< Archives: 2010 December

Here’s What We Are Doing On New Years; Good Luck To Us All

December 31st, 2010 - by: danny

Here’s What We Are Doing On New Years; Good Luck To Us All

Should Old Acquaintances Be Forgotten? Hell, No!

Happy “News” Year to all who visit this blog. If you like it, please tell your friends and lists to help us increase our readership. Its has been online since 2000 but the lack of promotional and marketing funds makes it hard for us to reach new readers. That’s where you can come come in to help. My appreciation goes to Cherie Welch, the Dissectrix, whom I still haven’t met though she   has been producing the blog since November of ’08 and the News Dissector Radio Show on the Progressive Radio Network. Thanks to David DeGraw, founder of AmpedStatus.com, for his services and support as well as to Franz Hartl who is helping on the tech front. We are seeking interns and volunteers to help us keep going. A salute, as always, to my partner at Globalvision and fellow blogger, Rory O’Connor.

The year is ending, and, as bad as it was, what with the political manipulation, decline of democracy, betrayal on so many fronts, and unending wars, it is likely to get worse in the year ahead. Many of us will be out partying as we have year-after-year. We will watch the ball drop in Times Square and see all the revelers reveling but those of us who are conscious doubt much can or will get better.

Rather than bring you all down, let me wish our small but growing community all the holiday cheer we can wring out these moments. Special thanks to those who recognize the hardships of sustaining independent media in this period and who have contributed to support Mediachanel.org. This is the last day to so if you want to claim a deduction for your donation to The Global Center, PO Box 677, NY NY 10035.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

VIVA MADIBA: Mandela’s New Book — Conversations With Myself: Nelson Mandela’s Final Memoir?

The consensus among reviewers is that the book doesn’t provide any new or startling revelations; instead it shows us glimpses of what the real Nelson Mandela is like, behind the public façade, behind the myth. In a review for the Guardian, Godwin (famous for his books on Mugabe’s Zimbabwean rule) says that Conversations with Myself is “intensely moving, raw and unmediated, told in real time with all the changes in perspective that brings, over the years, mixing the prosaic with the momentous. Health concerns, dreams, political initiatives spill out together, to provide the fullest picture yet of Mandela”. [More here →]

RELATED: Conversations with Myself book launch

‘In real life we deal, not with gods, but with ordinary humans like ourselves: men and women who are full of contradictions, who are stable and fickle, strong and weak, famous and infamous.’ – Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. Conversations With Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure: from letters written in the darkest hours of Mandela’s twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom. [More here →]

* * * * * * * * * *

Columbia Journalism Review: THE YEAR OF WIKILEAKS – The WikiLeaks Equation: Secrets, free speech, and the law By Clint Hendler

Call it the Year of WikiLeaks. From April 5, when the site posted a grainy video showing the death of two Reuters employees from a U.S. helicopter attack, to November 28, when mainline journalism organizations began releasing stories based on a trove of some 250,000 diplomatic cables, the secret-sharing site shaped the news cycle. It also threatened to upend America’s working assumptions about journalism and free speech. Of course, WikiLeaks has been around for years, posting anonymously sourced documents that others would have rather been kept hidden. But it was this year that people noticed. [More here →]

Putin Supports Assange, Ridicules Washington’s Democracy Claim

As sources in the Kremlin suggest WikiLeaks founder be nominated for a Nobel Prize, Russia?s Vladimir Putin voiced support for Julian Assange and assailed the United States for its “undemocratic” attitude toward the Website owner. He said Americans have no right to lecture others on democracy after this incident. [More here →]

FAIR GIVES P.U. Litzer to Diane Sawyer for Wikicoverage

At the end of every year FAIR rounds up some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance. This year brought no shortage of contenders; indeed, the hardest part of the P.U.-litzers is narrowing down the list. Readers who think we missed one can share their nominations at the FAIR Blog (fair.org/blog). And without further ado….

– Prosecute the Messenger Award: Diane Sawyer (ABC News) On October 22, ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer introduced a report on WikiLeaks’ exposure of thousands of classified documents from the Iraq War. ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz summarized the contents of the WikiLeaks files: “Deadly U.S. helicopter assaults on insurgents trying to surrender…. The Iraqi civilian death toll far higher than the U.S. has acknowledged…. Graphic detail about torture of detainees by the Iraqi military.” After Raddatz’s report, Sawyer offered this followup: “I know there’s a lot of outrage about this again tonight, Martha. But tell me, anything more about prosecuting the WikiLeaks group?” [More here →]

Alternet.org: Elizabeth Warren — Foreclosure Crisis Could Have Been Avoided

In an op-ed published in the Miami Herald, Elizabeth Warren makes a strong case for a new consumer agency: “No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation. The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.” [More here →]

What an understatement–“ridded with problems!” Follow Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism who is doing a great job of holding this industry’s feet to the fire. She reports today:

Woman Deceased in 1995 Continued to Robo Sign Till at Least 2008

How, may you ask, can a woman who has been dead since 1995 sign documents more than a decade later? Normally, one would hazard to guess that stamps with her signature on them were still in use (this is more common than you would think in foreclosure land). That would be plenty troubling.

But this little account comes from the debt collection realm, a cesspool of bad practices. Here, the credit card company Providian (acquired by WaMu in 2005) had employees signing affidavits in the name of Martha Kunkle for over a decade. Debt collection agencies continued to use these bogus affidavits. From the Wall Street Journal.

Economist Simon Johnson on the Year Ahead: Fresh Crises Loom in Europe and the U.S.

