With the exception of Miles O'Brien's segment on Opioid Treatment, yesterday's Newshour was a continuous attack on Trump and his administration. This was unabashedly led by Judy Woodruff who fed the pack all the leads they needed to maintain the attack.
The Newshour gave the mayor of San Juan a lot of time for her clearly political diatribe against relief efforts in Puerto Rico. the woman has no clue as to the logistics of a disaster like the one in Puerto Rico and is evidently unwilling to listen to the Democratic Party affiliated governor of the territory or other territorial officials who do not share her passion for attacking the relief and reconstruction work. It would be interesting to see her phone logs.
Additionally, the Newshour gave a lot of time to Maduro the emerging tyrant in Venzuela by enabling a propaganda barrage at an energy conference in Moscow.
There was a time when the Newshour was the gold standard for US TV journalism. That time is long gone.
Without Lehrer's guiding hand the Newshour has become an instrument of neocon and left wing propaganda. Mark Shields will be on the show on Friday. Watch him to see what the Newshour is about now.
Does this program receive public funding, and if so, should it? pl
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/episode/pbs-newshour-full-episode-oct-4-2017/
Many of the same foundations that donate to PBS also were recently leaked as donors to Antifa – this includes the Ford and Kellogg foundations and, of course, a Soros foundation.
I went to school with some of the Fords and they lived in my hometown. One of them turned the original Henry Ford mansion into a Hari Krishna commune.
The Newshour was no shining light when Jim Lehrer was at the helm. In 2002 it was pro-Iraq invasion all the way. I haven’t made a donation to either NPR or PBS since then.
Maduro isn’t anything to worry much about. Chavez, who had genuine mass support did very little to groom a successor. No one could share the spotlight. By all appearances, what support Maduro enjoys is more due to how the poor will fare when the neoliberals push their way back in and create another free market paradise. Aside from that, he seems singularly hapless and bumbling, responding to the usual American pressure with harmless ranting.
I don’t know if it is less “objective” or if we are all just so polarized. I watch it because, right or left, it is the ONLY program that practices long-form journalism on a nightly basis. They still pack more info in than anyone else and even their “fluff” is so much more serious and completely reported than the cables or the networks.
Colonel,
Even though Newshour is on every night here, I agree with your post except for the use of the term “left wing”. No way. They are neo-liberal/neo-conservative establishmentarians. They are the middle as defined by corporate sponsors and their donors; the top 10%. For example, they studiously avoid mentioning that the opioid epidemic, increased maternal death rate and lower life expectancy are due to the bottom 90% being tossed aside without healthcare and good paying jobs that can support families.
VV
They have a week long series on opioid addiction this week. pl
Oh wel that proves it now doesn’t it?
outthere
I think the Venezuelans should be left alone to starve under their tyrant. pl
Walker
I was on the Newshour a lot in 2002 – 2004 as a well paid military and ME consultant. Do you number me among the warmongers in re Iraq? pl
Laura
they are no longer a “long form journalist” group. They are an anti-Republican Democratic Party propaganda group. You like the content” That is fine but don’t tell me it is objective. pl
if it makes you feel any better to anyone younger that 30 or so PBS is fairly irrelevant.
the only reason i ever use PBS in any way is a safe link to all of bin ladens fatwahs,(as in noone would click on http://www.al-qaeda.jihad or what ever, but anyone would click on pbs.com)
Colonel,
Yes, they also had a segment on American women dying after childbirth.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/american-women-dying-childbirth/
It blames hospitals for not having a set of protocols and standards in place for rare emergencies. Not a privatized “for profit” medical system that is leaving rural America behind and is loath to spend money that will cut manager bonuses and shareholder value. The USA has the highest maternal death rate among developed countries.
paul
congratulations! You come here to laugh at the old people? pl
VV
You are right. I am adding neocon propaganda. pl
Dear Colonel,
Its been years since I felt PBS (or the mainstream media in general) were worth my time as an information source. I tend to look at drudge or counterpunch or zero hedge or the intercept or alex jones to see what is of burning interest in the world of news at the moment, and then search for and watch clips on the topic on youtube. When I listen to NPR in a rental car by default I find myself switching to sailor talk about their ancestry and what kind of an idiot they take me for, which raises my blood pressure. And then I change to a music station.
90% of time the BBC is okay or even enjoyable, exceptions being Ukraine and Syria and how glorious neoliberal economics is.
Estimates put the number of venezuelan refugees in the northern part of Brazil between 30k and 100k people. They came here to escape Maduro`s regime and/or because they were trying to escape hunger.
The problem is that that part of Brazil is isolated (jungle), among our weakest economy, has low population and the venezuelans are a mixed bunch. We find there from judges to indigenous people that do not even speak spanish, portuguese, english or even the indian languages that are used in Brazil.
In other words, it is a train wreck.
An USA intervention on this case could actually help Venezuela a lot and I doubt that it would have to be much more than a military and civilian leadership decapitation.
PBS an arm of the Democrat party?
Since forever.
Just like the rest of the media.
pl
Watching this I’m astonished to how close German state TV is to PBS Newshour regarding style and content.
Regarding the German state TV I’ld refer to it as publicly paid hasbara. It’s because of news like when Israel shot dead a Palestianian activist trying to cross into Israeli occupied Golan from Syria, 1st German state TV news has shown a video from the funeral of that activist claiming that to be an anti Assad protest due to te killings by the Assad regime. And that was while poeple able to read arabic could clearly read the name of the activist written on the coffin in the very same internet video shown on 1st German TV. There don’t care to correct such “mistakes” and when confronted they prefer to simply block people asking questions about their falsehoods. In Germany these publicly financed hasbara channels get billions of Euro of public money. Their official justification for living from public money is that they are a “lighthouse of truth” in the darkness of “unreliable information” from private media and the internet.
As Germans regarding media imported almost anything from the U.S. I wouldn’t wonder if the situation in the USA would be not so much different.
the US gov has propagandized itself and our broader society for many years – usually with some transcendent rationale of internal improvement via good works. the distinction of the PBS News Hour was its assertion of principled objectivity – novel from a gov channel, accomplished… and none too long-lived. be patient, it will be a target captured by its ideological opposites. prepare for News Hour becoming Alt Reality News… even if it takes far longer than our pres’ attention span allows. on the other hand, the audience will shrink to nil. don’t fret, that’s entertainment.
