That’s according to Time magazine’s Alex Perry (7/5/10):
If you want to see what’s wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling the world in a chartered Concorde. His death in 1997 ushered in a civil war that killed 5.4 million people and unleashed a hurricane of rape on tens of thousands more. Today AIDS and malaria are epidemic.
This is all a set-up to explain that China is venturing into the Heart of Darkness in a whole new way, investing billions on infrastructure projects in return for things like mineral concessions.
But if you’re going to charge Congo with being “what’s wrong with Africa,” you’d better give credit where credit is due. Independent Congo didn’t give the world Mobutu; that gift belongs to the U.S. and Belgium, who supported the overthrow and assassination of democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba and helped prop up the horror that was Mobutu for decades afterward.
Perry goes on to write that “the Western way of helping has been with aid” while, by contrast, “Beijing doesn’t do gifts; it does deals.” Besides “gifts” like Mobutu, the bulk of Western aid come with so many strings attached that the distinction between “gifts” and “deals” is little more than a semantic game.
The lesson from this article? If you want to see what’s wrong with Africa, don’t look to Time to find out.
(h/t Maurice Carney of Friends of the Congo)
Thanks for reminding everyone that Democratic Republic of Congo was originally a real democracy that outsiders helped destroy just as outsiders destroyed the local economy during the colonial period.
It’s not definitely the last time… the very last Time, this magazine editor challenges History with a terrible efficiency because many of his readers won’t take the time to read some wikipedia article, and for sure won’t bother reading FAIR’s articles dealing with Time’s Perry’s lies. It’s really a pity. In just a couple of paragraphs you remind anyone of the way Belgium and its western allies were supporting a narrow-minded military puppet dictator, Mobutu, against a smarter and a much more honest figure Lumumba Patrice.
The result was a true sustainable misery which permits hungry predators like China to replace morally condemnable western countries and to behave as adepts of pillage as well. Very good students… They surpass their masters…
Fairness and accuracy in reporting? Are you kidding? The piece is about China’s adventures in Africa. And you’ve managed to inform your readers that it is, actually, some sort of Western conspiracy to cover up Western colonial crimes. Pot and kettle, Julie.
The first paragraph sets the tone for the article and if it begins with a huge omission or flatly lying about Congo’s history, it makes one suspect of what is to come in the rest of the article. The telling of Congo’s story is critical, especially the last 50 years because people in the West often believe that the root of what happens in Africa is based solely on internal factors and not destructive external intervention. What would Congo look like 50 years later if Congo was run by the leaders who were chosen by the Congolese people instead of the leaders chosen and imposed by America?
Mr. Perry,
How can you be so severely inaccurate in telling Congo’s story even if it is about China. Your article being about China does not give you license to disfigure Congo’s history. From the way you started your story, the average reader would have NO WAY of knowing that Congo actually elected its own leader. Your audience is left to believe that Congo got its independence so it can produce a dictator which fits a narrative that you have imposed on the Congolese people instead of sharing the historical facts of what actually happened in the Congo. Thank you so very much Judy for pointing out how the mainstream media continues to depict Africa in a grotesque, inaccurate fashion.
Mr. Perry you should really look deep into your heart and put yourself in the position of a Congolese who lost their elected leader and had a dictator imposed on them from the outside and 50 years later reporters from the country who imposed a dictator refuse to tell the true story even when it is in an article about China in Africa. Do not take it as an attack on you but an effort to set the record straight. As a responsible reporter, you should be on the side of setting the record straight.
Mr. Perry,
Arguing that the piece is about “Chinese Adventures in Africa” does not answer the question of accurate reporting. If we digress from the argument of conspiracies, all it would prove is that there was a laziness on your part to properly research on the country that was the center of this piece. I am honestly disappointed that the TIME, a widely read source, could be so negligent. It is a sign of disrespect that reports on Africa and its people can be butchered by those that have a professional and social responsibility to properly inform the public, but do not. Honestly, you should view these comments as a professional favor from your peers, in the event that you make a future “faut pas” in reporting a historical fact on the United States.
Friends of the Congo
I wonder, if Congo is “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be,” then why all the interest from China, Europe, Canada, and the USA, and more importantly, from Time Magazine? Seems the mischaracterization might be deliberate and serve a much more insidious purpose than simply, “China’s adventures in Africa.”
By omitting Patrice Lumumba from the history of independent Congo, Perry effectively removes the Congolese voice from the discussion/debate since Congolese people “gave the world Mobutu” who handicapped Congo’s growth therefore they cannot be trusted with their own matters.
There is nothing conspiratorial about highlighting Perry’s inaccurate, unfair, mischaracterization of Congo and Congolese people. Perhaps it would have deflated “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be” theory because something good did come from Congolese people, and not just a string of failures aided and abetted by international interests.
Thank you FAIR for the highlight.
Mr. Perry,
You chose Mobutu as opposed to Lumumba to kind of wrongfully show that Africans opted for dictators right from independence. Your choice of words that follow the Mobutu line is awful. Well you try to tell us Africa’s heart is shd be in Congo that whoever wants to know what’s wrong with Africa look to Congo is treating the continent like a country which most in the west do. It’s the naivity that many westerners bring to the continent that you are almost incapable of telling the story of congolese people.
Thank you FAIR for adding honesty to Alex Perry’s TIME report. Whether the report is about China’s adventure in Africa or not, it seems to me there was serious intellectual dishonest in an effort to portray Congo as what’s wrong with Africa. Of course most readers will take Mobutu as solely a product of the Congolese people while the same readers are deprived of what was right with Congo (Lumumba and democracy in Congo) that was destroyed by the Westerners. Again, thank you for doing this.
‘Until lions produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will only glorify the hunter.’ This is an African proverb that Robin Philpot, a Canadian writer, starts with his book ‘Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard.’
Alex Perry’s Time article is nothing more than a repeat of the widely accepted narrative about African continent by Western media looking at everything African from negative loops. When a journalist from this category cannot point to Western responsibilities in the fate of the continent, he resorts to shaping his story as a fictional piece far away from the reality as people on the ground and others objectively spirited know it.
Certain facts can hardly be disputed..Mobutu was installed, supported and backed by the US…..not elected by an independent Congo. China’s current role of “investing billions on infrastructure projects in return for things like mineral concessions” seems a bit soft in the retelling. Billions of dollars are changing hands here, if it ever truly rested in the hands of the Congolese, and the return is circumspect. What I see on the ground in Congo is inferior products being sold at inflated prices, shoddy construction jobs that need to be redone only months after the initial project. Seems more like the entire western world, China now included, is sucking out the heart of Congo, and in turn all of Africa. It is not the Congolese feuling the war, the rape, the disintegration of health care and facilities. If we want to see what is wrong with the Congo, we need only look in the mirror reflecting all of the material things the war in Congo has gone to support…for the western world, not in the heart of Africa.
The idea that the US created Mobutu and maintained him in power belittles Africans and is typical of the kind of racism that dogs analysis of Africa from commentators and journalists who get as close to Africa as, er, America, like old Julie here. The US did not create Mobutu. They certainly did support him. Equally, by backing Rwandan President Paul Kagame, they also helped overthrow him. The crucial dynamic here is support. Africans have been the main players in Africa since independence, and while outside powers have influence, that is all it is — influence and support. Mobutu was in charge of his own destiny. The primary creator of Mobutu was Mobutu. And no one would confuse Kagame with anybody’s puppet. To think that either of these guys can be pushed around by some sinister Western power in the name of, what, world domination, is faintly ludicrous and more than a little racist and patronizing.
As for this lame idea that I, and the “mainstream media”, are part of some giant conspiracy to lie, cover up, dissemble etc in the name of, I imagine, the “military industrial complex” or perhaps the CIA, what do you think happens here? Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subteranean car parks? Grow up. People who do my job die sometimes. I’ve known three myself. Do you really think we’d take those risk to tell lies? Your cheap and half-arsed conspiracies are insulting and infantile. I challenge any one of you — just one — to actually go and do some reporting in Congo, and then come back to me. Until then, your comments are pretty worthless.
Alex, were you in Africa when Lumumba was assassinated? One’s physical location and experience obviously do not determine one’s ability to speak with authority on historical events. I have in fact been to Africa, more than once. Assumptions make for sloppy arguments, as well as sloppy journalism.
Highlighting the U.S. and Belgian roles in Lumumba’s overthrow and assassination and Mobutu’s ascension is hardly racist, and pointing out your failure to do so is hardly conspiratorial. It doesn’t take the CIA to produce bad coverage, it just takes a reporter who believes it’s perfectly legitimate to write about “what’s wrong with Africa” (specifically the “sucking vortex” that is Congo) without acknowledging the extraordinary Western role.
Julie — since you’ve chosen to hand out lectures on journalism, here’s one for you. What’s the first rule of fair, accurate and ethical journalism? It’s giving your subject a right of reply. Did you do that? No. Did you even attempt to? No. If I, or anyone from the ‘mainstream media’ had done what you did here, writing a highly libellous piece without checking our facts, or even attempting to contact the subject, we would have been fired. That, actually, is one of the differences between the ‘mainstream media’ you so deride, and that kind of biased and inaccurate invective that you represent and which so pollutes the web today.
And, yes, actually, “one’s physical location and experience” do, to a large extent, determine one’s ability to speak with authority on historical events. That, Julie, is the difference between what you do and journalism — which involves actual reporting and actual travel.
