On 9/11/07, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hmmm, here's the first part of the article, finally on
> the exile's website.
>
> Feature Story September 11, 2007
>
> The World's Sleaziest Magazine
>
> By Mark Ames
>
> Here's a real-life superhero dilemma: What do you do
> when you're the world's most powerful news and opinion
> magazine, carrying the English-language torch of
> freedom on behalf of your million-plus high-net-worth
> readers across the globe, and suddenly you spot
> injustice on the Eurasian horizon: Sham elections in
> an oil-rich Eurasian country, resulting in a one-party
> parliament; its autocratic leader just pushed through
> constitutional amendments allowing him to remain in
> power for life; and it's waging a campaign to bully
> Western oil companies out of their lucrative oil
> fields, in spite of contracts and investments made.
>
> If the country in question is Kazakhstan, and you're
> The Economist, then you know exactly what to do: Put
> Vladimir Putin on the cover and scare the shit out of
> your readers by harping about the Hitlerian threat he
> poses to mankind. It doesn't matter that you run a
> version of this story almost every week. Or that the
> story you decide to run in the wake of Kazakhstan's
> sham elections happens to have been run in almost the
> exact same form by all of your colleagues FOUR FUCKING
> YEARS AGO.
>
> For The Economist, the Putin-as-Fascist story isn't
> bound by traditional Newtonian concepts of time or
> space, let alone the basic principles of Western
> journalism. It's a story that can be played like a
> deck of trump cards. No matter what else happens in
> the world - for example, the mega-clusterfuck in Iraq,
> a war that The Economist screamed for in a campaign
> capped by its infamous "A Case For War" editorial -
> when a story threatens to confuse or upset their
> agenda, the weekly can just drop the Putin-Hitler
> trump card. It works like a dream, every time.
>
> Thanks to the English magazine's clever rhetorical
> strategy, calibrating an effective mixture of
> aristocratic contempt,
> two-notches-smarter-than-Newsweek diction, and
> occasional anti-elitist populism to pander to its
> majority-American readership, readers trust The
> Economist. They - particularly American readers -
> trust it because they think it knows more than they
> do; this is its entire appeal. They even get a sick
> thrill being talked down to by a dirty old
> aristocratic prig. For Americans in particular,
> accustomed to the lifeless, dumbed-down,
> least-common-denominator prose in their own media,
> reading The Economist is its own reward, giving them
> the sense not only that they're smarter than the
> average Time subscriber, but that it even makes them
> vaguely decadent, in a British movie kind of way. They
> become smarter by osmosis simply by being in the
> imagined drawing room of The Economist's witty
> banter-filled editorial offices.
>
> In reality, The Economist is one of the most
> appallingly wrong and evil - as in
> responsible-for-millions-of-dead-people evil - organs
> in the world today. As far as "wit" goes, The
> Economist ranks up there with Benson, the snappy TV
> sitcom butler, though it's nowhere near as
> delightfully entertaining as the British butler in the
> godawful Dudley Moore comedy Arthur.
>
> Or as Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker,
> observed after moving to England, "The magazine is
> written by young people pretending to be old people.
> If American readers got a look at the pimply
> complexions of their economic gurus, they would cancel
> their subscriptions in droves."
>
> If only it was a question of overrated wit. But it's
> much worse. It's a sinister and sophisticated English
> snowjob. Considering their influence and their
> influential readership, not to mention where they're
> leading us with their anti-Russia campaign, it's time
> to set the record straight, to put the "s" back in
> "limey" and call The Economist for the slimey fucks
> that they are, before they drag us all down with them
> again, just as they did with Iraq.
>
> * * *
>
> Last month's Kazakhstan/Russia coverage is a perfect
> example of what's so wrong with the magazine.
>
> Just before Kazakhstan's sham elections, The Economist
> warned that an "ugly trade" might soon happen: Every
> country in the West, save two, had already agreed to
> overlook President Nazarbayev's out-of-the-closet
> authoritarianism, and give him the chair to the OSCE
> in 2009 no matter how disgraceful the elections turned
> out. The two holdouts were the U.S. (whose ambassador
> praised Nazarbayev's constitutional changes allowing
> him to be president-for-life as "a good step forward")
> and Great Britain, which was a bit more circumspect.
>
> These two countries still haven't made up their minds
> about whether or not to allow Kazakhstan to take over
> the OSCE chair. Coincidentally, The Economist hasn't
> made its mind up either, a position manifested by its
> decision to allot a meager column-sized article
> tepidly condemning the elections. This was completely
> overshadowed by the multi-page lead article: Russia is
> "now" run by the KGB.
>
> As mentioned above, this story is four fucking years
> old. There's no "now" to it. The Economist article
> relies on a report issued in 2003 by sociologist Olga
> Kryshtanovskaya. Back in 2003, The Economist's
> colleagues in the Western media covered the report as
> the news story it then was. The Christian Science
> Monitor, for example, ran a story called "KGB
> influence still felt in Russia" in its December 30,
> 2003 edition. It stated:
>
> "Olga Kryshtanovskaya is a sociologist who dances with
> wolves. For more than a decade she's been Russia's
> premier expert on the political, business, and
> security elites.
>
> "But even Ms. Kryshtanovskaya says she's alarmed by
> her own recent findings. Since Vladimir Putin came to
> power four years ago, she's been tracking a dramatic
> influx into government of siloviki - people from the
> military, the former Soviet KGB, and other security
> services - bringing with them statist ideology,
> authoritarian methods, and a drill-sergeant's contempt
> for civilian sensibilities."
