Tag Archives: NYT

GAZA, WAR, and ISRAEL

Posted on July 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

AT THE MARKET IN GAZA

“The Palestinians of Gaza descended from refugees of the 1948 war that created Israel.”  That’s a stretch. Now any high school student should know the Jews were given a homeland by by the U.N. in a Partition Plan, not by war.  Who is so uninformed (or biased ?) that they would print such nonsense. The New York Times, that’s who.

The war of 1948 was a war against the Jews declared by Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq in an attempt to nullify the U.N. ruling and drive the Jews from the area. It is true that Israel did not declare their independence until the conclusion of the fighting, but the inference that Israel obtained its independence by going to war against its neighbors is simply false.

In the article, the Times points out,

“Today Hamas has no rival here. It runs the schools, hospitals, courts, security services and — through smuggler tunnels from Egypt — the economy.”

and,

Young men [in Gaza] carried posters of a man with vampire teeth biting into a bloodied baby.

The vampire was not Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. It was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank

and,

[The Palestinian people] have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one here [in Gaza]. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating.

Its latest victim is electricity for Gaza, part of which is supplied by Israel and paid for by the West Bank government, which is partly reimbursed by Hamas. But the West Bank says that Hamas is not paying enough so it has held off paying Israel, which has halted delivery.

“They [Fatah] are lining their pockets and they are part of the siege,” asserted Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader and a surgeon, speaking of the West Bank government. “There will be no reconciliation.”

Nevertheless, the tone of the NYT article puts the onus of Gaza’s problems on Israel and headlines their piece Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair.

Bob B

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment

Posted in Political polemics

Tagged , , , ,

HELEN THOMAS AND THE NEW YORK TIMES

Posted on June 8, 2010 | Leave a comment

“Only the News We See Fit to Print”

THE GRAY LADY

The New York Times’s masthead logo, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” first appeared on the paper in 1896. It is time that logo was removed.

The “Helen Thomas -Jews go home” affair remained totally unreported by the Times for four days. The idea that the event was not instant news is unthinkable. Then could it be that the paper, for some reason considered it unfit to print? How can that be that possible for editors who deemed the reporting of classified anti-terrorism information as fit to print with coverage in depth. Slavish dedication to ideology is the answer, dedication to a cause to the point of self destruction if need be.

When the NYT was unable to ignore it any longer the headline was

“Reporter Retires After Words About Israel”

Their height of criticism for her anti-semitic remark was

Ms. Thomas’s tone became more opinionated in recent years after she moved from being a news reporter to being a columnist once she joined Hearst.

This is the paper that hired Jayson Bair and made him a star because he was politically correct. This is the paper that was forced to fire him when the peoples press exposed the young black journalist as a total fraud. This is the paper whose Pulitzer Prize winning Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, wrote one glowing article after another declaring the virtues of Joseph Stalin and the success of Socialism in Russia. This is the paper many people the world over, trust more than any other. This is the paper they rely on for all the news they need to know.

Bob B

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment

Posted in Political polemics

Tagged , ,

FRIEDMAN’S FAT LADY

Posted on February 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

Thomas Friedman has penned an article for the New York Times declaring The Fat Lady Has Sung. Friedman’s fat lady is the bounty provided by the generations preceding us. But the glory days are over. “We are eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed to us like hungry locusts.”

He sees the problem and offers a solution – more government spending and higher taxes. Of course he didn’t say “more government spending”, but he advocated for deployment of Obama’s programs as part of the solution. And what is that if not more government spending? Einstein’s definition of idiocy immediately comes to mind. But Friedman is a very intelligent man. If idiocy is not the answer, then how is it that repeating the cause of the problem comes to be seen as the solution?

If you have read A Conflict of Visions you know the answer. It lies in an uwavering belief in the superiority of conceptual planning over the empirical evidence of experience. Reagan came close when he simply said “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”

It is clear that Friedman sees government to be the solution. I wonder what he sees as the cause.

Bob B

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment

Posted in Political polemics

Tagged , , ,

UNCIVIL SOCIETY

Posted on February 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

Bonfire of the Bureaucrats
Why did Communism fail in Eastern Europe?                              
Because the establishment ran out of steam.

The above three line header appeared recently in the New York Times Review of Books as introduction to a review by Serge Schmemann of the book, Uncivil Society by Stephan Kotkin and Jan Gross.

The authors attribute the failure of Communism in Eastern Europe to the bureaucracy in charge. There is no mention, not even a hint that there may be something about Communism itself that played a role in its failure. It was simply that, in this case, the bureaucrats messed it up.

If you have ever wondered how in the world some people still believe in the ultimate socialist society known as Communism after all its so obvious failures, here’s your answer. The right people have never been  put in charge. All socialism needs to make a better world is the right leader, a messiah if you will.

Enter from stage left, Barack Hussain Obama. A man of vision, a man of diversity, a man who promises to Change America. A man who promises to bring new Hope not just to America, but to the entire world.

If you have ever wondered  why there was so much enthusiasm for Obama, enthusiasm that bordered on worship, caused women to faint and sent tingles up a man’s leg, here is your answer. The democratic election to the Office of President of the sole superpower in the world is heady stuff to believers in the cause.

But be ye not dismayed. Obama is not a messiah nor will he change America from the land of opportunity into some sort of drab socialist nation. He may cause that shining light on the hill to blink, but it will come back on as brilliant as ever.

Bob B

Bookmark and Share

Leave a comment

Posted in Political polemics

Tagged , ,

TIMES PREDICTS END OF AMERICA

Posted on February 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

“We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end.” On that dour note the New York Times begins to tell us why that end may come sooner rather than later. Typically Times.

As they see it, we are at risk of  “re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland” when “By 1795 Poland had disappeared”…”not to re-emerge for more than a century.” According to the article it took only one objector to block any piece of new legislation at the time and that led to the nations demise.

How is America being put at risk of vanishing like Poland?  It’s the Republicans. Their party is now out of power. So they are doing what Democrats do when Democrats are out of power, namely, use procedural rules to their advantage.  In our republican form of government we not only want our representatives in office to do good, we also expect them to prevent bad. When totally out of power you can’t do much good but you can prevent some bad. That’s what’s happening and the newspaper doesn’t like it.

By the way, New York Times, I trust the “We”  in your opening sentence means – we, the New York Times. It certainly does not include me.

Bob B

Leave a comment

Posted in Political polemics

Tagged ,