Tag: nyt

NY Times Plays CIA Messenger — Turn Off The Lights, The Party Is Over

I apologize on not writing about the NY Times article by  Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz, The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin, before now but my schedule did not give me the time I needed to do the subject justice. I was inundated with requests for a comment by several media outlets and did my best to accommodate those in radio and TV interviews.

The key thing you need to understand is that this article is a deliberate piece of misinformation that is intended to shape public and policymaking opinion in the United States. The following opening to the article, like all propaganda, is a mixture of fact and fantasy.

the intelligence partnership between Washington and Kyiv is a linchpin of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. The C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements and help support spy networks.

But the partnership is no wartime creation, nor is Ukraine the only beneficiary.

It took root a decade ago, coming together in fits and starts under three very different U.S. presidents, pushed forward by key individuals who often took daring risks. It has transformed Ukraine, whose intelligence agencies were long seen as thoroughly compromised by Russia, into one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.

Yes, it is true that U.S. intelligence, along with NATO, supplied Ukraine with intelligence used to carry out missile strikes on Russian positions. Admitting this in the pages of the NY Times is reckless and dangerous. I am pretty sure the Russians already knew this but putting this on the record with U.S. intelligence sources is a casus belli for Russia. Can you imagine the reaction if Russian intelligence confirmed they provided intel to a group or country that attacked the U.S.? Do you think Washington would ignore that and not seek retribution? Of course not.

But the article starts with the big lie by claiming that the CIA relationship with Ukraine started in February 2022 and then piles on with these two whoppers:

Before the war, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the Americans by collecting intercepts that helped prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of a commercial jetliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The Ukrainians also helped the Americans go after the Russian operatives who meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Maidan and the ensuing events in February and March 2014 involved what I believe was a joint U.S./U.K. intelligence operation to remove Ukraine’s President Yanukovich and install a pro-Western government that would be used to attack Russia. The fact of the matter is that the CIA has been dealing with Ukrainian opponents of Russia since at least 1947.

The propaganda purpose of the article is revealed by the decision of the reporters to repeat the specious claims that Russia shot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 and that Russia “meddled” in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. We have had a slew of revelations over the last two months, principally from Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger, showing that it was the Clinton campaign with the help of the CIA and the FBI who meddled in the 2016 Presidential campaign in a failed effort to defeat Donald Trump. Entous and Schwirtz insert the bogus claim that Ukraine fingered the Russian officer responsible for “election interference.”

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The New York Times Implausibly Implicates Oklahoma’s Bathroom Law in the Death of a Nonbinary Student

Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old Oklahoma student who identified as nonbinary and preferred they/them pronouns, died on February 8, a day after a fight at Owasso High School. It is unclear whether the injuries that Nex suffered in the fight contributed to their death. But in a story published on Wednesday, The New York Times implicitly blames the altercation on an Oklahoma law that requires students to use restrooms that correspond with the sex “identified on the individual’s original birth certificate.” Details that the Times omitted cast doubt on that framing, which The Independent also pushed in a story headlined “Oklahoma Banned Trans Students From Bathrooms. Now a Bullied Student Is Dead After a Fight.”

Nex, whose given name was Dagny, was biologically female, and the fight happened in a girls’ bathroom, where Nex and another student reportedly were assaulted by “three older female students.” Although Nex apparently was bullied for identifying as nonbinary, it looks like the location of the fight was incidental.

That is not the impression left by the Times story. “Anti-Trans Policies Draw Scrutiny After 16-Year-Old’s Death in Oklahoma,” says the headline. The subhead adds that “the student, who did not identify as male or female, according to their family, died a day after an altercation in a school bathroom.” The story is illustrated by a photo of transgender rights activists during a 2023 demonstration at the Oklahoma Capitol. “Under state law,” the caption notes, “students must use the bathroom that aligns with their birth gender.”

Even though that is what Nex was doing at the time of the fight, the second paragraph again cites the law as if it explains the altercation: “Under an Oklahoma law passed in 2022, students must use the bathrooms that align with their birth gender.” The next paragraph notes that the fight happened “in a girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School” but does not acknowledge that Nex was complying with the bathroom law, perhaps because that would require acknowledging Nex’s “birth gender.” Although that information is clearly relevant in this context, the story does not mention it at all.

