IASPS - News Behind the News
Of Planes, Trains, and
Automobiles
or Why The New York Times is in Tow
On May 9, The New York Times ran the story,
"China says it won't let US spy plane fly home,"
by Elisabeth Rosenthal. It says :"Days after American officials
expressed hope that the damaged surveillance plane stranded on Hainan island
could be repaired and flown out of china, Chinese officials rejected the
plan, saying today that they would not permit the plane to fly home....But
China did not rule out...dismantling it and sending it home in pieces."
Two days later the Times
explained why: Chinese public opinion would not allow the government to let
America off so easily.
The actions of the Chinese government explain themselves. But The
Times' analysis is understandable only in terms of the US
establishment's reflexive fondness for totalitarianism.
By allowing the return of the aircraft only in a way that humiliates America, the
Chinese government is continuing to drive home to its own people and to
the rest of Asia the point it has made several times since the midair
collision of one of its fighters with the US surveillance plane, namely that
it can slap America in the face at will, and that America will sell out not
just its allies but its own interests to please China.
Since it has profited from this course of action, it would be remarkable if it
were not persevering in it.
The Times' acceptance at face value of official
Chinese references to Chinese public opinion, however,
is noteworthy. Since when has the Chinese government bowed to public
opinion? Public opinion favored the Democracy demonstrators in 1989. The
politburo ran them over with tanks. Public opinion supports Falun Gong and
other spiritualist movements. The politburo persecutes them with
dungeon, fire and sword. Public opinion is well nigh unanimous in hating the
"one child policy." But the politburo enforces it with monitoring of
menstrual periods, and all the sanctions at its command. Public opinion in
totalitarian states is the object of the rulers' relentless attempts to
manufacture it to its own specifications. The rulers conduct massive, violent
even murderous campaigns to destroy those parts of which they disapprove
and to create, ex nihilo if they must, whatever they want. This is not news.
Nor, unfortunately, is it news that the
New York Times and the Establishment for which it speaks
unquestioningly accepts the claims of politburos that they represent
public opinion. Thus it did for three generations with regard to the Soviet
Union. As for East Germany, Cuba, etc. every cleaning lady, every truck
driver, knew that governments do not represent people whom they keep
in their country by force. The Times also notes the
absence of "moderate" Palestinian opinion. It never mentions that
Arafat et al. murder to create the public opinion they want. But the
New York Times chooses not to know any of this. What The
Times writes about the relationship between the Chinese government
and its people must be read in that light.