Most experienced watchers of the euro zone are expecting another serious crisis in early 2011, tied to the rollover funding needs of its weaker governments. With debts coming due from March through May, the crisis seems much more predictable than what happened to Greece or Ireland in 2010. And the investment bankers who fell over themselves to lend to these countries on the way up now lead the way in talking up the prospects for a serious crisis.

This situation is not more preventable for being predictable, because its resolution will involve politically costly steps – which, given how Europe works, can be taken only under duress. Don’t smile at the thought and think, “It can’t happen here,” because this same logic points directly to a deep and morally disturbing crisis in the United States.[More here →]

Foreign Affairs, Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

ThinkProgress.org: Georgia Bill Would Force State Taxpayers To Pay Only In Gold Or Silver

Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) loves to introduce far-right reactionary bills. Among his greatest hits are an assault of Georgia’s authority to vaccinate its citizens, an unconstitutional bill declaring Roe v. Wade a “nullity,” and, of course, a bill eliminating income taxes. Yet Franklin may have outdone himself with his “Constitutional Tender Act,” which would require all transactions with the state of Georgia – including the payment of taxes – to be paid with U.S. minted gold or silver coins unless the state agrees to grant a special waiver for each transaction: [More here →]

SunLight Reporting Network: Information scarce on bids for failed banks

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is making less information available to the public about how it is dealing with the rising number of bank failures in 2010. Over the last year, the agency has failed to post a complete list of bids on 41 percent of the deals it makes with other banks to take over failing institutions–and what information it does provide is more limited than before.

Before May 2009, the FDIC would provide, upon request, the names of all entities placing bids on failed banks and how much each of them bid for the bank in question. Then the agency suddenly stopped–a move that provoked sharp complaints about lack of transparency, particularly in the business community.[More here →]

Key GOP lawmaker wants to stop financial regulations By Nancy Watzman

Reuters reports that Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, the incoming chairman of the Financial Services Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, wants to delay implementation of the new financial reform law for a year “so regulators have more time to understand the impact of rules they are writing.”

What’s missing from the story, however, is how much money Neugebauer has collected from the financial sector for his election campaigns–the very folks who might be interested in such a delay. In his most recent race he got more than $418,000, dwarfing contributions he received from other sectors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Among his top donors were Bank of America, the American Bankers Association, and Credit Suisse Group. [More here →]

NYT: Rattner to pay $10 Million to Settle Charges

Steven Rattner, who helped lead the Obama administration’s auto industry overhaul, has agreed to pay $10 million to settle influence-peddling allegations in New York. Rattner admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal, which was announced by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Thursday.[More here →]

How China deals with Financial Criminals

BEIJING A former China official tasked with investigating corruption has been executed for taking more than $4.7 million in bribes.The state-run Xinhua News Agency says Zeng Jinchun was shot to death Thursday. He was the ruling Communist party’s top corruption inspector for Chenzhou city in the central province of Hunan. The report says Zeng was found guilty of taking the 31 million yuan in bribes in return for handing out mining contracts and job promotions over a decade ending in 2006. Corruption in China sometimes gets the death penalty. Thursday’s execution comes a day after top Communist Party officials in Beijing again promised to crack down on the graft that is a major source of social unrest throughout the country. [More here →]

AP: Former Israeli president convicted of rape

JERUSALEM (AP) ­ Former President Moshe Katsav was convicted Thursday of raping an employee when he was a Cabinet minister, the most serious criminal charges ever brought against a high-ranking official in Israel and a case that shocked the nation. [More here →]

LETTERS ON MY ESSAY ON HELEN THOMAS

Yesterday, I spoke to Helen who was very excited by the piece, praised me for writing it although she said she feared it would “get me into trouble ” She was thrilled to hear about all the pick up by web sites in the US, Canada, Britain, South Africa and the Middle East.

William Shanley writes:

Great piece, Danny. And thorough research. The only other point that I might have been made was the irrational political climate in which we now live wherein free speech is casualty of corporate militarist empire, and reporters are taking the hit for political correctness and exposing what is real. No one was allowed to question 9/11 “facts,” Afghanistan, Iraq, torture, habeas corpus, and many reporters today are isolating themselves, unwilling to be interviewed for fear of losing their jobs. I have a list of major reporters I know who are living inside that meaning. Free speech is no longer free and history will record that it was lost in the last 10 years because of cowardice and rejection of the people’s right to know. But you’ve performed a great service by having the courage to stand up for a Great American, clearly distinguishing the issues and authentically communicating her passions and regrets. Many congrats…

albert stridsberg writes: while she showed irritation in her comments, helen thomas’s remarks were accurate and justified. if one must consider blood inheritance (as christians and jews generally do), it is important to note that most of the Ashkenzis who migrated to Palestine in the late 19th and 20th centuries were converts to judaism. their bloodlines contained no Semitic DNA. this can be demonstrated, apparently, by   DNA analysis of the present israeli population. helen knew this, of course.

Lady Jayne Stahl comments: Excellent piece on Helen Thomas, Danny, which I will circulate widely…

El Fra offered kind praise: Fabulous piece Danny – and thank you. Thank you for all your superlative work all these years, dogging the truth despite often being swallowed alive by the verbiage of most of the so-called “press”! Helen is an icon in my view – I always loved her for her steadfast adherence to what was “right” as opposed to what went with the flow, or was expedient. A teller of truths. Her banishment due to words taken out of context? That was reprehensible. Following her career most of my life, I knew what she was driving at and instantly knew these remarks were a sound byte and that they were going to try and have her banished. I cried that day. I’m a fan, I miss your stuff. I admire your defense of Helen, and, of course, admire Helen.

