The Good, the Bad, the Ugly , Just for a moment, imagine the consequences of the same kind of spurious, anonymous Opinion Ed about President Buhari surfacing in Nigeria's "Daily Trust" ( even if in Nigeria it does not enjoy the same status as the NYT in the US and the world )
Re – "what surprises me is that people are still surprised after a thousand years of being surprised"
Surprise, no surprise that someone is not surprised in the realm of ignorance versus knowledge, fact versus fiction, knowledge versus superstition and in this case, Ignoramus Cornelius can only say, just like Socrates, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing" and add that which Donald J. Trump was required to conclude with when he took the oath of office as President of the one nation under God: "So help me God!"
We are to assume that even if not elected, the writer of the anonymous opinion Ed in the NYT ( if he or she does indeed exist - as a single person or a conglomerate of interests represented by that one single person ) - as conscientious spokesperson did take some kind of oath of loyalty to the United States and its Constitution or much better still an oath of loyalty to the Almighty (the God of Abraham, Abraham and Israel – the God of Jesus of Nazareth ) and that person if a Muslim ( you never know) to the God of the Prophet of al-Islam ( S.A.W.)
"If he or she indeed does exist" - otherwise when the New York Times authorities are compelled by law to reveal ( at least to the relevant State Security agency) the name of the "resistance" agent or agents - they cannot say, " It was satirical , seriously, we were only joking, there is no such person or persons") in which case, Heaven knows what's going to happen next or if President Trump is merely going to shrug his shoulders and say " Fake News again!" or is going to sue the New York Times for lost sleep and unnecessary worries and even a slight loss of popularity due to the prominence given to that piece , because it claims to be from an insider.
If the NYT are not going to tell us the name of the coward or hero who claims to be an admin insider then all the other pious attestations are meaningless. It should be more insightful and less harmful to the United States if it chose the genre known as satire, instead. But ultimately "the resistance" has a real wish, to be most harmful since it claims to be in despair that it's too late in the day for Mr. President to ever change his austere and autocratic ways - and hopefully, as always, he will be singing "My way" (One of the problems with the United States is that ideally they would like all of their presidents to be like Jesus H. Christ - and so far none of them - maybe apart from Mr. Trump has been willing to do as he said: "take up your cross and follow me" - not even Brother Obama as was sadly brought to my notice by The Federalist this morning, when I read this : THE COMPLETE COLLECTION: OBAMA'S SCANDALS, GAFFES, AND POWER-GRABS [UPDATED!]
Which proves Paul's point
The last thing I read on truth ( apparently a scarce commodity in the political realm) was a long time ago , On Truth by the same author who wrote On Bullshit ( bullshit – which Vice president Spiro Agnew once degraded as a "barnyard epithet" . Surprisingly, ( are you surprised?) for all the bad-mouthing and tantrums that have been attributed to Mr. Trump, he has not yet been accused of using or misusing the words " bull shit " or the other barnyard epithet, " horse shit" - at least not frequently as in " I inhaled frequently , that was the point !"
Righteous or not, President Trump has every right to worry, and so would you if you were in his shoes about having someone who is disloyal to Mr. President - maybe even a Russian spy in his inner circles. In the UK, there is at least a modified " Official Secrets Act" after the Peter Wright Scandal . As of yet, the NYT which is privy to anonymous' identity is nowhere near an infringement of such an act...
"But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency"
On Sunday, 9 September 2018 10:38:18 UTC+2, vokafor wrote:
One of my respected graduate school professors often quipped, in the middle of a class, that "what surprises me is that people are still surprised after a thousand years of being surprised." He was alluding to the fact that our human nature innately makes us a gullible species—an instinct that ought to be controlled by the depth and pertinence of our acquired earthly knowledge and capacity for both critical thinking and critical reading. Well, I plead guilty to being utterly surprised about the seriousness that some of us have accorded to an anonymous publication. Have you ever been a victim of an anonymous publication? Have you ever been a victim of gossip? From a principled position, anonymous publications are suspect. Period! In fact, the more I re-read the NY Times explanation/rationale for publishing this Op-Ed anonymously, the more it causes me to feel that the newspaper regards us, its readers, as suckers who can believe anything, just anything, that the NYT throws at us without proper attribution.
