks aimed at ending the civil war in Syria, jointly intensifying their diplomatic pressure on the combatants to peacefully settle a conflict that has taken more than 70,000 lives and left millions displaced and desperate.” This is a most welcoming turn of events, especially for the people of Syria who have taken the brunt of the civil war, and hopefully the conference bears fruit quickly.

But—and there is one of these stubborn conjunctions—it is important for the purpose of history to note that for two years now the United States has blocked any peaceful resolution, and has instead pushed the conflict further and deeper into violence and war.

It is Russia who has long pushed for a political reconciliation.

In October 2011 RIA Novosti reported that “Moscow calls on the UN Security Council to continue the search for a balanced approach toward the political crisis in Syria based on a draft resolution prepared by Russia and China, Russia’s envoy to the UN said,” with the phrase “balanced” being a jab at how Washington and its allies have put all the requirements on the Syrian government to end violence, and not the rebel forces whom they have been backing.

Writing in December of 2011, Egypt Independent reported that, “Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Monday emphasized the need for dialogue and reconciliation in Syria.”

Even in December of 2012 Voice of America reported that, “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has echoed a call from an international peace envoy to resolve Syria’s civil war through a government-backed national dialogue and political process.”

The New York Times also reported on Russian efforts that same month when they informed readers that, “Moscow has made a muscular push for a political solution in recent days.”

While it is inaccurate to imply that Russia’s search for “a political solution” was “in recent days,” it is more disturbing that phrases like “muscular push” are used to describe such an effort, while the “paper of record” has routinely tried to make a case for war (see here and here).

A month ago today (May 8, 2013) the Syrian rebels detonated a car bomb near a school in Damascus, killing 14, and wounding dozens of others. According to Reuters, “State television said the explosion had occurred near a school in Sabaa Bahrat, a heavily populated area that also houses the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry. It said 53 people were wounded.”

Washington failed to condemn the act of terror.

Likewise when Daily Mail ran an article last December with this headline: “Syria rebels ‘beheaded a Christian and fed him to the dogs’ as fears grow over Islamist atrocities.” Apparently there is no “red line” for the rebels to cross.

And there are dozens and dozens of similar incidents. Not once has Washington put pressure on the rebels to stop their senseless violence, or argued for an international force to intervene and defend the Syrian people from the terrorists. Nor has Western establishment pundits like Bill Keller argued for such things. And even though al Qaeda is active in the country, beheading so-called infidels, or that the Syrian rebels are likely using chemical weapons, Washington and its media parrots have instead favored escalation. Just over a week ago The New York Times reported that “The White House is once again considering supplying weapons to Syria’s armed opposition.” This comes after the car bombing across the street from a children’s school.

And now Washington wants peace, as Myers and Gladstone tell us that “The announcement appeared to signal a strong desire by both countries to halt what has been a dangerous escalation in the conflict.”

Perhaps it has become clear that the rebels cannot win this war on their own, and the only reasonable way Bashar Assad will be brought down is another U.S. war which will elevate the jihadis into power. Perhaps President Obama is imagining one of these rebel jihadis attacking an American embassy in Damascus, and the Republicans foaming at the mouth for another politicized inquiry into how such an attack could happen, as they currently are over the embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya last year.

Whatever the reasons for the turnaround it is gladly welcomed. The people of Syria deserve a rescue from the terror Washington, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others, have unleashed on them. Though we should remain sober and note that the “conflict that has taken more than 70,000 lives and left millions displaced and desperate” is largely of Washington’s doings, and could have been avoided years ago if Uncle Sam followed the lead of Moscow and Bejing, both of whom had the “strong desire . . . to halt what has been a dangerous escalation in the conflict.”

