The Grasshopper

People who know me know I’m a big fan of the daily news. Every day, I wake up looking forward to reading The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The New York Times, and whatever free weekly rag I can get my hands on. I don’t get to read all of them every day, but I try to, and if you don’t believe me, come to Brighton sometime and take a look at the old newspapers lying all around my apartment. It looks like a bomb went off in a recycling center in here.

The reason I’m writing is because I feel that I have a couple of things that a lot of other people don’t seem to have these days: some free time, and a deeply-felt skepticism about the direction in which our elected officials are taking us. I’ve decided that I’m going to offer you, free of charge, my take on the day’s news, in the hopes that you might learn to share some of the same concerns about what’s happening to our country.

“Wait just a minute,” you say. “I don’t care about your take on the day’s news.” Well, that may be, but this is still a free country (although it's not clear how long that will last) and I have your e-mail address, so, you’re getting it, like it or not. All I ask is that you read and reflect upon what I’m writing to you, and take some time to explore the links I’ve included. In times like these, we can’t afford to be unaware of what the "leaders" of the United States (or our local elected officials, for that matter) are doing in our names.

We’ll start with the Obituaries in today’s Boston Globe. Do you know the one about the old guy who wakes up each morning, opens to the death notices, and looks for his name? If it’s not there, he makes breakfast. Well, I myself have opened to the obits a couple of times and been absolutely positive, based on the way I was feeling that particular morning, that my name HAD to be in there. Usually I had been up late the night before consuming prodigious quantities of adult beverages. But that’s not what I’m here to write about.

There’s a big obituary in today’s Globe (on page B8) for J. Randolph Ryan. ‘Ry,’ as he was known, is remembered as a “journalist, activist devoted to justice.” Here’s the link, if you want to read the whole thing:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/003/obituaries/J_Randolph_Ryan_61+.shtml

Here’s the part I found most interesting. ‘Ry’ wrote for the Globe in the 1980s, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1983. What was he remembered for?

“But it was in reporting and writing about Central America where Mr. Ryan first made his mark. 'He was really wrapped up in it,' [former editorial page editor Martin] Nolan recalled yesterday, 'and he was ahead of the game. It turned out he was right.'

William Goodfellow, director of the Center for International Policy in Washington (http://ciponline.org/), said yesterday that in the early years, 'Ry was almost alone among journalists writing for mainstream publications saying that what we were being told about the war in Nicaragua was just not true.'”

You have to read between the lines a little to get the whole truth of what’s being said, but it’s there. In the 1980s, when our government was telling us it was defending democracy in Central America by arming the Contras in Nicaragua and supporting the repressive Salvadoran government, there was this lone voice saying, “Hey, they aren’t giving this to us straight.” As the Globe editor, Martin Nolan, recalled this week – “It turned out he was right.” Goodfellow says he was “almost alone among journalists writing for mainstream publications” in his belief that Reagan/Bush I & Co. were up to no good in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras.

What’s amazing is that the same guys who were lying to the American people (and the mainstream reporters who, unlike Ryan, parroted White House propaganda in their newspapers’ pages) about what their government was up to in those days are still at it today!! Bush II has recycled a whole bunch of the people from his father’s days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in addition to Cheney and Powell. Let’s take a quick look (thanks to FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for this material):

• John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, covered up human rights abuses by the CIA-trained Battalion 316. He is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
• Elliott Abrams, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan, pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding evidence from Congress (i.e., lying) over his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush I pardoned him; Bush II appointed him to the National Security Council as director of its office for democracy, human rights and international operations.
• Otto Reich is the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the top post for Latin America. Reich was head of the now-defunct Office for Public Diplomacy (OPD), which the House Committee on Foreign Affairs censured for "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" (Washington Post,10/11/87).

For a truly eye-opening look at these appointments (and insight into how they might be viewed by people from outside the U.S. who wonder if we really care about things like human rights, freedom, democracy, etc.), visit:

http://www.fair.org/extra/0109/iran-contra.html

And if you had any doubt about the motivations of the Bush gang after reading that, there’s this headline from the front page of today’s New York Times: “Government Openness at Issue As Bush Holds On to Records.” The report, by Adam Clymer, states that “the Bush administration has put a much tighter lid than recent presidents on government proceedings and the public release of information, exhibiting a penchant for secrecy that has been striking to historians, legal experts and lawmakers of both parties.”

The whole article is here (you might have to register to access the story on-line, but it’s pretty painless, and then you’ll have full access):

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/03/politics/03SECR.html

Maybe, someday, someone will say that I was “ahead of the game” for stating that I think the Bush administration is not telling the truth about any number of their domestic and foreign policy initiatives. Believe me, I'm not the only one, but, as in the case of J. Randolph Ryan, there aren't may "mainstream" reporters casting doubt on the Bush agenda. For starters, there’s the planned war with Iraq, which has about as much to do with the illegal manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction as I do. If Bush wages war and occupies Iraq, the primary reason will be to secure control over the region's oil. Then there’s the new tax proposal, which has a lot more to do with tax relief for Bush’s wealthy friends than it does with stimulating the economy. And don’t even get me started on privatizing social security, or the real reason why Treasury Secretary O’Neill had to go.

And it’s not just the Bush administration I don’t trust. Take one look at the people running things up on Beacon Hill, and you realize we’ve really got a lot of work ahead of us. One of the great things about reading the different newspapers is the variety of opinions you can sample. The Boston Herald is the “conservative” counterweight to the Globe’s “liberal” style, and Herald columnist Howie Carr is about as conservative as they come. Say this for him, though, he has the state legislature’s number. Read today’s column by Carr for an understanding of how dysfunctional our state government is:

http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/carr01032003.htm

Here’s the opening line of the column - it's a gem: “Mitt Romney delivered a very nice inaugural speech yesterday, but you have to hope somebody told him Rule No. 1 of life at the State House: Nothing on the level.”

White House, State House, same deal: Nothing on the level.

There are journalists like J. Randolph Ryan still writing today, still questioning what the Pentagon and the White House spokespeople say, preferring to seek the truth instead of accepting the party line. You can find their work in a couple of different places, sites to which I'll refer you in the days and weeks to come. You might want to check them out now, or just bookmark them for later:

http://www.commondreams.org

http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

http://www.alternet.org/

If you're not interested in getting these e-mails from me, please let me know and I'll take your name off the list of recipients. If you want to forward this message to others, feel free. I'll be more than happy to add names that you recommend, as well.

I hope you will continue to read these messages, if only to get a different perspective on the day's news.

Respectfully,