>
> For The Economist's brand of quantum journalism, time
> is relative, depending on the observer - or rather,
> the observer's agenda. A story like this is like a
> fine wine, meant to be stored in a cool place, to be
> popped open for their readers to help them forget all
> that other depressing, confusing news coming out of
> Kazakhstan or Iraq. Thus, four years after the
> Monitor's story, The Economist arrives to sound the
> alarm.
>
> What's strange is how sloppy The Economist is about
> this, to the point where it reads like a classic case
> of four-years-late plagiarism.
>
> But most readers would never know how dated the peg to
> the recent cover story really is. "Political power in
> Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB's successor,"
> declared the magazine. Note The Economist's sly
> insertion of the word "now" - giving the reader the
> impression that news about the siloviki's rise is hot
> out of the box. "Now" in the weekly news world
> literally means "now." It doesn't mean four years ago,
> or even four months ago. It means last week, or
> perhaps sometime in the last four weeks.
>
> The Economist betrays even more nervousness about
> running a story this belatedly with another strange
> insertion in the opening sentence:
>
> "On the evening of August 22nd, 1992 - 16 years ago
> this week [note the ludicrous time-peg, "16 years ago
> this week" - Ed.] - Alexei Kondaurov, a KGB general,
> stood by the darkened window of his Moscow office and
> watched a jubilant crowd moving towards the KGB
> headquarters in Lubyanka Square..."
>
> Let's leave aside for now the very strange decision to
> anchor an anti-silovik story to Kondaurov - a former
> KGB general who was a top Yukos executive (respect to
> the PR firm that helped arrange that). A couple of
> paragraphs later, we are introduced to Kryshtanovskaya
> and her four-year-old study. Here, The Economist pulls
> a classic example of censorship-by-omission:
> "According to research by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a
> sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a
> quarter of the country's senior bureaucrats are
> siloviki-a Russian word meaning, roughly, 'power
> guys', which includes members of the armed forces and
> other security services, not just the FSB. The
> proportion rises to three-quarters if people simply
> affiliated to the security services are included.
> These people represent a psychologically homogeneous
> group, loyal to roots that go back to the Bolsheviks'
> first political police, the Cheka."
>
> They never mention when the report was published,
> because if they did - "According to a report four
> years ago..." - it would kind of contradict the "now"
> in the sub-header. So you just don't mention it.
> Instead, you crudely manipulate her findings: "the
> proportion [of siloviki] rises to three-quarters if
> people simply affiliated to the security services are
> included."
>
> Is that really what Kryshtankovskaya reported? In an
> interview with Radio Free Europe last year, she
> explained "The 78 percent figure...is not a precise
> figure." But precision, a quantum journalist might
> argue, is itself a relative concept.
>
> * * *
>
> For the last few years, The Economist has been waging
> a relentless, obsessive-compulsive campaign to rebrand
> Russia and Vladimir Putin as a Fascist state and a
> Fascist regime. Consider last year's "The Hardest
> Word":
>
> "It is an over-used word, and a controversial one,
> especially in Russia. It is not there yet, but Russia
> sometimes seems to be heading towards fascism."
>
> That's as serious a charge as can possibly be levied -
> Nazi Germany with thousands of nuclear weapons.
> Fascism in the popular consciousness has a pretty
> simple, straightforward definition: a country that
> will invade and enslave the world by force, and gas
> its Jews. Is that Russia? Because if Russia really is
> Fascist, then what the fuck are we doing here? Every
> foreigner should run screaming for the border, the
> West should demand the immediate and unconditional
> surrender of the Kremlin or else it blow the whole
> fucking world to smithereens by midnight tomorrow. I'm
> serious: If Russia is Fascist, what are we waiting
> for? Isn't this the lesson of the 30s - attack now!
> Don't wait!
>
> The Economist gets around this problem by softening up
> its definition of Fascism, thereby making it fit
> Russia while at the same time defusing its
> seriousness: "History also offers a term to describe
> the direction in which Russia sometimes seems to be
> heading: a word that captures the paranoia and
> self-confidence, lawlessness and authoritarianism,
> populism and intolerance, and economic and political
> nationalism that now characterise Mr Putin's
> administration."
>
> Yep, that's right, Fascism doesn't mean violently
> aggressive militarism, invasions, and the industrial
> slaughter of millions. Nope, you had it all wrong. In
> these multicultural times, we need to expand Fascism's
> meaning, to make it accessible to other cultures we
> dislike. It now includes "self-confidence,
> lawlessness, populism"... Let's see, what else is
> happening in Russia that we can put in there? Why not
> add to that Economist definition, "a word that
> captures the dima-bilan mullets and gopniki, face
> control and purse dogs, people who say 'da' and also
> say 'nyet.'"
>
> This sleazy redefinition of the word Fascism allows
> The Economist to effectively rebrand Russia by working
> backwards from Russia to Fascism. The implication is
> obvious. The Putin regime must be destroyed before it
> destroys us. Maybe not right away - but soon. That's
> what our leaders have always promised to do should
> Fascism ever rear its ugly head in Europe again.
>
> * * *
>
> It wasn't always this way. In fact, if you hopped
> aboard The Economist's own DeLorean time machine,
> you'd find that there was a time when they downright
> loved their li'l Fascist spy in the Kremlin. Sometimes
> they loved him, that is. And sometimes they didn't.
> Kinda depended on the day of the week.
>
> And it continues: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070903/016818.html
>
>
>
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