“the troops will be home by Christmas!”
every year.
I agree with you. My dad also couldn’t stand the New hour from way back. And he was basically a more or less liberal democrat when it didn’t involve too mush hypocrisy or political correctness.
I have been watching PBS News hour for thirty years.MacNeil Lerher report was slightly left but centrist,fair and honest and good journalism.Over the last couple of years they have become obsessed with race and gender.Simply being politically correct doesn’t account for their far left agitation.
“Neocon AND left wing propaganda” That’s a wide range of opinions to propagandize for.
Where’s the info about Ford and Kellogs fundingAntifa?
It is difficult to be objective in this divided time. My husband and I use to watch the News Hour when the 3 Colonels were on, you were our favorite. We gave up TV years ago mainly because the news is no longer news and we hate commercials. We do listen to the BBC.
mathiasalexander
There is a common thread between those who have a left wong agenda and those who favor an aggressive foreign po;icy. pl
It is indeed very useful to listen/watch Borg Broadcasting Central, you get straight to the bone of the “official” propaganda without all the fluff and silliness in which it has to be wrapped on CNN and als for American consumption.
Colonel Lang,
I remember your appearances vividly. You were the only sane person they talked to.
When you stopped appearing, I stopped watching.
Regards,
David
If not News Hour what? Fox? I don’t have cable (probably a good thing) so I have the option of watching the 3 major, or use to be major, networks or PBS. PBS might be somewhat left of center but usually they have two opinions when presenting an issue. You think Mark Shields is left of center, and he is, but he is always presented with someone from the conservative side to have his say. I do watch the BBC when it is on PBS which I like as to its European coverage. No media is perfect but the News Hour is probably better than most US television news.
Citizen Journalists Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson go deep undercover at the March for Racial Justice to spill the truth behind fully funded liberal protesters.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ke8b75/the-opposition-with-jordan-klepper-paid-protestors-give-the-performance-of-a-lifetime
Alves,
Although my underlying motivation of my viewpoint might be distinct from that of our host, I agree completely with his prescription. Let Venezuela sort its problems out by themselves.
(I am unsure as to how much is due to outside meddling versus internal mismanagement, by which I mean, I am unsure. The major media narrative, to me, sounds like created for a five year old, and both sides in any conflict have reason to exaggerate or lie. Thus, let them sort it out themselves without US interference, not to mention blood and sending even more treasure to China – you don’t think the US would actually raise taxes (!!!!) to pay for your proposed military action, do you?
On the other hand, look at the disaster in the US oil patch state economies thanks for oil dropping from hundred bucks to fifty. What would one call the massive investment in fracking which has yet to actually make a profit with the zombie kept alive by 0% interest. Fortunately, we are a rich enough country now to mismanage our economy massively, and not go belly up (unless China pulls the plug on our debt).
Its called the Dutch disease, and its not a surprise the Venezuelans caught it. The Norwegians caught it in the 1970s, were not bailed out, learned a lesson, and have had no problem with the recent price drop.
Vietnam Vet – I think that’s dead on the money. If you add to that the fact that those of the 90% who are white are told that that’s some sort of thought-crime then pass me a pitchfork and I’ll come along with you. Though it’s always a puzzle to me when I listen to the BBC – I suppose that’s the English equivalent of the service you’re discussing – that those who reproach us for such a crime are in the main prosperous whites themselves.
I do, however, have a problem with your definition. I do not think it captures the essence. You write that they are “neo-liberal/neo-conservative establishmentarians. They are the middle as defined by corporate sponsors and their donors; the top 10%.”
That’s Prog you’re talking about. Their own special place in the spectrum but straight Prog. Listen to them talk. You’ll never hear them put a PC foot wrong as they peddle their own particular brand of crony capitalism.
It’s a big club, Prog club. There are Bernie ones, Clinton ones, Marxist ones, neo-Liberal ones and Libertarian ones. Some of them say quite sensible things, in my perhaps naive view. Bernie was pretty good on the income gap, for example. But essence of prog is dirigiste, pro-immigration and anti Little House on the Prairie and by their fruits we may know them all.
Judy Woodruff has been showing her true colors for some time. When the Iran Nuclear Deal was approved, she hosted a panel of neocons stacked against it. During the 2016 primary, she interviewed Bernie Saunders twice. In both interviews she interrogated him as though he were a threat to the Republic. When HRC was her guest, she was polite and deferential. When Trump announced the Afghanistan “surge” her ONLY guest was Gen. Keane. CrowdStrike’s Dmitri Aplperovitch has been on the program several times to bang the drum of Russian interference in the election without any opposing viewpoints.
German news reporting, as I found it, used to seem quite balanced and professional. There were some unfortunate snags sometimes. On the German radio transmissions to Eastern Europe, at least in the past, there was at times confusion because the Croatian speakers, for example, would give the German supervisors scripts in German of what they were proposing to say, but would broadcast something different in Croatian when they were on the air. I gathered that what was broadcast wasn’t quite as bland as what was in the scripts.
Such contretemps aside, I used to listen to Deutsche Welle a lot before the cuts and found what they put out often more informative and comprehensive than the BBC, or at least the BBC post Iraq.
In more recent times German TV, prime time too, allowed good coverage of authoritative and convincing criticism of the generally accepted Khan Shaykhun story. That would never have appeared on the BBC. Maybe because the German cronies are hurting from the Russian sanctions there is, from the little I’ve seen, much more room allowed on German TV for those criticising what’s going wrong in the Ukraine as well. As with the quarrel between Saudi and Qatar, when crooks fall out you can sometimes find truth in the cracks. Or maybe the Germans, who do like to get the job done properly whatever they’re doing, still believe news is there to be reported rather than suppressed.
When I recollect how the BBC and other big news outlets remained silent about significant military operations in the Ukraine, and how little they say about what’s actually happening on the ground in Syria, I wonder if we sometimes worry too much about balance or spin when we listen to Western news outlets. It’s omission that’s the main problem. Never mind how they twist the facts, if they’d only report the bloody facts somehow.
With apologies to Woodrow Wilson, who once said that the reason academic politics were so bitter was that the stakes are so small, the reason DC politics have become so bitter in recent years is that there’s no space between the parties in support of the neoliberal political-economic agenda. Which is is essentially agreeing with what Vietnam Vet said above.