A final note (sorry to bang on about this, but someone has to call you to account, Julie): you’ve been to Africa? You may genuinely be unaware of this, but there are 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Because I’ve been on holiday in Chile’s lake district does not qualify me to comment on the inner affairs of Colombia. If you want to write about the DRC with any authority, get out of your office, and go to Congo. Until then, you have no authority, none at all – and any competent journalist would recognize that.
Alex, you misunderstand what we do here. We’re not reporters covering the Congo; we’re critics reviewing the work of journalists like you. If a writer for Time wrote a negative book review without calling the author to get a response, would that be a firing offense? If so, your magazine has a very odd ethical code.
As for a right of response–aren’t you taking full advantage of it? Though I must say you could have made better use of it than complaining about the “invective” of a blog post while throwing around words like “racist” and “libellous.” Julie’s post was factually accurate–unlike your response, which accused her of never having been to Africa. When she noted that was wrong–not to claim any special expertise in the region, but to point out that you were making false assumptions–instead of apologizing, you come up with fresh insults. If you’re trying to make a point about the superior ethics of corporate journalists, I suggest that you’re headed in the wrong direction.
Jim – when I write a piece I do weeks, months and sometimes years of research. Cue my name into time.com and then decide, on balance, if you think I do a dis-service to Africa in my reporting. I’m guessing you’ll be surprised. I know Julie will be, because she didn’t do even that most elementary piece of research. What she’s doing here doesn’t qualify as criticism, which can be an honorable pursuit. It’s ignorant, five-minute toss-it-off blogging, based on uninformed bias and barely thought-out conspiracy, of the kind that passes itself off as comment, but whose content and effect is to mislead, distort and disinform. Exactly – and this should concern you – what she accuses me of. And exactly – and this should really alarm you – the kind of thing that increasingly makes people grateful for the ethical and professional standards of the “mainstream press”.
And as for right of response – yeah, I am calling you out now. Julie’s piece was a shameless and crass piece of cant, and if she can’t stand the heat, maybe she should exit a kitchen in which she clearly does not belong. The bigger point is, as I hope you know full well, you’re supposed to give me a right of reply at the time, in the piece. It’s only by chance that I came across Julie’s piece. I give a right of reply to everyone I report on by contacting them, even for a review. Not that odd at all. Although apparently odd for you guys.
Finally, Julie’s piece was not factually accurate. Congo did give the world Mobutu. He was Congolese. He came from Congo. He ruled it for 32 years. To suggest he was formed, shaped, maintained and only ever a puppet of the US is a gross inaccuracy, and, as I say, a racist one: prejudiced against Africans for assuming they never control their own destiny, prejudiced against the US, for assuming it’s always some shadowy bad guy. You can try to call me out on Congo if you want, but seeing as I’ve been six or seven times, for weeks at a time, and make it my business to read everything about it, I’m willing to bet you know zilch in comparison.
And dude – ‘corporate journalists’? What planet do you live on? Every journalist has to get paid. Often – damn the corruption! – by a corporation. If you’re trying to say that my corporation has some nefarious ethics that define my reporting, I not only refute that, and call you a twit, I throw that back at you. Your corporation exists prime facie to insult the mainstream press. It’s whole foundation is bias.
You want more? I can do this all day, and you guys surely need to learn a thing or two. I mean: is this what you do for a living? Invent crap, and throw it around? You’re armchair crap-throwers? That’s no way to go through life, Jim.
Alex Perry doesn’t get it. The fact that he has spent so much time responding without even understanding his historical misinformation is quite amazing. Defining the narrative is critical to telling one’s story. Remember “power is the ability to define one’s reality” if others define your reality starting with you history they will continue to have power over you. Lumumba understood this that is why he said “History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity.” I am sad to say that Alex Perry has just embarrassed himself by even commenting on this blog post with such multiple comment rather than aknowledging the error and move forward with an intellectual discussion.
I am looking forward to reading once again Perry`s comment so that he can further discredit himself as a fly-by African expert to tell the history of Africa as one who lived it.
Keep reading Mr Perry… and when you will understand why what’s wrong with Africa is a reporter like you who misinformed the world, then may be you will be able to cool off and accept your own prejudice in this situation.
OK. Let’s start with “fly-by”. I live in Africa.
Try again.
:-) Mr Perry still doesn’t get it. Let’s start with historical corrections
1. Independent Congo did not give the world Mobutu. The US did.
2. Mobutu did not impoverished the Congo alone… Check out the Congressional Budget Office report on Cobalt in 1981
3. There is no civil war in the Congo but a war of aggression by two of US and UK allies, Rwanda and Uganda. Mobutu’s death in 1997 did not bring about conflict. Congo was invaded by Rwanda and Uganda before his death in 1996.
4. If you are going to quote IRC number, you should state that 5.4 million died in the Congo from 1998 to May 2007 according to the IRC. If we both know that the war of aggression on the Congolese people started in 1996, and still continue `till today, your moral intellect will let you know we have passed the number 6 million.
Drink some tea to cool off… go walk a dog… read more books… and write an objective article. I pledge to help you with it if you are open to it… and you still have not seen where your analysis misinform the whole world…
I really wonder how TIME allowed a misleading article to be publish. You could always write an errata and do right by the Congolese people.
Kambale — that, I presume, is everything you know about the DRC in one post. Bravo, old boy. Such knowledge. Such erudite depth. Such spelling.
But, to bring you back to the subject, this isn’t a debate about the civil war in Congo. It is my rebuttal to Julie’s misrepresentation of my story and distortion of its meaning in the name of her prejudices. It is also making the broader point that most of what she has written, and Jim and most of the other posters here, is hypocritical: guilty of precisely the kind of minsinformation, bias and lazy research that she accuses me of. Don’t get me wrong: journalists should have watch-dogs. Journalists come in all shapes and sizes, and they vary in quality and neutrality, and even the best make mistakes. But a journalism watchdog that commits all the worst journalistic offences in the course of its work is not going to be much cop, is it? I mean, just calling yourself “FAIR” doesn’t make it so.
Or does it, actually, in the eyes of the faithful? Maybe, as Jim says, I don’t really understand what FAIR does. I assumed, as I said, that it was a press watchdog – albeit a rather bad one. But I could be wrong. Your post, and others here, remind me of the kind of blind, illogical faith I’ve experienced when I’ve come across cults. Have I stumbled across an internet cult, whose central tenet is that all “mainstream press” coverage is biased in the name of oppressing the weak, and that only you – the faithful – keep the slim flame of truth alive? Do you have ritual burnings of the New York Times and ritual shootings of television showing the BBC? Because, now I re-read the posts here, there’s not a lot of rational, or fair, thought to most of it.
Thank you for the Bravo Alex… still waiting for you to take me up on my offer for Congo 101. It will go a long way to help you better present historical facts. You should be aware it is not a debate and if you have stated civil war and you are corrected about the nature of that statement as a matter of historical records, you should be happy that someone actually caught your mistake and is helping you learn Congolese history.
Looking forward to helping you learn more about Congo.
Mr. Perry:
“To err is human, but to persevere in error is only the act of …”.
I notice in discussions, those who have no substance to add to the discussion result to poor attemps of evasion of name calling and spell checking other people’s posts!!! What’s abvious is that the weeks, months, or years of “research” on that piece was very poor at best.
As for the living in Africa or reporting inside Congo and reporters dying in the line of duty, I wonder what you know about other people’s lines of work here and how dangerous and their work locations!!! Still I am wondering what that has to do with reporting accurately. Anyway, I am sure Julie’s piece will help with more objective and rational reporting in the future whether you chose to admit it or not.
Champ – another credulous acolyte, I see. Read the piece. And for God’s sake, drop the pomposity.
And to you all – for this will be my last post – is this it? Really? Do you actually spend your lives like this: wrapped in ignorance and whining prejudice, surrendering to poor logic, dumb conspiracy and defensive pomposity, and spelling like 4-year-olds? This isn’t a press watchdog. This is a collection of… well, you know what I think. But, honestly. Raise your game. This is just poor. D-
It saddens me to see Alex “Mainstream” Perry stoop so low to valiantly defend his right to write biased uninformed, misleading, and distortion of information about Africa and specifically DRC. Mr. Perry claims to spend “weeks, months, sometimes years of research” but somehow failed to discover the bit about “independent Congo” giving the world Lumumba. And if Mr. Perry did discover that bit during his “weeks, months, and sometimes years of research,” he omitted it deliberately so as to support his racist assertion that Congo is “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be.” Mobutu’s death did not “usher in a civil war” either, Mr. “weeks, months, sometimes years of research” but somehow you failed to detect that too?
Yet instead of offering a correction, Mr. Mainstream decides to lecture critics of his inaccuracies and blatant bias and racism on their methods, and their gall for calling him out, deflecting from his own glaring mistakes in his “mainstream” article.
Everyone has been extremely respectful, bringing to your attention your (deliberate or ignorant) mistakes, yet you chose to throw a tantrum rather than acknowledge your mistake and move forward. Did you want a pat on the back since you “live in Africa” and somehow still managed to regurgitate the same racial biases characterized by mainstream, yes mainstream narratives about Africa and Africans? Because people who do your “job die sometimes” you’re somehow above criticism and fact checking your information? Or maybe people should turn a blind eye to your implication that somehow colonial Congo was better for the Congolese, despite the fact that “independent Congo’s” Lumumba was assassinated with the help of USA and Belgium? And that this neo-colonialism and inevitable geopolitical conflict between China and the West will “save Congo” while absolving western involvement in the destruction of Congo while they reap the benefits (check your Mobutu assertions) but somehow managing to reserve all the “blame” on Congolese people who barely benefit from their own wealth?
