mainstream media, NYT:
It’s in the leftmost sections of the nation’s conservative, dominant (so-called mainstream) and corporate media that you best discern where concentrated economic and political power set the outer parameters of permissible discourse.
(...) Is this all perhaps part of the answer to the great supposed mystery of “Why They Hate Us?” Dominant U.S. media’s powerful, opinion-shaping unwillingness and/or inability to acknowledge the victimization of people on the wrong side of our imperial guns is part of a broader devaluation of non-North American and non-white lives in U.S. culture. We are obsessed with the tragic murder of 32 innocent students at Virginia Tech but cannot bring ourselves to focus on routinely larger and daily civilian body counts in occupation-mangled Iraq.
(...) We offer hundreds of thousands of dollars for information about three U.S. soldiers ambushed south of Baghdad last May. We value the life of innocent civilians murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001 at $1.8 million. Meanwhile we give the comparatively tiny sums amounts of $500-$2500 to the surviving family members of innocent civilians we butcher in the name of freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan (Mitchell 2007; Engelhardt 2007).
(...) “Our” media has spent more energy mourning the death of a fallen U.S. horse (Barbaro) than it has on the death of untold thousands of children in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
(...) We killed 3 million Indochinese people during the 1960s and 1970s and spent the next three decades agonizing over what the Vietnam War did to us – the real victims.
(...) And who can forget the famous nationally televised comment of the “liberal” Bill Clinton administration’s Secretary of State Madeline Albright regarding the murder of half a million Iraqi children by U.S.-led economic sanctions. It’s a hard choice, she said, but added “we think he price is worth it” (Stahl 1996). The Madame Secretary did not comment on whether the parents of the deceased juveniles agreed with her curious imperial cost accounting.
(...) The U.S. GI deaths in Mesopotamia are terrible of course, but they reflect legitimate resistance efforts by an illegally occupied people who have suffered from the U.S. invasion on a scale that makes American “sacrifice” look minor indeed.

newspeak from the new york times:
Fatah accepts Israel’s existence and wants to negotiate with it over Palestinian statehood. It also accepts the authority of past agreements signed by the Palestinians, including agreements to stop terrorism. Hamas accepts none of these things, and sees no contradiction between its terrorist deeds and its demands that its governing officials be treated like those of any state. [presumes that it's "our" right to decide. would we agree to foreign intervention in american affairs b/c bush is high on the imperial imperative?]
(...) President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel have done everything they could think of to isolate Hamas and far less than they might have to help Fatah’s most important remaining leader, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. [is that so?]
(...) That should include a total freeze on settlement building and expansion, a prompt easing of the onerous, humiliating and economically strangulating blockades on Palestinian movements within the West Bank, and the swift release to Mr. Abbas’s office of all tax revenues rightfully belonging to the Palestinians but still in Israeli hands. [to Mr. Abbas, the choice of the Palestinian people?]
(...) Hamas’s future diplomatic treatment should depend strictly on its own behavior. If it is ever willing to stop engaging in terrorism and live up to the standards expected of law-abiding governments, there will be something for Israeli and American officials to discuss with it. The past few days offer little encouragement in that regard. [evidence of this terrorism?]

chavez and oil:
The Times went on to claim this action would undermine Venezuela's growth hinting Big Oil's threat to leave might get Chavez to back down enough to get them to stay. It never happened as this writer suggested April 12 in an article titled "Wall Street Journal and New York Times Attack journalism." The article made it clear oil exploration and production in Venezuela is so profitable that even with a smaller share of the profits US, European and other Big Oil investors wouldn't dream of leaving. Whine plenty, leave, not likely, and now we know they won't.
(...) Hugo Chavez, in fact, is a self-proclaimed social democrat charting his own independent course toward progressive "21st century socialism" along the lines Latin American expert James Petras calls the "pragmatic left" in contrast to the more "radical left" of Colombia's FARC guerrillas; elements of "teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas in Mexico;" many "small Marxist groups in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and elsewhere;" and Venezuela's "peasant and barrio movements," among others. Other Latin American leaders Petras calls "pragmatic" leftists include Bolivia's Evo Morales, Cuba's Castro and many "large electoral parties and major peasant and trade unions in Central and South America" including Mexico's PRD party, El Salvador's FMLN, Chile's Communist Party, "the majority in Peruvian (Ollanta) Humala's parliamentary party;" and others including "the great majority of left Latin American intellectuals."
(...) Hugo Chavez offers them a new choice having announced in March he intends creating a Bank of the South social democratic alternative to the repressive neoliberal Washington Consensus IMF-World Bank model. So far Bolivia and Argentina have agreed to be part of it with Chavez hoping other Latin countries will join as well by contributing 10% of their capital reserves for this enterprise he hopes will be operating by summer.