I Disagree, but perhaps merely Quibbling.
As a registered Green, I qualify as “Leftist” here, though mostly we label ourselves “Progressives”. I assure you, most of us strongly object to aggressive foreign policy. It was your strong objections to the US invasion of Iraq which drew me here; and I’m not the only Lefty here for that reason.
I see multiple threads which link “Liberals” (Lefty pejorative for Clinton Democrats) and military adventurism, and the differences matter:
1. Pro-Israeli tendencies.
A. Most US Jews are Democrats, therefore, blablabla
B. Democratic party gets too much of it’s money from Zionist sources (GOP gets more $, but lower % of total Party$, though Trump is an exception)
C. “Everybody Knows” that Israel is our strongest Ally; many Democrats focus more on Domestic policy, and go along with the FP consensus they perceive.
2. Neo-Liberal Imperialists (“IMF Democrats”)
A. see Neo-Liberal Economic & Social policies as the Best Way, and are willing to use US Military power to make things better for everybody.
B. Democrats get too much money from coastal “elites” who benefit nicely from “New World Order”
C. Liberal Social Policies (recognition & Rights for every micro-Group) should be encouraged (or enforced) around the world (Democrats take Pussy Riot over Putin)
3. (Old) Democrats are afraid of being labeled as Chickens, so they’ve turned into Chicken Hawks. This has been happening since the GOP hollered about Truman “Losing” China. I think that was the primary reason that Democrats took us into Vietnam.
These tendencies are strong among Centrist Democrats, NOT the “left wing”.
Ravenn,
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/why-are-mainstream-charities-funding-the-anti-trump-resistance/
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/26/us/ford-and-reuther-kin-revive-old-detroit-mansion-for-sect.html
The Venezuela mess is self-inflicted.
Four or five elections, they voted for “free” stuff.
This is what “free” looks like.
Walker,
I rather think that MacNeill was the keel to that show back in the day, perhaps keeping Lehrer on task in being a journalist. After MacNeill’s departure, I think the rot began to set in in earnest. Just my personal opinion, of course.
I don’t think anyone under 30 even watches the news. It may come back to haunt them.
English Outsider,
All of the above. And VV, although it is quite true, as Col. Lang observes below, that the Newshour is running a series on the opioid crisis this week (safely past the presidential election so as not to get people to “noticing” the things that you rightly associate with this crisis), given their internal agreement with the neo-liberal/neo-conservative axis of evil, I suspect that this series will somehow neglect to draw the syllogism, and thus fail to connect the dots concerning the roots of this crisis. In fact, I think that you can probably take that to the bank, sadly. The great neo-liberal/neo-conservative power nexus is very skillful with such misdirection, particularly in coordination with an information operation aimed at the pervasive disempowerment of the citizenry. That’s how they keep things going their way, after all.
Col.,
To my mind, the common thread between them being a deep-seated authoritarian streak. And this authoritarianism is not merely proscriptive, making actions or thoughts illegal or harshly disparaged, but simultaneously it is prescriptive, making clear what actions and (particularly) what thoughts are permissible,the ignoring of which puts one at extreme peril. Videthe plight of Mr. Giraldi, or the push against the BDS movement.
PBS had decent content in the early 90’s when McNeill and Lehrer were in charge. Once July Woodruff returned from being CNN’d the content went from some debate and some content to poll ratings. Night after night of what your neighbor thinks. Whether they know which direction Russia or not.
I know I have posted this before. Repeat rant. Should they receive public money. I would do away with the tax deduction for advertising, then I would tax big, because it has been terrible for the People. Then see what is left.
I recall you, and no, I don’t. But you were one of the very few.
What the News Hour with Jim Lehrer used to typically do was gather a group of national security “experts” and discuss, with relish, how an invasion of Iraq would play out militarily. The issue of whether an invasion would be legal or a good idea virtually never came up.
I do recall when you were present your granite refusal to enthusiastically join in with the groupthink.
I remember Lehrer, on the very few occasions that they had someone from an antiwar group on, look like he couldn’t quite grasp what was being said. “What? You mean you don’t think a war is a good idea?”. Total befuddlement.
The News Hour helped cause the war, along with the rest of the press.
Something that’s rarely ever mentioned by the news media is the fact that the survey company Press Ganey deserves much of the blame for the opioid addiction problem in this country. They, along with the corrupt hospital regulatory agency Joint Commission, lobbied hard to have patient satisfaction factored into Medicare reimbursement. And some of their most important survey questions ask about pain management. It asks whether or not the doctor prescribed enough pain meds to relief your pain, and whether or not the nurse gave you your pain meds in a timely fashion. These questions may seem rather harmless, and some may even see this as a win for patient advocacy, but it’s really not on either account. Doctors on the frontlines, as well as nurses on the frontlines, including myself, have been warning for years that such survey questions will help fuel an opioid epidemic in this country. Press Ganey balked at this, including Joint Commission and Medicare. But, hey, this should surprise no one. After all, all three of them are in a revolving door together, getting rich off of Uncle Sam.
So as Press Ganey goes from being a mere million dollar company to a monstrous billion dollar company, think of all the massive amounts of money they have made by helping to get millions of Americans addicted to narcotics. If I personally had any kind of power in Washington, I’d push hard to have Press Ganey handover a sizable portion of their profits selling surveys to hospitals and put it to use treating opioid addiction across this country!
Walker
I like Lehrer but you are right. He was out of his depth. They got me more or less by accident on someone’s recommendation. I resisted at first but once embarked with the other two guys it was like a drug. I knew Iraq well. A neocon takeover took place at the Newshour in 2004 and generally throughout USG connected broadcasting. When that was completed I was out. pl
I had a sense you were not long for that world. You were definitely not in synch.
Colonel, with due respect the US/ Western MSM is almost totally state’ propaganda hour, with no exception across different media platforms, it’s just a waste of time to even complain any more, I can’t see how this can be changed, and given back to people without a serious massive fight with Borg.
The Newshour, just like the rest of TV news and most of the print media, only tout establishment views. That’s where the gravy train is at. None of them wants to be contrarian since it will directly impact their personal pocketbook. There’s no honor or integrity anymore as it doesn’t pay to have principles other than personal satisfaction and a clean conscience.