Here’s where your simple, yet mainstream mind missed your own bias. Post independent Africa/Congo: War/disease/corruption/underdeveloped, you managed all of that in just the opening paragraph of your article. Congratulations on adding a new layer of analysis on the Congo/Africa situation not often heard and/or reported by reporters like yourself living in Africa.
Please answer me this, I wonder, if Congo is “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be,” then why all the interest from China, Europe, Canada, and the USA, and more importantly, from Time Magazine? How is it there is so much wealth coming from “the sucking vortex where Africa’s heart should be” enriching the world at large?
I hope you can at least comprehend this, but one doesn’t have to be a follower of Julie or this blog to recognize your racist misrepresentation of DRC. One just has to have taken the “weeks, months, sometimes years of research” that you claim on the subject matter to tell you that your article was biased, uninformed, misleading, and distorted facts about Congo’s history.
Again congratulations on your ignorant representation of Congo in your article, and your valiant defense of your ignorance. :)
Racist? Mr Perry, you are a clown, and your argument is a straw clown.
Claiming that Mobutu was created and maintained by the US does not constitute a belief that African’s are incapable of managing their own affairs. It’s a non-sequitur. Nobody, apart from you, has made any such statement. Maybe you think I’m anti-semitic because I don’t like what the Israelis are doing to Palestinians?
Anyway, to the core issue at dispute. It seems clear the US had no great desire to see Mobutu take power in Congo. The US did, however, have an enormous desire for Lumumba, the democratically elected peoples choice, to be deposed, and they knew that Mobutu was one of those, if not most, likely to take control. To argue this means they did not create Mobutu may be arguably correct, but it’s sophistry in extremis.
I know you’re going to come back and read this. I mean, you just happened too come across the blog? Really? You googled it because you want to know people say about your writing.
You won’t respond though, because by now you’ve had a chance to do some proper ‘research’ and realised how wrong you’ve been.. I mean, civil war indeed? Phfft!!
It seems to me the comments of everyone above has pretty well said everything I would have said about Mr. Perry and his westernized version of reality.
The only addition I would want toss into the fray is this.
Does anyone here truly believe publications like “Time” every speak for the people, regardless of country or race? I would expect the obvious answer to be a resounding NO.
One other nation I can think of where western sponsored trouble, destruction, poverty, war, and iron-fisted rule by dictators is regularly ignored and glossed over by Time is Haiti.
Mr. Perry represents the double-standard that is commonplace among all the major media outlets in America.
After reading this entire thread and his many responses, Mr. Perry struck me as rather unprofessional, in spite of his ‘professional’ credentials as a TIME journalist/lackey.
Instead, Mr. Perry just comes across as petulant (or ‘infantile’?), tossing around any number of ad-hominem attacks and even stooping as low as to make fun of people’s spelling errors.
I don’t think FAIR readers are the ones that are ‘pompous’, Mr. Perry. Perhaps you are projecting?
You summed up my thoughts pretty well Dylan. Alex Perry apparently has all the intellectual rigor and infantile maturity of a highschool Young Republican’s club member. Honestly I hope that poster isn’t actually the real Alex Perry, rather merely an impostor – but his personality would certainly explain his very shoddy and misleading “journalism”.
And although it’s obvious his ideology is already set in stone and nothing would convince him otherwise, I’ll mention briefly that acknowledging that corporate media might have ulterior motives in their reporting is as far away from a “conspiracy theory” as you can get. It’s merely just how the business world works. If you’re a CEO of a corporation with holdings in both media companies and other unrelated companies – let’s say the defense industry – it’s in your best interest, and in the interests of the stockholders, to ensure that the newspaper you own isn’t constantly undermining those other investments. In just a couple of real examples, CBS is owned by Westinghouse, and until very recently NBC was owned by General Electric. You expect us to believe that these companies would allow their media subsidiaries to report freely when, in the business world, they owe their “ethical” obligations to their stockholders and not the rest of the world? Less surreptitiously this is manifested in cross-reporting to advertise entertaining holdings and other products, but it also informs an overall ideology that supports American business interests. If you ever wrote an article critical of a company Time Warner is invested in, you expect us to believe that it would get air-time, coverage, and there would be no professional ramifications down the road? How about something that hurts the CEO’s portfolio? Your refusal to acknowledge this belies either extreme delusion or you just decided to lie to us for ideological reasons. In any case, the end result is that you are a terrible reporter regardless of the reasons, and represent the problem with mainstream journalism in this country. You do a disservice to all of us, and articles like the one you write only misinform rather than inform. Fortunately there are people like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibi, and this website that fight your distortions; but your idiotic attacks and unprofessional attitude about the whole thing just takes the cake.
It’s fun to watch him flail.
Even people who know only a tiny bit about the Congo situation know that the US installed and supported Mobutu. I’ve never read a book about it, only a handful of articles–most of them mainstream, even–and I know that.
Here, here is the first fucking line of the wikipedia page for “Foreign policy of Mobutu Sese Seko”
“Mobutu Sese Seko’s foreign policy emphasized his alliance with the United States and the Western world while ostensibly maintaining a non-aligned position in international affairs.[1]”
That’s the first fucking line, the first thing after the title. It even comes before the table of contents. And that footnote links to a document from the US state department, here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+zr0011) . This isn’t, like, a disputed thing we’re talking about here. It’s like how you don’t need to be a WWII whiz to know that the Hitler led the Germans. It’s basic, elementary knowledge.
Mr. Perry – saying that an independent Congo gave the world Mobutu is a gross omission and factually wrong. An independent Congo gave the world Patrice Lumumba.
But why listen to us “cultists” and “conspiracy theoritsts.” Let’s see what some of your fellow reporters have written on this matter and the public can then judge which narrative is best in line with the truth and how Congolese tell their history of the independence period.
Editorial Board, The Guardian UK
Then, Lumumba, denied a formal place at the ceremony, denounced colonial rule. Belgium conspired to overthrow him; so did the United States.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/01/patrice-lumbaba-congo-editorial
Joe Bavier
Congo’s New Mobutu
Mobutu, archetype of the African strongman, was fond of pink champagne, leopard-skin hats, and pushing political opponents out of helicopters while his backers in Washington footed the bill.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/29/congo_s_new_mobutu
The Independent
“Congo has suffered from Western influence in the decades since independence, too. During the Cold War the US used the brutal dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, as a proxy against Soviet-backed Angola. ”
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-congo–africas-disaster-2013789.html
Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba’s Murder
By Stephen R. Weissman
Sunday, July 21, 2002; Page B03
In his latest film, “Minority Report,” director Steven Spielberg portrays a policy of “preemptive action” gone wild in the year 2054. But we don’t have to peer into the future to see what harm faulty intelligence and the loss of our moral compass can do. U.S. policies during the Cold War furnish many tragic examples. One was U.S. complicity in the overthrow and murder of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Forty-one years ago, Lumumba, the only leader ever democratically elected in Congo, was delivered to his enemies, tortured and summarily executed. Since then, his country has been looted by the U.S.-supported regime of Mobutu Sese Seko and wracked by regional and civil war.
Washingtonpost.com
http://www.udel.edu/global/agenda/2003/student/readings/CIAlumumba.html
It is true that your article was mainly about China but your error was so egregious and glaring that it had to be addressed specifically because of the gross ommission that you made.
@ Toto, flail indeed — Mr. Perry reminds me of school kids that have always been told by parents that they are brilliant, and cannot fathom that they would ever be wrong; it seems his peers/management at time have taken over the parental duties, and I’m sure there are many sympathetic “how dare they/ don’t they realize who you are/ …” then walk away, and under their breath “what a wanker.”
@steven
Hah, yeah, but I can’t single out Perry for the obvious failings of a few foreign service brochures and a standard liberal arts degree. In all fairness, he isn’t going to be meeting with any trade unionists in the pink zone, and it’s doubtful that this sort of behavior would be encouraged. No one ever leaves their neighborhood.
It’s the smugness, the hyperbolic reaction to dissent and his reliance on emotional values in his articles that should deem his reportage as unreliable. His work is void of meaning. That’s the real issue.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
Someone must be doing a clever impersonation of Alex Perry. I can’t beleive for one moment that this well known Time magazine reporter is anywhere nearly as fatuous, lacking in critical thinking skills and arrogant as this impersonator
Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subteranean car parks?
It always amazes me that corporate journos fail to get their heads around the fact that if it appeared they needed someone telling them what was acceptable to write they’d never get the gig in the first place.
Oh, and “corporate media”, Alex? – it refers to that section of the media funded by advertising, which is to say the media organisations pursuing the business model of selling audiences to advertisers. The advertisers are the customers; the readers and viewers the product. The job of corporate journalists is to provide content that serves that business model; the passing of any relevant, accurate and useful information in the process will be purely coincidental.
The good news is that the petulance of Mr Perry’s response smacks of cognitive dissonance; that is, he has an inkling of what his job really entails, and doesn’t like the taste of it. Hence his vehemence when reminded. Either that, or someone is borrowing his name, as tooearly suggests. A properly “professional” Villager is well-skilled in completely ignoring anything that might pop their self-affirming bubble.
My goodness but this Alex Perry is an ignorant, self-important, pompous douchebag. A better example of the necessity of the good work FAIR does is difficult to imagine.
