Media – Page 16 – Prog Gold

Comment of the Day – A Consummation Devoutly To Be Wished

Published on November 11, 2007

In comments to Nick Cohen’s Observer column this morning:

conorfoley
November 11, 2007 2:37 AM

The day that we finally meet I am going to beat the shit out of you Nick.

Euston seems highly appropriate for the comeuppance of the beyond odious Observer hack Nick Cohen who’s long deserved a good slap. But who’s going to adminster it? Someone who’s actually been in a warzone, unlike Cohen, who merely sits on his ass and cheerleads while others do the dying.

It’s not some outraged Dave Spartalike doing the threatening – said Conor Foley is one of Cohen’s fellow Guardian/Observer columnists:

Conor Foley is a humanitarian aid worker. He has worked for a variety of human rights and humanitarian aid organizations, including Liberty, Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He currently lives and works in Brazil, and is a research fellow at the Human Rights Law Centre at the University of Nottingham.

I can’t imagine threatening other writers with violence is a usual thing for Foley, as angrily critical as he has been of Cohen in the past.

But is it really Foley, or a sockpuppet?

Granted this is the comments section to an online newspaper but it’s there in black and white; as the comments are moderated and commenters registered and it’s been up there 7 hours or so without being deleted, I think it’s reasonable to say, without seeing his IP, that Foley is who he says he is.

But it wasn’t just that one-liner; Foley follows up an hour later:

conorfoley

November 11, 2007 3:46 AM

Incidentally moderator I think that, in context, my above comment does not breach the talk policy (or at least no more than the original article).

I have lost several friends in Afghanistan, including Bettina Goislard whose anniversary is this week. She was shot dead at point-blank range while driving in a clearly marked, but unguarded, humanitarian vehicle. Several more of my friends and colleagues have died in similar circumstances, while others have been kidnapped.

I am also likely to return to Afghanistan in the near future and so the sentiments expressed here have a direct impact on my own health and safety.

Nick Cohen ‘feels strongly about things’ and expresses his views in ways that other people ‘might find extremely offensive or threatening’. He has, for example, criticised those involved in human rights and humanitarian work in ways that are factually inaccurate and harmful.

Since this particular article is on the threats of physical danger facing those working in conflict zones, I think that the views of one such person about its author are ‘on topic’ and make a relevant contribution to a ‘hearty debate’. Let me also, again, extend an invitation to Nick to discuss this topic with me directly here, something he has, so far, been rather reluctant to do.

Cohen’s quick enough to advocate violence as long it suits his political purpose and it’s kept at a safe physical and political distance from his comfy metropolitan life. I wonder, does he have the guts to even debate Foley online or in the pages of his own paper, let alone meet him in the flesh?

Well, I don’t wonder at all really. That’s just a rhetorical device. What I do know is that Cohen, like his fellow chickenhawks and Eustonites, lacks both courage and conviction and will bottle out rather than ever riisk his precious skin putting his so-called principles into practice.

Foley’s balls are out on the table, if I may be so indelicate. Where’re Cohen’s?

UPDATE

Foley’s original comment has been deleted :

conorfoley

November 11, 2007 2:37 AM

This comment and those referring to it removed by moderator.

I guess that’s Cohen’s response then. Like I said he would, he bottled it.

Foley has followed up again:

conorfoley

November 11, 2007 11:41 AM

Darkhorse: It is an emotional subject and my guess is that the moderator’s have recognised it as such.

I spent almost a year and a half in Afghanistan. Around 40 aid and reconstruction workers were killed while I was there and I had several narrow escapes, which probably left me with mild PTSD. I turned down a job in Iraq to go there and several of my former colleagues from Kosovo were killed in the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad. Everyone agrees that the major reason for the decline in security in Afghanistan was linked to the invasion of Iraq (diversion of troops and resources and propaganda boost for the Taliban) and that is one of the reasons I was so strongly opposed to it.

Since the invasion of Iraq Nick Cohen has written a string of extremely inflammatory articles on the issues of torture, human rights and humanitarian intervention. I have responded to some of them, but this piece just brings forth a howl of outrage.

More….

UPDATE: The entire thread seems to have disappeared or maybe it’s my crappy browser or connection, though if, as one commenter claims, Cohen moderates his own comment threads then he really did bottle it, diidn’t he?

Luckily I saved ithe whole exchange in a text file: If anyone wants it, email or drop a note in comments.

Wait…

Published on October 29, 2007

Did I really just hear a BBC correspondent describe the view, put forward by some Manhattan Institute warm body, that incidents like this, where a noose was sent to a Black school principal are unimportant and should be ignored, as objective?

(For those unfamiliar with it, the Manhattan Institute was best buds with Rudy Guliani during his mayorship of New York, not a guy known for his warm feelings towards the Black community there, or his sensitivity in racial relations.)