Do you find Obama or Hillary denouncing Harvey Weinstein?
This why SST is so important!!
Treading carefully where even angels might have a rough time, might I suggest that post 2016 America seems to be full of “left wingers” claiming indignantly that they’re nothing to do with that awful Clinton mob. I’ve noticed them om the Colonel’s site too, from time to time.
And indeed it would be grossly unfair to suggest that all who sing “Kumbaya” so fervently are simultaneously possessed of an intense desire to bomb more brown people. It’s just that that’s what so many of them always seem to end up doing.
I never said that it was not self-inflicted.
However, it is also a fact that a small group of people can keep their hold on power if they control the State, and that is what happened there when they blocked the recall vote and came up with a new constitution that makes a mockery of democracy.
Far from me to propose the USA make a large military intervention or even put troops on the ground. That is not what I meant when I said that it should be a decapitation of the civilian and military leadership.
Maduro`s government is not popular, otherwise there would be no refugees in Brazil and Colombia when there is no civil war.
Alves
The decapitation bullshit is in the movies where George Clooney can look good. pl
Alves,
So, assassination then? Send in the hit squad? Not to be rude or anything, but I think you need to back off of that idea.
English outsider–The enthusiastic liberal warmongers you are talking about are mostly Clintonites.
There is a weird phenomenon I have noticed. I only have anecdotal evidence. Anyway, last year I heard a liberal who was talking about how wonderful Hillary was and here is the ironic part– she said she first started daydreaming of a Hillary Presidency while marching against upcoming Iraq invasion back in early 2003.
Clinton, of course, favored the war, so this person who thought the Iraq War was a total disaster also thought Hillary was wonderful in part because she was so qualified. I think there are a fair number of people on the left who admire a fictitious Hillary who only exists in ther heads. I have heard other people who opposed the Iraq War praise Clinton for her foreign policy experience. They claim to hate getting into unnecessary wars, but love Clinton. It makes no logical sense, but I think there are a lot of people like this.
On the other hand, there are also Democrats who are just straight out chickenhawks. They are much more likely to be on the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party..
On the German radio transmissions to Eastern Europe, at least in the past, there was at times confusion because the Croatian speakers, for example, would give the German supervisors scripts in German of what they were proposing to say, but would broadcast something different in Croatian when they were on the air.
English Outsider, could you specify supervisor? What was the position of that “supervisor”, his/her job title, function? Are you suggesting you were present while this happened in the respective international broadcast section? Or did a Croatian journalist/author/speaker working for the DW tell you so?
I am familiar with the Deutsche Welle. And the legal framework of the DW and more generally German media laws. Worked for DW for a while. Thus, your story triggered my curiosity.
English Outsider
“German news reporting, as I found it, used to seem quite balanced and professional.”
I can assure you, German state TV is not balanced and the less influential private stations in Germany are neither. I follow the most influential 1st German state TV ARD closely, very closely, especially their Tagesschau news. They pretend to be objective, set up a straight face and feed the people with very one sided information – ommitting crucial other information – when they are not engaged in complete lying.
You say:
“In more recent times German TV, prime time too, allowed good coverage of authoritative and convincing criticism of the generally accepted Khan Shaykhun story.”
I didn’t notice that report or don’t know what you mean. It doesn’t sound like Tagesschau, quite the opposite. Do you have link?
The most influential ARD-Tagesschau is very reliable regarding soccer match and weather reports, somewhat a trustable he-said-she-said source when it comes to less important reporting but a total disgrace when it comes to high stakes geopolitical reporting. Before the US Presidential elections in the USA, eg, coverage on Tagesschau was something close to 99% promotion of HRC and negative of DJT.
And just check recent Tagesschau news on Syria. Wednesday: Tagesschau reported that highly respected UN concluded that bad dictator Assad used even more chemical weapons than known before:
http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/syrien-giftgas-131.html
Thursday: Tagesschau reported that the surprisingly well doing Syrian national soccer team is playing for evil dictator Assad and therefore any sympathies for the underdog are misplaced:
http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/syrien-fussball-101.html
I exaggerated a bit but follow the links yourself and form your own opinion. 1st German state TV pushes such carricature of news with a straight face – just like PBS.
And be sure these are not innocent mistakes. For example, when there was the shooting on Euromaidan protesters in Ukraine, 1st German state TV all over reported that the whole world and all reliable people say pro-Russian Ukrainian police shot pro-EU-protesters.
About six weeks later – only after the regime change in Kiev was a fait accompli – 1st German TV admited in one report that they had a TV team in Kolomoyskyi’s Ukraina hotel who witnessed and filmed the shooting of protesters in Kiev at that time. The team of the 1st German TV had an easy job to film the criminals because there where shooting protesters from the very rooms of the hotel, where the 1st German state TV people were checked in. 1st German state TV suppressed this crucial information for about six weeks until they were sure it won’t matter any more. Have a look, for example here, what material they sat on and reported it only months after the blood bath:
http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Monitor/Todessch%C3%BCsse-in-Kiew-Wer-ist-f%C3%BCr-das-Bl/Das-Erste/Video?bcastId=438224&documentId=38433008
And even after the report the 1st German state TV still followed the storyline of brutal pro-Russian people killing Ukrainian – though their own reporter team clearly witnessed that it was false flag terrorism by Yanukovich’s opponents.
These gals and guys from German state TV, – among the best financed state media in the world – they put up a straight face and lie directly in the face of the viewers or by ommission, but only regaridng important things – just like PBS newshour.
EO,
die DW is not independent, it has people from the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland on guiding boards.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Welle#Mitglieder_des_Verwaltungsrats_der_Deutschen_Welle_.282014.E2.80.932017.29
It is hasbara paid by german taxpayers; Bandoleer is correct in my view.
Why would you single out a representative of the Jewish community here in Germany? Below a link to the complete list of the Broadcasting Board of the DW. They no doubt have a supervising assignment, in the larger German post WWII public channel frame:
http://www.dw.com/en/the-broadcasting-board/a-322842
And obviously DW versus the usual German only public channels has a comparative legal basis. Similar to the BBC? Or Radio Free Europe? I didn’t check that.
http://www.dw.com/downloads/36383966/dwgesetzen.pdf
Hi LeaNder, did you get the virtual flowers I sent? Hope I didn’t put my foot in it too much but that spelling reform hit me where it hurts. Way back I thought I’d better get a grip on German spelling and spent more time than I should have done learning the rules. Even made a little chart for handy reference. Never thought the rules were that logical but I never complained. Their language, their rules, and my job was just to learn them.