The real joke is this endless stream of stories warning the West about China’s political and economic activities in Africa… those “self-serving” Chinese, who only want to help themselves to Africa’s natural resources, with scant regard for the human rights records of the regimes they are cooperating with…
Very alarming indeed. To someone who has no idea about the last century (and more) of African history… Just plug in “French” for “Chinese” and you begin to get the picture. And, just to be clear, China would have to try its very hardest for a very, VERY long time to do more damage in Africa than the United States has.
I thought I was the only one to discover the shallowness of Perry’s article in the Time. Various commenters here have tried to give him a non-colonial perspective, only for him to revert to infantile insults. His main claim to authenticity is that he lives in Africa. But he forgets that some of the commenters here were born there, lived in Lumumba’s/ Mobutu’s/Nkrumah’s times, witnessed the start of the war, even lost relatives in those various times!
Mr. Perry, it seems to me that all you had to do was say something like, “You know, writing that, ‘Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko…’ without mentioning the essential support he received from the U.S. and Belgium, probably was a mistake that gives an incomplete picture of what led to Mobutu’s rule.” Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how we deal with them that matters. And you’ve not dealt with this one well at all.
And did Iran give the world the Shah, and is was the overthrow of Mossadegh the result of a popular uprising of the Persian people? According to the pompous Perry, probably. But this too is well known to be a US-crafted coup.
But the US version of Pravda continues to attempt to rewrite history.
Abiodun, You’re forgetting that the African-born commenters may have made spelling errors, thereby losing all claim to the authenticity of genuine journalists like Alex Perry.
Time magazine is a waste of trees,time and money. Jon @ A Tiny Revolution has a nice take down of this clown.
Mr. Perry wrote “I live in Africa” to make claim to his special authority on the DRC without being specific as to which of the “48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa”, while at the same time making the distinction that “because I’ve been on holiday in Chile’s lake district does not qualify me to comment on the inner affairs of Colombia”.
His tantrum was entertaining. He obviously doesn’t understand that there isn’t a need for a “conspiracy” when journalists like himself so thoroughly internalize their responsibility to function as the PR division of Empire, Inc.
Alex, I would expect more from a real journalist than juvenile ranting “you haven’t been to africa, i live there”, “well if you’ve been to africa you’ve never been to the congo”, “you criticized me in a blog post without telling me first”.
Please stop behaving like a spoiled brat! If you want to answer the criticism, then behave like an adult and respond with cool reason. Drop the emotional, ad hominem, “how dare you criticize me” attitude and maybe you can exchange ideas instead of demonstrating hurt feelings and an attitude of entitlement.
> What’s the first rule of fair, accurate and ethical journalism? It’s giving your subject a right of reply. Did you do that? No. Did you even attempt to? No.
I love that he doesn’t see the irony in writing this in a public response to Julie’s story on Julie’s website.
To be fair, Alex, I think you’ve gotten quite the opportunity to reply and you’ve certainly taken the time to write a lot of drivel.
>Champ â┚¬“ another credulous acolyte, I see.>
I.E. , trust me, not him.
I will write this note without the use of a spellchecker in order to see if I can avoid the wrath of one of Time’s other minions.
Where to start, where to start?
We could go the racist angle where Alex seems to be getting at his opinion that the Africans and the Asians (Chinese) are just ruining Africa. We could go on about Time’s current “Fortune/TIME/CNN Global Forum 2010” where the cover art seems to imply that Bill Clinton is single-handedly battling the Chinese for domination of Africa.
Lets start with the racism. I don’t know if he is a racist, but let us look at his recent history. It is pretty apparent that he is a commercial jingoist extreme. Please compare his “Come Back, Colonialism, All Is Forgiven, By Alex Perry Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.html#ixzz0sjJZNX2M” with our current conversation piece.
In this fable, Alex tells how he thoroughly scoured Congo (not really, he never says where/why/how he found this guy) for an impartial observer of the economic situation and found this one amazing chap , Le Blanc (a nickname), or literally translated, “the White”. Alex does tell us that “Le Blanc isn’t much concerned with that history; he lives in the present”. I think that is a prerequisite for Time writers and their interviewees.
Amazingly, Mr. White tells Alex how great things were when the Whites were running the show and how they would be welcomed back and “If they came back, this time we’d give them the country for free.” Amazingly well done job , Alex. I am sure you wrote this with all due respect to Mr. Luce’s ghost.
One question, if you are reading, Alex. Can you ask Mr. White if he loves the Yellows as much as the Whites?
Readers, see for yourself if you can appreciate Time’s Journalistic Standards (TM) in all of its glory. Alex adds “Leopold’s absentee brutality set the tone for those that followed him in ruling the Congo â┚¬” successive Belgian governments and even the independent government of Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled from 1965 to 1997 . . .”
Notice anything missing in the timeline? Did someone go down the memory hole? Oh. Just that “democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba” guy. I wonder if Mr. White ever heard of him?
Another admirer of Alex’s writes “I have been watching his pieces in TIME ever since. Well, Alex Perry has an Achilles heel all right, my friends. The man tends to exaggerate. Maybe he means well. Maybe he is someone prone to hyperbole. Alex Perry consistently makes such sweeping generalizations in his reportage that may go unnoticed abroad, but looks too flat, too black and white for a reader in India.” (http://www.dancewithshadows.com/alex_perry_time.asp.) Such accuracy and that was with just the first Google hit!
Further Indian friends write of him “Chandan Mitra, editor of the Delhi-based newspaper The Pioneer, called Perry’s article ‘supercilious, patronizing, white-supremacist, flippant and crassly ill-mannered.’ ” (http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/20alex.htm).
Wow. They nailed this guy right in 2002!
We could go on and on and that would be fun, but I have other sites to troll and other experts in journalism to assail.
Keep nailing this bastard, he deserves it.
the article was bad enough, but perry’s comments on here are downright pathological. congratulations, alex – you may beat out david brooks and chris matthews for the “2010 What Makes the Mainstream Media Mainstream Award”.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710–.htm
…and be careful smoking around all those straw men.
Mr. Perry, the “conspiracy” you scoff at is not explicit, but rather implicit. Humans adapt to methods that work, given the goals they have set for themselves. Quite often, this adaptation is not conscious but rather unconscious, or instinctual — especially when consciously facing one’s own duplicity would be a source of cognitive dissonance. In your case, your instincts rewired themselves very early on to allow you to climb the latter of success in the world of journalism, with the long term goal of being an “important player”. Those instincts told you, quite correctly, that if you focused too much on the crimes of the West, you’d only go so far. In other words, you have a very good fashion sense, in this case socio-political fashion.
If I’ve lost you, please read this report: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/papers/torture_at_times_hks_students.pdf. It shows just how inconsistent the mainstream, profit-driven media are with regard to torture. Now picture yourself working, say, at the New York Times, with dreams of climbing the latter of success there. Now picture yourself insisting to your superiors that the word “torture” be used to describe the waterboarding practices of the US military and intelligence communities. Now picture what your chances are of actually realizing your dreams of success at the NY Times.
I know you know all this, you’re not stupid. But your disingenuous, simplistic response to the accusations made by Ms. Hollar warrant this patronizing explanation of human behavior.
When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what [Alex Perry] or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, “nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure.” Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system. – N. Chomsky
Alex Perry says, “As for this lame idea that I, and the “mainstream media”, are part of some giant conspiracy to lie, cover up, dissemble etc in the name of, I imagine, the “military industrial complex” or perhaps the CIA, what do you think happens here? Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subteranean car parks? Grow up.”
This was Alex Perry’s most entertaining and revealing post! In it, he completely proves the point Chomsky was making in the quote I posted above!
Alex Perry: “And no one would confuse Kagame with anybody’s puppet. To think that either of these guys can be pushed around by some sinister Western power in the name of, what, world domination, is faintly ludicrous and more than a little racist and patronizing.
From 1953 through the present the CIA has assasinated or overthrown generally democratically elected leaders in Iran, Guatemala, Laos, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Indonesia, Zaire, Cambodia, Bolivia, Chile, Australia, and Angola.
I think someone is being ludicrous, racist and patronizing, but it is not Julie.
hey Alex you could have wrote “The Cold War gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko” and it might even have got past your editors
Actually, I can understand Mr. Perry’s point when he says his article was “…about China’s adventures in Africa. And you’ve managed to inform your readers that it is, actually, some sort of Western conspiracy to cover up Western colonial crimes. Pot and kettle, Julie.”
The point is that China is starting to muscle in on Western mining interests in the DRC. He certainly didn’t intend to rehash how Western mining corporations got a foothold there in the first place. See? He’s just reporting on what the Establishment sees as a threat, which is the purpose of institutions like Time. Mentioning our own crimes, as George Orwell said, are just not “proper” to say.
Now go back to watching sports or American Idol. Let the “Smart and responsible men” (of course, the writer is always one of them) run the show like they’re supposed to, without interference from “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders” like people who write blogs.
Please cut Mr. Perry some slack.
The white man’s burden wears you down sometimes.
Yikes! Sad but illuminating to see a journalist for a preeminent publication behaving this way. As Ms. Hollar noted, it’s not true that “Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko”. The CIA-instigated coup did.
We don’t know how Congo would have turned out without that CIA coup. Perhaps Mobutu’s 32 years of kleptocracy wouldn’t look so horrific when compared with the alternatives. And perhaps the CIA coup was understandable in light of the Cold War.