Millie Barnet writes from Santa Rosa, California: This is truly heart-breaking as well as outrageous and sickening, what happened to Helen Thomas. I would like to be part of an action, a roll call of people to apologize to her for such dishonor, and to thank her for her life of fearless service in the highest cause possible to humankind: speaking truth to power. When power cannot bear the truth it needs to be brought down. Long live Helen Thomas, a woman to make all women proud. And she didn’t wait for permission from a “women’s movement.

Charles Halal, a Lebanese American wrote: “Thanks Danny, It’s not often anyone speaks with as open a mind as you. My father would applaud your efforts…”

George Collin writes from New Hampshire: Let me couch my quibble: I fancy myself a recovered former Chrisitian and relative atheist. I don’t dismiss the best of Christian principles, but do lament that its leaders hardly seem to take the Redemption seriously. Relative atheism allows the sop of avoiding the pseudo canard that can befuddle the absolutists: how can we be absolutely certain of the absence of what so many, meaning such disparate content, refer to as “God”, by one label or another.

That said, are not a seeming majority of Christians particularly damnable these days, even though it would be an absurdity to say that Christians collectively are damnable,….for their ‘relative’ silence. Why are Christianity’s pubahs not banding in protest at the White House gates and decrying Obama’s ignoble acceptance of the Nobel, and the atrocities he orchestrates in Afghanistan, and his many other betrayals of basic human rights?

Analogously, there are Jewish critics of Israel militaristic policy. Obviously including you, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Paul Jay and on and on.. But, though it exists, we don’t hear too much about internal Israeli criticism of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I think Helen, forgivably, blinked when she articulated her qualified regret. And I don’t think she “misspoke” in the first instance, other than articulating unwisely. Yes, the whole story is that there inevitably, and predictably, would be and obviously actually are Jews whose compassion is intact and, not succumbing to silence, out Israel for its US coddled regional imperialism and barbaric practices in general as well as for its reprehensible repression of Palestinians, whose ranks obviously include many who have succumbed to mindless malice.

My point is that the substance of Helen’s message, as you clearly allow, was accurate and hardly Antisemitic. Just because arrangements were made for the establishment of Israel on Palestinian land did and does not now make it ‘moral’, nor does Palestinian upset justify Israeli barbarism in the name of ‘security’. It was impractical, unrealistic and, you might say, that Jewish immigrants should go home, back to where they came from was frivolous venting. In that sense, Helen’s solution was absurd, but not anti-Semitic.

I finish by saying that I don’t think we should allow Helen’s remarks to constitute “misspeaking” in the same way, say, that certain of Roger Clemens’ apparent lies were dismissed by him as “misremembering”. Misspeaking connotes, in my view, the implication that while the essence of her view may be unexceptional she disclosed unforgivable bias in her delivery. The facts on the ground justify her vitriol. Best to you!

E Kittredge: Thank you so much for your article which I read to the end. I’m grateful too that Common Dreams bookmarked it. I’ll check out mediachannel.org. Thanks again, Danny Schechter!

Kathy Barry: Thank you Danny Schechter for your excellent article in Common Dreams today. I was trying to write such an article but the final stages of book production commanded all my time. You hit it right on the mark. Did you know that at the time of the Gaza Aid Flotilla, the same Rabbi had a phoney video on his site which pictured Arabs “terrorists” on the boat condemning Jews. But at the time no one questioned his journalism. Your article is honoring and compassionate.

You may not remember but we met years ago in either Detroit or Syracuse in relation to some CORE activities. All a bit hazy. Congratulations on your new book. Best, Kathy Barry

SN writes: Thanks for that article, the first I’ve read in support of Helen Thomas and the first I’ve seen with any context to the story. I remember seeing it on the Daily Show and having a feeling that Jon had just contributed to a hit: click hereGreat job and again, thanks.

Victor Ortiz wrote: “Thank you for the Al Jazeera piece, Danny!”

Wesley Parish writes,

I couldn’t agree more. It’s disgraceful how people confuse a people, a religion
and a state, and then insist that the state is beyond criticism …

Karen Wald writes:

I was so outraged by what they did to her and, understanding what she was trying to say, attempted to defend her (which made at least one reader of cuba inside out ask to be taken off the list!)
Thanks and have a good year (let’s hope it’s not too much worse than the last) :(

Jon Ross writes “She showed her true colors and was caught.”

Comments to: dissector@medichannel.org

Post to Twitter

Share

See the whole Post / →

A New Media Low: The Character Assassination Of Helen Thomas

December 30th, 2010 - by: danny

A New Media Low: The Character Assassination Of Helen Thomas

MEDIA HIT JOB OF THE YEAR:

Punishing White House Correspondent Helen Thomas For Criticizing Israel — Our Media Experienced A Few Highs and Many Lows in 2010; None As Disgraceful As The Vitriol Against Helen Thomas


In 1960, I co-founded a student magazine at Cornell University called Dialogue. I was a wannabe journalist, fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at Presidential press conferences, a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas. [career photos -- here and here]

In recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been severely tested—as, no doubt has hers – in an age where diatribes and calculated demonization chills debate and exchanges of opposing views. Once you are labeled and stereotyped, especially if you are denounced as an anti-Semite, you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond redemption, even beyond explanation. You have been assigned a scarlet letter as visible as the Star of David the Nazis made Jews wear.

My career path took me from covering civil rights activism in the streets to later working in the suites of network power. I went from the underground press to rock and roll radio to TV reporting and producing at CNN and ABC. As a member in good standing of an activist generation, I saw myself more as an outsider in contrast to Helen’s distinctive credentials as an insider, as a White House bureau chief and later as the dean of the White House Correspondents Association.

