Showing posts with label Bosnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bosnia. Show all posts

Saturday, September 27, 2025

The Trouble With On-The-Job News Reporting

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                 Christiane   Amanpour was born in the West London suburb of Ealing on January 12, 1958, the daughter of Mohammad Taghi Amanpour (Iranian) and Anne Patricia Hill (British). Her father was Shia Muslim and her mother Roman Catholic.  Christiane Maria Heideh Amanpouris a British-Iranian journalist and television host. Amanpour is the Chief International Anchor for CNN and host of CNN International's nightly interview program Amanpour, CNN's The Amanpour Hour on Saturdays and Amanpour & Company on PBS. She also hosts Christiane Amanpour Presents The Ex-Files with her ex-husband James Rubin on Global.

There's negativity to report about on-the-job news reporting such as Christiane Amanpour spoke about this morning when talking about a newscast experience she had in Bosnia.  She just reported about what she saw.  Christiane Amanpour's reporting on the Bosnian War (1992–1995) was pivotal in bringing the conflict's atrocities to a global audience. Her work as CNN's chief international correspondent from the besieged city of Sarajevo helped shape public perception and triggered a debate over journalistic objectivity during genocide.

  • Amanpour reported on the brutal shelling of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb army and the suffering of civilians trapped by the siege.

This morning she included what she observed (only) in Gaza withIsraelis not allowing reporters inside Gaza. This has become a bigcomplaint.                                 


What if the following happened and reporters simply reported what they saw.  How would they have reported the act?  Wouldthe why part of the act be included if they didn't bother to findout?  

The U.S. dropped the world's first atomic bomb, codenamed "Little Boy," on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, a U.S. 

B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, carried out the bombing. A second bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, resulting in Japan's surrender and the end of World War II.

Estimates of Japanese deaths from the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki vary, but it is generally accepted that the bombings resulted in at least 200,000 to 250,000 deaths, with a range of specific figures like 140,000 for Hiroshima and 74,000 for Nagasaki cited by the BBC, and official records suggesting 66,000-150,000 deathsThe exact death toll is impossible to determine due to extensive destruction, the confusion of wartime records, and ongoing deaths from radiation-related illnesses over the following weeks, months, and decades. 

If Christiane only saw this happening, she would have had a scalding report about the USA, not knowing what prompted the USA to do such an outlandish thing !  

The primary reason for the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan was to force a swift surrender, thereby avoiding a costly U.S. invasion that was anticipated to result in hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese casualties. 

Other contributing factors included a desire to demonstrate the bomb's power to Japan and potentially to the Soviet Union, to secure U.S. post-war dominance, and to use the bombs before the Soviets could enter the war against Japan..That's AI's reasoning.  

The primary reason President Harry Truman used the atomic bomb on Japan was to force a swift and unconditional surrender, avoiding a costly ground invasion. The American military feared that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would result in a massive loss of life for both American and Japanese soldiers and civilians. It could be that they had no idea of the power of one of these bombsand didn't expect the loss of life by dropping one.  

  • Avoiding a deadly invasion: Military planners had developed Operation Downfall, a large-scale invasion of Japan. Estimates for American casualties ranged from 100,000 to over a million, with millions more Japanese military and civilian deaths expected. The recent bloody battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, where Japanese soldiers fought to the last man, demonstrated the high cost of each island conquest.
  • Saving lives: Truman believed that an unconditional surrender, brought about by the atomic bomb, would ultimately save lives by preventing the prolonged bloodshed of a conventional land invasion. As he later wrote, his "object is to save as many American lives as possible".
  • Swift end to the war: Four years of intense, worldwide conflict had exhausted the American public. An end to the fighting was a national priority, and the atomic bomb offered a way to achieve a final victory as quickly as possible.
  • Japan's refusal to surrender: By mid-1945, Japan's military position was hopeless. However, many Japanese leaders were still determined to fight to the death and resisted calls for unconditional surrender, even after repeated conventional bombings devastated their cities. The bombs were intended to demonstrate a new level of destructive power that would break this resolve. 
  • Incidently, President Truman learned about the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb immediately after becoming president on April 12, 1945, through briefings by the Secretary of War and the project's general. He was informed that the bomb was incredibly powerful, capable of causing massive destruction and civilian casualties, but he believed it was a necessary tool to end the war and save Allied lives. While some scientists suggested a demonstration, Truman's advisors recommended using the bomb, and he agreed to drop it on Japanese cities to force surrender and end the conflict. 
  • This sounds so familiar with Hamas who won't surrender butkeep on fighting by hiding behind their own people, shootingthem if they try to leave the area, steal their food from trucksbrought in, hide in hospitals;; even wanting to die as martyrs forrewards in a future life.    
  • Journalistic appointments: Journalists have reported that when the Gaza war began, newsroom leadership often assigned the story to a specific reporter, often a white male with little regional expertise. In some cases, reporters with Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim heritage were reportedly perceived as biased and sidelined.  Al Jazeera is an example. 
  • Official interference: Some outlets have been accused of allowing external entities to influence their reporting. It was reported that CNN journalists covering the conflict must submit their work for review by the network's Jerusalem bureau and that some of the Israeli military's conditions for international journalists on the ground included pre-broadcast reviews. This response must have led to deciding to keep out reportersperiod if they couldn't understand what had been going on. 
  • Christiane Amanpour did not produce a specific documentary report on President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb in Japan. However, her program Amanpour and Company and other CNN broadcasts have covered the topic in depth, especially around the 80th anniversary of the bombings in August 2025.  
  • Research
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Amanpour

