Front-page headline in the New York Times today (4/13/10):
Civilians Killed as U.S. Troops Hit Afghan Bus
The paper seems to have a real problem with writing a headline that informs readers in a straightforward way that the United States kills civilians.
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One can clearly see why so many readers have fled the corporate news. It seems the New York Times, and other corporate papers are basically propaganda shills for American Empire and criminal war crimes, that are rarely acknowledged, if not buried in the back pages.
Remember the Zionist Judith Miller that lied us into Iraq. Remember the Georgia aggresssion, where the New York Times blamed Russia for the aggression, and had to covertly correct its story??? It seems the class whoring, imperial whoring, corporate cheerleading by both liberal and conservative class elites is never ending. Sanger, now is doing what Judith Miller has done, warmongering us into a war with Iran, based on the same damn lies.
Failure to take on the criminal Empire, and its war crimes, along with Zionist Israel, has allowed the New York Times to corrupt itself into Passive apologists for wars of aggression and apologists for War crimes, civilian deaths. NO WONDER I BROKE FROM ALL CORPORATE NEWS, EXCEPT AS THIRD PARTY ANALYSIS, ON THE FAILURE OF IMPERIAL CHEERELADERS AND CORPORATE THUGS.
Throw out the damned Strunk & White! The use of the passive voice is both acceptable and appropriate in this case and most others.
I want to make clear that I am not an opponent of the passive voice; it’s part of the English language for a reason. It’s when people use the passive voice to protect the guilty (“mistakes were made”) that it becomes pernicious.
@ Eric Schwing: What service is rendered in referring to Judith Miller as a “Zionist”? I ask, because I notice than another well-known Zionist is a staunch critic of American foreign policy in general and the invasion of Iraq specifically, yet is never (to my knowledge – not ever) referred to as such. I am referring to Noam Chomsky, of course.
So let’s not mince words here: are you a bigot?
Here is what Chomsky himself says (from The Chomsky reader): “I was deeply interested in…Zionist affairs and activities â┚¬” or what was then called ‘Zionist,’ though the same ideas and concerns are now called ‘anti-Zionist.’ I was interested in socialist, binationalist options for Palestine, and in the kibbutzim and the whole cooperative labor system that had developed in the Jewish settlement there (the Yishuv)…The vague ideas I had at the time [1947] were to go to Palestine, perhaps to a kibbutz, to try to become involved in efforts at Arab-Jewish cooperation within a socialist framework, opposed to the deeply antidemocratic concept of a Jewish state (a position that was considered well within the mainstream of Zionism).” (Peck, p. 7)
Hard for me to imagine that being for a binational state would be considered “zionist” by most Zionists today.
the issue i am afraid is not strunk & white. the issue is agency plain and simple. who dunnit, autrement dit.
WE DUN IT.
AND OUR TAX MONEY PAYS FOR US TO DO IT.