← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 19820 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-08-25
2005-08-25 06:42 | User Profile
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[SIZE=4]To hell with Judith Miller[/SIZE] by Stan Goff
That’s what I said. And to hell with the press’ sanctimonious lamentations over First Amendment rights. If they were so fu**ing committed to the press being some kind of democratic tripwire, they wouldn’t behave like such craven hucksters about virtually every real issue that comes along. In particular, they would be critical of themselves about the likes of propaganda hacks like Judith Miller.
Jose Padilla, Wen Ho Lee, and lengthening list of others have had their constitutional rights trampled as public spectacles in which the press participates as eagerly as any lynching crowd on a picnic, but where was Judith Miller when all this was happening?
She was working for the White House as a disinformation specialist even as she worked for the mighty New York fu**ing Times, helping the administration make its case for the war in Iraq. No single reporter was more solicitous in retransmitting the Rendon Group’s fabrication about mushroom clouds over New York and the Saddam A-bomb.
It’s unlikely that more than a handful of reporters in the nation had as many chances as Miller to rub elbows with Dick Cheney’s favorite Iraqi advisor, Rendon Group vet, conman, and convicted embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. Miller appeared at one point in Iraq to be actually working for Chalabi while working as an embedded reporter.
Little wonder, then, that Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Scooter Libby, is a prime target, along with Karl Rove, of the investigation into the administration’s vengeance outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, when her husband Joseph Wilson refused to doctor evidence for the Bush administration to develop the weird claim that Iraq was buying weaponizable uranium from Niger. Rove, Libby, or whomever (someone on the White House staff) “leaked” Plame’s identity as a U.S. intelligence operative abroad - which is a felony violation of federal law.
Me, I don’t sit around losing sleep at night about the disempowerments of the Central Intelligence Agency (they’ve done more to disempower themselves than any opponent could ever do). I admit I’m seriously into situational ethics here… the ethics being whether the protections that ostensibly exist for journalists and their sources being a means to protect the public from official power can be reasonably claimed when a reporter lets themselves be used by official power, to punish people like Wilson for having a shred of integrity. I’ve always thought the categorical imperative is a form of detached philosophical stupidity anyhow. This case seems to prove that.
It’s an obligation for political activists to know what the masses are watching on television, so every day I try to force myself to see a bit of CNN, a bit of MSNBC, a bit of local affiliate news. It’s about as joyful as having a sea urchin packed up your ass, but it still seems like an obligation. It seldom changes, this self-referential parade of airbrushed newsmodels regurgitating the manufactured cliché of the day, slobbering over think-tank reptiles and retired generals who are themselves reduced to preening cheap-jackery before narcotic America.
It’s only the shortest step between this and Judith Miller’s breathless ranting about Saddam’s bombs on the flagshit NYT. I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would give the NYT any more credence than the fu**ing Debka-file. They get things right about as often.
When I see them give as much ink to Jose Padilla as they are to this vicious, self-serving hack, who willingly let herself be used by the White House she now claims the First Amendment to protect, I’ll stand in front of the Supreme Court with a “Free the lying little shit” sign. But for now, she can rot for all the hell I care, and I’d be delighted to see Karl Rove in the same cell block.
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2005-08-25 15:41 | User Profile
Like so many who write for the New York Times Judith Miller has acted as if she must set standards for the rest of the country. Her concern has been for her fellow Jews for the most part.
From my book:[QUOTE]When Jews arrived at the death camps, they acted submissively. When visitors arrive in Washington D.C,, they could go to the Holocaust Museum and learn about the camp at Treblinka and about the dark side of technology which permitted 150 prison guards to kill 900,000 over 18 months at a cost of 5 cents a person. The director of the museum, Michael Berenbaum, believed that gruesome statistic has a deserved place among this nation's monuments. The rather appalling statistic that one person, on average, was able to kill 6000 human beings over 18 months, or to put it another way one person on average killed eleven others every day for 18 months, was not to be given nearly as much thought. Did the Germans kill all these people at the same time every day? Did they kill one every two hours and rest two hours? Did the Germans take a coffee break? During the 18 months did the concentration camp internees attempt to resist? Did they try to escape? If so, how many times and how violently did they fight before dying? These questions did not concern Ms. [COLOR=Red][B]Judith Miller[/B][/COLOR], a reporter for the New York [I]Times[/I], who wrote a book on Jewish inmates and their behavior.
Contrast their behavior with 1st. Sergeant Peter Vetcher of Darby's Rangers who surrendered to the Germans on January 30, 1944 after fighting all night against panzer troops in Cisterna di Latina, Italy and running out of ammunition. Badly wounded and bleeding from shrapnel, Vetcher was taken to a POW camp in Rome. With the Allies advancing on Rome Sergeant Vetcher was marched through the streets of Rome to a train to take him to Germany. While he marched, ignoble Romans and their contemptible kids threw stones and spat on him. A logical conjecture was they would be the same people who clapped and cried when the Allies "liberated" Rome in a few weeks. Once in Germany he escaped from Stalag 2B, his first prison camp and was about to board a ship to Sweden when he was recaptured. Then he was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Once again Sergeant Vetcher showed initiative by waiting three days and digging under a fence. Sergeant Vetchers and his kind have not counted for much in the world of the New York [I]Times[/I], but one must ask if a Sergeant Vetcher amongst the Jews in Buchenwald would have made a difference.
Judith Miller, [I]One, by One, by One[/I], p234, (Simon & Schuster, 1990)
[I]Army Times[/I], p17, Jan 13, 1992[/QUOTE]Where are the Sergeant Vetchers of today?
2005-08-25 16:25 | User Profile
IR,
The funny thing about this is that the folks she hauled water for are some of the ones who have been laughing the most at her jailing. Poetic justice, I say. [QUOTE]Itââ¬â¢s only the shortest step between this and Judith Millerââ¬â¢s breathless ranting about Saddamââ¬â¢s bombs on the flagshit NYT. I canââ¬â¢t for the life of me figure out why anyone would give the NYT any more credence than the fu**ing Debka-file. They get things right about as often.[/QUOTE] Even Limbaugh said that DEBKA's accuracy was only 25%. If he won't use it, you know it is bad.