Guest blogged by Robert C. Koehler
INTRODUCTION {by Winter Patriot}: If you thought there were no brave and honest journalists left in America, you’ll be happy to know that you’re wrong. Bob Koehler is living proof of that.
We are honored to have Bob with us for a bit of live blogging, but we are also richly blessed in that he has given us some fascinating reading.
In true blogger style, he sent these with the most recent piece first, the oldest last. But he’ll probably forgive us if we walk you through them in chronological order. Our story starts here:
The Counter-Recruiters: All the charm of the draft — and then some
Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?
This flower-bedecked poster slogan from the ’60s will surely be haunting the Army’s “values stand-down” day on Friday, May 20, when the service branch’s 7,500 recruiters and their COs take the day off for a little ethics force-feeding.
The Army’s — the whole military’s — desperation is showing. None of the four branches is meeting recruitment goals as a brutal, unpopular war drags on, and the recruiters, who are all under heavy pressure to snare two warm bodies a month for this lost cause, are getting outed in the media for appallingly unethical and illegal practices.
These practices, according to the New York Times, CBS News and other sources, include advising potential (bottom of the barrel) enlistees about how to circumvent drug-screening tests and create fake high-school diplomas, how to pass the physical (one overweight young man was given laxatives and the advice, “Don’t tell your parents”), along with blatant threats and even, apparently, abduction.
Neighbors of Ever Jandres of Encino, Calif., recently wrote a letter to U.S. Rep. Howard Berman charging recruitment malfeasance and asking him to look into the 24-year-old learning-disabled epileptic’s mysterious disappearance, Mark Crispin Miller reported online at News from Underground. A spokesman for Berman confirmed that the congressman is “very concerned” about the matter.
Jandres, who is Salvadoran and has a borderline low IQ, was apparently “befriended” by a local Army recruiter, who invited him to come with him to Arizona for three days to observe basic training. Five days later, his distraught mother (who speaks no English) got a phone call from her son, who told her, hysterically, that he was on a military base in South Carolina. He was now in the Army, he said, and wasn’t allowed to stay on the phone longer than a minute. Family members’ and friends’ attempts to get any information from the Army have been fruitless.
We’re fighting a war that many of the most ardent supporters want no part of, personally – any more than does anyone else of sound mind and the least claim on a future – so the recruiters are battling rationality itself as they struggle to sell inner-city teenagers on the glory of serving in occupied Iraq and signing themselves over to an organization that will essentially own them, body and soul, for the duration of their hitch or longer. Small wonder the recruiters are forced to bend, break and occasionally shatter the rules to get anybody to sign up.
However much ethical restraint they’ll now be temporarily forced to incorporate into their basic spiel (no laxatives!), one thing’s for sure: They won’t begin telling prospective recruits the truth.
“We have to understand that one of the things that happens in war is, truth dies,” said Ray Parrish, a Chicago-based counselor for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who left a well-paying job with full benefits to work with GIs returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And he’s hearing the same expressions of disillusionment, anger and betrayal that he heard when he counseled Vietnam vets and battled the VA to get them their rights. He’s seeing the same shattered psyches, the same wrecked lives, the same post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The first vets over there are the ones having the worst time,” he told me recently. “During the invasion part of the war, there was very little thought put into pulling the trigger and a lot of innocent civilians were being killed. The ones who pulled the triggers are the ones who are having the car accidents now.”
Values stand-down or no values stand-down, the recruiters will not begin telling teenagers anytime soon about post-traumatic stress disorder; high vet suicide rates (among Vietnam vets, it has been estimated to be triple the number of names on The Wall); or today’s equivalent of Agent Orange, depleted uranium, which, when breathed in, can devastate health over the long term and, especially cruel to young couples, cause birth defects.
Supplying this information is the job of the counter-recruiters, and the fact that they’re out there is one of the most important stories of the war. The vets themselves are the counter-recruiters, telling the truth to high school students.
This is the way back from post-traumatic stress disorder – the way for shattered men and women to redeem themselves and rejoin the human race. “It’s part of the healing,” Parrish said. “That’s what the vets are doing – making sure the recruiters don’t sell at all.”