Shooting Yourself In The Foot

Published on October 22, 2007

Interesting events in Phoenix as a litigious sheriff unhappy with the way Phoenix New Times journalists covered him allegedly takes his revenge:

Michael Lacey, the executive editor, and Jim Larkin, chief executive, were arrested at their homes after they wrote a story that revealed that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, its reporters and even the names of the readers of its website had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor had been appointed to look into allegations that the newspaper had violated the law in publishing the home address of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s home address on its website more than three years ago.

The weekly and its leadership has been in a long running battle with Mr. Arpaio, after the weekly published a series of stories about his real estate dealings.

“They did not have a warrant, but they told me that I was being arrested for unlawful disclosure of grand jury information,” Mr. Larkin said by phone from his home early this morning, after he was released from jail. Mr. Lacey remained in jail early this morning. Captain Paul Chagolla, a spokesman for the sheriff did not return a call for comment.

Steve Suskin, legal counsel for Village Voice Media, said that the arrests on misdemeanor charges of the newspaper executives represent an escalation in the conflict between The Phoenix New Times and Sheriff Arpaio, who has received national attention for his reputation for running tough jails.

“It is an extraordinary sequence of events,” Mr. Suskin said. “The arrests were not totally unexpected, but they represent an act of revenge and a vindictive response on the part of an out of control sheriff.”

Here’s one of the articles Sheriff Joe Arpaio is so unhappy about:

You get elected to public office, say, sheriff.

You start scowling like John Wayne and jam the jails full. You put the cons in stripes and house them in surplus Army tents, where four guards oversee 1,800 inmates.

Your detention officers beat up prisoners, while feeding them food unfit for a dog. A paranoid public afraid of crime is grateful because it naively believes your abusive policies will scare people from committing that next robbery and shooting.

Who cares if this is all baloney?

You drum up a few death threats along the way, because that generates free publicity chronicling what a bad-ass you are.

Who cares if innocent people go to jail?

The voters love it. Even as your office is besieged by tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits stemming from beatings and deaths in your Mother of All Dungeons.

The dead guys were druggies anyway, your public relations machine claims. And, hey, that’s what the county’s insurance policy is for — settling claims of distraught survivors.

What matters most is that your image as “toughest sheriff in America” has made you into a valuable commodity.

And that image is worth a lot.

More…

If Arpaiao hadn’t had those media executives arrested and the NY Times hadn’t picked it up, I and many thousands of others nation and worldwide never would have read that and known of the terrible allegations against him.

Hubris begets nemesis. You’d think an officer of the law would know that. Silly sheriff.

Good Read of The Day

Published on October 21, 2007

Studs Terkel, interviewer extraordinaire, interviewed in today’s Independent:

“I’m known around the block as a writer and broadcaster,” Terkel tells me, “but also as that old guy who talks to himself. I never learnt to drive. Why should I have? The bus was there. So one day I’m on the corner alone, waiting for the 146. I’m talking to myself, finding the audience very appreciative. Then other people arrive; I talk to them too. This one couple ignore me completely. He’s wearing Gucci shoes and carrying The Wall Street Journal. She’s a looker. Neiman Marcus clothes. Vanity Fair under her arm. So I told them, ‘Tomorrow is Labor Day: the holiday to ‘ honour the unions.’ The guy gives me the kind of look Noël Coward might have given a bug on his sleeve. ‘We despise unions.’ I fix him with my glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and I ask, ‘How many hours do you work a day?’ He tells me eight. ‘How come you don’t work 18 hours a day, like your great-grandparents?’ He can’t answer that. ‘Because four men got hanged for you.’ I explain that I’m referring to the Haymarket Affair, the union dispute here in Chicago in May 1886. The bus is late. I have him pinned against the mailbox. Then I say, ‘How many days a week do you work?’ He says five.”

[…]

An unflinching socialist from boyhood, his marriage to Ida, a social worker of fiercely philanthropic character, did nothing to temper his idealism. His friendships with Billie Holiday and the black opera singer Paul Robeson, among others, meant that when Senator McCarthy began blacklisting supposed subversives, it was only a matter of time before Terkel’s career was derailed. Studs’ Place was pulled by NBC; his column cancelled by the Chicago Sun Times.

When a network director demanded he take a loyalty oath, it was his mother’s voice that rose up in him. “As a porker takes to mud, so I take to disputatiousness. I’m like an alcoholic when there’s booze around. I suggested, gently and politely, that he fuck off.”

Studs Terkel is a living treasure and I’m glad he’s still with us but it won’t be for that much longer. Where are the Studs Terkels of the future to come from? Answers on a postcard please…

It won’t be from today’s journalism schools, that’s for sure. Even the journalists themselves know that. Luckily there’s still some realjournalism going on.