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It's
bad enough that right-wingers rant about The New York
Times being liberal, but it's stretching the bounds
of civility to have to also hear left-wingers rant
about The Guardian being liberal. Most things being
relative, certainly the latter rag is less stained
than the former, but all private for profit free market
newspapers in the West are advertising based so naturally
are in symbiotic sympathy with their multi-national
corporate advertisers. As such they will no more bite
the hand that feeds them anymore than a local village
shopkeeper would want to shun his or her best customers.
So what's good for General Motors will more times
than not be editorially written as good for the rest
of us.
Hence,
it is a rare day indeed to see (if at all) any such
corporate sponsored corporately owned newspaper take
the side of say the Anti-Nice Treaty forces over the
Pro-Nice Treaty forces, or for that matter socialism
over capitalism or labour over management or even
little free market countries over big free market
countries. Come to think of it, it is very rare to
see any advertising based daily newspaper anywhere
support a labour strike or work stoppage unless of
course it was going on at a competitor's newspaper.
And
what daily in the States has ever written a nice thing
about roadside billboards or the US Office of Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)? No doubt
that is because of their own dislike for competition
from other advertising businesses and that their own
in-house labour problems are often times engendered
by managerially negligent life & limb accidents
around their rolling presses. Therefore, they write
editorials on among other things protecting the roadway
environment and on protecting business against government
interference without any mention of their own conflicts
of interest.
Sure
any newspaper or media outlet is entitled to their
point of view but it'd behoove the rest of us to see
beyond their narrow little opinion dominated universe
and see through their incessant mask of objectivity
especially when it slips from time to time as it did
on The Guardian (Monday, July 15, 2002 at page 18).
While trundling through the pages of this sheepish
pulp I stumbled upon the following nuggets in an obsequious
obituary written by Guardian regular Greg Chamberlain
(repeated verbatim in The Irish Times, [Saturday,
July 20, 2002 at page 16]) for Joaquin Balaguer, the
six-times elected President of the Dominican Republic:
"He came to politics during the ferocious dictatorship
of the Generalissimo - 'El Benefactor' - Rafael Trujillo
whom he slavishly served" (emphasis added). Yikes!
Soon thereafter, backed by the United States and its
military occupation, "(Balaguer's) 1966 election
was engineered by preventing his fellow man of letters,
left-winger Juan Bosch.ousted victor of the country's
first free elections in 1962 from campaigning. Balaguer
let loose the old regime's thugs, who murdered thousands
of his real and supposed enemies. He claimed he was
powerless against what he called 'uncontrollable elements'"
(emphasis added). Ah sure! As long as they weren't
the poor killing the rich or neo-nazis killing Jews
then all is forgiven.
But
just when you think The Guardian would be condemning
this Waylon Smithers- cum-Ariel Sharon, here comes
next their most precious gem: "His lip service
to democracy had helped the country keep its balance
and advance as its plantation economy was battered
by the global market"(emphasis added). D'oh!
So that's the secret.
That's
right! Now you can tell them you read it here in the
liberal Guardian (and the so called Irish Times).
Pretending to be democratic while killing thousands
is ok so long as it advances the free market economy.
If only Joe Stalin could have figured this out. That
is why I suppose there are good bombs and bad bombs,
collateral damage and not criminal carnage. It is
why the US needs immunity from the International Crimes
Court or else the right to invade the Netherlands
on demand. Without immunity their pretentious little
democratic nation building game would be up. Guys
like George Sr. Bush and Colin Powell wouldn't be
able to firebomb to death 2,000 Panamanians while
they slept in an effort to oust a CIA stooge like
Manuel Noriega on cocaine charges. Is that the kind
of cob-webbing-the-capitalist world we'd want to live
in? Who really wants to dance away the night at Afghan
weddings anyway?
Now
our part of the world is safe for paying lip service
to democracy because we cannot trust the little people
to husband their own natural resources or vote correctly
on Nice or to have a sense of perspective about these
things. That's why American CEO Warren Anderson can
steer clear of India's civil court writs for the 16,000
wrongful deaths by his company Union Carbide in Bophal,
whereas Osama Bin Laden has to (rightly) stay on the
move while William Calley gets to set up a jewelry
shop in Augusta, Georgia since being (wrongly) pardoned
by Richard Nixon after only 2 weeks in jail for his
convicted role in the 1968 My Lai Massacre of over
600 unarmed Vietnamese: mostly old men, women &
children.
Terrorism
in the name of profit is good. Terrorism against the
name of profit is bad. It's as simple as Lon Nol vs.
Pol Pot. Only radicals would condemn both. That is
why any difference between The New York Times and
The Guardian and The Irish Times (among others) is
one of degree not kind. Not surprisingly, all these
papers support the continued British partition of
Ireland. And lest anyone think there be too much generalizing
here from a particular, consider that this obituary
for Balaguer is really a rare glimpse of insight into
how Western elite geo-political calculations are normally
made even if indeed it was by editorial oversight.
Why else would the American Government have backed
this democratically dubious mass murderer Joaquin
Balaguer not once but six times only to have The Guardian
and The Irish Times now pay homage to him? He kept
his people down for foreign direct investment while
much of the Western world still boycotts Castro's
Cuba. And the Bertie Ahern's of the world take notice
because they know what side their bread is buttered.
This
is in part why we are all voting yet again on whether
to stay a neutral Irish Nation or become a European
province and fight for Spain in Morocco. Our middle
managers and their political elite want us to be even
weaker nationally than we already are because there
are a lot of British inspired upper class Irish people
and their handmaidens who don't really like being
Irish such is the nature of long term oppression and
would rather be West Brit or West Eurp. So let us
pin their lips together and vote no on Nice II and
have our selves a genuine triumph of national democracy.
Second verse same as the first since you wouldn't
buy a used car from these people anymore than you
would from Richard Nixon or Joaquin Balaguer.
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