Suppose they gave a war and nobody came? This is what we’re witnessing, slowly, one wised-up teenager at a time.
We’ll come back to The Counter-Recruiters in a moment, but first please read one of Bob Koehler’s more recent columns:
The Spirit of Nazism: Supporters of American torture want us to cut them a little slack
When I was a kid and the worldwide horror at Nazi atrocities was fresh, I had no doubt that the only way the human race could climb from the pit they put us in was by letting the images of the concentration camps stamp themselves on our consciences forever, so that as individuals and as a nation what we stood for first was: Never Again.
Nazism, as I grasped it in my formative years, was a monster loose in the collective psyche, a live possibility of evil set loose by hatred and blind obedience (“we were just following orders”), which required a moral stand far, far in advance of the next reappearance of Der Fuhrer. Every instance of the dehumanization of one group of people or another had to be fervently opposed not because it was Nazism’s full flower — the boxcars, the gas chambers, the Final Solution, the 6 million dead — but because this is how it all starts. This is the precondition for holocaust.
Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois grew up in the same era that I did and learned the same post-World War II moral lessons, and his recent words on the floor of the Senate — the ones that set off such wailing and howling among the diminishing ranks of supporters of the Iraq war — reverberated with the shock and disbelief of a 10-year-old thumbing through a Life magazine photo spread on Auschwitz. His words were politically incautious; they were honest.
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control,” he said, referring to the torture and humiliation of detainees at Guantanamo, “you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings.”
The fury that ensued was rooted in a different take on the moral meaning of Nazism: that only its aggregate death toll matters. Because our kill count in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t approach the number of corpses Hitler or Stalin racked up, Durbin has no right comparing torturers in American uniforms with those in Nazi or Soviet uniforms.
And just like that, the spirit of Nazism vanishes as humanity’s warning signal and becomes instead a moral cover. As long as we keep our kill numbers sub-genocidal (only 100,000 or so), we can kick detainees to death for a good cause, bomb civilians, fire on journalists and storm hospitals. As long as our population of political prisoners held without charges in inhumane conditions — “chained to the floor, deprived of food and water,” as per the FBI report Durbin cited — is in the mere tens of thousands, our prison network can’t be called a gulag.
If Durbin’s comparison had truly been out of line, it wouldn’t have generated such hysteria. It would have been worth a pitying shrug, a roll of the eyeballs. But it hit a nerve precisely because it was so dead-on accurate. The horror of our little war on terror is that we’re behaving with the same lurid inhumanity that has, since the 1940s, been associated with Nazism.
Durbin was the courageous messenger bringing this news to the floor of the Senate. Republicans didn’t shoot the messenger, but their demands that he “apologize,” retract what we said and abase himself were the political equivalent of doing so.
I must confess I have almost as little patience with the Democrats’ making the same demand a few days later of Karl Rove, who at a GOP fund-raiser in Manhattan said liberals were wimps: “Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war. Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”
Ha ha, Karl. Good one. Democrats on the Defensive (a permanent subcommittee of the DNC) tried to match the decibel level of the GOP howls a few days earlier. They failed, of course — they always do — but managed in the process to remind their constituency of one of their most egregious betrayals: their role in Congress’ near-unanimous vote after 9/11 giving George Bush carte blanche to make war on the world.
Rove and Co. — including Bush in his Tuesday night speech at Fort Bragg, N.C. — are still trying to milk 9/11 for political gain, even as they evade the consequences of their reckless militarism and perpetuate the lie that the invasion of Iraq, planned well before 9/11, was a response to the hijackings.
I wish the Democrats, rather than trying to wring a political apology out of Rove, could have turned his words against him. He did belittle the values of many, if not most, of his countrymen, who following the terrorist attacks wanted not indiscriminate war against Islam but a compassionate re-evaluation of the use of force to achieve geopolitical ends. We ache for this all the more as we watch our military machine churn out more atrocities.