We should also recall that The New York Times derided Russia for their “strong desire” and even went so far as to equate it with “effectively toss[ing] a life preserver to President Bashar al-Assad, seemingly unwilling to see a pivotal ally and once stalwart member of the socialist bloc sink beneath the waves of the Arab Spring.” Russia was just as clear then as they are now: they did not want to go along with efforts that would worsen the situation, but now that the situation has gotten considerably worse, and Washington is warming to the idea of a political solution, now The New York Times is presenting this as a positive development.

An Israeli plane bombs a target in Syria. The news is passed along first to Fox News, (huh?) by someone in the Administration.

It happened on a Thursday, but we only find out about it late on Friday. The New York Times assigns three reporters to cover the story that goes up on their website in the middle of the morning on Saturday.

Earlier that day, President Obama, speaking in Costa Rica, said there will be no US ground troops on the ground in Syria. Now, the Administration says it is considering “military options.”

Saturday’s New York Times choses this story for its first page: “ISRAEL TIGHTENS BORDER DEFENSE AS SYRIA ERUPTS.”

And so, the story is reframed with Israel pictured as the defender, not the aggressor. The bombing makes it into the third paragraph of that story on page 1 but refers only to the bombing of “a target.”

Their earlier story has now been moved by the Times deeper into the paper, to the bottom of page 10. That headline reads: “ISRAEL BOMBS SYRIA as the US Considers Its Own Military Options.”

The report: “American officials did not provide details on the target but, instead, referenced an earlier attack attacking a Syrian military supply effort to Hezbollah.” Unmentioned is that the original report understated the extent of the damage in Syria caused by Israeli bombing.

Reuters was better informed, “Israel has carried out an air strike targeting a shipment of missiles in Syria bound for Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.”

The New York Times does not mention the reaction by Lebanon which issued a statement carried by BBC denouncing the attack as illegal and a violation of their air space. We had to wait until Sunday for Syria’s response reported by AP:

“Syria has condemned the Israeli airstrikes against targets around Damascus, saying the attacks aim “to give direct military support to terrorist groups” fighting the government.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also said Sunday in a letter sent to the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council that the “Israeli aggression” killed and wounded several people and “caused widespread destruction.”

Syria’s government refers to rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad’s regime as “terrorists.” Apparently no one has told the AP that many of the “rebels” are actually aligned with Al Qaeda.

CNN reported:

“U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are reviewing classified data showing Israel most likely conducted (emphasis mine) a strike in the Thursday-Friday time frame, according to both officials. This is the same time frame that the U.S. collected additional data showing Israel was flying a high number of warplanes over Lebanon.

One official said the United States had limited information so far and could not yet confirm those are the specific warplanes that conducted a strike. Based on initial indications, the U.S. does not believe Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace to conduct the strikes.

…The Lebanese army website listed 16 flights by Israeli warplanes penetrating Lebanon’s airspace from Thursday evening through Friday afternoon local time.”

The Times of Israel later confirmed the air strike, adding, “The officials said the shipment was not of chemical arms, but of “game changing” weapons bound for the terror group Hezbollah. One official said the target was a shipment of advanced, long-range ground-to-ground missiles.”

A day later, on Saturday, Iran suddenly was dragged into this with the New York Times reporting: “‪Israeli aircraft bombed a target in Syria on Thursday to disrupt the pipeline of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah.”’

On Sunday, a new raid was reported: A Syrian news agency says the missiles targeted a site near Damascus.. Other sources reported many attacks.

The Obama Administration may have encouraged the Israeli attacks when President Obama in what is now said to have been an unexpected “off-the cuff” remark supporting the idea that Syria may have crossed a certain “red-line” despite an admitted lack of evidence.

This “mistake”—a blatant acceptance of the Israeli line—is now being blamed on the front page of the New York Times for “putting the US in a bind,”” limiting our options.

Translation: The President “misspoke.” Further unstated translation: it was a fuck-up!

After the last Israeli bombing of Syria on January 31, Iran warned: “Israel will regret its attack against Syria. The Telegraph reported, “Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned of “grave consequences for Tel Aviv.”