Yet, beneath her establishment credentials and status, she was always an outsider too—one of nine children born to a family of Lebanese immigrants in Winchester Kentucky, who despite their Middle East origins, were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church. She became a pioneering woman, a modern day Helen of Troy, who broke the glass ceiling, infiltrating the clubby, mostly male, inside the beltway world of big egos and self-important media prima donnas, most supplicants to power, not challengers of it.

Her origins were more modest. She grew up in an ethnic neighborhood in Detroit, a city I later worked in, as an intern in the Mayor’s office (I was in a Ford Foundation education in politics program in the sixties that also boasted a fellow fellow in another city, Richard B. Cheney. Yes, the one and the same.) Helen received her bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University in 1942, the year I was born. Earlier this year, her alma mater which had taken so much pride in her achievements, withdrew an award in her name in a striking gesture of cowardice and submission to an incident blown out of all proportions that instantly turned Helen from a “shero” to a zero in a quick media second.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center – not, by the way, linked to the legendary Nazi Hunter (who was unhappy with its work), put her on their top-ten list of anti-Semites after angry remarks she made about Israel went viral and blew up into one of the major media stories of 2010.

President Barack Obama who cheerfully brought her a birthday cake, hailing her long years of service to the American people, later labeled her remarks “reprehensible.” You would think that given all the vicious slurs, Hitler comparisons and putdowns directed at him, he would be more cautious tossing slurs at others. But no, all politicians pander to deflect criticism whenever they fear the winds of enmity will blow their way. And now it was Helen who was being compared to Hitler in a new furor over the Fuhrer even though she says she grew up in a home that despised him, and from which her two brothers joined the army in World War ll. She says now “We didn’t do enough to expose Hitler early on. He was not just anti-Jewish. He was anti-American!”

I might add if I considered it necessary, that I grew up in a Jewish family and am proud of that identity, our culture and traditions. But that was no big thing to Helen who worked alongside Jews all of her life in the media world, many as close friends. Her main concern as a child was with non-Jews who baited her in school as a “garlic eater,” a foreigner.

She may be a critic of Israel but never a hater of Jews, a distinction the world recognizes, but that right-wing backers of the Israel lobby (and the media that backs it) refuse to accept in the name of a black/white ‘you are with us or ag’in us” ideological agenda which has no tolerance for critics, differences of opinion or the anger of the dispossessed. They only see themselves as victims, never the people they victimize. Prejudice often infects those who live in glass houses and who are quick to condemn others.

For many years, I admired Helen from afar, and later gave her an award for Truth In Media voted by my colleagues on Mediachannel.org. She is an institution, an icon of honor. We were impressed by her history of asking tough questions even when they embarrassed Presidents. Then, suddenly, last June, I like everyone in the world of media, was stunned to witness her public fall from grace, partly self-inflicted, perhaps because of inelegant language used in response to an ambush interview by provocateur father-son Israeli advocates posing as journalists. They were following in the footsteps of the vicious comments by Ann (“You will find liberals always rooting for savages against civilization”) Coulter who earlier denounced her as an “old Arab” sitting yards from the President as if she was threatening him. She refused to dignify that smear with a response.

I didn’t know until she told me that she had also been hounded for years by Abe Foxman, a leader of the Anti-Defamation League, who demanded she explain 25 questions she asked Presidents over the decades, “I didn’t answer,” “she told me, “because I don’t respond to junk mail.”

Foxman then sent the questions to her employer trying to get her fired, she says. Later, he recruited former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleisher in his crusade against her. Ari and his boss disliked her “hostile” questions about Iraq on official claims that have since been unmasked as lies.

Helen always stuck to her guns. She was considered the grand dame of White House journalists. Presidents respected her. She went to China with Nixon. You don’t survive in that highly visible pit of presidential polemics for as long as she did by backing down. Many correspondents assigned there turn into bulldogs for the camera. Maybe that’s why Helen can appear abrupt at times.

She has, however, always been polite enough to try to answer questions from strangers without always realizing who she was dealing with in a new world of media hit jobs, where “gotcha” YouTube videos thrive on recording embarrassing moments, what we used to call “bloopers.”

In her senior years, she was brought down by a kid seeking a marketable sound bite like the one he extracted — as if he was a big game hunter in Africa. She had been baited and took the bait. Unaware of how the video could be used, she ventilated and then regretted doing so. It was too late. That one media hit job triggered millions of online video hits.

Helen later apologized for how she said what she did without retracting the essence of her convictions. But by then, it was too late. Her long career was instantly terminated. The perception became everything; the context nothing.

She tried to be conciliatory, saying, “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.” Those remarks were derided and dismissed, with the pundits and papers demanding her scalp. She had no choice but to resign after her company, her agent, her co-author and many “friends” started treating her like a pariah.

“You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive,” she says now. She believes the Israel lobby controls the discourse on Israel. She cited, as an example, CNN firing a veteran editor in Lebanon for praising a popular cleric for his support for woman after he died. CNN had no problems hiring Wolf Blitzer, a former editor of AIPAC’s [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] magazine and lobby spokesperson.

I didn’t ask her but I am sure she is sympathetic to President Carter for speaking out on the issue the way he has, despite the way he was later dumped on. Once under predictable vitriolic attack began, even he was forced to back down away from some of his positions. She was forced into retirement and thrown to the wolves in a media culture that relishes stories of personal destruction and missteps. It’s the old ‘the Media builds you up before they tear you down’ routine.

As blogger Jamie Frieze wrote, “I don’t think she should have been forced to resign. After all, the freedom of speech doesn’t come with the right to be comfortable. In other words, the fact that you’re uncomfortable doesn’t trump my free speech. Thomas made people uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean her speech should be punished.”

But punished she was.