Two brutally honest columns, I thought. Some people thought different. As evidence, consider the following, which Mr. Koehler sent us just recently, and which, as far as we know, has not been previously published:
I’ve been wrestling for a while now with the extremely personal tone of some of my negative mail lately. It has always been my policy not to dismiss anyone’s point of view when he or she takes the trouble to write to me, which can leave me emotionally vulnerable to their words. Lawrence Ferlinghetti once said, “Keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” When I flub that dictum, it’s not in the direction of closing my mind but losing my brains.
Here follow some letters on another recent column, “The Counter-Recruiters,” which follows the letters. The letters I received in response to it, like those I got regarding “The Spirit of Nazism,” were stingingly personal and are part of what fueled “America, America.”
The first set of letters are an exchange with one guy, including my mild, let’s-put-this-on-civilized-terms response, which was a total bust:
===
1A. I served in the Army, and now my son (Proudly) is serving in the Army. The next time you see the enemy (if in fact, he is YOUR enemy- which I question). Remember that the only thing that stands between him and you, is people like my son, who is brave enough to do the job that needs to be done.
When my son asks me about people like you I remind him that COWARDS need protecting too. Because I can spot a coward very easily, that is part of what we learn in the service. And I have to remind myself cowards need protecting too.
You are not fooling anybody, least of all the real men of this world.
B.G.
1B. Thanks for writing. I realize we disagree. The next step is to disagree without name-calling. Whaddya think?
Bob Koehler
1C. You don’t realize that your the first guys to kick the USA and you would be the first run to run and hide. I have earned the right to call you names. You’re a coward, I can spot ’em a mile away. YOu know it too. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you alone, it will be our little secret – your a coward, thus, cowed by real men.
Just be thankful there are those that are not cowed.
===
2. Your desperation is showing…the people in the military don’t need to be lectured about the hardship of serving our country…we’ve done it…I spent 30 years in the Army and have two sons in now… Men and women will continue to serve in our military service so that you can continue to be the cringing coward you sound like. 🙂
Have a nice day
F.H.
COL (Retired)
US Army
===
3. Gee, I’ve missed hearing that old mindless “suppose they gave a war and nobody came” line. It certainly worked for the French in WW II, but only because people like my father, who fought and died in that war, believed that there are some things worth fighting for. I assume you are one of the hell-no-we-won’t-go generation, which is unfortunate since it would be nice if you could live long enough to see what disparaging our military will do to this country. The sacrifice young Americans are making to preserve our way of life by building democracies in places where life is devalued and denigrated could, with the help of people like you, become meaningless and even foolish. “Innocent civilians” died here one September 11, in case you’ve forgotten, and as far as I know, they weren’t killed by American soldiers. I wonder who will defend our country when our military crumbles. My guess is it won’t be you.
V.T.
With all that background, we’re in a fair position to appreciate Bob Koehler’s most recent column,
America, America: We’re losing each other, we’re shoving each other away
I don’t know who “Steve” is or whether he’s really 6-foot-5 and weighs 265 pounds, but, whatever else can be said about him, he has to be credited with clarifying how bad things can get when dialogue breaks down.
As we wage war abroad, we seem to be edging closer to waging it at home as well: Red vs. Blue. It’s kind of a game. Both sides play it and the media promote and indulge it – this mutual and, to some extent, willful misunderstanding of one another. It’s just a short hop from there to denial of humanity and the fervent wish to terminate the existence of an ideological nuisance.
“I’ve run into you in the past. The next time will be a memorable event. Why? Because extensive reconstructive surgery will still not make you recognizable to your family members!”
This was followed by an obscenity involving my mother, in extra large type, then signed with a first name and the intimidating body stats. That’s the entirety of the message.
The only indication of what might have set him off was on the subject line, which contained a reference to the column I wrote last week elucidating the moral context of Sen. Richard Durbin’s comparison of U.S. torture practices to Nazism, Soviet gulags and Pol Pot. Retrieving the letter from my inbox was the low point of a Fourth of July spent in extended soul-searching.
I was doing that because I’d already gotten a lot of disturbing mail on that column, which I was trying to make sense of. Indeed, one writer had concluded a lengthy letter with that very suggestion: “I hope on this the Fourth of July weekend, you can do some soul searching and understand why your column is so insulting to all who have come to call themselves Americans.”
