Jim Taylor’s Weblog

Sunday July 19, 2009

Telling us truths we’d rather not hear

By Jim Taylor

Secret hit squads
        Now the latest revelation – Dick Cheney ran a secret hit squad out of the White House, intended to track down and eliminate suspected Al Queda leaders anywhere in the world.
        Investigative reporter Seymour Hersch broke the story back in March, speaking to an audience at the University of Minnesota.
        “Congress has no oversight,” he said at the time. “It’s an executive assassination ring essentially… Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving.”
        Hersch’s story was immediately denied, of course.
        But President Obama’s new CIA director, Leon Panetta, confirmed the squad’s existence before Congress on June 23 – the day after he ordered it terminated.
        This week, both the New York Times and the British Guardian described a program hidden from Congress, intended as a death squad.
        Admittedly, the two papers and Hersch diverge on details – who did it, how much they did, where – but in essence, the muckraker was right; the denials were false.

Journalistic credibility
        As you probably know, I rate Bush and Cheney somewhat lower on ethics than the Hell’s Angels. So I won’t waste words jousting at ruined windmills.
        But these recurring issues raise for me the issue of journalistic credibility.
        When journalists like Seymour Hersch make charges, they’re typically dismissed as malicious and unfounded rumours. If CNN and Fox cover the story at all, they ridicule the messenger rather than investigate the truth of the message.
        And the same thing happens again the next time. And the next time…
        Of course, we should be wary of wild accusations. In today’s Internet world, anyone can say anything. I’ve been on the receiving end of accusations from people who can find a conspiracy under every bureaucrat.
        But we should not discount the voices of those who have a history of telling us truths we would rather not hear.
        Even if they are, at the time, a solitary voice crying in the wilderness.
        People my age will recall that two stubborn reporters at the Washington Post – Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – pulled the covers off Richard Nixon’s Watergate cover-up.

Reliable sources
        There are precious few Woodwards and Bernsteins around any more. Squeezed between shrinking revenues and greed for corporate profits, most news media now simply regurgitate handouts from officialdom. If an authority denies torture, that’s good enough. Full stop. End of story.
        But there are a few writers and reporters who have a record of getting it right.
        Seymour Hersch is one of those. Sometimes he puts two and two together and gets five – but that’s at least as valid a conclusion as those who deny that two and two equals anything but zero.
        Similarly, Robert Fisk writes about Middle East issues for the British newspaper The Independent. He knows the area; he knows the people; he discerns undercurrents that others miss.
        George Monbiot writes for the Guardian. Where Fisk reports facts, Monbiot explores trends. He’s often so far ahead of the pack that he might as well be running a different race.
        Monbiot describes himself as a leftist. The others usually claim they’re neutral. But one thing is certain — none of them are apologists for the status quo.
        There are other writers. I can’t name them — indeed, I shouldn’t name them. Only you can decide which writers and commentators you will believe. Just remember that the important thing is not how well they write. Or who they write for. Or whether their views correspond with yours.
        The only important thing is how often the passing of time proves them right.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn



Once again, thanks to those of you who sent notes of support for our family during our daughter’s encounter with the H1N1 “swine flu” virus. And special thanks to those who, in real life, fed our cat, watered our plants, and mowed our lawn while Joan and I were otherwise occupied.

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About My Paraphrases

Occasionally, I get frustrated by the Bible. Not usually by the message, which is timeless, but by the language and metaphor. Contemporary translations update the language, but not the metaphor, so the text still expects us to respond to images of deserts and tents, camels and droughts, kings and concubines. What we’ve learned since the Bible was written — about psychology and evolution, about quantum physics and astronomy, computers and fossil fuels – is simply left out.
        At such times, I start paraphrasing. I don’t pretend that these paraphrases rely on new translations of original texts. They are, rather, my way of writing what I think the original writers might have said IF they lived today. Sometimes I stick close to the traditional versification; sometimes I take liberties.
        My paraphrase of Paul’s letter to the Romans attempts to put Paul’s sometimes convoluted words — and argument — into a contemporary setting. If Paul were writing today, to the Christian church, I’m not sure he’d worry as much about the failure of the Jews to follow Christ as about the failure of Christians to follow Christ, so I have rephrased in those terms. I suspect he would also make use of quotations from the Gospels — which of course didn’t exist when he wrote his letters — rather than using quotations from the only scriptures he had available, which we call the Old Testament.
        About 200 people have requested the paraphrase of Romans, as an electronic file.
        I now have two new paraphrases available, for Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes sticks pretty much to the biblical flow of verses – though with, I hope, some sense of humour. Job cuts 42 chapters down to about three pages. I found the speeches in Job interminable; the only way I could make sense of the various characters’ verbal meanderings was to turn them into television sound-bites.
        I’m making these available the same way as Romans – on the honor system. You send me an e-mail and request the file you want. I’ll send it. If you like it, and want to keep it, you send me a cheque for $5 by snail mail. If you don’t like it, simply erase it from your hard disk and send nothing.

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