As a veteran of one kind of real journalism, she may have been inexperienced in dealing with our volatile media culture that now thrives on hostile ‘drive by’ attacks and putdowns.

When I called Helen Thomas to ask if she might be willing to share some of her thoughts on what happened, I found her as eloquent as ever, supportive of WikiLeaks, critical of Grand Jury harassment in the Middle West against Palestinian supporters and angry with President Obama for his many right turns and spineless positions. This clearly was not a Mea culpa moment for her, but what has she learned from this ordeal?

While she hasn’t written about the incident she did speak to me about it for publication.

I first asked her for her view about what happened. She was, she said, on a path outside the White House on a day in which Jewish leaders were being honored inside, at American Jewish Heritage Celebration Day, an event she said she was unaware of. A Rabbi, David Nesenoff, asked to speak to her, and introduced his two sons who he said wanted to become Journalists. (One was actually a friend of his son Adam, also his webmaster.)

“People seeking advice come to me a lot,” she explained, “and I told them about my love of journalism and that they should pursue their goals. I was gracious, and told them to go for it.”

Then the subject abruptly changed. “What you think of Israel they asked next. It was all very pleasant and I don’t blame them for asking,” she told me. But, then, she admitted, she didn’t know the people who she then said, “shoved a microphone in my face like a jack knife.”

It wasn’t just any rabbi making conversation. Nessensoff is an ardent pro-Israel supporter who runs a website called RabbiLive.com and can be a flamboyant self-promoter. He says, “even though I was born in Glen Cove and grew up in Syosset Long Island, Israel is my Jewish homeland. It is the homeland for all Jewish people.”

The Jewish Forward newspaper would later report: “Nesenoff came under scrutiny for appearing in a video depicting a man of Mexican descent pretending to give a weather forecast while a bearded rabbi in a black hat and coat stands nearby.

The four-and-a-half-minute video, titled “Holy Weather,” features Nesenoff dressed as “Father Julio Ramirez,” an outsize caricature of a Mexican priest. The rabbi makes statements that fuel stereotypes, painting Mexican laborers as dishwashers. He speaks in an exaggerated rasp of a Mexican accent, saying, among other things: “The last time I saw a map like that I was in an immigration office with three gringos down on the Mexican border, you know, right near New Mexico.” Fractured Spanish pops up from time to time, as when Nesenoff says the rabbi’s tendency to get better assignments is “no mucho bueno picnic.”

Though some critics used the skit as ammunition to portray him as a hypocrite and a racist, Nesenoff said he was dressed up because it was Purim. God, he said, likes humor.

Israeli officials were not in a laughing mood after this incident for other reasons. Fox News reported: “A senior Israeli politician tells Fox News that Israel is currently in the midst of its worst international crisis since the creation of the Jewish state. The politician, who asked not to be named in order to speak more candidly, added that for the first time Israel’s legitimacy is being questioned by many in the international community.

“The official believes the lack of a viable peace process, combined with last week’s Gaza-bound flotilla incident, which killed nine, has brought Israel to this situation. The Israeli public doesn’t understand the severity of the situation, according to the politician. The official believes that Israelis should not react in a nationalistic way to recent events, because it is only weakening the Jewish state in this process.”

I don’t know If any of this was weighing on Helen’s mind but I do know that criticism of Israel was soon at an all time fever pitch because of the Gaza Aid Flotilla which left Turkey on the day of the “interview.” There has been lots in the press about it before it sailed – hopes by the activists, threats from the Israelis. The prospect of a confrontation was in the air.

Supporters of the humanitarian project feared Israel would attack the ships as they soon did. For media spin, Tel Aviv righteously and loudly defended its violent interception of the non-violent convoy as an act of legitimate self-defense but, later, quietly, paid compensation to the victims when the world media turned against them.

Soon, there would protests worldwide and furious exchanges in the media. Much of it was very emotional. There was also anger at President Obama for not denouncing Israel’s intervention on the high seas. But, by that time, Helen Thomas was silenced and silent. (In some outlets, the incident “outing” Helen was used, bizarrely, as pro-Israel “balance” to show why Israel must act tough.)

Back at the North Lawn that day at the White House, Helen, who must have been following these evolving events, blew a fuse, or at least lost her usually professional demeanor. Here’s the now infamous exchange videotaped by an amateur cameraman, offering a deliberately unflattering and extreme tight close up of an 89-year-old woman.

Nesenoff: Any comments on Israel? We’re asking everybody today, any comments on Israel?
Thomas: Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.
Nesenoff: Oooh. Any better comments on Israel?
Thomas: Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not German, it’s not Poland …
Nesenoff: So where should they go, what should they do?
Thomas: They go home.
Nesenoff: Where’s the home?
Thomas: Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else
Nesenoff: So you’re saying the Jews go back to Poland and Germany?
Thomas: And America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries? See?

Nesenoff does not repeat her use of America, but only to Poland and German. He has nothing to say about her reference to occupation. Clearly, the question triggered something deeper in Helen, feelings that she had perhaps bottled up for many years in the White House where every reporter has a built in radar that teaches them to be careful about what they say and how they say it, especially on a subject like Israel that Helen considers a “third rail,” almost an “untouchable issue.” She earlier told one college audience, “I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter.” (She was then an opinion columnist and perhaps freer to speak her mind).

Israel was not a new subject for her to comment on either. Anyone from the Arab world tends to have a very different understanding of the history there, a perspective that we rarely hear or see. It’s a narrative driven by anger ar unending Palestinian victimization.

