Standing Up to a Bully

Ref ferozk #45

[A simple word of advice to you would be: read everything and listen to everything, but decide for yourself! If you do not like the product, do not buy the product, but do not blame the manufacturer for making it! America is a plural society and there is a pluarity of opionions there and you have to decide, which one makes the most sense. Remember, freedom of expression is not about telling the truth or about saying anything you want. Instead, freedom of expression is listening to what is being said and more importantly, tolerating what is being said and not blaming the town crier for the message being uttered!]

Another case of ``Do as I say and don`t do as I do``.

Do you actually practise this when it comes to news about India?

For instance, when a Christian nun cried ``rape`` in India, all the self-loathing Hindus and their newspapers decried the event as yet another manifestation of Hindutva. When the nun admitted during a judicial inquiry that she made up the story, only the Indian Express printed a retraction. But you continue to cite that and/or similar trumped-up stories to be the result of the BJP`s Hindutva policies.

How many of you guys shouted yourselves hoarse about the ``saffronisation of education`` in India but quietly ignored the fact that the Supreme Court found nothing wrong with the new textbooks or curricula?

How many Indian journalists have tried to discover the name of The Muslim Tea Vendor of Godhra or his daughter? And you guys approvingly quote Mr. Chandrasekharan of Wall Street Journal (or is it the NYT?) and his story about the Hindu pilgrims on the train not paying for tea and samosas from the Muslim Tea Vendor.

Oh yeah, before I forget, FartsAnna is the favorite Indian journalist among Chowkies.

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tahmed32 #49

{In Afghanistan a number of western journalists were killed in action. How many pakistani - or al-jazeera or Arab journalists of which you approvingly quote - have been killed in Afghanistan trying to bring authentic news to their viewers?}

I think you are being a trifle harsh on Arab journalists. Allow me to remind you of the two intrepid reporters, allegedly Moroccans, who blew up in mysterious circumstances on 9th September 2001 shortly after the beginning of their interview with late Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud. It is said that the only question they were able to ask him was ``If you capture Kabul, what will you do with Osama bin Laden?`` Evidently a case of selfless sacrifice to the cause of authentic news reporting.

The US media is quite open and unbiased on domestic affairs. Each newspaper may support the democrats or republicans, but on the whole one gets both parties` views on things.

The US media on foreign affairs is quite a bit more biased than say the European media. This is probably due to the following reasons:

1) The American population usually doesn`t care much for international affairs. They have left that responsiblity to certain groups in the govt. and to certain think tanks. These think tanks and govt. officials can be influenced by pressure groups within the US, and thus be made to influence US foreign policy. The public then rallies behind the foreign policy, without asking too many questions, since they are not too interested in foreign affairs to begin with. This is despite the fact that the influencable think tanks, on many occassions, have carried out certain foreign policies (to satisfy lobbyists/businesses/other countries) which actually harmed the US population.

Once the whole US population has rallied behind a foreign policy, the media cannot go against it, even if it wants to. The media will be considered unpatriotic by the public. Due to this, the major advertisers on that media will withdraw their ads etc. And the newspaper/tv program will go out of business.

It is not a coincidence that people like Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Arundhati Roy, Ramsey Clark etc. do not get much, if any, face time on mainstream US media. Its because they ask a lot of questions which go against the US foreign policy. Similarly, it is not a coincidence that the US media hasn`t done many documentaries on the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Iraq by the US. Even though it does detailed documentaries on a whale killed outside the Alaskan sea coast. Similarly how many documentaries have been done on the Afghans killed in the latest bombings. Does anyone know the exact number? How many investigative reports have been carried out on the transfer of lethal technology to Iraq by the US during the Iran-Iraq war.

Bill Mahr of Politically Incorrect, accidently, made one comment that went against the current US foreign policy. It wasn`t even a critique, since Bill Mahr usually supports US foreign escapades. However, the public didn`t like the comment, and all his advertisers withdrew their ads (literally). So his show went under, and he is out of a job.

Imagine what would happen if the major US TV channels actually started reporting facts that went against the foreign policy that the US think tanks (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, The Enterprise Institute/Center people etc.) have been able to rally the US public around. They would go out of business for reporting the facts.