But let’s not whitewash history. “Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko” in the same way that independent Iran gave the world the last Shah. They didn’t, the CIA did.
The most impressive thing about the American system of authoritarianism is the absolute willingness of people like Mr. Perry to misrepresent the actual history of a nation for the benefit of the state without any sort of sanction (implicit or otherwise) required. This is how the media redefines torture simply because the government does so. That it continues to engage in the double standard demonstrates how successful this system truly is.
Oh yes, and Mr. Perry, as you adjust yourself on the Pedestal of Journalistic Practices that you have placed yourself, I recommend practicing what you preach. Next time you criticize a piece of music remember you are not a musician or have any level of music training. You are not an actor or an athlete, politician or a judge. Let’s see how long it takes for you realize how silly and inane your stance is.
Want to know something ironic? During the Congo Crisis, we (that is to say, the United States) were the first ones that Patrice Lumumba turned to for help. We gave him the cold-shoulder. Next he tried the United Nations, but they didn’t give him as much help as he wanted. Only as an absolute last resort did he turn to the U.S.S.R. for help. Lumumba even told a journalist that he personally deplored communism, and wanted the Congo to remain neutral during the Cold War. (Read Sean Kelly’s excellent study, “America’s Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire” for the details.)
If Lumumba had remained in power, it’s hard to say how the country would have fared. Belgium did nothing to prepare the Congolese for independence. Few Congolese were given more than a rudimentary education. They were deliberately given as little education and preparation as possible, to forestall the emergence of a black elite that might demand equal rights, or even independence. Also, Belgium deliberately stoked up ethnic tensions and played upon differences (both real and imagined) between different tribes – which would later have disastrous ramifications in Rwanda and Burundi. Even without Mobutu, the Congo would have likely remained poor. Colonialism royally screwed the Congolese over, virtually guaranteeing that the country would be unstable and prone to corruption. Post-independence Western meddling made things worse.
It should be noted, though, that the U.S. and Belgium were not equally responsible for Lumumba’s assassination or Mobutu’s rise to power; Belgium and Katanga were responsible for Lumumba’s death (the U.S., of course, had plans of its own, but they never came to fruition); the CIA (and by extension the U.S.) alone was responsible for Mobutu’s ascension. Lawrence Devlin, chief of station in the Congo at the time of Lumumba’s ouster and during Mobutu’s second coup, five years later, wrote a fascinating account of this in his “Chief of Station, Congo.”
As for Lumumba himself, he was a complex figure, with both positive traits as well as faults. His tenure was far too short to be assessed fairly. Had he stayed longer, he could have taken a dictatorial path, like so many of his contemporaries did, or he could have remained democratic. The fact is, we will never know. That being said, it’s hard to imagine anyone being much worse than Mobutu.
Then bean counters at places like Time or Newsweek wonder why they are steadily losing readership. It’s incredible really. The denial on Perry’s part I mean.
Can someone bring this up at Time’s Swampland blog? Maybe Karen Tumulty has something to say for her colleague?
The piece is about China’s adventures in Africa.
True enough, but there’s this little thing called “providing context.” That’s something you failed to do. You were called out on it and instead of conceding the point made here, you decided to act as though historical context wasn’t needed in this case. Why?
The crucial dynamic here is support. Africans have been the main players in Africa since independence, and while outside powers have influence, that is all it is â┚¬” influence and support.
While I agree with the main gist of this (That Mobutu wasn’t the *product of* some Western Conspiracy), this is terribly simplistic. Yes, Africans ARE the main players in their perspective regions and countries, but you CANNOT downplay the amount of influence Western regimes have had on Africas history. To shunt it aside as though “influence and support” from some of the worlds foremost superpowers…. countries that have vast resources and hold key positions in the biggest international Governing bodies in the world…. is inconsequential, is quite frankly naive. Do you believe Mobutu, or let us say the Shah of Iran in another instance, would have necessarily been able to retain power for so long were it NOT for the “influence and support” of said Western regimes? I don’t believe this influence and support was the SOLE reason someone like Mobutu got to, and held, power…. but I’d have to be completely blind to say it didn’t help.
To think that either of these guys can be pushed around by some sinister Western power in the name of, what, world domination, is faintly ludicrous and more than a little racist and patronizing.
It would seem you ignore the lure of power and influence at your own peril. To think that a Western power could (and did) have substantial influence in a country (in this case DRC) is being realistic. Men like Mobutu are power hungry, the West never HAD to push him around. Ever heard of the that old adage about the “stick and carrot?” Well, in the realm of international relations, it is a well worn concept (Especially given the increasing interconnectedness of this world, and thus, our constant entanglements with various countries who we depend on for certain resources). All Washington (and the other Western Powers) had to do was give Mobutu a few items on his wish list and he instantly became somewhat beholden to them (and thus part of a reciprocal relationship).
And if you would, I recommend laying off the “race card” here. It is not racist to suggest that the US, or any other powerful nation, can and does routinely influence the conditions of another country directly. Very few people would deny that Africans, or anybody else for that matter, have agency.
Do you really think we’d take those risk to tell lies?
What makes you think Journalists are always aware of when they’re telling lies? This grants ANYONE a little bit too much self awareness and expertise.
And, yes, actually, “one’s physical location and experience” do, to a large extent, determine one’s ability to speak with authority on historical events.
This would be dependent upon what ones “experience” IS. Parachuting into the DRC and filing stories for Time Magazine, while certainly not devoid of merit, does not… in my honest opinion…. give one credibility as a “historian” of any sort (What an example of the same dynamic in the Middle East?…. Robert Fisk anybody?). As an example, I find Richard J. Evans “Third Reich Trilogy” to be one of the most judicious, sweeping and scholarly accounts of Nazi Germany written thus far. He was born in London in 1947, after all these events took place. He didn’t *need* to be present for these events to speak authoritatively on them, he STUDIED them via historical method. Have you done the same? What native languages do you know? Do you speak fluent Swahili or Lingala? Have you spent numerous hours pouring over historical archives in the country and rigorously fact checking accounts (whether they be eye witness or second hand) via numerous sources? I don’t doubt that you at least TRY to research your stories to whatever extent you can, but please don’t patronize me by acting or implying as though YOU of all people is anything close to an “authority” on the DRC. You’re a journalist, not a historian, don’t flatter yourself too much.
I live in Africa.
I live in the United States currently…. that doesn’t make me any more of an authority on US history than anyone else. Nor are YOU any more of an authority on the DRC because you “live in Africa.” I really hope that this isn’t the attitude of all journalists, because if it is, we’re screwed.
One aspect of Mr. Perry’s argument that I sympathize with: giving “the other side” the opportunity to respond. Given that FAIR performs action-alerts wherein they essentially ask people to answer for their actions, I think it’d be great if FAIR itself sent little “alerts” to every journalist/media personality highlighted in these blog entries.
Also, the action alerts usually urge remaining polite in contacts with media. I think Julie’s reply to Alex was relatively respectful (compared to Alex’s remarks). I would also, honestly, have thanked him for even taking the time to review the criticism. Journalists will obviously feel under siege if their work is reviewed here, and attempting to keep a respectful dialogue, however low the journalist goes, is probably the best way to foster it.
The ultimate goal here is to open a window for a little more discussion of U.S. roles in foreign atrocities in the mainstream media. I feel like a journalist who is open enough to reviewing criticism of their work is more likely to consider it in their future work, and attempting to give them an honest opportunity to review criticisms of their work, and respectful dialogue about its shortcomings, is the way to make that happen.
So I say alert journalists to every item in FAIR criticizing their work, and attempt to engage them in respectful dialogue when they do respond, even if they respond coldly at first (what else do you expect when we clearly do not respect the work they do?). Try to focus on substantive reminders of the information they fail to offer, rather than trying to play “gotcha” along with them.
I really don’t think that Mr. Perry has a point, other than shilling. Paymasters? – No way.
To feign empathy with Africa by wishing for better amenities like paved roads is really off the mark in so many ways, that to engage in a discussion would inevitably necessitate a 101 lecture in (post)-colonial history. Suffice to say that the thinking of / toying with a metaphor like Africa’s Heart is in itself nothing more but some odious paternalistic veneer. Congo/Zaire was the single most important source of Cobalt and Uranium to the West for the last decades, to be controlled by a subservient regime at any cost, minus conspicuous waste like infrastructure, freedom of expression, rule of law etc. Btw.: How many colonialised subjects did sport a College degree in 1960? Well, according to one source 16 (sixteen)!
There is probably no easy fix, as perpetual denial was/is/will be the prerequisite of corporate journalism as it stands.
What is much more interesting is this slight of hand remark reg. the fallout of Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko death.
The African Cold War was to be settled and if it was for the slaughter of some million vortex dwellers – so be it. (Requiem for Revolution: Cuba’s African Odyssey, a documentary by Jihan El-Tahri – highly recommended to to get some perspective, courtesy of the poeple interviewed in the film, who had some real experience on the ground…)
I would pose that there was/is no civil war, but an international war, instigated by the invasion of Ugandan and Ruandan elements on the behest of mainly US, French and German interests.
If one was to consider American commercial interests and had to rely on the reporting of outlets like TIME to make rational decisions one would be left empty handed. In light of this one could argue that there might be an unintended benevolent consequence for the peoples on distant shores, as doing business or trading with the Chinese probably does not entail what the West bluntly calls: to make a killing.