She told me she had been in Israel in 1954 and visited the Palestinian village of Kibia that was invaded by Israel in which local residents were driven out and many killed. She told me she personally met many Palestinians forced from their homes. She is not the only one angry about this often hidden legacy, especially because many Israelis justify expelling Palestinians in biblical terms and are supported by Christian Evangelicals in saying so. That’s ironic, isn’t it, because in our media, fanatical fundamentalists are only pictured as Muslims, rarely as Jews.

Her historic memory was clearly triggered although her views are hardly extreme. She says Israel has a right to exist, and so do Jews “like all people. But not the right to seize others lands.” She says Israel has defied 65 UN resolutions on these issues. She was frustrated when so many Presidents danced around the issues and in her view, “caved” on human rights.

To Nesenoff and many viewers oriented to see the world only through a unflinching pro-Israel narrative, Helen had crossed the line in their view from being anti-Israel to being anti-semetic. The reason: the inclusion of Poland and Germany into the mix were considered “obviously anti-Semetic.”

She agrees that by citing Germany, she opened the door to accusations of insensitivity, lumping her in with holocaust deniers, but denies being one or hating Jews. She says she was startled by that charge because she is, she says, a Semite so how can she be ant-Semetic? (Another irony: Jewish emigration to today’s Germany has increased 10-fold since the fall of the Berlin Wall to 200,000 with many leaving Israel. This “reverse exodus” troubles Israeli officials.)

Helen told me her thinking on this subject goes back to being moved by a rabbi who spoke alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963. I was there also, and heard him speak too [transcript of speech], and so I looked him up.

It was Joachim Prinz of the American Jewish Congress who made a speech that influenced a younger Helen Thomas. He said, “When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not .the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.

Helen says her whole career has been about combating the sin of silence. She says she has now been liberated to speak out. And “all I would like is for people to know what I was trying to say, that Palestinians are living under tyranny and that their rights are being violated. All I want is some sympathy for Palestinians.”

Had she said it like that, if she had perhaps made a distinction between Israel as a State and its settlers on occupied lands, she might still have her job. Unfortunately, what she did say, and how she said it, brought all the attention on her, not the issues she was trying to expose.

Now it’s the holiday season, allegedly a time of peace and forgiveness when Presidents issue pardons to convicted criminals and reflection is theoretically permitted, a time when its been suggested that even a State Department hawk like Richard Holbrooke could, on his deathbed call for an end to the Afghan war that he had dogmatically supported.

We have watched the rehabilitation of so many politicians over recent years who have stumbled, taken money or disgraced themselves in sex scandals, including Senators, even Presidents.

Helen Thomas is not in that category.

Yet, many of those “fallen” are back in action, tarnished perhaps, but allowed to recant, to work and then appear in the media.

But, to this day, there has been almost no compassion, empathy or respect shown for one of our great journalists, Helen Thomas, who has been presumed guilty and sentenced to oblivion with barely a word spoken in her defense. She admittedly misspoke and is now officially “Missing” like some disappeared priest in Argentina.

A whole world may be critical of Israel. Millions may believe that the occupiers should withdraw or that that Israeli rejectionism of the peace process must end. But when a “mainstream” American reporter of great stature touches these sentiments, she is consigned to Dante’s Inferno, and turned into a non-person.

How can we expect Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile if our media won’t set an example by reconciling with Helen Thomas?

Comments So Far From Readers on The Demonization of Helen Thomas

Bruce Morgan: An excellent article. This needed to be said, and it was said very well. There are not many authors with the courage to write this article, and not many places where it could be published. Kudos.

Kevin Tully: Her comments were very unfortunate but should not have so absolutely tainted an amazing career.

Daniel Geary: According to Wikipedia, David Nesenoff proclaimed that “after attending a press conference in the White House, divine intervention led to his encounter with Helen Thomas.” Evidently, divine intervention caused him to grow up in the same town I did, Syosset, N.Y. Perhaps divine intervention will help David see the arrogance, ignorance, inhumanity, and despicable ways of the country he claims to love–and if we’re lucky, even cause America’s lunatic leaders to stop supporting the lunatics pounding the war drums of Israel.

Da’ud X Mohammed: thanks for advance notice of Helen Thomas: Thrown to the wolves. (The Title used by AlJazeera.net) —   that was goddam long overdue! Although I recognized your voice, I was glad to see your signature at the bottom of the page. As though you’re not in enough hot water on your own, giving some voice to Helen Thomas and quoting her yet again; “You cannot criticize Israel   in this country and survive,” should likely lend to finishing off your career too. There will never be peace in the Middle East until Israeli Zionists and Likudniks and their mindless supporters get real about their treatment of the Palestinians, the Helen Thomases of this world, and even Jimmy Carter – the best friend Israel ever had, but who they threw away like a wad of kleenex for his daring to speak of an “Apartheid” connection to the Israeli Defense Forces’ Apartheid-like occupation of the Palestinian territories. The one sided peace Jimmy Carter got for Israel cost Anwar Sadat his life. The one sided peace the Palestinians have lived with all these years was a 9/11 factor in NYC no matter what AIPAC and the Bush era neocons say., even today.

There will never be peace in the Middle East for as long as we can’t discuss what is happening over there. The Israel Lobby and even the US Congress are locked into never letting that happen if criticizing Israel is part of the discussion – so you and Helen Thomas have thrown away your careers for nothing. For every house bulldozed in Palestine, Jimmy Carter builds one in the USA. Jimmy Carter is likely the only one to survive the injustice that the Palestinians call Nabka (the catastrophe), but still with his heart half broken, and Sadat is dead.

Terry Bisson: Liked your piece on Helen Thomas. What a chandra (sp?) (DS: SHONDA!) Keep up the good work.

Linda Ross: There are plenty of us who will always love and respect Helen Thomas. I am terribly sorry she is being silenced and shunned.