Then they changed the rules. They changed the damn rules! And they’re going to do it again when they’ve got this lot under their belt. If there are any flowers going begging I think you ought to be sending them to me.
By the way the Icelanders pulled that trick many decades ago. Theirs was a neat and unobtrusive spelling reform that was reckoned to be dead accurate. Within twenty years so many vowels had changed their length that they needed supplementary lists to keep up with it. About the same time the Irish did the same. Mercilessly cleared out fossil spellings and for good measure abandoned the old script too. Upset a lot of people, for no useful result. And don’t let’s pretend that what they’ve ended up with is that close to the language the few who speak Irish for real use day to day.
Listen. Never let a bureaucrat near your language. Not with usage – though they try to police that these days like a bunch of commissars. Not even the spelling. When it’s needed change comes by a rough and ready consensus, not by a one size fits nobody diktat from above. The politicians and the ideologues spend far too much time poking around in our bedrooms as it is. At least tell them to push off when they start poking around with our languages. Say NO to the orthographic acquis!
On that one I think you can fairly say you heard it here first. Now. That anecdote you wanted confirmed. Yup. Straight from the horses mouth. As an outsider I meet so very few horses you may be sure I examine their teeth carefully when I do. I don’t think the people involved found the episode as amusing as I did.
Bandolero – thanks for that much needed correction. I tend to have stars in my eyes when I visit Germany because I like the country very much but even so I do notice that their news services are bad. I didn’t think they were as bad twenty or so years ago, but that might be rose tinted spectacles. What I had intended to convey, but failed, is that I didn’t find the German media quite as bad as ours in England. Do I have any instances to back that up with?
The link to General Kujat’s pouring cold water on Breedlove’s assertion that the Russian army was preparing to go into the Donbas in force no longer worked when I looked for it a while ago. Kujat’s rebuttal was confirmed by leaks from French Intelligence at the time, those leaks confirming that the requisite military preparations had not been made, and also by a statement made by President Obama, but Kujat’s was the most direct and authoritative rebuttal I came across. Kujat appeared on ARD several times and I think that particular talk show was also on ARD. Lueders appeared on ZDF and was given a reasonable time to explain why he thought Assad’s forces were not responsible for Khan Shaykhun. I don’t know how much screen time Sahra Wagenknecht gets. Her forthright denunciation in the Bundestag of German policy in the Ukraine I saw in a video and you will know better than I how much of that gets through to people. In my (obviously considerably more limited) experience in Germany, not much.
If I have time I’ll have a go on Wayback and see if I can find the links on these subjects that I’ve submitted to the Colonel’s site in the past. As I say these links don’t always last very long so even if I do find them they might not be much use.
How well did we do on our side of the Channel? Because English is my native language, and because I followed Ukraine 2014/15 as closely as I could, I was very aware of the failure of the BBC to report the conflict objectively, or indeed at all most of the time. A lot is done by nuance too by the BBC, and I think I was able to pick that up pretty accurately as well. Nuance isn’t something you pick up in a foreign language learned late and imperfectly, so I’ll miss a good deal on German TV that you’ll have got automatically. Also I’ll watch very much less. Most of what I catch is mentioned to me by friends and I then find it on playback.
I didn’t know of SST at the time or I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, but as it was the best assessments I could find were from a couple of academics, + what I could pick up scrambling around on the internet. In hindsight those academics’ assessments were accurate. They also match with what I pick up reading the back numbers here. There were, by the way, some very interesting recent exchanges with commenters on the Colonel’s site who appeared to be Russian. Their insights also matched closely with what those academics had worked out earlier. So I’m fairly confident with those assessments made back in 2014/15. The fragments I’ve mentioned above that came out on German TV were more in line with those assessments than what we got here in England. But I stress that they were only fragments, and that doesn’t alter the fact that in the general run of reporting German TV is also very poor.
So, your call. Is German TV quite as bad as English TV? All I can say myself is that I’ve seen a few bits of good balanced reporting on German TV that as far as I know weren’t on our screens here. And that, in truth, there’s damn all on either side of any news at all, when you think of the resources they’ve got and the importance of the subject.
LeaNder,
you ask, “why would you single out a representative of the Jewish community…”; it is obvious from the link I gave that there is no other ethnic group represented in the “Aufsichtsraete” (governing bodies) – if there would be an Islamic/german body included, one could argue that there is some balance. But I have been watching DW and listening to their programs and I can see for myself, how unbalanced the reporting was, when there was any topic on Israel/ Palestine. I do not have the stamina to follow and log the links as Bandolero has done above, but I stopped looking or listening to DW. Muslims outnumber Jewish religious/ethnic group by far in Germany, so that’s why am bringing this up, Muslims/Germans of Turkish ancestry ought to be represented as well, don’t you think? After all, they are also paying taxes.
English Outsider
Let me say “sorry” that I wasn’t able to express my point in a way you directly understood. The point I wanted to make was that the propaganda technics used by US PBS newshour and German ARD Tagesschau seem quite similar. Both completely fail truthful, complete and balanced reporting while at the same time pretending with serious faces doing so. I think this kind of propaganda is in some ways even more harmful than the stuff radiated through outlets like Bild, Fox or the Daily Mirror. When people are attacked with this stuff by these bad reputed outlets, they discount it. But if basically the same nonsense is ventilated by Tagesschau, the Times or PBS Newshour many educated people tend to believe the nonsense. I think Volker Bräutigam is quite good at exposing Tagesschau propaganda, but I’m not aware if PBS Newshour has similar ex-employees.
If I may ask you – I hope PL allows a friendly off-topic exchange here though the recent “open” thread would certainly better fit for that question, allow me to ask you this. Many people in Germany have high hopes on Corbyn.
http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=40357
I saw in Jonathan Cook’s reports at Mondo Weiss that Corbyn’s Labour glory may be under severe pressure:
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/challenges-undermine-continues/
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/continues-asserting-semitism/
I’ld be very much interested what’s your take on that as an English man. How is the situation in England?