Reporters J. David Goodman and Edgar Sandoval return to the subject of state policy later in the story:

The death renewed scrutiny of anti-transgender laws passed in the state and rhetoric by Oklahoma officials, including the state superintendent for education, Ryan Walters, whose agency has been forceful in trying to bar what it calls “radical gender theory” in schools.

“It’s dangerous,” Mr. Walters said in a video made by the agency last year. “It puts our girls in jeopardy.”

The video highlighted a fight in a bathroom the previous year in which, according to a lawsuit, a female student was “severely” injured in a fight with a transgender student.

Advocates for nonbinary and transgender students said that the state’s policy on gender and bathrooms had led to more reports of confrontations in schools.

“That policy and the messaging around it has led to a lot more policing of bathrooms by students,” said Nicole McAfee, the executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, which advocates for transgender and gay rights. Students who do not present themselves as obviously male or female find themselves questioned by other students, they said. “There is a sense of, ‘do you belong in here?'”

The cause of Nex’s death remains unclear. The New York Post reports that Sue Benedict, Nex’s mother, said Nex fell and hit their head during the bathroom fight. The Post also quotes the mother of the other victim, who reported seeing the assailants “beating her head across the floor.” But according to a statement that the Owasso Police Department posted on Facebook yesterday, preliminary autopsy findings indicate that Nex “did not die as a result of trauma.” The statement adds that “toxicology results and other ancillary testing results” are still pending and “the official autopsy report will be available at a later date.”

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Elon Musk Is Right and The NY Times Is Wrong About Illegal Voting by Non-Citizens

In a recent trio of posts to X, Elon Musk wrote that (1) illegal immigrants “are not prevented from voting in federal elections,” (2) “you don’t need government issued ID to vote,” and (3) Democrats “are importing voters.”

To rebut those statements, The New York Times (NYT) published an article by Jim Rutenberg and Kate Conger claiming that Mr. Musk is “spreading election misinformation” about “illegal voting by noncitizens” and echoing a “conspiracy theory” spread by former President Donald Trump.

Although Mr. Musk’s words are imprecise, the gist of what he wrote is correct, and The NYT is categorically wrong.

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New York Times Publishes Op-Ed Calling for Biden to Step Aside and Allow Another Democrat to Run

The New York Times has published an opinion piece calling for Joe Biden to step aside and allow another Democrat to run in 2024.

The article by Ross Douthat was titled “The Question Is Not If Biden Should Step Aside. It’s How.”

Douthat began by pointing to the special counsel report released Thursday that found Biden had mishandled classified documents, but should not be charged, at least in part, because of his failing memory.

The report referred to him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and “significant limitations.”

“Joe Biden should not be running for re-election,” Douthat’s article began. “That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst. And Democrats who are furious at the prosecutor have to sense that it will become only more obvious as we move deeper into an actual campaign.”

The writer explained that he does not necessarily believe that Biden is currently unfit for the presidency, but that he may not be during a second term.

“Saying that things have worked OK throughout this stage of Biden’s decline, though, is very different from betting that they can continue working out OK for almost five long further years,” the article continued. “And saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he’s capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again.”

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NYT Engages in Front-Page IDF ‘Womenwashing’

If you read the Global Times, an English-language daily owned by China’s Communist Party, you will catch stories about the forward-thinking gender politics of the People’s Liberation Army. Just last year (2/21/23), readers found out that the PLA is recruiting “female carrier-based aircraft pilots for the first time,” and before that (4/9/19), the paper bragged that women in the PLA are “showing valor and fortitude no less than men.”

The paper (7/15/19) hailed “10 women who hurdled the training as operators of the country’s most advanced tank,” reporting that internet commentators called them “modern-day Mulans.” It even ran a photo spread (12/19/13) of the “Beautiful Female Soldiers of the PLA” with the help of China’s state wire service, Xinhua.

In the West, articles like these tend to be disregarded as government advertising that sugarcoats the country’s military expansion by portraying it as some kind of social progress. Because the paper is party-owned, and China ranks 179 out of 180 on Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index, it’s hard not to be skeptical of these pieces’ intentions.