Not all of the mail was critical. A great deal of it was supportive. But the common thread of the angry letters was that, by defending Durbin – by making the case that this country could go down a terrible path just as Germany did, and that the torture scandal may be an early warning signal – I was defiling the troops and trespassing on sacred ground. One writer said: “It was the most biased, hate America, leftist opinion I have ever read.”
Again with the America reference. After reading enough letters with the same tone, the same invocation of this exclusive, mythical “America” – the America of purple mountains majesty but not of slave markets, Jim Crow laws or several hundred years of genocide against the continent’s original inhabitants – I began getting the weird feeling that I was being expelled, excommunicated, from a church I had never belonged to.
Except, well, that’s not entirely true. I do belong to the mythical “Church of America,” by virtue of having grown up in it and been stamped indelibly by it. I also belong, of course, to the real America, sprawling, flawed, violent, multicultural. I’m dissatisfied with, yet fervently believe in, both myth and reality. The two of them together are a work in progress.
And this begins to get at the nature of the soul-searching that consumed my Fourth. As I read each damning letter, I could feel a tearing in my own breast. It’s not that I mind having my views challenged or wince at debate. Usually I relish it, but on this day I felt that the stakes were higher than I could cope with. We’re losing each other, we’re shoving each other away – we citizens of the two Americas – and no good can come of this.
I thought about my daughter, who recently got back from South Korea and said to me that three weeks in that far more homogenous culture gave her a whole new appreciation for her country: America the Diverse, the world’s Petri dish of racial and ethnic commingling. We’ve achieved, after years of struggle, a basic, street-level acceptance of superficial human differences that have bedeviled the human race, and kept it embroiled in preposterous conflict, for millennia beyond counting. That’s something to be proud of.
Something has kept this country together through the shouting match of our becoming, and I guess I have always taken that “something” for granted – this sense, I suppose, that I have a right to be here and say my say with full-throated passion, and so do you. Why do I doubt this all of a sudden?
Perhaps because I’ve just gotten a glimpse of what a civil war would be like: two halves separating, each claiming full ownership of the treasure of wholeness.
Bob Koehler will be here to respond to the best of your comments and questions early on Sunday. Please join us at 8AM Pacific time, 11AM Eastern. This should be very interesting.
Mr. Koehler,
I can only imagine what it must be like to wade through that hate mail. Americans just can’t handle the truth. Because the truth is unpleasant and forces one to accept that everything you’ve believed is a sham.
So consider this some NON hate mail. You are a true hero. Many will not be able to understand this. It’s not their fault (ok, well, some of them at least.) They’ve been sold a bill of goods. But that does not decrease the need for men like you who have a forum from speaking out–just the opposite.
I say Bravo to you.
–Jim C.
Bob, you’re living the paradox of the Great American Writer: you
must be sensitive enough to see what’s going on, and tough
enough to endire the reaction.
Bless you, Bob. You are more important to more people than you
can possibly know. When this dark time has passed, we can all
be proud of what we did to help, and you sir can be very, very
proud.
God bless Bob Koeler.
I was pleased to see your column, Spirit of Nazism, because it expressed a perspective similar to what I have been hoping a national columnist would say and which I have tried to express to a few people in my own emails. First of all I’m tired of people demanding apologies. As you said, Durbin did not need to apologize for what he sees as the truth, and neither did Carl Rove. Those demanding apologies presume that the argument that offended them is untrue, but use the demand for an apology to hide from the responsibility to challenge and prove the argument wrong. If the argument is so wrong, they should not be afraid or unable to make persuasive (to those still with an open mind) counter arguments. Anybody who makes a charge of Nazism (or any other "…ism") should not be questioned for merely having brought up the word or the parallel, but rather for whether they have made a credible and accurate charge. If we abhor Nazism, for example, so much, and we want it to never happen again, then we must be ever vigilant. We must not take things for granted, as you said in your last column. We must not take for granted that we are so pure in this country, so insulated by our previous huistory, as not to be capable of Nazism. If we are on the lookout, we must be making comparisons and making the test all the time of whether our behavior resembles that of what we supposedly abhor. Let the validity of the comparison be judged on its merits, but let the vigilence and the comparison itself not be questioned. It is our duty to compare and judge. The judicial system provides an analogy. It is up to the jurry to reach a judgement; it is up to the prosecutor to bring the charge and try to prove the case. We are all the perpetual jury for democracy.