LeaNder,
I have noticed that you gave a link to only one Board of the Deutsche Welle, but there is another Board – and on it there is another person (Herzs Krymalowski) from the Zentralrat der Juden. So on each Board there is a person with potentially biased view. Was your link to pictures where only one person of Jewish faith is represented a fine way to make an omission, just like so many carefully omitted items in MSM ? I hope not, because I have seen many of your even handed comments. (btw. the name of Herzs Krymalowski is probably misspelled in the Wiki article, it probably should be Herzl and not Herzs)
Bandolero – I read those links with interest. Thank you. The last two show the ultra-zionists doing their thing. I’d be interested to see DH’s views on that, particularly since in recent years the electoral weight of the Muslim population in the UK has begun to tell. On your general question, the Colonel’s London correspondents have very much more insight than I have into the present state of affairs on the top deck of the Titanic.
This provincial deplorable actually voted for Corbyn recently, Prog though he undoubtedly is. He’s no good on outsourcing or immigration and swapping crony capitalism with crony socialism, even if it could be attempted, was last year’s bedtime story; but I judge we’ll kill fewer foreigners if he’s around than if he isn’t.
You say “Many people in Germany have high hopes on Corbyn.” Same reasoning, I suppose. I couldn’t see a Corbyn-type figure making much of a dent in Germany’s problems, but I wouldn’t see him or her glad-handing the Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine either.
Ok, EO, I recall they shifted dutifully, including the respective training programs for the larger staff.
Admittedly I managed to survive by only adopting what I considered acceptable. Die Zeit offered its own selective adoption at the time. There surely was a lot of resistance. … Admittedly I was among the resisters concerning the obvious not always purely phonetically based curiosities. …
Strictly the spelling reform was sold as project to help pupils. And given that aim obviously (?) had to fail. And fail it did given this aim.* Has been modified over and over again. More chaos, given its supposed aim?
As outsider it may be hard to keep up with “the experts”. Amusing if you follow the circle more closely. 😉 … By now we have “Easy German” which may be vaguely related?
*One of my sisters had a lower version of dyslexia. She’s a teacher now. She made me take a closer look at the expert circle more recently. … Very, very long ago I was testing her on OE or ME texts of English. She proved surprisingly good at guessing, reading or understanding the texts. While her messages, notes, labels were often not quite “correct” German they were always easy to read or understand for this German.
Within twenty years so many vowels had changed their length that they needed supplementary lists to keep up with it.
I am no linguistic expert, quite the opposite really. I did it to the extend I had to. … Maybe at its core I was only wondering why the “Tudor Vowel Shift” as the “Great Vowel Shift” was sold to me at the time, could fit into more long term regional vowel patterns …. Admittedly I did not pay too much attention on long vs short.
*****
did you answer my question? Not sure.
Muslims/Germans of Turkish ancestry ought to be represented as well, don’t you think? After all, they are also paying taxes.
Yes, I agree. But this couldn’t be ever Turkish only Muslim representatives. It needed a Muslim representative. Or wouldn’t you mind if non-Turkish Muslim are left out?
it is obvious from the link I gave that there is no other ethnic group represented in the “Aufsichtsraete” (governing bodies)
How would you describe ethnicity. You feel that “ethnic Germans” returning from Russia over the centuries should also be represented as some type of inner but ethnically different group?
The Broadcasting Board isn’t equal to the ‘Aufsichtsrat’ in economics.
Herzs Krymalowski
Interesting profile. Pretty active it feels. That’s the Administrative Board. I was working on the upper floor, but not for the “Intendanz”. Only had rare encounters there. Yes those members might be able to pressure the “Intendanz”/Director General. I wouldn’t know, if there is such a history from either board. That would be no doubt an interesting research project with a focus on the post 9/11 universe. Or earlier. But what’s left of it in the DW archives?
http://www.dw.com/en/administrative-board/a-327031
I worked in the communication parts up there, while it was still in Cologne. Close to the Directorate really. I don’t recall a member selected by the German Jewish Central Committee at my time. … On the other hand, I doubt I would have paid attention to it then.
Wasn’t aware of him. He may have been selected since he lives close to DW.
Donald –
I had the same experience.
I would reply simply that HC’s experience is precisely what scared me. Her record was demonstrably hawkish, her policy regularly inept, misguided, and dangerous.
Often that ended the conversation.
I am persuaded that reason is a lesser part of how most people construct their world and how they vote.
Bandolero,
random pick. Carsten Kühntopp. He may have gotten himself into troubles over his take on the Operation Cast Lead. According to traces left on the web. …
But, yes, his contribution is badly sourced. I have to admit that I sometimes was angry at Martin Gehlen (print media) too, but at least that article he could have been aware of when reporting of Syria’s national football team:
http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/sport/syrische-nationalmannschaft–fussball-ist-der-traum–der-die-menschen-zusammenbringt–28369724
I would prefer to opt out of any possible objective reporting around Trump on German ground. In any case Trump supporters seemed to be quite well represented in the polite political talking circles both before and after his election. Including occasionally support from the regular Swiss hard right media representative over here.
Maybe I should have a chat with the Tagesthemen anchormen, who recently retired. At him I was quite angry at one point too. Before I felt he had been careful enough for my taste. To the extend I watched him.
LeaNder,
Thanks for your insight. Your question “why did you single out one ethnic group” is still hanging in the air. My personal view is that the two people from the “Zentralrat” were the only representatives of any ethnic / religious group on these two Boards. I could ask in return, “why were these included at all..?” You made me feel like my observation was inappropriate, that is all.
LeaNder
You don’t seem to have known much about the industry you worked in. pl
My personal view is that the two people from the “Zentralrat” were the only representatives of any ethnic / religious group on these two Boards.
Your ‘personal view’ is not quite correct.
Yes, admittedly of the different religions there is a Jewish member related to the Council of German Jews on the Administrative Board. Strictly there wouldn’t need to be a representative of any religions on that board. I gave you a link above were you can see how he must have gotten into the AB. DW’s legal basis. Since he isn’t one of the representatives elected by the three Federal Institutions, he must have been elected by the Broadcasting Board. As you can read there.