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Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, the article purports to prove “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” than even Israeli authorities have been willing to allege . However, the Times report is marred by sensationalism, wild leaps of logic, and an absence of concrete evidence to support its sweeping conclusion.

The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.

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Two reports debunk New York Times ‘investigative report’ of mass rape on October 7th

On December 28, the New York Times published an “investigative” report on gender-based violence allegedly committed by Palestinians during the October 7 attack. The newspaper says the story was based on over 150 interviews conducted by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, along with Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella. The story concludes that Hamas fighters engaged in systematic rape and sexual violence against Israeli women.

The story itself repeats October 7 testimonies that have been previously published and already debunked and discredited, but the Times investigation hinges predominantly on one central story, the story of the rape of “Gal Abdush,” who is described by the Times as “The Woman in the Black Dress.”

Although claiming its story proves that “the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7,” the veracity of the New York Times story was undermined almost as soon as it was published, including from the Abdush family itself who says there is no proof Gal Abdush was raped and that the New York Times interviewed them under false pretenses.

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NY Times Targets Pro-Trump Memes, Equates Them with Deepfakes and Advocates for Regulation

It’s that time of the US election cycle again: what were formerly known as “newspapers of record” attempting to, for political reasons, promote odd ideas like regulating jokes.

It’s the New York Times this time, looking like it’s terrified that Donald Trump might be successful in his new presidential bid, and so going guns blazing after what it calls his “troll army.”

And “troll” here means – meme creators. As for the memes themselves, the NYT either pretends not to or doesn’t get the joke – namely, that they are jokes, and basically treats them as sinister tools for peddling misinformation and deepfakes.

To add insult to the paper’s injury, the memes not only support the Trump campaign, but Trump also enjoys them, and takes time to communicate with the meme creators.

The article claims that there is a large number of “sexist and racist tropes” being repeated in these memes, but singles out a video collection of some of President Biden’s many gaffes.

Trump apparently liked the original and used it during his rallies, but the gaffes are truly so many, that he thought a few more could be added to the video, which the creator was happy to do.

This, the NYT treats as a very serious matter, referring to the creator as “effectively” being no less than a member of “a shadow online ad agency” for Trump – even though he does not work for him.

What happened to the right to back a presidential candidate, express it in a humorous way, and not be treated with suspicion and described in over-the-top dramatic tone, such as that these creators with the memes, “brutally denigrate” Biden, and show “unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls” who resort to “vulgar invectives”?

But it’s the suggested “solutions” that are the most bizarre part of the article.

One is the implication that memes should be treated as ads that run on TV and radio, meaning, regulated for “accuracy, fairness and transparency.”

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The New York Times Credulously Embraces the ‘Super Meth’ Theory

A story about polysubstance use in today’s New York Times mentions “super meth” four times: once in the headline, once in a subhead, and twice in the body text. “A decade or so ago, Mexican drug lords figured out how to mass-produce a synthetic ‘super meth,'” Times reporter Jan Hoffman writes. “It has provoked what some researchers are calling a second meth epidemic. Popular up and down the West Coast, super meth from Mexican and American labs has been marching East and South and into parts of the Midwest.”

Yet Hoffman never explains what “super meth” means. Instead she links to a widely cited 2021 article in The Atlantic by journalist Sam Quinones. In that piece, which is based on Quinones’ 2021 book The Least of Us, he posits that methamphetamine derived from phenyl-2-propanone (P2P), the dominant method nowadays, is more potent and more hazardous than methamphetamine derived from pseudoephedrine, a process that became less common after the U.S. government restricted access to that precursor.

If that were true, it would be yet another illustration of prohibition’s tendency to make drug use more dangerous: By cracking down on cold and allergy medications containing pseudoephedrine, the government pushed production abroad and encouraged traffickers to use P2P instead, which, according to Quinones, made the resulting methamphetamine purer, more addictive, more physically harmful, and more likely to trigger “mental illness”—so much so that, according to the headline over his Atlantic article, it might not even make sense to “call it meth anymore.” But although Hoffman evidently considers Quinones a credible source, he never offered a plausible reason to believe any of that.