Already, American right-wing politicians began cheering on the story. Politico reported, “South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told a crowd here Friday night that Israel has bombed Syria.”

Graham, a Republican who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was addressing the South Carolina Republican Party’s annual Silver Elephant fundraising dinner. He mentioned the attack in passing, amid a longer discourse on U.S. national security policy.

“Israel bombed Syria tonight,” Graham said flatly, before moving on to a longer, dire discourse on the threat of a nuclear Iran.”

You can just smell the aroma of more escalations and of a wider war to come. US news organizations are waffling but accepting Israel’s version even as Israel seems to be leaking it, rather than fully disclosing it.

There are two important aspects of this: what the real endgame is—and why it seems to be more about preparing for war on Iran rather than on Syria?

In 2007, Seymour Hersh wrote about what he called a “redirection” of Israeli strategy:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Adds Tony Cartalucci on ICH: “Indeed, Israel’s explanation as to why it struck neighboring Syria is tenuous at best considering its long, documented relationship with actually funding and arming the very “terrorist groups” it fears weapons may fall into the hands of.”

The second concern is the question of the reliability of news reporting, including accounts by human rights groups who may be under pressure from funders to go easier on Israel than Syria. Scott Long, a former manager at Human Rights Watch explains the nature of the bias in a recent report.

Notes the Electronic Intifada: “Long’s account indicates that HRW observes a sort of fake balance in which it must artificially generate criticism of Palestinians just in order to offset criticism of Israel’s much greater and more frequent human rights abuses and crimes:

Writes Long:

“Human Rights Watch, where I worked for many years, strains all its muscles to be completely objective on Israel/Palestine — an effort that has never gotten it a scintilla of credit from the militant pro-Israel side. Its releases on Israel and Palestine are the only ones in the entire organization that are routinely edited by the executive director himself. An informal arithmetic dictates that every presser or report criticizing Israel has to be accompanied by another criticizing the Palestine Authority or Hamas — or, if that isn’t possible (the PA barely retains enough authority to violate anybody’s rights) at least one of the surrounding Arab states.

A mathematical approach to objectivity may help accountants detect embezzlement or captains keep ships afloat, but that kind of balance looks ridiculous in the political world, where the incessant fluidity of action disrupts the illusions of double-entry bookkeeping. (The call for an “embargo on arms” to “all sides” is an excellent example of “objectivity” that benefits one side much more than the other.”)

So there you have it: a breaking story, confused stories partial to Israel, and news that is filtered to keep the outrage focused on alleged human rights abuses by countries Washington dislikes.

News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He blogs for Newsdissector.net and produces a column for NYT eXaminer. Comment below or send them to the author at dissector@mediachannel.org

By Michael McGehee:

One of the most frustrating aspects of this column is the predictability of how The New York Times covers events. Sure, there are often nuggets of truth which, like diamonds, must have the dirt and filth cleaned away before you can appreciate it, but the task of sorting through articles, and translating gobbledygook, or bringing out relevant information that was left hidden in silence or obscurity is a burden.

Bill Keller’s latest NYT column “Syria Is Not Iraq” is no different.

The piece is an imperialist call for war with lots of crafty catchphrases and omissions. But sifting through it we get a good look at the depravity of the Western establishment.

For example, Keller repeats a phrase often found in the Western establishment: credibility.

But in Syria, I fear prudence has become fatalism, and our caution has been the father of missed opportunities, diminished credibility and enlarged tragedy.

Keller is warning us that inaction is diminishing the “credibility” of Washington.

First, Keller ignores that Washington has long been behind the rebels in their effort to overthrow the government when he starts out his article with talk of “the search for an American response to the civil war in Syria.”

America cannot respond to the civil war in Syria, because it already has. What it can do is escalate.

Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the U.S. has been supporting the Syrian opposition groups since at least the days of former President George W Bush, and that the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails written in December of 2011 shows that the West “are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces,” and that the plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within.”