The Broadcasting Board starts on page 28 or “§ 31 constitution”, the Administrative Board on page 32 or “§ 36 constitution”.
http://www.dw.com/downloads/36383966/dwgesetzen.pdf
On the Broadcasting Board are representatives for the Catholics (Catholic Church) chairman, the Protestants (via their umbrella organization EKZ) and Jews (via the Council of German Jews). As the three first members of the board listed under § 31 tell you.
I already admitted there is no Muslim representative.
********
On the other hand there is no Muslim umbrella organization accepted by all German Muslim. Meaning at this point in time they don’t even seem to agree who could represents them best. Struggles inside the larger community, complex scenario with the Turkish state via DITIP controlling matters, not non-Jewish German resentment against it either. Turkey sends the imams and teachers, initially it also paid them at least until the Muslim World League took over financially:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish-Islamic_Union_for_Religious_Affairs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_World_League
Church and State, dual loyalties, once again? Cem Özdemir mentioned in the article below has a Turkish background himself, (Green Party):
https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21703296-tensions-rise-turkey-they-spill-over-germany-old-faultlines
The AfD Party member Gauland recently said of a female member of the SPD with Turkish background, she should be sent back to Anatolia. See below more troubles of our own ahead?
Now, 63% of the Muslim have a Turkish background, but they aren’t the only Muslim in Germany, there are such that don’t only belong to the DITIP communities:
Google translate – from German Wikipedia – you can see how diverse the other 40 % are. Once again, even if we ignore that people of Turkish descend don’t feel DITIP should represent them over here.
https://tinyurl.com/Islamic-Organizations
Schäuble, of all people, tried to start a dialog between the groups and individuals via an German Islam Conference. German Wikipedia:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Islamkonferenz
********
But yes, I am willing to admit that unquestioning support of Israel by all means (e.g. Iran?) is the standard inside the ‘Zentralrat’ too. The Zentralrat is dominantly Orthodox. Reform and/or Progressive Jews struggled long and hard to even get accepted. Criticism of Israel is toxic, gets you kicked out of the Council and related functions in the Jewish community. There are also quite a few secular media attack dogs around that hunt you down. The frontman (blog: the axis of the good) was also a strong supporter of Bush juniors WOT, and fed the hate over here. Along with Daniel Pipes et al. Both made it on the curious Brevik’s document. Remember Anders Behring Breivik? Tyler liked him.
But if not even a member of the Jewish community can criticize Israel’s wars, how can a descendant of the perpetrators/the killers? Germany is a very special ground in this context.
If you can find something in English check e.g. Rolf Verleger, descendant of survivors. Had to give up his function in the Central Council. A minor matter (?) more randomly, the Jewish community managed to have a planned event with Norman Finkelstein cancelled. … Seen more heavy events in the US against Norman. Led by Dershowitz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Council_of_Jews_in_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Progressive_Jews_in_Germany
*******
But very, very much water flowed down the Rhine since 9/11. And by now a rather alarming percentage of Germans don’t feel that Islam can belong to Germany. Ironically the highest number are in the East, where I doubt many Turkish Germans live. Islam doesn’t belong to Germany. I would say, depends. There have been even some utterly crazy fundamentalist semi-self-thought converts to Islam around too. But not only converts. Some hardly educated Muslim too. Let me give you two more notorious ones of the converts:
https://www.thelocal.de/20170726/notorious-german-islamist-preacher-jailed-for-five-and-a-half-years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Vogel
And yes, no doubt matters are heating up. We’ve got troubles of our own too. You know? This is the tip of an iceberg of a much bigger story. They found target lists, another soldier who had already raised eyebrows and suspicion in the French-German brigade:
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/islamism-isnt-the-only-terror-threat-germany-is-facing/
And yes, we had the slightly opaque story around the National Socialist Underground too. Which targeted Turkish Germans all over Germany one place vaguely overlaps with the two German army members.
“did you answer my question? Not sure.”
Not really, LeaNder. I dodged it. But that was in another country. Germany, at least my Germany, has changed a lot since.
If you’re into ME you’ll know of the “Ormulum”, the magnificent attempt at spelling reform here. He doesn’t mess about, old Orm. Tells us who’s boss in a way Schaeuble would have been proud of. Opens the batting with a splendid defence of the title he’s chosen:-
This book is called the Ormulum
because my name is Orm.
So there. Pick the bones out of that, if you dare. Then he devises a spelling system that nails those pesky vowels down tight. He changes it a bit half way through – shades of your own recent spelling reform? – but by the time he’s done he’s got us all as present and correct as some martinet of a drill sergeant.
Didn’t catch on, Orm’s bid for orthographic supremacy, and we’ve more or less muddled through since. Just as well – the language has changed so much since then that Orm’s straitjacket would have throttled us.
Ok, I’ll check. Will I encounter the long German “u” somewhere along the way?
Two corrections, I didn’t proofread:
EKZ should be EKD. The translation irritates me slightly. Maybe that’s way. It is also used on the English Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Church_in_Germany
German: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland
English:Evangelical Church in Germany. (that’s not quite the same for me)
… abbreviated EKD) is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and United (Prussian Union) Protestant regional churches and denominations in Germany, collectively encompassing the vast majority of Protestants
********
This needs precision:
Struggles inside the larger community, complex scenario with the Turkish state via DITIP controlling matters, not non-Jewish German resentment against it either.
In a nutshell, there is both a non-Muslim German suspicion BY NOW, but yes, why didn’t we pay attention earlier; as well as an inner Turkish German Muslim resistance. Although they feel they are getting minorities more recently.
I am partly influenced by both camps. Although, at the time of the resistance against the Cologne DITIP Mosque building I was among its supporters, and I do not regret it.
Great architecture:
https://www.google.de/search?q=Cologne+Mosque&client=firefox-b&dcr=0&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-w-CQ1ePWAhXBB8AKHQ67B0gQ_AUICygC&biw=1920&bih=955
MacNeill was everything.
Lehrer…just a “Yah, let me tell you where my last paycheck came from!” stooge.
Opioids…by definition, synthetic drugs created to mimic opiates.
The market is being flooded with these strictly technological creations in industrial proportions.
Industrial.
Markets.
If you modified that statement to “Democratic Elite,” and emphasized that most Democrats don’t agree with Mr. Lehrer, I’d agree with you.