Wow, this is what Time hires these days? Someone points out an error in his piece, and he turns into an attack dog. Obviously Julie’s critique was spot-on. Otherwise Alex wouldn’t have spent so much time commenting on here. Alex’s bosses don’t need to sit him down in a dark room and tell him what to write. He is sufficiently narrow-minded, jingoistic and unquestioning, so they can just let him do his thing.
The crucial dynamic here is support. Africans have been the main players in Africa since independence, and while outside powers have influence, that is all it is â┚¬” influence and support:
On September 19, 1960, Larry Devlin, CIA Station Chief in the Congo received a telegram signed by President Eisenhower ordering him to assassinate Patrice Lumumba a duly elected Prime Minister of a Souvereign State. (Memoirs of a CIA agent by Larry Devlin page 131). Is that all it was Mr. Perry? Influence and support? Think again.
To think that either of these guys can be pushed around by some sinister Western power in the name of, what, world domination, is faintly ludicrous and more than a little racist and patronizing;
This was the situation in Congo Brazzaville during the early nineties; one doctor for 9000 people, extremely high infant mortality rate, an external debt of $ 6 billion, delayed civil servants salary payments, etc. Yet, the country is the fifth largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, producing an average of 222.1 thousand barrels of crude oil per day, 0.29% of the world total. Meanwhile Elf Aquitaine, a french multi-national owns 85% of the countries oil production while the rest (15%) went to the government.
Pascal Lissouba, former President elect of Congo Brazzaville decides to correct the situation and improve the living standards of his citizens by requesting an additional 10% oil production share increase from Elf Aquitaine. This does not please France. In 1997, after a lengthy civil war orchestrated by Elf, former dictator and current President of Congo Brazzaville Dennis Sassou Nguesso takes over power and immediately and reinstates Elfs 85% oil share deal.
Does this enlighten you Mr. Perry or do you need more? Please let me know. I will be glad to provide you with the information you seemingly luck. Oh, and by the way, I am congolese and I currently live in the DRC.
To Alex Perry:
As an aspiring journalist, thank you for teaching me everything I need to know in terms of how not to report a story. You clearly demonstrated poor reporting skills in your latest “Time” magazine story including a lack of professionalism with people who disagree with you. Nice going “Alex.” You just sullied your journalistic reputation. People will take note of this.
wow. this internet thing is cool. don’t read time (but remember a college physics teaching assistant referring to it as a fascist rag while i, in 1966 from north florida, thought it was “left wing”): getting the critique of international stories from locals is very heartening and enlightening. and while eating into the bottom line (which the msm must acknowledge), these blogs also dissolve much of what is left of the msm’s credibility.
Alex, do you drink? I mean, are you an alcoholic? You sure sound like one–a bitter, superior, narcissistic old limey hack, a spittle-spewing gin-soaked fleet street closet case with his empire-loving head still firmly up his boy-loving ass. fortunately for you that does not in any way disqualify you for a good career in American journalism. You’ll fit right in with “Sully” and “Hitch”.
Shorter Alex Perry: “How dare you readers express an opinion about my oeuvre? Anyway, you can’t spell! And you’re probably fat.”
Sic transit gloria journalismi.
Perry lives in Africa like some fat old sweaty dimbulb lives in America, in a high-security cognitive propaganda bubble. He sees and hears what he’s told to. He lacks the habits of mind to write for pay, that’s how he got his job.
I’d like to thank everyone here who participated in handing Alex Perry his ass on a gilded platter. What always amuses me about “journalists” in these situations is how quickly they run away with their tails between their legs…
I wonder what in the original post Perry thinks is “highly libellous.” Not just libelous, but highly libelous.
dave┞¢© Says: “I’d like to thank everyone here who participated in handing Alex Perry his ass on a gilded platter. What always amuses me about “journalists” in these situations is how quickly they run away with their tails between their legsâ┚¬Ã‚¦”
agreed dave … except for Under The Volcano having to sully such an otherwise wonderfully participatory, expositive and illuminating thread (everything that’s great about the internet and blogs) with hateful homophobia … Shame! (and why?). Why, UTV, did you make me have to read your hate in such an otherwise beautiful (in the Platonic sense) realm UTV?
This is like a class for journalists in how not to respond to criticism on the web. It’s like he watched Donald Rumsfeld dealing with reporters and said, “Hey, I like that whole abrasive, condescending, arrogance thing he’s working there- that’s what I’m going with from now on when anyone questions my reporting.”
(Natch Time’s ‘Letter to the Editor’ function is not functioning, so I’m posting it here.)
Dear Editor,
Mr. Perry misrepresents the source of Congo’s (DRC) status as a failed & war-torn state.
Jonathan Kwitny recounted in his Pulitzer-nominated book, Endless Enemies, that the democratically-elected Patrice Lumumba was abducted, hog-tied and dumped in the trunk of the CIA Station Chief’
s car while he & CIA subordinates drove around all night drinking and having a good time before finally turning Lumumba over to his US-backed & US-funded enemies, for torture & summary execution.
Without that US meddling — without that by-definition anti-democratic covert action that overturned a democratic election and placed Mobutu in power — the DCR would be in far better condition today.
Mobutu took our money, and our training & guidance — and he did our bidding. He knew the consequences of not falling in line all too well.
For Alex Perry to omit this history, to put the source of these proxy wars for key resources at the Congo’s feet, or at Mobutu’s feet, is plainly dishonest. It is not journalism; it is storytelling. And it required no research, no heavy lifting; only the willingness to lie by omission and by commission.
Mr. Perry owes an apology to Julie Hollar over at FAIR, who schooled him but good, for his insulting fact-free diatribes in their comment section. But he owes much more to the commenters there, to his readers at Time, and to the DRC and citizens who’ve been so abused by his lack of professionalism, and by the hard work Mr. Perry puts in as a purveyor of ahistorical fictions about who’s responsible for the catastrophe that is the DRC.
At least the Chinese will leave an intact infrastructure behind, rather than total disaster that is the legacy of American covert action and explicit policy.
Had Mr. Perry not responded so unprofessionally, in a manner so abjectly without merit, so irrelevant to the critique, and devoid of substance — there’d be little point in sending in this letter.
But the facts do matter. Decent and accurate journalism is at issue. And hit-&-run comments on FAIR’s blog dont’ speak well of what passes for Mr. Perry’s integrity.
Time’s editorial stance is in need of overhaul.
Sincerely,
johnsturgeon
Mr. Perry:
Perhaps you should read this:
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003328.html
Your magazine has a sorry history in that area of the world.
So Mr Perry lives in Africa. Not impressive. As anyone who has ever been a reporter knows, an enormous amount of conventional wisdom is generated by reporters sitting around at the press club bar. Been there. Done that.
And of course Mr Perry can write what he likes because the owners of the magazine like to read what he likes to write. That’s why he was selected for the job.
Surely the person posting as Alex Perry cannot be the self-same journalist? It reads as razor-sharp satire. Brilliant – I dont think I ever seen a flame out of such proportions. What a muppet.
As a long time stand up comic I’d like to point out a piece of the funniest and well written comedy gold ever produced. I’d like to give Mr. Perry credit for the following laugh line.
“To think that either of these guys can be pushed around by some sinister Western power in the name of, what, world domination, is faintly ludicrous and more than a little racist and patronizing;..”
Here’s my favorite pull from Alex Perry’s comments: “If I, or anyone from the ‘mainstream media’ had done what you did here, writing a highly libellous piece without checking our facts, or even attempting to contact the subject, we would have been fired. ”
HA! Alex, ever read the New York Times’ Middle East pages?
Mobutu was Congolese, and thus African, and of that there is no doubt.
A fact which was irrelevant to the clearly documented history of a degree of intervention and support by the US government, maintaining Mobutu in power even during 2 local (Congolese! Indigenous! African!) rebellions which likely would have thrown him out of power, without which Mobutu would not likely have seized nor maintain power.
Certainly one can always choose which particular focus to have in studying political, economic, and military developments — the regional powers and internal forces Mobutu represented, for example — but to suggest that situating such subjects within the context of astounding degrees of US funneling of arms, cash, logistical support, intelligence, assistance in assassination plots, and support against internal rebellions is ‘racist’ or ‘belittling African roles’ is among the most dishonest, anti-intellectual claims I’ve ever encountered.
It would be like suggesting that focusing on the Soviet role in East German governance was offensive and insulting to the Germans who lived there.
Mr. Perry needs to worry about his own spelling before harping on someone else’s:
“…meeting me in badly lit [b]subteranean[/b] car parks”
Keep up the good work Alex!
Hah, i can’t help but think back to Season 5 of the Wire on this. The scene where they’re trying to come up with ideas for a piece about the city’s school children but they ultimately decide that too much context would bog them down in details so they just beat up on the school system.
“It’s like you’re up on the corner of a roof and showing some people how a few shingles came loose, meanwhile a hurricane wrecked the rest of the damn house”
Alex Perry wrote: “As for this lame idea that I, and the “mainstream media”, are part of some giant conspiracy to lie, cover up, dissemble etc in the name of, I imagine, the “military industrial complex” or perhaps the CIA, what do you think happens here? Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subteranean car parks? Grow up. People who do my job die sometimes. I’ve known three myself. Do you really think we’d take those risk to tell lies? Your cheap and half-arsed conspiracies are insulting and infantile.”
ahem
Commenter John Passou above (7/4) talked about Larry Devlin, and Jonathan Schwarz @ Tiny Revolution also notes Devlin’s book “Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone”:
____________________________
” We moved onto Ambassador Houghton’s office where we were joined by Ambassador Burden for more detailed talks concerning the Congo and its problems…During our discussions, Tim brought up a delicated matter: “Time magazine plans to do a cover story on Lumumba with his picture on the front of the magazine.” He continued, “Celebrity coverage at home will make him even more difficult to deal with. He’s a first-class headache as it is.”