I recall that after conducting months of hearings on 9/11, a US Congressional committee remarkably concluded that a chief weakness of US's highly-priced intelligentsia is its failure or inability to "connect the dots." But I submit that failure to connect the dots is not a peculiar weakness of the US intelligence community, generally-speaking.
On this forum, are we also sometimes or often unable to connect the dots? Is it possible that history is repeating itself in terms of how otherwise serious people are reacting to this anonymous Op-Ed from the New York Times?
On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 7:08 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
These lyrics apply :
Joni Mitchell : The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)
John Kerry ( of the Resistance ) spells out how crucial he believes this matter is : here talking to Anderson Cooper on CNN
"False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin,
Only a matter of time 'til night comes steppin' in" ( Jokerman)
At first my gut feeling was that our sour grapes "Lyin' Hillary" of insidious intent could have written or suitably doctored the "anonymous" opinion editorial as part of the on-going New York Times and the Clinton National Network ( CNN) crusade against anything triumphantly Trumpian. After a careful reading you realise that what you have left in your hands is a document that's still more abstract than concrete. The complaint and the disgust is still only general : there is not a single concrete and specific example by which the author nails the pent-up discontent to the page – perhaps to fool you by giving the impression that any specific vocabulary would be giving too much away; some have said about that one raisin in the pie, "anti-trade" should link the anonymous author with the economic wing or the treasury department. Such links deliberately strewn in your way could also aim at leading you astray, far from the scent, dear Watson. So , the net is left so wide that anybody, even you could have written it. Could be someone who smells that he or she is or was about to get fired. Or someone in cahoots with another person who has been fired. Could even be Comey.
Yet, the resolution of the current impasse is really not such a difficult one even if it has some characteristics of a philosophical proposition - not beyond simple logic or deduction, in this whodunnit case compounded by some practical cloak and dagger skulduggery in the inner circles somewhere along the corridors of White House power. Isn't it Paul Rand who has suggested a lie detector test? Then he should volunteer to be the first one to take it. Lead by example.
There are others in the Trump stable, also under suspicious even if he too will protest unusually loudly and claim the greatest loyalty to his Master and hero – the Great White Hope - I mean one such as Uncle Tom's Ben Carson ( as in "I want my nigger" – Huckleberry Finn) who could react like O. J. Simpson : "Fox news Channel's Shepard Smith asked O.J. Simpson if he would take a lie detector test." I'm not going to be some dancing monkey for you guys," Simpson said" (Juice)
Line em up .Line 'em all up
Worst case scenario : The identity of the insider author of the anonymous opinion editorial is hopefully not a case of a Democrat mole or a Russian spy right inside there, lurking in the depths of an administration under investigation concerning "Russian interference"....As to the extensive power and the savvy of the Russians , think back to their recruitments at Cambridge – and from that point of view it makes absolute sense when President Trump says that it's a National Security issue :
"Supposing I have a high-level national security, and he has got a clearance, we talked about clearances a lot recently, and he goes into a high-level meeting concerning China or Russia or North Korea or something. I don't want him in those meetings."
Both Brother Obama and his president, President Trump, have deflowered the concept of innocence or privilege or immunity being granted to this kind of anonymity. Brother Obama has made the point that Mr. Anonymous was after all not democratically elected : "The claim that everything will turn out OK because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren't following the president's orders, that is not a check. I'm being serious here. ... These people aren't elected. They're not accountable."
So the final question is this : Is there a law that can compel the New York Times to reveal the name of the anonymous opinion ed. author, in the interest of national security?