60 minutes did briefly touch on this, in one show. They showed that the US govt. leaked a relationship between one of the hijackers meeting an Iraqi rep in the Czech republic, thereby linking Iraq with Al-Qaeda. 60 minutes even got the US govt. rep to admit the above was a fabrication and never occured. But now over 2/3rd of the US population, according to the 60 minutes survey, believes that Iraq is linked with Al-Qaeda. If some TV channel started digging into this and tried to prove in detail (beyond a 5 minute 60 minutes story) that the US govt. is framing Iraq, it would lose its sponsors, because the US public does not want to hear anything against its President and his men at the moment.

Maybe ten years from now, the US public will be ready to hear the exact facts. At that time, the media may report objectively. But by then, many more innocents will have been killed by the US in Iraq.

Re: Omar R. Quraishi

For starters, the American media, both electronic and print, is biased. There is nothing earth shattering about this fact; it is fact of reality. American media is not in the business to give an objective analysis of the news and it should not be expected to be objective in its new coverage. The reason for this is simple. American has a provincial attitude towards the world and considers that the world revolves around America- including the sun!

American media caters to a select clientale and the American media is not interested in projecting the truth; it is interested in making money and it will report only that, which sells. News is a big business in the United States and it is about making money and not fairly portraying the plight of the down trodden.

As for FoxNews, I never listen to it, because it is just a rabid junkyard dog of the neo-conservative right in America. New York Times is a politically correct version of the FoxNews and is a mouth piece of the group known oxymoronically as the republican-democrats. The Washington Post is the voice of the establishment and will always support the political mainstream.

If you really, really, want to read about the political pluse of America, read The Capitol or The Hill; read Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy; read the Guardian and the Observer - two British newspapers - that are insightful and objective; read The International Herald Tribune and its selections of international press coverage.

A simple word of advice to you would be: read everything and listen to everything, but decide for yourself! If you do not like the product, do not buy the product, but do not blame the manufacturer for making it! America is a plural society and there is a pluarity of opionions there and you have to decide, which one makes the most sense. Remember, freedom of expression is not about telling the truth or about saying anything you want. Instead, freedom of expression is listening to what is being said and more importantly, tolerating what is being said and not blaming the town crier for the message being uttered!

Ciao

Urstruly #24, Romair #40

Scratch a Pakistani, find a conspiracy theorist.

First Qazi Urstruly changes the Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon, into a 747 - an aircraft more than thrice as heavy - and demands to be shown the wreckage of a fully fuelled aircraft travelling at a few hundred miles per hour after it hits a solid structure weighing tens of thousands of tons, before he will deign to deliver his verdict.

The seed thus planted germinates in Air Marshal Romair`s fertile if commonplace imagination.The man is off and running bringing up irrelevancies to show how difficult it was for all but the most skilful and experienced pilots to have carried out the 9/11 attacks..

The most obvious method would have been to use autopilot to get to the general vicinity.

As for locating the targets, the WTC towers weren`t exactly needles in the Manhattan haystack - or if they were, they were easily the biggest, tallest needles for miles around. At 450 metres high and 65 metres wide they towered over Lower Manhattan and would have been visible 10 miles away in good weather. They were tall enough that exact control over altitude would not have been required to hit them. It was also completely unnecessary to conform to an exact traffic pattern passing through gates at various altitudes etc. the way an airliner does when it lands at a commercial airport. Being hauled up by the FAA would have been the last thing on Mohammed Atta`s mind!

Similarly for the Pentagon attack: the Pentagon is not exactly the grain of sand that the Air Marshal makes it out to be. It used to be the largest office building in the world and may still be so. Each exterior side of the pentagon measures 300 metres or so; it is absolutely unmistakeable from the air. Because of building height restrictions in the DC area, there would have been no obstructions to complicate the approach from the west. The final approach route over essentially unbuilt-upArlington National Cemetery would have made things especially easy.

As for the supposed mastery shown by the pilot who turned into the South Tower, Romair is reading immense sophistication into pure happenstance. Similarly with the landing flare presumably executed - at 300 knots - by Flight 77 before it crashed into the Pentagon.

And finally, Romair might like to look up the intriguing case of the student pilot - a high school dropout - who crashed a stolen Cessna into the West Wing of the White House in 1994. He did it AT NIGHT, flying over the Mall and the Ellipse, avoiding the Washington Monument and probably using it as a beacon. He managed to kill only himself. The White House is of course a far smaller, less visible target than the Pentagon, and much less accessible from the air. ... All of which goes to show that flying an airliner into the Pentagon wasn`t really as complicated as Romair makes it out to be.