I think that there is more evidence than the prison torture to make true patriots worry. The very fact that this administration is in power (i.e. election irregularities), the serious questions over the conduct of the administration prior to and on 9/11, and prior to and during the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the actions of this administration domestically all provide legitimate evidence with which to draw parallels. The gullibility of the American public itself towards this administration and the way it ascended to power is another worrisome parallel. Thom Hartmann has made a very interesting factual comparison which is worth reading (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm).
Please continue with your profound and brave insight and your eloquent exposure of the truth. Never apologize or regret for having taken your readers symbolically by the lapels and shaken them. Unfortunately, some of us need to be shaken to wake up. For those who do not wake up, you will have no regres for having tried.
In response to comments 1-4, I want to express humility and gratitude for such support. The key is to transcend the sense of isolation and, as Kathy Kelly, the great peace activist, says, "catch courage from one another." I just looked at the Thomas Hartman piece that Dave (comment 4) linked to; it’s chillingly excellent — a review of the early days of Hitler, pointing to the parallels with George W. Bush. Creepy, to say the least. The times in America are scarier than they’ve ever been in my lifetime. The organizing principles of fascism have moved from the margins of American society to the very center, and patriotic Americans — the ones who understand they are citizens of the whole world — have to figure out where the line is that we will not allow them to cross.
So it’s a little after 10 a.m. Chicago time and I’m live and online and looking forward to some kick-ass dialogue!
Mr. Koehler-
One of the most truly disconcerting things for me in my recent awakening to the disappearing American democracy is the loss of voices like yours in the American mainstream media. I grew up in the Vietnam era and came of age in the Watergate era. Journalists were American heroes and we took for granted that we would hear the truth from them. Now, even those who remain on the scene and who were the big voices in those bygone years seem muted or bought out. Could the Bob Woodward of today, who seems to walk such a careful line of "neutrality" still write the pieces that broke the Watergate case open if he were suddenly transported back to that time? I know that times and the corporate media have changed but have journalists also changed this dramatically or are they just being muted, like you, by their corporate masters?
Bob-
You are a hero to many of us for your honest voice amongst the chatter, claptrap and cowed blather of the majority of the MSM today. I hate to put you out on a limb but do you give any credence to the suggestions that the governments of the US or Great Britain could have tacitly condoned or even participated in the 9-11 or recent London transport system terrorist attacks.
Good Morning, Bob, and welcome to The BRAD BLOG. "Humility and gratitude" for "support"?? Right back at-cha, sir! Nowadays it’s a rare journalist who publishes "controversial" "opinions" about counter-recruiting and [ahem] torture … not to mention crooked [ahem] "elections" … and Depleted Uranium! … and the rest of us — guys like myself who have no credentials or sources, who are not journalists by any stretch — just regular folks who want to alert others to certain [ahem] "risks" inherent in our country’s current "direction" — we couldn’t ask for a better friend. Thanks again for your "kick-ass" column!
Dear Steve (comment 7) —
You ask some big, profound and complicated questions. Have journalists changed? What happened to the literal Bob Woodward (muckraker extraordinaire now turned cautiously "neutral")? How come the media that played such an important role in exposing the crimes of the Nixon presidency in the ’70s are such lapdogs to G. Bush??? Etc.
I think the answer is that the role of the major media has always been to serve power and what’s stunning are the exceptions. By the end of the ’60s a huge, though temporary (??) transformation of American society had occurred, combined with a growing awareness that the Vietnam war was neither winnable nor good for business. The center tipped and the media tipped with it, resulting in increasingly critical-to-scathing coverage of the war and, when Watergate came along, of the Nixon administration itself. Nixon was shellshocked with "why me?" syndrome, protesting that he was no worse than the guys who’d preceded him. That may or may not be true, but he got caught in an irony of history. The media shift against him allowed the Woodwards and Bernsteins and Seymour Hershes (among many others) to have outlets for their work.