Bandolero,
one minor hint on the Syria poison gas link. Or “Chan Scheichun” (Gerfman). And I only spent about five minutes on it.
Check if a UN-press release went “over the ticker” as we say over here. Would a UN press release be considered more important? Did they state in that report that they partly relied on Human Rights Watch? Or did one or the other in the team check HRW on the topic?
Here’s another link, dated two days later:
http://faktenfinder.tagesschau.de/ausland/syrien-1067.html
notice they use so-called for the fact finding missing? There they give you a link to the complete report.
LeaNder – If I may reply to your comment here, and this time in all seriousness:-
You say:- “But if not even a member of the Jewish community can criticize Israel’s wars, how can a descendant of the perpetrators/the killers? Germany is a very special ground in this context.”
“A very special ground?” Why so? The shadow of past atrocities hangs over just about every country in the West and all nations elsewhere with any history. Even in the States, the country where so many from the Old World went to escape oppression and brutality, there is an adequate supply of past sins to contemplate. There is a sort of folie de grandeur in the German insistence that a short period of German history, 1933 to 1945, exceeds in barbarity and viciousness any other episode of barbarity and viciousness that the rest of humanity ever bore witness to. A morbid folie de grandeur, one that rots out German politics today and infects its neighbours.
But they say “The German sin is special. There was factor x or y or z that puts it above all other sins committed.” Nonsense. Every atrocity or series of atrocities has, according to circumstance and opportunity, its own distinguishing features, its own unique dimension of horror. Are we to compete in such matters? Shall I play the Bengal famine as my card and you raise me with the Herero? Do you play your Holocaust and the Russian raises you with his Bolshevik terror? And the Chinese come in and trump us all with their Cultural Revolution or the Japanese with their Manchurian occupation? This is not a game for sane men and women to play, and it is not a game for sane men and women to allow to take over their lives and way of thinking. I know, as an outsider but one who knows a little of your country, that the Germans have allowed this game to take over the basis of their political thinking virtually to the exclusion of all else, to their serious disadvantage and to the serious disadvantage of those who play that game with them.
Because it leads nowhere. It has no practical use even, this game. The reverse, in fact. We spend so much time lamenting the dried blood on our hands from yesterday that we scarcely have time to notice or care about the fresh blood from today. All over your country are people guilt ridden for the atrocities German soldiers committed or caused to be committed in Europe near eighty years ago. Yet quite unconcerned about similar atrocities, committed too under the influence of the same ideology, that are occurring in Europe today. So unconcerned that they see without protest their country encouraging and funding those atrocities of today. Those dead of yesterday cannot be brought back to life. But those getting killed today need not be killed. An odd sort of guilt, that obsesses about the dead and yet witnesses the same fate for the living with equanimity.
So a useless guilt, but also a reasonless one. How many generations of guilt are we to inherit? If my grandfather killed yours – and our respective forefathers had ample opportunity to kill each other last century – does that mean that I somehow owe you something? Must I feel guilty when I think of you? Again nonsense. Let the dead bury the dead and let’s you and I not spend all our time grieving over past sins that were nothing to do with us. Would it not be better to use our time making sure those sins will not be repeated?
So too with the Holocaust. It’ll be decades yet before the historians can even start to examine that accurately, but we know already that whatever assessment they come up with it’s going to be very bad. Those atrocities, even put in the context of all other atrocities, were on no small scale. So? Did you commit them? Could you have stopped your grandfather committing them, if he did? More nonsense. They’re nothing to do with you.
The historians tell us that the extraordinary success of the German peasant communities of a millennium or so ago was due to the cohesiveness of those communities. “We are all members of one another” was second nature to them. It resulted in success in circumstances in which communities where it was every man for himself would have had a hard time surviving. That greater concern for the community that we still see today in Germany – often in contrast to more self-centred attitudes elsewhere – is still in evidence. Germans do still tend to have a notion of collective responsibility that encompasses their community. To stretch that notion of collective responsibility so that it encompasses the unalterable past is to allow a virtue to become a vice.
Therefore you have no “special ground”. You share with the rest of us the ground our forefathers worked, for good or ill. Time to get on with working the ground better, if you can, not loitering aimlessly around graves long since grassed over.
LeaNder – I said “in evidence” above when I should have said “strong”. I submitted my comment straight off when I saw yours and didn’t check it as I should have done.
Which I suppose completes our exchange on the same theme it started with – the perils of proof reading, or of the lack of it.
thanks for the feedback.
thanks, once again. But try to not misread me. That’s an obsession, admittedly, from early on. … Don’t either assume, since someone else did, it might have to do with the “burden I carry as German”. But yes, I occasionally met people that tried to exploit my “collective guilt” to their own advantage.
Donald – I dropped back here to see if LeaNder was still around and happened to notice this: “The enthusiastic liberal warmongers you are talking about are mostly Clintonites.”
Clinton this, Clinton that, you’d think that the Obama years were all Mrs Clinton’s doing. Tell that to the marines and see if they listen kindly to your story. They blame it all on Mrs Clinton now because the memory of the blessed Obama must be left spotless for the herd to marvel at.
To be fair, I think the neocons and the progs – but I repeat myself – wheeled old loppylugs out whenever they had to sell us a tale that was more than usually dodgy. I doubt they ever explained much to him about what was going on, even if they could work it out themselves. The main thing was to crank that golden voice up. I tell you, I listened to him regularly and if he’d told me 39 angels could dance on the head of a pin I’d have knocked you down if you’d said 38. Hell, I bet the caddies sit around even now telling tales of the good old day when the Prez could crack 20 below par without even breaking a sweat. He was that good with the spiel.
So maybe they’ll get away with pinning it all on Clinton and canonising Obama. Maybe. But they didn’t call him the Drone King for nothing.
Anybody know anything about the foundation and corporate underwriters of the News Hour?
rjj,
I am not a scholar of this, I only noticed that a person now frequently on Newshour,is Lisa Desjardins, carries the name of one of the underwriters, “Family Desjardins Fund” as I have seen flickering once on the screen. I have no knowledge if she is related by marriage to that family or not. Could be coincidence. Other big donors are frequently listed.
EO,
this is exactly what I think. Wonderful summary of the whole issue.