ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Doubting Thomas

Good morning from Santa Barbara. California. A friend forwarded this from your last issue, and I noted the use of the word "despicable" in regard to a Mr. Thomas Friedman, about whom I know little or nothing. (I've never met him and couldn't place him when I read the forward.) Anyway, the sentence was this: "Dissenting opinion" is provided by the despicable Thomas Friedman of the New York Times." I write to ask if you could please tell me why the man is despicable? I don't understand. Many thanks.

Bill Hackett, Santa Barbara

GP replies: I didn't write the line in question, since I didn't edit ETS! last issue; so, perhaps, someone else will want to chime in later. I wouldn't use the word myself, but there are plenty of reasons to dislike Friedman and his writing. Thomas Friedman is the New York Times' star "foreign policy" columnist; he has won several Pulitzers, mostly in the service of providing endless justifications and apologias for what conservative pundits now like to call American Empire. Friedman has been particularly vicious in attacking and personally slurring opponents of international economic institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization, and particularly disingenuous in singing the fulsome benefits of neoliberalism for the billions of poor people such policies have victimized. But he's also aggressively and consistently defended US military and economic interventions, often on behalf of dictators, thugs, and thieves, all over the world. And--at least according to ETS! columnist Alexander Cockburn--he's also an arrogant, self-aggrandizing jerk in person, except to people in power, to whom he's forever ingratiating. I wouldn't know about that. But that's the start of a list.

Shamelessely Biased

I found your April 10, 2002, issue to be completely one-sided towards Palestine. There are two sides to the issue. Having trusted your coverage of other conflicts up until this point I can see you are only interested in slanting the news in what you perceive the PC fashion to be. I am reminded of a time, not very long ago, when the "Left" in this country was very supportive of the Chinese Communists and their policies towards the invasion of Tibet. The Left totally bought the lies of the Chinese that Tibet was an oppressive state that needed to be "liberated" by worker ideology. Later on Tibet became trendy and this previous attitude was forgotten. Young people who are quick at this time to hop on the anti-Israeli bandwagon might find themselves in the future rethinking their slogans. The Mid-East is a much more complex issue than Tibet ever was, and the Left was very wrong about not supporting the Tibet people. For that matter, why aren't you covering the tragic state of affairs in Tibet? Because the Tibetans took the nonviolent approach, are definitely not blowing up innocent civilians, therefore they don't get any press at all!

Eileen Weintraub, Seattle

G.P. replies: Eileen, of course our coverage in that issue was one-sided, and since you're familiar with our paper, you should know why--it's not because we're reflexively "PC." It was because a) the biggest recipient of US foreign aid, in a part of the world where the United States was already threatening military attack, had launched an unprecedented attack against the civilian population of what should, by any and every global standard, be a foreign country; b) the media accounts of that offensive were (and remain) dramatically different (and less critical of Israel's actions) in the United States than in any other country in the world, including Israel; and c) we happened to have no fewer than three volunteers for our newspaper who were inadvertently on the scene and who were, along with all other eyewitnesses, providing accounts dramatically at odds with what most Americans, and most people in Seattle, understood to be happening.

Meanwhile, if ETS! reported--as endless US media outlets do--solely on a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, would you call the report "one-sided" because it lacked an account of the suffering of other Palestinians? Of course not. And in this case, the Israeli attacks are being carried out not by isolated individuals, not just by a movement of religious fanatics (though one is certainly involved), but by one of the most powerful governments and military juggernauts in the world, aided and abetted by the most powerful, namely, ours. Those attacks went far, far beyond any and every standard humanity holds for conduct against an enemy's civilian population during war. Is the Mid-East a complex issue? Absolutely. But war crimes are not. If by "one-sided" you mean to suggest that it's not fair that ETS! didn't print any sort of material trying to justify Israel's atrocities last month, it was because there was no justification. None. Ever.

Wake Up, Morning Edition!

First of all, I want to thank you for being there and for your tireless work in printing things other news sources refuse to tell us about. I am a local middle-aged citizen who is sick and tired of the press' concern over stoopid matters and it's refusal to give up on the propaganda they all know they are trying to force feed us.