Today there remain as many great journalists … or potentially great … as ever, I’m positive. But work that really takes off the gloves … work that is nakedly principled … is about as welcome in the mainstream as an outbreak of head lice at your local elementary school.
We’re back in normal times of a mostly silent and passive press… well, normal times on steroids. As we lurch toward fascism, the media are as tepid as the Democrats.
Since I haven’t seen any comments from Winter Patriot on this thread, I’ll have to assume he’s not here- (perhaps getting some well-deserved sleep or trying to actually have a life). In any case, I will be so bold as to briefly assume his job as moderator in order to thank you, Mr. Koehler, for being the honest voice and one of the few keepers of the flame for the flickering fourth estate that you seem to have become. I certainly also want to thank you for having taken time out of your busy schedule to be here with us today and to contribute your thought provoking words to the Blogathon. I’m sure that everyone will agree that your presence honors the pages of this blog whenever your name and "voice" appear here, whether live or otherwise.
re #10 see #8 LOL @ synchronicity!
Oops, spoke too soon. Hi Winter Patriot! Good to see you here and I’ll defer to your excellence in making the Blogathon move along in such an extraordinary and professional manner so far! Thanks to you as well as to Mr. Koehler for being true American Patriots.
Our late demented friend richard CLAIMED he was no worse than any others, but he WAS a lot worse than his immediate predecessors, for example — he and his war criminal pal henry were responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths, and even more refugees, not to mention "disappearances" and "death squads" — don’t get me started! But then again the george administration likes to defend its most heinous policies behind the wall marked "not as bad as saddam" or "not as bad as stalin" or "not as bad as hitler" … so maybe all this is relevant after all … and maybe bob woodward’s past as an intelligence officer is relevant too — how long can it be before somebody high in the "defense" department decides that this idiot george has to go the way of the madman richard?
Sorry about that, Bob! You git me goin’, man!
Thanks, WP!
On to Carol and comment no. 7 — do I give any credence to the suggestions/rumors of Bush-Blair complicity in 9/11 or the recent London bombings? Well … sort of. A cursory review of the evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, raises plenty of questions. The first thing cops ask at the scene of a crime is: Who gains? The Bush crowd gained as much from 9/11 as Hitler gained from the Reichstag fire; combine that with the chilling Project for a New American Century’s seminal report called "Rebuilding America’s Defenses," which said with remarkable prescience that none of its ideas could come to pass unless we had another Pearl Harbor. Boom, a year later the twin towers went down and the world’s most famous C-student this side of Dan Quayle suddenly had carte blanche for world conquest.
However, I have no real traction on this story. I fear it the way almost every other journalist does. To begin to pursue it would consume and probably destroy your career. It’s one of the appalling uncertainties on the horizon of my awareness. I read about it but understand the gravity of beginning to make public accusations. For a responsible journalist, this can only be done after deep and thorough research.
One of these days I will have more time freed up for bigger investigative projects. God knows somebody has to take this on.
Re WP’s comment 13 and the crimes of Richard Nixon. Yeah, I agree, he was Scumbag No. 1 among American presidents until the current one. But he was still within the fine tradition of most of the rest of them. They all cozied up to right-wing monsters abroad and sanctioned covert and overt undermining of democratic movements and the removal or assassination of inconvenient left-wing populists. Nixon’s excesses in this regard weren’t what brought him down. He got far worse press for using profanity.
ROCK ON Bob Koehler [emphasis mine]:
My point exactly! This is why we need irresponsible bloggers who are willing to sit down for their country and tell it like it is!! even if they don’t know how to do deep and thorough research — even if they don’t know how to spell deep and thorough research [;-)]
Bob- what a great answer to my question! It epitomizes where so many of us stand – suspicious and, in some instances certain, of the evils that "lurk under the bed" of the America we thought we knew yet, not quite able to fully voice our doubts for fear of shattering the minimal true dialogue that still exists between "red and blue" in this country. We all have to live our lives and try to get along in our daily interactions but when is the desire to do so superceded by the greater demand to voice what we believe to be true: that, like those hijacked jets on 9/11 our beloved country has taken an alarming wrong turn and horrible things could happen if we don’t do something about it.
