Good job, b! I love reading about what a joke the State-run NYT is:)

Posted by: relament | Apr 5 2012 17:04 utc | 3

Glenn Greenwald today has also been properly scathing on this New York Times “reporting”: State-dominated media and Iran.

Posted by: lysias | Apr 5 2012 17:59 utc | 5

That is the home of the anti Zionist, Zionist the Angry Arab!

Difficult to interpret. True that al-Akhbar and the Angry Arab are anti-Zionist. So what? It’s quite normal.

Posted by: alexno | Apr 5 2012 20:37 utc | 7

what a bunch of crap

In offering an overall view of the threat from Tehran, Gen. John R. Allen, the senior allied commander in Afghanistan, told Congress in recent public testimony that Iran continued to “fuel the flames of violence” by supporting the Afghan insurgency. “Our sense is that Iran could do more if they chose to,” General Allen said. “But they have not, and we watch the activity and the relationships very closely.”

here’s the report of Gen. John R. Allen reporting to congress, nothing about this iran allegation. nothing. notice the clipped quote. what exactly did he say i wonder.

Posted by: annie | Apr 5 2012 21:16 utc | 9

“This is the new Journalism of post 9/11. Actually journalism died in 9/11 and was replaced by “reporters”, those who have no journalism background, but look good and sound good on TV, the new standard for american media…”
The truth is that this sort of journalism has been standard for a very long time, not only in the USA but in Britain too. The Cold War was “reported” this way, so that it became common knowledge that the Soviet Union was constantly planning to push a thousand tank divisions into western Europe; the “domino theory” depended on the belief that China was ready to pounce on its neighbours, despite the evidence suggesting that nothing was further from the CCP’s mind than foreign adventures.
What has changed is that the socialist press has disappeared completely and social democrats have become more imperialist than the imperialists. On the other hand there is, for the moment, the internet which gives us unprecedented access to news and a variety of opinion.
What has changed is that in 1964, for example, while the media was just as bad (IF Stone being almost the only honest reporter in the USA) in Congress and Parliaments across Europe there were plenty of communists and real socialists, nationalists and, in America’s case, old fashioned democrats like Wayne Morse and Fulbright who had more dignity than to eat the bullshit governments served up to them. Another thing that has changed is that the political parties have become entirely undemocratic, and totally centralised so that local left wing bases are no longer tolerated.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 5 2012 22:13 utc | 11

annie | Apr 5, 2012 6:05:03 PM | 10
Your link is broken unfortunately 🙁
Can you repost it ?
And ditto on what Bevin notes…
The NYT and other US news outlets are only interesting for their cooking recipes pages.

Posted by: Philippe | Apr 5 2012 23:14 utc | 13

I think the NYT is a propaganda arm of a foreign government. The Times has to rearrange the words of the military to fit said government’s political agenda.
James Risen has a peice in the Sunday NYT, front page, undermining the US Intelligence Communities report that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapons program, by correlating it with Cheney’s cherry picking of IC Iraq data. First, Risen blames the CIAfor failing to see Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, when it was Cheney and his newly formed intelligence office (can’t remember the name) that stovepiped the intelligence reports by sidelining information that didn’t support the Vulcans’ foaming-at-the-mouth desire to invade Iraq and opening the flue for misinformation (like Curveball) to reach the eyes of the barely sentient, dry-drunk President. Second, he insinuates the same process is going on today, but in this case to stop war: the IC is feeding Obama only information he WANTS to see.

Posted by: Optimax | Apr 6 2012 1:45 utc | 15

ALLEN: We’re seeking to understand exactly what Iran is doing in Afghanistan. But we also understand that Iran and Afghanistan have their own bilateral relationship. And that’s a — an ancient and a, in many respects, productive relationship for Afghanistan.
So I — I will not take issue with the fact that the Afghan government has a relationship with Iran. My issue is primarily in the area of security and what we understand to be Iranian assistance to certain elements of the Taliban.
It has not been dramatic. It has not been pervasive. But we seek to understand it, and we have interdicted that assistance on a number of occasions. And so we’ll continue to watch it very closely. We’ll see if it is modulated, if it is increased or if it becomes more pervasive, then we’ll have to take actions as necessary within Afghanistan to continue to check that process.
…
FRANKS: Dr. Miller, did you want to weigh in on that?
JAMES MILLER: If I could just add very briefly, as you know, sir, the Iranian government has also provided not only rhetorical but material support to the Afghan government.
And so what we see is a — is, in many instances, a positive influence, but then, just as General Allen has talked about, at the same time, in another part of the country, we’ve seen Iranian support for the insurgency.
So what we’d obviously like to do is to encourage continued support for the government in Kabul and to, through various means, including the interdiction that General Allen talked about, reduce to a minimum, attempt to eliminate any incentives for support to the insurgency.
FRANKS: I guess it just occurs to me, given, you know, Iran’s history of making IEDs to blow up our troops in Iraq shouldn’t engender a great deal of trust on our part to the — you know, the potential of using the longstanding relationship between Afghanistan and Iran to our benefit.
I’m not sure that there’s a real basis for that. But, I mean, I defer in this case to the people on the ground. I’m just suggesting that there seems to be a general pattern here, and I’m just wondering what the drawdown and the date certain has done to the overall — at least the psychological array of our enemies’ attitude toward continuing to resist the efforts of freedom there in Afghanistan.
And I’ll — General, if you have any thoughts — any other thoughts?
ALLEN: I was just going to say that we have not seen the Iranian signature weapons in Afghanistan that we saw frequently in southern Iraq. And that would be a very quick indicator to us that things have changed dramatically.
FRANKS: Right. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you. We’ve got two committees going on at the same time, so I have to sprint to the other one, so thank you very much.

MARCH 20, 2012

Posted by: annie | Apr 6 2012 1:53 utc | 17

The truth is, since late 90s when printed news were bought by big corporations, cost effectiveness became mantra. Investigative journalism is expensive and therefore was eliminated.
http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4904
A group of academics from Canada studied the percentage of investigative items in the news between the early 90s and late 90s. Percentage dropped from 30% to nearly 3 % over less than 10 yrs. I have to find the reference.
Investigative journalism was replaced by reports reproducing nearly verbatim official sources and objectivity based on facts is replaced by objectivity based on Balance.
A head of a PR and ad company told me once that 40% of the industry contracts are with governments.

Posted by: Sophia | Apr 6 2012 2:18 utc | 19

i guess i should say that i have no great faith in halberstam’s credibility when it comes to big things… he gets to you. leaves you with an inescapable impression, just fromt he sheer volume of his work… but his work doesnt include everything that should be included.
for instance, he’s gone into excruciating detail about some of kennedy’s actions, but i cant remember him saying anything at all about kennedy’s fuck-hollering contests with ben gurion about israel’s nuke weapons program.

Posted by: retreatingbladestall | Apr 6 2012 3:32 utc | 21

Actually it is worse than this. If you read the print version of the paper you’d see that this article accusing Iran of aiding terrorists in Afghanistan was placed right next to another article covering a bombing in Afghanistan which had a photo of injured Americans. The implied message of responsibility was clear.

Posted by: Cyrus | Apr 6 2012 12:51 utc | 23