A letter I sent to NPR will most likely not "wake" anyone up there, as all of the mainstream press are asleep. I did not used to agree with this, but I am beginning to think Eldridge Cleaver was right about one thing: the only way to make people sit up and listen is to "Burn, Baby, burn!" Interesting that they are beginning to get worried because of the downturn of viewership and readers. They do not seem to know (or don't want to face) that the reason this is, is because intelligent people find the real news in the alternative presses and on the Net--if we know where to look. Hopefully this trend will continue until the propaganda mills gasp their last breath--and before the government realizes that the only freedoms left in this country are with the alternative press and on the Internet. I shudder to think what they will try to do when they realize where the real power is growing!

Here is the letter I wrote to NPR:

Dear NPR:

While I will say that you have a far more balanced view of news than the commercial media, I think you all are missing the mark about Karen Hughes' leaving in order to take care of her 15 year old son. The "story" seems to be that somehow there is something else afoot besides family values. Female co-anchors and editorialists all over the country are all a-twitter because it is so nice to see a woman make this sort of choice and maybe family values is really why Ms. Hughes is leaving.

I call Ms. Hughes one of the biggest hypocrites in this country. Too bad she could care less about the rest of the children in America whose mothers have to work outside the home. Mothers who have never seen their baby's first steps, heard their first words, or walked them to their first day of school. Those of us who ring up your purchases, offer you more coffee, or type the letters of some CEO can be seen weeping in a bathroom stall knowing what we are missing--and what our children are also missing as well. Why are you not talking about these things?

Maybe in Yuppie Land a woman has the choice to be home with her children or not--but out here in the real world, this is not a choice for most of us. Millions of us still have to live with the weariness, the sadness and the problems of raising children while holding down a low-paying job. We are not doing this for our "fulfillment" or to make payments on the family vacation house. We are doing it because we have to feed, house, and clothe our families and because most American men (if they are in our lives) are working for peanuts and not making enough to support a family alone--if they are able to financially help at all.

Mr. Bush and people like Ms. Hughes make policies and support big businesses' low wages and high CEO incomes (read Enron buddies here) while they tout a world where mid and low income women would have to choose a life of crime if they don't work outside of the home. Check out Mr. Bush's plans (Ms. Hughes' dear friend and the person whose sentences she finishes) as they support programs that pay low-income women $1.00 an hour on workfare while their big business buddies rake in the bucks gotten in return on slave labor.

Pu-leeze, I have nothing but disgust for Ms. Hughes' concern for her family! She was well paid to be a part of a system that wants to force other parents to spend vast amounts of time away from their children merely trying to support them--while her "baby" is too good for it. AAAAWWWW, how loving of her. Isn't it nice that her boy gets his mama while 50,000,000 American children have no parent to come home to? This is the same sort of logic as making endless wars that her and her friend's children (poor babies) will never see because they will be in ivy league schools getting that diploma that the rest of America's children will never be able to afford. Oh but no, hey--they can just send ours out there to do their dirty work, because aren't our children merely ignorant, neglected collateral damage anyway? How many of their offspring are facing an endless time in Afghanistan and other places fighting "terrorism"? Why is this not a story worth telling?

Sorry if I sound bitter, but I am disgusted to think that the so-called "story" seems to be that Ms. Hughes is leaving because of political pressure.

Very sincerely,

Catherine L. Sullivan, Seattle

We Get This A Lot

Hi. I was reading some articles and have always wanted to ask the following question. There are many countries and many different types of governments in their countries. I have traveled the world and never seen a country I like better. If there was one I like better or if I did not like the one I was in I would probably move. That is what most people do when they are totally unhappy.

My question is why do some people want to totally change a country's way of life rather than accept the norms of the country they live in? Would the changes you suggest make America a place that I did not like and others like me would not like? Would this be fair to us?

Your friend,

Sam Baldwin, Tennessee, USA

The changes I'd like to see are, I think, changes you'd like, and changes that would make this country a better place. But more importantly, for me, they'd make the world a better place, too. This country has been protected by a big moat for a long time, but as you saw last September, that doesn't work as well as it used to, and what's in the rest of the world's interest is more than ever in your and my interest, too. The folks in DC? The world could fall apart, our country could fall apart, and they'd be in a secure, undisclosed location, telling all of us to kill each other and then making plans to get the survivors to go into debt to buy their products when rebuilding. Personally, I'd rather have freedom, democracy, self-determination, and so on. For everyone, not just the people I grew up with.