Hi Bob! First I want to thank you for standing up for the truth and for publishing such "unpopular" articles. You are a True American Patriot in our eyes.
My question is this: Have any other journalists contacted you to say they agree with you or are you the "Lone Ranger" so far?
Kira- I am sooo happy to see you on this guest blog thread. I/we have missed you!
Thanks Steve!
After a full year with my nose pressed up against my computer moniter – trying to find out just what’s happened to my country and trying to find out what I as 1 person can do to stop the one-party corporatist takeover – my brain is almost mush!!
I’ll be taking a few days off here and there so I can keep my sanity!
I hope I didn’t miss Bob — is he still live blogging with us?
Hi Bob, I so appreciate your columns, thank you.
In regards to your answer #14, someone does have to take this on. Is there truly any investigative reporting done anymore in America? I’m surprised Sy Hersch or Ron Suskind have not done any reporting on 2004 or 9/11. I once read that when asked about reporting on fraud in 2004 Mr. Hersch said "the story was just too big."
To WP, Carol and Kira (comments 16, 17, 18). This is fun and challenging. Thanks for all the great questions and feedback.
Regarding WP and the "irresponsible" bloggers who constantly challenge the inertia-bound mainstream, hallelujah and keep on keeping on. To the extent that I am a mainstreamer I am caught up in the inertia and caution of "what will the editor tolerate?" I can’t not play this game. Until I can find a handle on the 9/11 story I have to dance around it and maybe hint darkly at things that make me suspicious. But I’m moving toward this story. I straddle two worlds, half-MSMer and half loose cannon and pissed-off pacifist.
Regarding Kira’s question of whether I’m a lone ranger or do other journalists contact me and say they agree. Yes, some do. More and more. Dave Astor, who writes for Editor and Publisher, the much read industry trade journal, has done so. My bosses at the syndicate where I work have been extremely supportive not just on principle but because they agree with me and feel I’m taking on issues vital to our democracy. And I do here from editors across the country applauding one column or another. The fact that some editors run my controversial columns indicates respect for the point of view I represent. That’s enormously gratifying.
LAY IT ON THIN, bloggers! We all know that BOB KOEHLER wouldn’t even have been invited to the blogathon if DON WYCLIFF hadn’t turned us down!
just kidding, of course!
Alison — isn’t that just crazy? "The story was just too BIG" ??? Once upon a time journalists were scrambling to get the BIG story — the bigger the better.
It’s a lot easier when you simply "catapult the propaganda."
To Alsion (comment 22) … if Sy Hersch said 9/11 was just too big, that really gets at the limits of conventional "first draft of history" journalism. We do skim the surface. We have to long-range perspective. The crimes and possible crimes of the Bush administration are pushing us mercilessly to grow and become bigger, deeper, more probing writers than we ever dreamed possible. We’re being pushed to investigate deeper and deeper into the foundations of the nation.
Bob – thank you so much for taking your time to be here live-blogging today. You mean so much to us and we are so grateful to be in your presence.
One last question regarding the news about the London bombings — CNN reported yesterday that Musab al-Zarqawi was (possibly?) responsible. Do you know where that idea originated? Where the "rumor" started?
Bob! Thank you thank you for your words of truth – we crave them and appreciate them so much!!
Do you see any possibility that the growing alternative media will put enough pressure on the corporate owned media that they will be forced to start reporting truth and facts in a more "balanced" way?
To all — I can’t believe the time’s almost up. This is a great way to communicate. It’s my belief that citizenship itself is growing in meaning, as we midwife a different kind of nation and a 21st century that isn’t a dark continuation of the 20th. I both fear and relish how much will be asked of us in the coming months and years.
re #22 and #25 : It used to be that stories got rejected because they were just too small! … but nothing is too small now!
