NYT (Mis)Spells Out Debt Problem for SYRIZA
A New York Times report (1/29/15) by Liz Alderman suggested that Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, from the anti-austerity SYRIZA party, doesn’t understand his country’s debt problems:
When pressed to describe how Greece would pay for bonds falling due in the coming months without taking the €7 billion installment, Mr. Varoufakis replied, “Let’s not talk about details.” To SYRIZA’s detractors, such remarks might signal that the new government does not understand the magnitude of Greece’s financial challenges.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (photo: Angelos Tzortzinis/NYT)
Before becoming Finance minister, Varoufakis taught economics at Cambridge, the University of Athens, University of Sydney and UT/Austin, among others, so he probably does have a grasp of his country’s financial situation. The story’s next line, however, suggested that Alderman’s grasp of basic debt issues was somewhat shaky:
But Mr. Varoufakis suggested that the government could finance its obligations by reducing the target for the so-called primary surplus, the amount of cash in Greece’s coffers after expenses and interest payments.
Actually, the primary surplus is how much is left in the budget before interest payments—the reverse of what the Times wrote.
China ‘Stumbles’ With Well-Paid, Educated Workforce
The New York Times‘ depiction of India, a high-riding land untroubled by soaring blue-collar wages. (photo: Atul Loke/NYT)
“As other big developing markets stumble, India is emerging as one of the few hopes for global growth,” New York Times business reporter Keith Bradsher (2/17/15) declared. As an example of such stumbles, Bradsher cited “China’s investigations of multinationals” and “surging blue-collar wages” as factors that “have prompted many companies to start looking elsewhere for large labor forces.” Another Chinese “problem” cited by the Times: “a sharp increase in college attendance.” India, meanwhile, is doing it right, because there “labor law protections are starting to erode.”
Arming Syrian Rebels: An Old Policy Is New Again
A raft of stories this year declared that the US was starting a new policy of training and arming Syrian rebels: CNN (1/16/15) headlined a report “Pentagon: US to Begin to Train and Equip Moderate Syria Rebels.” NBC News‘ (2/17/15) reported “US to Equip Moderate Syrian Rebels: Defense Official,” while Reuters (2/17/15) had “US to Train and Equip Moderate Syrian Rebels.” AP (2/18/15) wrote that
the US has been talking about training moderate Syrian rebels for months, but has been moving very slowly to identify groups and screen the fighters in an effort to ensure that enemy insurgents aren’t brought in.
Aside from the word “moderate”—which in US media usage generally just means “supported by Washington”—the problem with these reports is that the US has been training Syrian insurgents for years now (FAIR Blog, 2/22/15). The Guardian (3/8/13) reported two years ago that “Western training of Syrian rebels is under way in Jordan in an effort to strengthen secular elements in the opposition,” and that this “training effort is led by the US.” The Guardian story cited the Pentagon acknowledging that “a small group of US special forces and military planners had been to Jordan during the summer to help…train selected rebel fighters.”
As for the US arming Syrian rebels, Reuters (1/27/14) was reporting on this policy (“Congress Secretly Approves US Weapons Flow to ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels”) more than a year before reporting on it again as a new initiative—rather than one that had been tried and failed.
To Love America, Love or Hate the Right Foreigners
Defending Rudy Giuliani’s assertion that he doesn’t believe Barack Obama “loves America,” (Politico, 2/18/15), Republican lobbyist and Washington Post blogger Ed Rogers (2/23/15) wrote “there are plenty of reasons that suggest Obama might not love America as it is or in the traditional sense.” Oddly, many of these reasons had less to do with the United States than with a set of foreign countries and figures one has to take a stand on to show that you “see America as the light in the darkness or as the world’s best hope.”
For example, Obama’s America-love was questioned because of his insufficient enthusiasm for “our loyal ally, the prime minister of Israel,” World War II = era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and “the Christian Crusaders of 900 years ago.” Contrariwise, Obama supposedly hadn’t shown enough animosity toward “America’s enemies” like Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia and “Islamic terrorists.”
What about closer to home? There are two Americans mentioned whose connections to Obama are presented as indications that he “doesn’t really care”: “the perpetually aggrieved Rev. Al Sharpton” and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, described as a “civil rights lawyer” who “tends to look for grievances.” Apparently, in the domestic sphere, shunning people of color who have “grievances” is the essence of what it means to “love America.”
‘Fun Moments’ in Climate Denial
When Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Ok.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, tried to debunk what he called the “hysteria on global warming” by holding a snowball on the Senate floor, the Washington Post editorialized that the performance was a “national embarrassment”—despite the paper having columnists on staff who make similarly absurd arguments (FAIR Blog, 3/3/15). Chuck Todd on NBC‘s Meet the Press (3/1/15), on the other hand, introduced an Inhofe clip as “a little lighter note,” saying the senator “used a fun little prop to make his point.” After the clip, Todd added:
Now, I’m not going to use that to get into a climate change debate. I am actually going to use it because I think the House and Senate floor sometimes get some fun moments.
The LA Times‘ Michael Hiltzik (3/2/15) noted that the show aired just a few days after a new study (Nature Communications, 2/24/15) reported a sea-level rise outside New York City that was “unprecedented during the entire history of the tide gauge records.”