Brigitte ArweI, New Orleans would like to express my heartfelt thank you to Mr. Schechter for his wonderful, fair and objective, article concerning the erradication of Ms. Helen Thomas. I am so glad that journalists like him still exist in this world of “sham.” Thank you for standing up for the truth. God bless you, Mr. Schechter.

David Rothman

“thats what you get for sitting in the front row of the circus. eventually you are going to get splattered with elephant shit. freedom of speech doesnt apply to members of the media, nor anyone else anymore. well unless you are a klansman of course, than you have the right to spew your hatred in public at anytime.

Bob Angell commented

“I have long been an admirer of Helen Thomas and that has not changed. Something tells me most people are smart to know this was a hatchet job. Thanks for the great article.”

Virginia Mary “Did one slender fingernail reach out to rake the sacred cow?”

DjGreen wrote: “THANK YOU!”

b.b.kemp: Helen Thomas: One of a kind, stand-up broad who has the courage to tell the Truth. Unfortunately, most people can’t handle the Truth.

Steven Zuckerman: Bravo, my friend. Once again, Bravo.

Comments welcome: Dissector@mediachannel.org

If you appreciate the work we do, please support Mediachannel with tax deductible donation to the Global Center via PayPal or with a check marked For Mediachannel to Global Center, PO Box 677, New York, New York 10035. Checks payable to the Global Center. This is your last chance to claim a deduction for 2010.

Post to Twitter

Share

See the whole Post / →

Where Are The New Jobs? —Not In The USA, Forecasts Glum

December 29th, 2010 - by: danny

Where Are The New Jobs? —Not In The USA, Forecasts Glum



Dissector In The Media: Discussing the START treaty on Press TV with a Russian editor and British arms control expert

As we count down to the end of the year, I keep looking for stories that will help us more deeply understand the times we are in and what we are up against. They come from many sources, some in major media, many not. I hope you find this effort of some value.

Today marks the 120th anniversary of the Wounded Knee massacre. “I will always be what is called wasichu, and wasichu is a Lakota word that means non-Indian, but another version of this word means “the one who takes the best meat for himself.” And that’s what I want to focus on — the one who takes the best part of the meat. It means greedy.” ~ Aaron Huey

Aaron Huey’s effort to photograph poverty in America led him to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where the struggle of the native Lakota people — appalling, and largely ignored — compelled him to refocus. Five years of work later, his haunting photos intertwine with a shocking history lesson in this bold, courageous talk presentation at TED: America’s native prisoners of war [Open interactive transcript »]

HEADLINES:

Where Are the Jobs? For Many Companies, Overseas

US Changes How It Measures Long-Term Unemployment

Helpthe99ers.com: Radio host Nicole Sandler started this website, Helpthe99ers, to put “the haves” who want to help in touch with “the have nots” who really need help right now.”There’s a growing group of people in this country who seem to have been forgotten by our government.   Collectively known as “the 99ers,” these are the people who’ve exhausted all of their unemployment benefits, and have nowhere else to turn. At this site, I hope that those most in need can connect with those who can help.” [More here →] RELATED: Nicole Sanders at Crooks and Liars

Financial Times: Non-US Banks Gain from Fed Crisis Fund

William Black, Helping Control Frauds

U.S. Government Can’t Account For Billions Spent In Corruptistan

2010-12 $5 Gas To Be Here By 2012? No Grasshopper, Much Sooner

Blasting Jesse Jackson For “Being Out Of His Depth”

Rory O’Connor sent this to me with this comment: Look what the dicks at Mediaite say about Jesse:

“Jackson seems out of his depth, since even though the growing gap between the richest and poorest Americans is a legitimate and worrisome issue, dismissing the wealthiest and their success as not productive doesn’t do much to advance his cause.” See article below:

Jesse Jackson: Obama Should Advocate For A “Radical Reordering Of The Economy” by Matt Schneider

Jesse Jackson appeared on MSNBC yesterday and let it be known that President Obama better enjoy his vacation now, because come January, Jackson expects a lot from the President. Not only does he want a renewed commitment to the war on poverty, but he also wants the President to go right to Congress and to stick up for the women and children Jackson meets in homeless shelters who apparently are working every day and still can’t afford the rent. [More here →]

[Rev. Jackson appears at the 7 minute mark:]

Carol Rosenberg, Miami Herald: WikiLeaks: How U.S. tried to stop Spain’s torture probe

MIAMI — It was three months into Barack Obama’s presidency, and the administration – under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies – turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain: Don’t indict former President George W. Bush’s legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations. [More here →]

OUR GREATEST EXPORT: WAR — Largest Military Budget Since World War II By Rick Rozoff

On December 22 both houses of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill authorizing $725 billion for next year’s Defense Department budget. The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, was approved by all 100 senators as required and by a voice vote in the House. The House had approved the bill, now sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law, five days earlier in a 341-48 roll call, but needed to vote on it again after the Senate altered it in the interim. The proposed figure for the Pentagon’s 2011 war chest includes, in addition to the base budget, $158.7 billion for what are now euphemistically referred to as overseas contingency operations: The military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. The $725 billion figure, although $17 billion more than the White House had requested, is not the final word on the subject, however, as supplements could be demanded as early as the beginning of next year, especially in regard to the Afghan war that will then be in its eleventh calendar year.   [More here →]

Juan Cole: Top Ten Myths about Afghanistan, 2010

10. “There has been significant progress in tamping down the insurgency in Afghanistan.” [More here →]

Robert Fisk: WikiLeaks Exposed US and Hillary’s Hopelessness

“That Clinton should want her State Department slaves to play secret agents on the poor old UN shows what an utterly worthless institution the US State Department has become.” [More here →]