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FLASH RELEASE!!
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Teenaged Girl
Loses Lip Gloss
…And Cries!!
Video Online!!
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MEDIA CIRCUS
DEVELOPING NOW!!
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… or maybe I’m just too jaded!
Thanks for live blogging today Bob.
Heeheehee!! OMG, WP. I’m glad I wasn’t sipping my coffee when I read your post #30! Too funny — but wait! It’s really TRUE!!!
Jen – excellent question #28.
And thank you WP, Steve, Kira & everyone else here today.
To Jen (comment 28) — Yes! I’m an eternal optimist, but even so I think the forces of history and even evolution are push and pressing against the mainstream. If it weren’t for the alternative press, so, so many stories would simply not exist. They’d be vapor. I personally read the alternative press as much as the NYT or the mainstream, if not more, so that I can keep current with what’s really happening. It won’t be fast or easy but the influence of the alternative is growing and it’s scaring a lot of people who defend the status quo. First they ignored us, then they mocked us, then they fought us, then we won — Gandhi.
Whoops, time to go. Thanks to all of you.
Thanks Bob and all for participating…sorry I got here too late…I’m only through Comment #13 or so…
Thanks Bob for an example of "integrity"!
BlogOn!
Thanks very much to Bob Koehler. It’s been a pleasure blogging with you — and you’re more than welcome to hang around as long as you want … or even come back! anytime!!
Bob-
Thank you for doing so much to give us hope that there is at least the ghost of the MSM still left out there and, of course, thank you for gracing us with your presence during the Blogathon. We are all lucky to have you as a friend to the Brad Blog!
Bob,
Sorry I wasn’t able to participate in real time. I hope you get a chance to read the comments (e.g. mine) posted after your sign-off time. And, I hope you get the gist of my message: Thanks for being one of Brad’s "Angels" during the Blog-a-thon. I trust that you will put 2+2 together and identify me with a few previous emails under another moniker. Again, I thank you for your gracious response to the issue that I raised in those emails.
Best wishes in your future work.
aka VG
Wow, this was great-I am so happy Mr. Koehler was involved with this important event- at first I was going to say I’m sorry I missed it, but maybe it is even better to read it now in full.
Even though I had followed the very painful ups and downs of the Election Fraud, from before the election; (I naively turned on MSNBC once, shortly after the election, sure the story was going to break, and honestly saw Ann Coulter – still talking about J.K. looking French! 😥 true story).
I was reinspired by your/Robert Koehler’s Silent Scream of Numbers.
BTW Robert Parry from Consortium news seems to have a lot of good back ground on the decline of the Mainstream Media’s reliablility, as well as the history of BushINc. Iran Contra, and Sun Myung Moon etc. which of course were linked to some of the SMEAR attacks on Michael Moore and J.Kerry.
I was thinking-and others have alluded to this as well; how much the BushInc. functions like a cult. They are obsessed with keeping everyone on message-much like thought control. There is a lot of – closeness-even overt affection (G/G? :rolleyes:) within the inner sanctum, and they use a great deal of intimidation and fear to control the group. When someone disagrees or defies them (like Paul O’Neill and many others) at first attempts are made to bring them back into the fold, and then they are ostracised. If they break free, and speak out, they are smeared and punished.
Quote:
"Followers of a cult unquestioningly give their power away to their leader’s version of reality….“Staying on message” is the typical communication style within a cult. The cult leader plays with people’s fears so as to gain their trust and control them, which is a process that is not based on love but on power over others." http://www.awakeninthedream.com/bushcult.html
We are living in very strange and scary times. I am glad we have some true heros (including Andy-sorry for your loss- to all who knew him) to look to for guidiance and a reality check.
Hi Jacalyn! Sorry you missed the live-blog. I agree with your post. Yes, this is the scariest cult I’ve seen yet. How many millions of people need de-programming now? Man-oh-man.
I just wrote something on another thread that is (I think) appropriate to mention here. I keep trying to point people to when the hypnotizing really began in a big way and it’s all due to a very powerful psychological tool, NLP.
Here’s the Link to my comment.