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

How Hitler Got His Foot in the Door

Nadene Goldfoot




                                                                                  Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Some historians see the decline of the Ottoman Empire starting in 1683.  We know it was doomed by going into WWI with Germany.  The Ottoman Caliphate needed the acquisition of new wealth and saw the agriculture, manufacturing and commerce of the European countries as a way to get this.  They had the Balkans of SE Europe and the Near East since the 14th Century which included Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and  Montenegro.  The Ottomans didn't have their own financial system.  They had to borrow money which started at a decent 4%-5% but must have risen.  On top of it they ran up huge debts.  Sound familiar?  A war they thought would be short and lots of debt spelled their doom.

Germany in 1913 was part of  an era of arranged marriages in Europe.    This country had a "solid, prosperous, advanced culture and population".  Most of Europe, including Germany was ruled by a monarchy.  Germany was under the Kaiser Wilhelm.  Then on the 28th of June  the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife, Sophie  in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovenia were assassinated.    They had been shot by Garrilo Princip, one of 6 Bosnian-Serb assassins.  Bosnia was then a part of the Ottoman Empire.  Austria-Hungary had the mandate to occupy and administer Bosnia, but the Ottoman Empire had, since an 1878 treaty of Berlin, sovereignty.  Germany decided to fight over territory in the Balkans.  Austria-Hungary was in competition with Serbia and Russia over the same territory.  By July 28, 1914 most of the world was involved in World War I.  The Germans thought for sure that they would have a short war that they would win over this and that they could finance it with post war reparations.     From a position that both thought the other wouldn't fight over it, they created the "Great War."  It is figured that about 9 million soldiers died in this war. It was the end of the German, Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires.

In Germany a month before the war started in June 1914 a 1 lb loaf of bread cost 13 cents.
                                         WWI started July 28, 1914.
1916    it cost 19 cents
1918   it cost  22 cents.     WWI ended November 11, 1918 and Germany lost  WWI.
1919   it cost  26 cents  
1920  it cost $1.20
1921  it cost $1.35
1922  it cost $3.50
1923 it cost $700 in about January
1923 it cost $1,200 in about May, 5 months later
1923 it cost $2,000,000 September
1923 it cost $670,000,000 October: Finally wide-spread riots broke out.
1923 it cost $3,000,000,000 (that's billions) November
1923 it cost $100,000,000,000,000 middle of November  (trillions)  This was the financial end for Germany

What had happened?  On October 11, 1922, the German Central Bank and the German Treasury decided to "jump start" a stagnant economy.  Earlier they knew they needed easier money, so using the idea of more is better, they created more and more money.  The economy was still at a standstill so they kept on making money more available.  Nothing happened for the best.  Then prices exploded but the shoppers were staying home.  So they devalued the mark.  They made 2 billion marks to a dollar.

In the beginning in 1913,  4.2 marks equaled $1.   By November 1923 you needed 4.2 trillion marks to get $1.  This is what is called-hyper-inflation and it destroyed their country and almost the whole world.  The middle-class was destroyed.  Few people owned their own homes. Almost everyone rented, so thousands became homeless.  Savings were worthless.  Pensions were meaningless.  People demanded pay twice a day to fight the inflation.  They heated their homes by burning paper money.  They shopped with a wheel-barrel full of worthless paper money.  They could not pay a dowry for their daughters, so there went marriages.  Social morality died.  The roar of the roaring 20's began to rumble. Sin was in.

Adolf Hitler began a ten year effort to power by working on all the unhappy people living under this chaos and street rioting who saw no way out and needed somebody to blame.  Thus Germany's Jews, the ultimate scapegoat,  were gassed and we lost 6 million from all over Europe.  He was born in Austria and was a German politician and became the leader of the Nazi Party.    He came into power in 1933 and remained till the end of the WWII in 1945.    He started his life by being a German soldier in WWI as a Corporal.  It was in July 1919 that he infiltrated the German Workers Party and started his evil intentions.  

We Americans need to take a lesson from this history.  Evidently creating more money as we have recently done is not the best method.  We have had unemployment for 4 years and are not recovering as quickly as our government expected.  It leads to unhappy people who start the blame game.  We don't want it to lead to a Hitler-type situation.  Already I see Israel, a Jewish state, being blamed by Europe through the decisions in the UN.  They say in song that "money makes the world go round."  We need to take better care with ours.  We don't want to turn into the Ottoman Empire as we owe so much money to China already.                                          

Resource; market Commentary by Art Cashin, October 11, 2012 from UBS financial Services, Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
End of the German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Ottoman_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Balkans