(...) Additional parts of Chavez's plan involve forging stronger ties to other oil importing nations like China to reduce Venezuela's dependency on a hostile US. He also announced April 29 the nation hopes to gradually sell its seven US-based Citgo refineries replacing them with a new Latin American-based network in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Dominica. It's part of his plan to provide the region a stable oil supply and 100% of the energy needs for Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) members and Haiti.
(...) Further, Journal writers take aim at PDVSA demeaning it as a state-run company claiming it has "little focus" because Chavez turned it into a "poverty-alleviation ministry." As a result, the Journal says it became inefficient and its production fell from 3.1 million barrels a day when Chavez first took office in 1999 to 2.4 million barrels a day now according to US government Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures that look to have been cooked to bring them down. They're disputable with differing ones coming from alternate sources including the 2006 CIA World Factbook listing Venezuela's daily production at slightly under 3.1 million daily barrels, around the same figure PDVSA reported then including extra-heavy crude from Orinoco belt production. In May, 2006, Venezuelan Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Raphael Ramirez indicated the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognized the nation's daily oil production at over 3 million daily barrels while the government reports it now at 3.3 million compared to 2.6 million or less claimed by international oil analysts and EIA deliberately understating oil output the way Washington and the West distort everything positive about Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.
(...) All it can say, with a heavy-handed dose of sour grapes, is that "Mixing oil and politics may not help Mr. Chavez in the long run" as he'll need "private companies' expertise to develop the heavy crude in the Orinoco region" without ever conceding he already has it and a long line of takers ready to step in if any now there foolishly leave. They won't, but don't expect to see that opinion reported anywhere in the Wall Street Journal as they'd then have to admit everything they wrote earlier was false and misleading. They don't have to. You just read it here.

nyt on israel and palestine:
Moyers’ analysis of the US media failure on Iraq was valuable, yet incomplete. He explained that to launch the attack on Iraq “high officials… needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.... our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.” Bob Simon of CBS explained to Moyers that the administration used marketing techniques to sell the war, “Just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it… Keep that drum beat going.” Media critic Norman Solomon told Moyers, “I think these [news] executives were terrified of being called soft on terrorism.” Moyers gave numerous examples of The New York Times passing on bogus intelligence on Iraq to the US public. Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review highlighted the Times central role in marketing the Iraq war, saying: “The New York Times…remainsimmensely influential. People in the TV world read it every morning... People in government-- of course read it, think tanks, and so on.”
(...) Moyers omitted a crucial reason for why the government’s case for war resonated with both the US media and public. It was based in widely held stereotypes about Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East, assumptions which are also essential to understanding US policy in Israel and Palestine. In his classic 1978 book “Orientalism”, Palestinian-American scholar Edward Sa’id asserted that the Western understanding of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East is a product of colonialism, and that Westerners view the East as inherently inferior and in need of redemption. The US case for war in Iraq rested on orientalist assumptions - that the Middle East was an undifferentiated region of Arabs and Muslims who, lacking any history or valid grievances, are possessed by an irrationally violent nature as well as hatred of the West, Israel, freedom and democracy. The region could be transformed through a combination of US military force and Western enlightenment. Playing on this racist view of Arabs and Muslims which is deeply rooted in the US psyche, the US government managed to convince most Americans, via a complicit media, of fantastic tales about links between Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime and Al Qaeda, stocks of horrific arms, a maniacal desire to use them against the US, and of the beneficial impact of “shock and awe.” This belief that irrational Arab and Muslim violence requires enlightened Western intervention and domination is also used to justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, underpins uncritical US support for Israel, and is central to US media coverage of Palestine and Israel.
(...) And in Israel, the other major outpost in “the war on terror,” racist ideology and politically tainted intelligence are also pushed by the government and credulously reported by US media outlets like The New York Times. For example, an April 11, 2007 Times news article by Isabel Kershner headlined unverifiable claims by Israel’s Shin Bet (the equivalent of our FBI) that it had thwarted a massive Hamas suicide bombing planned for Passover.[2] The article largely ignored Palestinian denials reported the same day in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily.[3] The Shin Bet claim seemed to merit skepticism in light of the Palestinian denials, and Hamas’ decision two years ago to halt large-scale attacks.
(...) Indeed, Hamas’ implication in a large-scale bombing plot would have come at a convenient moment for Israel. Following 16 months during which 27 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, the lowest total in more than six years, Israel is struggling to prevent the crumbling of the international boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and to fend off repeated peace overtures from the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. The Israeli government has been feeding the media stories saying that the calm is a ruse, that Hamas is using it to arm and plan attacks, and that Israel will therefore be forced to mount a large-scale invasion of Gaza soon. The Times has published at least four other articles echoing these Israeli government assertions since March 2007.[4]
(...) I received an email on April 27, 2007 from The New York Times’ Public Editor Byron Calame acknowledging that: “In the editing of the article late in the evening, the denials Haaretz had obtained from unnamed Palestinian and Hamas officials were deleted. While the vagueness of the sourcing made it less essential that those denials be kept in the story, I think the article would have been better with the denials included.”