FORECASTS/ADMISSIONS/ASSESSMENTS OF WHERE WE ARE

From Washington’s Blog in NakedCapitalism.com

The following experts have — at some point during the last 2 years — said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

→ Washington’s Blog — The following experts have — at some point during the last 2 years — said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

How could that possibly be, when the stock market has largely recovered? (Let’s forget for a moment that the stock market rallied after 1929, but then crashed in a double dip). [More here →]

David Swanson: A Year of Fall and Decline

“The fall and decline of an empire can take many years, but certain “benchmarks” (as imperial courts have been known to call them) can measure the progress in one year alone. Take, for example, the year 2010.” [More here →]

Former NY Mayor Ed Koch is Not optimistic: Unfinished Business: The Great Recession

Looking back on 2010 and the  Great Recession, I continue to be enraged by the lack of accountability for those who wrecked our economy and brought the U.S. to its knees.  The shocking truth is that those who did the damage are still in charge.  Many who ran Wall Street before and during the debacle are either still there making millions, if not billions, of dollars, or are in charge of our country’s economic policies which led to the debacle.

Yes, in the recent mid-term elections, the American people did replace 63 Democrats with a like number of Republicans, but will that really change things for the better? Time will tell, but I doubt it. Neither do I see the Obama administration, with all its good intentions, succeeding in the areas where the public has suffered the most: jobs and home values. [More here →]

Simon Johnson, Baseline Scenario: Tax Cutters Set Up Tomorrow’s Fiscal Crisis

The truth is, the deal moved us closer to a fiscal crisis, just as the euro zone now is experiencing. Who will emerge on top in the U.S. version is harder to predict; at the moment, Republicans have the edge. But it’s not clear even they will be happy with what they wished for – an opportunity to enact massive federal government spending cuts. [More here →]

TRENDS FOR 2011: GERALD CALENTE OF THE TRENDS INSTITUTE

KINGSTON, NY, 28 December 2010 – After the tumultuous years of the Great Recession, a battered people may wish that 2011 will bring a return to kinder, gentler times. But that is not what we are predicting:

1. Wake-Up Call The people of all nations, having become convinced of the inability of leaders and know-it-all “arbiters of everything” to fulfill their promises, will do more than just question authority, they will defy it. The seeds of revolution will be sown.

7. Journalism 2.0 2011 will mark the year that new methods of news and information distribution will render the 20th century model obsolete. With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0″ has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit. [More here →]

MARCHING FOR JUSTICE IN THE CONGO

World Women March in Bukavu for Peace, Justice and Women’s Rights By Nita Evele, Congo Global Action

Thousands of Congolese women marched on the street of Bukavu, the capital city of the province of South Kivu on October 17, 2010 as part of the third World March of Women (WMW) to show their commitment to peace and security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Delegations of women from Africa, Europe, Middle East, North, South and Central America gathered in Bukavu to draw the world’s attention to the need to end the violence against women, promote and recognize women’s place and participation in rebuilding the DRC. [More here →]

Ron Daniels, writes from Haiti: Flawed Election Clouds Haiti’s Future

As I pen this article, the Electoral Commission in Haiti is still “recounting” the ballots from an ill conceived and flawed election which threatens to further impede progress towards building a new Haiti. The international community, including the United States, which is bankrolling Haiti’s reconstruction, seems at a loss for how to untangle a mess caused by their insistence on pushing for elections under almost impossible circumstances.

President Rene Preval was also very eager for the elections to proceed, especially since he felt confident that millions of dollars expended on his hand-picked successor Jude Celestin and the INITE Party would ensure victory and his role as Prime Minister or defacto President in the new government (Wikileaks disclosures simply confirmed what was commonly known for months; Preval was/is eager to have a Putin-Medvedev type arrangement to maintain his hold on power). But the election proved to be a disaster, and if the incredible mess created by errors, failures and fraud is not cleaned up properly, it will have a negative effect on an already bleak situation in terms of the effort to build the new Haiti. The election was ill conceived from the outset. [More here →]

Alas, so much is being ill-conceived.

IN MEMORIAM

NYT: Sun Hongjie, a journalist who was beaten into a coma this month in northwest China, died Tuesday morning, a colleague said. Mr. Sun was an investigative reporter for The Northern Xinjiang Morning Post. Colleagues declined to say whether he had been killed because of his reporting. Police officials said that Mr. Sun and a friend had argued, and that the friend had arranged the
assault.

BOROWITZ: IS HAWAII AMERICA??

Birthers Challenge Hawaii to Produce Statehood Certificate — President’s Birthplace Not Really American, Leaders Claim

KAILUA, HAWAII (The Borowitz Report) — Leaders of the so-called Birther movement followed President Obama on his Hawaiian vacation today to demand that Hawaii prove it is actually a U.S. state. Mr. Obama’s claim to American citizenship has rested on his birthplace being Hawaii, but the Birthers argued today that Hawaii’s claim to being part of America is far from a foregone conclusion. Speaking to reporters in Kailua, Birther leader Orly Taitz said that Hawaii cannot be considered part of the United States “unless it can produce an authentic statehood certificate.”

WATCH: JIMBO BROWN, CULTURAL DISCOVERY

Last night while “dining” at the neighborhood’s distinctive “Trailer Park” here in Chelsea, I ended up sitting next to Jimbo Brown, a Texan in exile who lived in Houston and now works at the nearby Dallas BarBQ restaurant. We started chatting and I discovered I was hanging with a cultural phenom, a published poet, performance artist and wordsmith extraordinaire.
He sent me the the link above which I am happy to share in the holiday spirit. WORD!

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Post to Twitter

Share

See the whole Post / →