“Then why don’t you get the story killed?” Burden asked. “Or at least modified?”
“I tried to persuade the Time man in Leopoldville until I was blue in the face,” Tim replied. “But he said there was nothing he could do about it because the story had already been sent to New York.”
“You can’t expect much from a journalist at that level,” Burden said pulling out his address book and flipping through the pages. He picked up the phone and put a call through to the personal assistant of Henry Luce, Time’s owner.
Luce soon returned the call. After a brief, friendly exchange that made clear his personal relationship with Luce, Burden bluntly told him that he would have to change the Lumumba cover story. Luce apparently said that the magazine was about to go to press. “Oh, come on, Henry,” Burden said, “you must have other cover stories in the can.” They chatted for a few more minutes before Burden hung up.
A few days later in the United States we picked up a copy of the magazine with a new and different cover story. Lumumba had been relegated to the international section.”
Alex Perry, in these posts you really come across as a childish, petty, profoundly arrogant man. It amazes me how little you seem to realize this – I presume years spent hiding behind the accountability-free Time masthead will do that.
You have, however, provided much (presumably unintentional) entertainment across the Internet today. This gives rise to the question: can a man be said to have publicly embarrassed himself if he lacks the self-awareness to recognize the embarrassment?
(Wow, Alex Perry, whoever you are. You’re really hell-bent on embarrassing yourself here, huh? Like, a lot.)
Julie Hollar’s piece is short, to the point, and accurate.
Alex Perry uses a paragraph to sum up what’s “wrong with Africa.” He completely ignores the West’s involvement in that short paragraph. And then he accuses anyone of pointing out said involvement in their analysis of Africa’s problems as “racist.”
His responses here are just too bizarre to really take seriously.
Hello,
If anyone reads dutch or knows someone who does, there are some very interesting articles about colonial Congo and the independance of Congo on the belgian news site http://www.apache.be:
The sons of Lumumba press charges against still living Belgians who were involved in the Lumumba murder. The article has a complete account of how the murder happened with specific attention to the responsibility of the Belgian government and government officials at the time:
http://www.apache.be/2010/06/nabestaanden-dienen-klacht-in-tegen-moordenaars-lumumba/
With the 50 years independance celebration, this topic is again big in the news in Belgium. Some people still defend what Belgium did in Congo (some even still defend the king Leopold II who turned Congo into his own private concentration camp: http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2010/06/mep-louis-michel-says-king-leopold-ii.html), but there are many Belgians who recognise the responsibility in Belgium of what happened in Congo and how this reflects Congo still today.
Here are some other (dutch) articles on the history of Congo:
Criticism of a Congo expert on a not-so-critical book about 80 years of Congo:
http://www.apache.be/2010/05/detailkritiek-op-tachtig-jaar-congo-volgens-david-van-reybrouck/
http://www.apache.be/2010/05/david-van-reybrouck-masseert-westerse-bemoeienissen-in-congo-weg/
How Leopold II and later Belgium became the ‘owner’ of Congo (mainly the viewpoint of belgian politicians at the time):
http://www.apache.be/2010/06/belgische-politici-en-congolese-onafhankelijkheid-waar-is-de-nooduitgang/
WELL ALL OF YOU LIB’S SHOULD OF STOPPED COMMENTING AFTER JULY THE 1 BECASUE THAT IS WHEN ALEX PARRY STOPPED LEAVING COMMENT’S HEAR. WELL HE IS A BUSY MAN, LIVING IN THE COUNTRY OF AFRICA, AND I AM SURE THAT IN THE DAY’S SENSE JULY 1 HE HAS DEFINATELY NOT BEEN SITTING AT HIS ‘WORK SPACE’ WHILE CONSTANTALLY REFRESHING THIS WEBSIGHT AND PUNCHING HIMSELF IN THE PENIS GROIN OFTEN AND REPEATEDLY, DUE TO HIS SHAME.
WELL WHY NOT? WELL HE SHOUDL’NT FEEL SHAME, HE HAS MADE A GREAT PERFORMENCE HERE, DEFINATELY BETTER THAN YOU LIB BLOGGER’S ‘D-‘ WORK. WELL IT SHOUDL BE OBVIOSU WHY LIFE MAGAZINE PAY’S HIM THE ‘BIG BUCKS’ TO LIVE IN AFRICA, HE IS THE NEW JON STOSSAL.
Wow–just, Wow. As a humble citizen consumer of journalism who never knew of Alex Perry before stumbling on this exchange, all I can say is Thank You FAIR!. With preening, arrogant pricks like this guy out there writing the news, the necessity of your kind of work has never been clearer.
Are the majority of Time reporters as hysterical as poor Alex? Or just those suffering from paranoid delusions?
I haven’t laughed this hard at Pompous Projection and Hysterical Rantings in a LONG time. Tears are streaming down my face and I have a stitch in my side from laughing so hard.
Thanks to all the other posters who have done the studious research Alex should have done. What a jingoistic buffoon.
Nice work Seasandcakes, on putting the lie to Alex’s comments regarding CIA manipulation of the Media. Apparently Alex has never heard of Operation Mockingbird.
To suffix – excellent and deserved flogging of Alex Perry. If only as a tardy penance for his 2008 article gaily titled “Come back colonialists”… or something like that.
BTW there is an excellent short documentary called Chinatown Africa by Current TV
http://current.com/shows/vanguard/89565630_chinatown-africa.htm
of course they are talking about Angola and Zimbabwe but the shoe fits.
Time is garbage – even my 11th grade history teacher (no Howard Zinn himself) hated it.
The evidence before us indicates that Alex Perry is a journalist of the old school (i.e., he’s drunk).
For a man that takes “weeks, months and sometimes years of research” to write a piece, it’s amazing that it only takes him seconds to call someone “boy” when defending himself. A prejudice white man with a pen and an audience is a very scary thing….
Any mainstream journalist freaking out like Alex Perry does here is indeed a sight to behold. This is wonderful.
This utter moron should actually read what his own magazine wrote over the years about Congo.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003328.html
Idiots like Perry are employed to churn out racist, self righteous,ignorant nonsense about non whites and they freak out when somebody points out how wrong he is.
Writing like Perry’s is why I abandoned Time years ago. While the rest of the article may be insightful (I wouldn’t know), the first paragraph is so horribly historically wrong that I stop reading right there. I couldn’t care less what this revisionist thinks and that usually includes some type of exceptionalism, whether British or U.S. It gets old and tired.
I’m fascinated by Perry’s ominous assertion that FAIR is peddling conspiracies. Chomsky dispelled this myth in Manufacturing Dissent. The owners of the corporations that publish rags like Time don’t need a conspiracy. They simply hire people who share their values- people like Perry.
The value being shown here is spite for his own readers, which is exactly what Time’s executives feels for us- we are “wrapped in ignorance and whining prejudice, surrendering to poor logic, dumb conspiracy and defensive pomposity, and spelling like 4-year-olds”. That’s why Time’s publishers and writers, in their infinite wisdom and virtue, have undertaken the odious tasks of educating us.
“Grow up. People who do my job die sometimes.” Wow. People who do my job die all the time, like everyone else. In fact, everyone I’ve known either (a) has died, or (b) will die some time. I must therefore be the awesomest truth teller on earth.
After having read this string and other criticisms posted by FAIR, the only conclusion I can draw is that FAIR seems to violate nearly every journalistic standard. It’s all fine that everyone gets on here for attacking the reporter for misrepresenting the situation, but what about the points he raises? I’ve asked other journalists who’ve been criticized by FAIR and they concur that the site does not contact the subjects of the stories to allow them to explain. How is that fair? How is that balanced? It’s not. And it wouldn’t fly in any other outlet.
The other point I’ll make before surely getting bashed by all the FAIR followers is that the critics on FAIR don’t know what it’s like to be a foreign correspondent. They’ve never tried to file a story from Africa in limited space, trying to write something new and, gasp, hopeful, and then been bashed for not going on in length about the country’s history.
Did this TIME reporter try to do that? Did he write that context only to have it cut? Was he unaware? Was it his first time in the country? Well, we don’t know because FAIR apparently has a policy of not contacting the reporter/subject of the piece.
I think that if FAIR turned the tables, it’d find a LOT of shortcomings in its own work.
Im sorry to say but Alex Perry’s criticism of this blog and the nitwits who follow it has proven accurate. You all just need, with every fiber of your being, to see the US and the west as the be-all and end-all of evil in the world. Have you ever heard of context? Intellectual honesty? Critical thinking? All I see is knee jerk cut and paste responses. Kind of scary actually. He shouldn’t have wasted his breath. Your collective world view was decided long ago and nothing will change that.
(and I have nothing to do with Perry, am a moderate liberal. Was sent to this site by Taibbi’s blogpost).
As a citizen and intelligent and educated person myself, I consider to be important what journalists print or say, thus, evaluating the content they are producing, rather than hear someone attempt to contextualize what they have already written or said.
These are not interviews in which one needs to check whether or not quotations are accurate. These are evaluations of what a journalist put in print.