(...) Of the 1085 Times news articles since December 1, 2004, 37% mentioned Palestinian “attack(s)”, 36% mentioned “terrorism”, 28% mentioned “terrorist(s)”, 21% mentioned Palestinian “violence”,[6] 18% mentioned “suicide bombing(s)”, 16% mentioned Palestinian “weapon(s)”, and 14% mentioned Palestinian “radicals”. In contrast to this strong Israeli narrative, only two words reflecting a Palestinian narrative appeared in a comparable percentage of Times’ news articles. Israeli “settlement(s)” were noted in 32% of articles,[7] and Israeli “occupation” was mentioned in 16% of articles. This imbalance is even more striking because the emphasis on Palestinian terrorism and violence corresponded with a two year and five month period during which Israelis killed 965 Palestinians, more than half civilians, while Palestinians killed 85 Israelis.[8] Nonetheless, Israeli “attacks(s)” are mentioned in 13% of Times articles, and Israeli “violence” in only 4%.
(...) Only very careful readers of Times news reporting would be able to locate, amidst the barrage on Palestinian terrorism, basic elements of the Palestinian experience - Israeli human rights abuses, Israeli attacks and violations of international law, Palestinian poverty, the Palestinian understanding that they are victims of Israeli discrimination and racism, and Israel’s denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees. In a startling display of bias, since December, 2004, 70 to 130 times as many Times news article mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” or Palestinian “attack(s)” as mentioned Israeli “discrimination”, “racism” or “apartheid”.[9] Thirty-five times as many articles mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” as mentioned Palestinian “poverty”,[10] though 70% of Palestinians are now living below the poverty line.[11]
(...) The same day, April 22, The Times ran a telling parallel news story by Jennifer Medina, “Settlers' Defiance Reflects Postwar Israeli Changes”, about an Israeli settler takeover of a Palestinian home in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood in Hebron’s old city. Rather than describing Hebron’s settlers, acknowledged by Israelis as extreme, uzi-toting settlers who frequently attack Palestinians, as “radicals” or “extremists”, the Times politely called them “the most uncompromising of the settlers”. And despite the settler takeover of a home in a Palestinian neighborhood, the Times subtly placed the burden of violence on Palestinians, noting, “there are fears of violence -- there have been some reports of young Palestinians throwing rocks at the settlers. And a white Star of David is spray-painted on the front door of a Palestinian family.” Of 1085 Times articles, 133 mentioned Palestinian “radical(s)”, while only four articles mentioned Israeli “radical(s).” Colonizing settlers are neither radical nor violent, but colonized Palestinians are.
(...) Growing Palestinian radicalization is a dangerous trend, but by minimizing Palestinians’ radicalizing experience of oppression and denial of rights, the Times reader is left to rely on the orientalist assumption that radicalism is a disease that springs naturally from Arab and Muslim minds and spreads.
(...) More broadly, the concepts of Israeli discrimination and racism against Palestinians, which are part of the daily language of many Palestinians including Bishara, were raised in only 0.4% and 0.5% of all Times news articles on Israel and Palestine since December 2004. The concept of Israeli apartheid, also a daily staple of Palestinian discourse, but summarily dismissed by the Times’ Ethan Bronner as “overstatement” and a “false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa”, was mentioned in only 0.3% of all Times news articles from Israel and Palestine. The Times has essentially refused Palestinians the opportunity to present their view that they are victims of discrimination and racism.
(...) Palestinians’ lived experiences - that they are under attack, being killed, impoverished, having their land taken, denied their rights, and the victims of a discriminatory system - are drowned out by the drumbeat of Palestinian terrorism, even when few Israelis are being killed. As with Iraq, this racist narrative of inherent Arab violence is being exploited to justify domination of one people by another. Lacking this analysis, Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War” represents only a first step towards exposing US media bias in covering the Middle East.

sail away wolfowitz:
At its core, the fight about whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank is a debate about Mr. Bush and his tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the bank, the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which have viewed themselves — at various moments since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — as being at war with the Bush White House and its agenda.
(...) Members of the bank’s board from around the world began comparing what they called the murky way in which the bank made some policy decisions to the secretive habits of the Bush administration.
(...) [but it's the NYT] ...much as he did many years ago as ambassador to Indonesia, where he immersed himself in the culture and took on a dictator, Suharto. His campaign against corruption was intellectually unassailable and quintessentially American, and he was certainly right as far as the facts were concerned, members of the bank’s staff and leadership say.