Ref omar_r_quraishi #43

[...hahah sdhillon: to the list of myths that you mentioned why dont you also add a couple more like cows are godly, and a monkey king jumped from sri lanka to india !]

The jump from Sri Lanka to India is slightly more likely than a journey on a flying horse from Arabia to Jerusalem or all the way to heaven.

How about that other myth that a book was dictated by an angel to an illiterate trader and that got magically transcribed with no errors and has been handed down for 1400 years untransmuted?

This business of 72 houries: does it mean that you also believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus?

#38 by arjun_m on January 10, 2003 9:44pm PT

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Everyone is biased...people only complain when the other person doesnt share their biases..
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Like I said most media sources have a left or right tilt. However overall they report fatcs. However sources like FOX news claim they are ``fair and balanced``. Now we all know they push a specific agenda.

I am surprised at their coverage on Iraq....One day they started the news with ``No Nukes Yet``. This goes way beyond a right tilt. This is ridiculous.



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Give people a little more credit..they arent sheep..like i said..if Limbaugh asked his audience to vote for Hillary, his listeners will probably turn him off...
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I can not give much credit to talk radio listeners. They are hardly open to opinions. They want to listen to the same things over and over again.

qureshi #43 you write ``where in the world did u get the impression that saddam hussain is my hero -- if anything, all that the heading suggests is that america is a bully -- read more carefully pal ``
It is crystal clear from your article that you think of Saddam Hussein as a hero, and now you are merely backing off from what you wrote above. Trouble is, you cant back off your written words. So let me help you read your own words more carefully, chum: The title of your article says it all: ``Standing up to a bully``. Who is standing up to the ``bully`` (as you choose to call the US)? Dont tell me it is Mother Teresa you had in mind. The very first para of the article makes it clear that it is Saddam Hussein you refer to. If I accept that Hussein is not your hero as you now claim, and since you have not (and can not) deny the fact that Saddam is a murdering son of a b!itch, then that renders your article to be a piece of nonsense. Since then the US will clearly do the Iraqis and the rest of the world a favor by getting rid of him. So what will it be: are you speaking from both sides of your mouth, or is your article a piece of nonsense?

PS: Let me also comment on your second para, where you berate berate western news sources like BBC and CNN: Pakistani journalism, including Dawn, can only hope to match these sources in terms of dedication and quality of reporting. BBC journalists have lost their lives trying to report the rebel side of the story from Chechnya. And indeed western journalists have a long tradition of putting themselves in harms way in order to bring authentic reports back to their readers or viewers, going all the way back to at least WWII. In Afghanistan a number of western journalists were killed in action. How many pakistani - or al-jazeera or Arab journalists of which you approvingly quote - have been killed in Afghanistan trying to bring authentic news to their viewers? Journalism in Pakistan and the Arab countries (including al-jazeera) can only hope to some day match western journalism - including BBC and CNN - in terms of professionalism, dedication and fairness.

sac -- good to see you here-- and more power to you -- americanexpress that news item u posted was FUNNY ! hahah sdhillon: to the list of myths that you mentioned why dont you also add a couple more like cows are godly, and a monkey king jumped from sri lanka to india ! hahah -- what goes around comes around my friend so dont complain -- and tahmed -- where in the world did u get the impression that saddam hussain is my hero -- if anything, all that the heading suggests is that america is a bully -- read more carefully pal

Romair #40

``Or those terrorists had received far more flying training than the experience on small planes they are said to have received in Florida. Some information is definitely being hidden in this area. ``

Others have said this too. It is speculated that consistent with the various trips they made to the region, the hijackers trained under professional fighter pilots of shall-we-say-unnamed-nationality at air bases in Afghanistan operated under auspices of shall-we-say-unnamed government and just like the airlift of from Kunduz of Pakistani personnel which the European press reported, this fact is also being covered up by the US to shield an unnamed unspecified-line ally.

If this speculation is true, finally all this lying by the US was to no purpose, since Bin Laden got away and the US and frontline ally are reduced to taking pot shots at each other.

Romair #41.

You are not alone in observing that one needs lot of training and experience before one can crash planes in low and high buildings like Towers and Pentagon. I heard someone say/write that ``true that they took flying lessions in USA, but they certainly got their training and practice somewhere else``. Don`t ask me where was the person pointing his finger to.

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