The answer is: Of course
Yes we can. Can guarantee that.
On Friday, 7 September 2018 21:11:33 UTC+2, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:"I can guarantee you that! " crows Farooq. Farooq can't guarantee anything. He is merely telling us that he believes in the NYT.
Who can guarantee that Jesus is "the Messiah" or even a "prophet", "virgin birth" etc. ?
"Don't put my faith in nobody, not even a scientist " (Noble Laureate Dylan could also be telling the truth)
Dean Baquet ( executive editor of The New York Times) can also say" Please believe me" , but there's no guarantee that he or any other New York prophet is telling the truth. He has been there before about "anonymous sources"
This was a very informative, please check it out ( from May last year) : Dean Baquet on BBC Hardtalk
With just a little imagination at work, anything is possible. The concoction ( anonymous opinion editorial) was calculated to cause trouble and to damage Mr. President ; it has fulfilled its malicious intention and that is all. Now we have a paranoid president, there's a traitor in the house and everyone's under suspicion. Maybe a hundred more anonymous opinion eds will follow suit, some of them giving lurid details about some hanky panky going on in the oval orifice, just before the mid-term erections
Let us pray for Mr. President and the American people
On Friday, 7 September 2018 18:16:00 UTC+2, Farooq A. Kperogi wrote:The New York Times is a nearly 200-year-old newspaper with more Pulitzer Prizes than any American newspaper--and with a heightened consciousness of its reputation as America's newspaper of record. It's not the National Inquirer or some mercenary, ethically challenged Nigerian newspaper. It would NEVER knowingly fabricate an Op-Ed and attribute it to a non-existent Trump official. I can guarantee you that!FarooqFarooq Kperogi, PhD
Associate Professor
Journalism and Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building Room 5092
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, GA 30144
Office phone: 470-578-7735
Fax: 470-578-9153
Cell: 404-573-9697
Website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Sent from my 4G LTE Android device. Please forgive typos.On Fri, Sep 7, 2018, 11:41 AM Victor Okafor <vok...@emich.edu> wrote:In the context of political party politics, I am a centrist Independent though it's a result of my political evolution. However, being an Independent does not detract from the part of me that's a historically conscious social activist. A social activist does not have to belong to or does not have to be aligned with an specific political party. In fact, an Independent social activist is much more likely to receive bi-partisan attention than a social activist who is openly partisan and ideologically grafted to one side of the isle. From my vantage point as a centrist Independent, I tend to be able to dispassionately cast critical lenses at the actions of both major political parties.--On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 10:29 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:Victor:To be an Independent in the Age of Trump - or to be indifferent to Trump - is to be a suspect of something.And there you have it.Bolaji Aluko--
On Friday, September 7, 2018, Victor Okafor <vok...@emich.edu> wrote:Friends:
Is it possible that the real author of the Op-Ed does not work within President Trump's administration and that the essay, ahead of the upcoming US midterm elections, is a made-up story--a political fiction designed to both cause a disequilibrium within that administration and deepen mass disaffection with this presidency? In this age of higher frequencies of fake news within both the social and traditional media, anything is possible. Fake news, more commonly known as gossip, has always been part of the human experience across human cultures, but emergent social media, which have diminished the role of gate-keepers in traditional news media, have exacerbated that phenomenon.
If this Op-Ed turns out to be fake, would that be a first time that a newspaper, anywhere, has published a material that's entirely made-up? Of course, no. I am not a fan of anonymously authored materials. In general, anonymously authored materials are suspect and they must be regarded with a grain of salt.
Human gullibility, which predisposes us to believe the worst about fellow human beings that we dislike, may also be at play here.
In the context of US politics, I am a quintessential Independent, and so, sometimes, I am able to look at political currents from a non-partisan perspective.
--On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 4:32 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:What if there is no "writer"(that is someone from Trump's cabinet)? Is that perspective impossible?
CAO.
--
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