And Keller should know that Washington has no “credibility” in the eyes of the rest of the world, especially not in terms as an impartial observer or fair handler of world affairs. The only sensible reading of “credibility” is that of a thug or gang. Unless we use force to have our way then the world will not fear us. That is what is meant by a diminished credibility. The notion of “credibility” is much like the term “international community,” which doesn’t mean what it suggests, but the opposite. It is classic doublespeak. The “international community” is the United States and its small coterie of allies. If the United Nations General Assembly overwhelming votes for the end of the Cuban embargo, or to call on Israel to end their occupation of Palestine, or if the Non-Aligned Movement hosts a meeting in Tehran, Iran where they signal a break from Washington, then this is not presented as the will of the international community.

Readers should wonder if the editors at the “paper of record” were on vacation when Keller wrote his article because it was puzzling to read this: “The United States has supplied humanitarian aid and diplomatic pressure. But our reluctance to arm the rebels or defend the civilians being slaughtered in their homes has convinced the Assad regime (and the world) that we are not serious.”

What is puzzling about this? In their NYT article “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.” from late March of this year CJ Chivers and Eric Scmitt write that, “With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.”

How can Washington be “reluctant” to do what it is already doing?

Furthermore, all this humanitarian talk about “defend[ing] the civilians being slaughtered in their homes” is total emotive nonsense.

This article was published on the same day that it was reported that the al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels were the likely culprits behind the sarin gas attack earliers this year. The Syrian rebels have carried out countless terrorist attacks, beheadings, executions, and other crimes. How can Bill Keller keep a straight face when writing about arming the rebels AND defending “civilians being slaughtered in their homes”?

There is a large imbalance in not only coverage of this conflict, but also in recommendations for its resolution. Readers would be hard-pressed to find The New York Times advocating the U.S. to cut off aid to the Syrian rebels in order to pressure them to enter into some kind of peace talks.

And that’s just it: the notion of a peaceful settlement is nowhere in Keller’s article.

It’s “war, war,war!”

Keller even has the audacity to write: “A failed Syria creates another haven for terrorists.”

That’s right: unless we arm terrorists who are using chemical weapons, conducting beheadings, and vowing genocide of religious groups, then the secular state of Syria will become a “haven for terrorists.” Don’t scratch your heads too hard trying to work out that logic.

We can look at the marvelous work done in Afghanistan in the late-1970s and 1980s to see what arming Islamic groups do to stopping a country from becoming a failed state and preventing a haven for terrorists. Or the post-9/11 era of the Northern Alliance.

Or we can look at the more recent case of Libya, when armed Islamic gangs targeted black African communities with a genocidal campaign, and waived the al Qaeda flag over a court building in Benghazi.

We could look at Iraq and the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq, and the humanitarian catastrophe of car bombings, which continues to the present, but Keller doesn’t want that. That’s too instructive. Before Washington’s genocidal sanctions Iraq was anything but a failed state, but years under that regime, and then war and occupation unleashed a haven for terrorists that turned Baghdad into a living nightmare.

Keller’s nonsense continues with the statement that intervention in Syria is good and not like Iraq because “in Iraq our invasion unleashed a sectarian war. In Syria, it is already well under way.”

Translation: Because we already “unleashed a sectarian war” without having to invade the country then it’s okay to invade (or escalate without invading).

The imperial warmongering continues until Keller closes by saying that “getting Syria right starts with getting over Iraq.”

The more than one million dead in Iraq, and millions more injured, or turned into refugees, or ethnically cleansed from their communities, and those born with birth defects and cancer: get over them. The only way to “get Syria right” is to escalate conflict. The only way to stop Syria from becoming a failed state that offers a haven for terrorists is to arm terrorists to destabilize the country. Then peace and prosperity will come and Washington will have one more country in the oil-rich region that follows orders.