As drug historian David Herzberg notes in a Washington Post review of Quinones’ book, “Quinones has no laboratory or epidemiological evidence that P2P meth is different from ephedrine-produced meth—the ‘super-meth’ theory is based entirely on anecdotes.” Herzberg adds that “journalists were writing equally terrifying things about ‘crack’ cocaine and ephedrine-based meth (and heroin) back in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Quinones himself is hazy on the scientific basis for his theory. “No one I spoke with knew for sure” why “P2P meth” was “producing such pronounced symptoms of mental illness in so many people,” he says.

Claire Zagorski, a paramedic who teaches harm reduction at the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, questions the assumption underlying that question. “We have no evidence supporting the idea that the meth currently on the market is meaningfully different at a population level,” she writes in Filter, “or that P2P-produced meth is any more or less neurotoxic than ephedrine meth.” Nor is that surprising, since “all meth actually has the same chemical makeup,” and “the only difference is the production method.”

Hoffman avers that “super meth” packs “a potentially lethal, addictive wallop far stronger” than ephedrine-based meth. But on the face of it, you would expect the latter method to produce more potent methamphetamine—exactly the opposite of what Hoffman and Quinones are claiming. An “ephedrine/pseudoephedrine reduction,” the Drug Enforcement Administration notes, yields “high quality d-methamphetamine,” the psychoactive isomer, without unwanted l-methamphetamine. The P2P method, by contrast, “yields lower quality dl-methamphetamine,” a combination of the two isomers.

Quinones concedes that P2P-derived meth is not actually a new thing, noting that “the Hell’s Angels and other biker gangs” used this method before phenyl-2-propanone, which was placed on Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act in 1980, became harder to come by. In his telling, the key development in the marketing of P2P meth happened sometime around 2006, when Mexican cartels figured out how to “separate d-meth from l-meth,” which he describes as “tricky” and “beyond the skills of most clandestine chemists.” In reality, Zagorski says, “isomer separation is fairly teachable” and “not all that mysterious”:

The cleanest and most straightforward way to remove the L from the psychoactive D isomer is capillary electrophoresis. This process involves feeding a meth sample into a small capillary tube and exploiting differences between the two isomers that cause one to “stick” to the tube’s coating while the other continues on. Anyone with around $4,000 can do this with via a capillary electrophoresis machine, which automates the process to minimize human error and labor.

However challenging the process, it is necessary only because the P2P method yields an inferior mixture compared to the “high quality d-methamphetamine” produced by the pseudoephedrine method. Either way, Zagorski notes, the goal is something like “pharmaceutical-grade meth, the regulated version of which is sold under the brand name Desoxyn.” Yet that “FDA-approved prescription form” of the drug “doesn’t cause ‘cerebral catastrophe'” involving the “violent paranoia, hallucinations, conspiracy theories, isolation, massive memory loss, [and] jumbled speech” that Quinones describes.

Unfazed by the lack of such symptoms in patients who take Desoxyn, Quinones asserts that “methamphetamine is a neurotoxin” that “damages the brain no matter how it is derived.” Still, he says, “P2P meth seems to create a higher order of cerebral catastrophe.”

Why would that be? “One theory is that much of the meth contains residue of toxic chemicals used in its production, or other contaminants,” Quinones writes. “Even traces of certain chemicals, in a relatively pure drug, might be devastating.”

The problem, in other words, is not that P2P meth is especially pure but rather that it contains potentially “devastating” contaminants. Maybe.

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NY Times’ Paul Krugman says ‘inflation is over’ — if you exclude food, gas and rent

Paul Krugman’s assertion that “the war on inflation is over” if you exclude food, energy, shelter, and used cars is being mocked online.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist posted the comment on his X social media account on Thursday.

“The war on inflation is over,” Krugman wrote in the caption, adding: “We won, at very little cost.”

Krugman attached a graph titled “CPI ex food, energy, shelter and used cars” that showed a declining rate stretching from 7% in January of last year to slightly below 2% in September.

The reaction on X to Krugman’s post was scathing, with critics noting that the Labor Department’s consumer price index (CPI) — the most widely used by economists to gauge prices faced by consumers — factors in those day-to-day living expenses.

“This is fantastic news for all Americans who don’t need food, a place to live, or fuel & electricity,” wrote Tim Murtaugh.

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