There is no requirement for book or media or scholarly article reviewers to ‘check with’ the subjects of their reviews, nor should there be, as this would be a shallow, insane standard.
Instead, the subjects of reviews are free to respond and their responses should of course be published, exactly as has happened here, and the notion that “journalistic standards” means that no one can objectively evaluate the printed or broadcast output of a journalist’s work without contacting said journalist first is so ludicrous as to be laughable.
By the way, at this point in history there are piles and piles of academic studies and documentary records over what happened in the early days of independent Congo / Zaire, not merely the reflections of this or that journalist.
Alex Perry is a tad too prideful. He messed up on some facts, his logic is flawed, and now
he’s trying to backpedal and attack correction rather than say “Ah, I admit I was wrong about that.”
Perry thinks, ‘I live in Africa, therefore I have authority to talk about Africa.’
Well, then I guess with Perry’s thinking -no one has the authority to talk about World War 2 unless
they actually fought during that time??? I just have to read up on WW2 and then I can talk about it.
As for “mainstream” news, I usually like to wait it out 5 years and read an actual comprehensive book
about certain events such as Columbine. Time lost it’s credibility a loooooooong time ago, now it’s
just a “style over substance” kinda thing. It’s got a nice ring to it, but might as well be a celebrity gossip mag.
Manufacturing Consent, maybe? Manufacturing dissent is more like what Perry was charging this website with…
Wow. Couldn’t think of a worse trait in a “reporter” than those exhibited by this prick Perry. Nothing like being snotty and wrong!
He doesn’t even know the history of American involvement in the Congo–the very subject he is prattling about!
What arrogance. What ignorance.
If I want the white-washed American version of African history I know I can go to Time Magazine for all the propaganda that the authorities have allowed to print.
Once again the blogs have outdone the paid “reporters” like this hack Perry. Read A Tiny Revolution:
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003328.html
Christ, what a dick that Alex Perry turned out to be. I mean wasn’t that everyone’s response to this?
El Cid:
For all your self-described intelligence and bountiful education, you really miss the point. This is not a scholarly work. It’s not a peer review. It’s journalism. Any journalism 101 class would teach you that even media criticism should play by a set of basic rules. Your entire argument is baseless because you don’t seem to have a clue about what journalists do.
If you want to see real media criticism at work, read Howie Kurtz at the Post.
The funniest thing about this is that FAIR is essentially criticizing TIME for a total lack of context in the piece but then turns around and publishes an article that totally lacks any context.
I’m not defending TIME.MickVV’s comment, I think, sums up Alex Perry’s response quite succinctly. But if FAIR is going to purport to be a savvy media critic that holds journalists to the highest of standards, it should hold itself to those same standards.
I once posted a fact-based rebuttal comment on a statewide newspaper’s blog and the writer emailed me for days with the exact same tone of these comments from Alex Perry. He tried to get me to apologize on the comment thread and when I wouldn’t he started finding my small local blogs and, for a short time, basically cyber stalking me. Over one short comment.
I think they are so used to being praised by their corporate ass-kissing editors that they don’t even realize they’ve become (or always were) corporate hacks. When they get reminded that not only do they write with a corporate world-view bias, but that they’re also lame and/or lazy researchers, well, they just emotionally implode. FAIR has to be wrong so that they don’t have to face who they really are. If they can crush the writers and commenters at FAIR, then their world goes on just as it should. You know, where women are associated with kitchens and Africans are boys and, if you can’t find anything to criticize you tell someone that they spell badly. So there! Thank God we don’t have to rely on networks and newspapers as our only news sources anymore.
“These are not interviews in which one needs to check whether or not quotations are accurate. These are evaluations of what a journalist put in print.
There is no requirement for book or media or scholarly article reviewers to ‘check with’ the subjects of their reviews, nor should there be …”
Umm, actually yes there are. It’s called journalism and nonfiction. Check into it before commenting as the authority there, El Cid.
I’m still shocked, although humored, by how this journalist was incapable of handling criticism professionally. It’s surprising that such a person, who defends his writing on the Congo by claims such as “I’ve been there atleast six times!” and “have read everything there is to know about it,” can work for such a prestigious magazine as Time. What is even more ludicrous is that his first response was to ask Hollar if she has ever been to Africa. Visiting the place you are writing about does not immediately make you an expert on it – in fact, it does not by de facto make your work any less unprofessional, unbiased or falsifiable than that of others.
Other statements made by Perry are equally absurd. People die in your line of work, and hence you should be immune from criticism? Your work shouldn’t be judged as failing to meet basic standards of journalism? What was the point of such a statement than to desperately try to strike an ethos mark with readers? Quite petty of you.
It’s a waste of time to even address the ignorance that is behind his claim of how “the Congo gave the world Mobutu” – other comments have done that well on their own.
Fail, (feyl)
â┚¬“verb (used without object)
1. to fall short of success or achievement in something expected, attempted, desired, or approved: The experiment failed because of poor planning.
2. to receive less than the passing grade or mark in an examination, class, or course of study: He failed in history.
3. to be or become deficient or lacking; be insufficient or absent; fall short: Our supplies failed.
4. to dwindle, pass, or die away: The flowers failed for lack of rain.
5. to lose strength or vigor; become weak: His health failed after the operation.
6. to become unable to meet or pay debts or business obligations; become insolvent or bankrupt.
7. (of a building member, structure, machine part, etc.) to break, bend, crush, or be otherwise destroyed or made useless because of an excessive load.
8. to stop functioning or operating: The electricity failed during the storm.
9. Time magazine’s Alex Perry
Is China going to give the U.S. a pack of cigarettes in exchange for having their way with Congo.
That’s how they do it in prison.
Came for the analysis of ahistorical, shabby and context-free journalism; stayed for the embarrassing personal meltdown. I can’t tell which one was more fulfilling, but I know which one was more entertaining.
[i]ThirdMan Says:
July 7th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Im sorry to say but Alex Perry’s criticism of this blog and the nitwits who follow it has proven accurate. You all just need, with every fiber of your being, to see the US and the west as the be-all and end-all of evil in the world. Have you ever heard of context? Intellectual honesty? Critical thinking? All I see is knee jerk cut and paste responses. Kind of scary actually. He shouldn’t have wasted his breath. Your collective world view was decided long ago and nothing will change that.[/i]
Um, hmmm.. Yes. I think I’ve heard of this critical thinking and intellectual honesty stuff. Let’s see how well you do with your own post held just mildly to scrutiny: Please post some examples in this thread of people saying the west is the be-all/end-all of global evil, or anything remotely like it. I can’t find a single thing like that, to say nothing of “you all.” Maybe you’ll be more successful. Or maybe you’re just making up stuff. The “I’m a liberal” disclaimer means exactly nothing, by the way. The word is high abstraction enough. But let’s ask you flat-out something on topic that Alex failed to distinctly confirm or deny in his flailing responses: Are you saying that the US had no involvement in the rise of Mobutu? Is saying that the US was involved somehow tantamount to hating everything about the US, or tantamount to the concept that *everything* is a conspiracy? How do you even begin to prove or quantify your initial assertion with such limited data?
Off topic, sort of: Amusingly, “subteranean” [sic] isn’t the only English error the oh-so-superior pedant Alex Perry made, though it seems to be the only one anybody has picked on so far. He even screwed up a classic simpleton bit from middle school: “It’s [sic] whole foundation is bias.” Also: disservice is one word; hyphen unnecessary. I didn’t even pick through his posts very much to find those. There are perhaps even more. What a loser.
Amusingly again, one wonders to what extent Perry thinks he can talk about modern China without living there (the real point of the piece!!), per his own absurd and arbitrary rules of knowledge attainment and authority.
You know, this has all gotten very nasty. Obviously the journalist got a bit hot under the collar and said things he shouldn’t have. It happens. I’m pretty sure he feels badly about it. Is there any need to pile on any further?
No, it isn’t and that’s utter, utter nonsense. Pick up any scholarly journal and look at the review section. This includes reviews of scientific papers.
What matters about journalists is what they do, not what they think about what they do.
Whoever told you that it’s somehow unfair to judge someone’s work on their work and instead you need to first contact the subject and make sure they give their spin on your evidence-based judgment is full of it.
It’s usually clear when people are blathering vapidly when they begin with an “Umm,” because it means they’re drawing upon an idiot set of beliefs they expect all to share.
A good number of journalists apparently believe their work is too important to fall under the same scrutiny that an undergraduate research paper would face.
I’ll ignore the idiotic, laughter-inducing nonsense in the second point.
What do you mean by “it’s journalism…not a scholarly work”? You think journalists can ignorantly insult perspectives they know nothing about and then defend themselves by saying “I’m a journalist, I’m allowed to be arrogant and ignorant and dismiss those who know what they’re talking about because I went to a J-school which emphasized talking out of my a** instead of knowing what the hell I’m saying?”
The best journalists weren’t arrogant, uninformed pricks, they knew what the context was of the subject they were writing about.
This defense of journalism as a field in which it’s okay to be a loudmouth ignoramus on subjects which one speaks imperiously but uninformedly is quite bizarre.
If that’s what “journalists” think that this is what “journalists” do, maybe they need to learn a little bit of the professionalism of those who aren’t paid to be full of crap, and concentrate on doing the valuable parts of this once honorable field.
EL CID: you are really dense. I think he was saying THIS SITE is journalism, not scholarly work. Therefore, it should be held to standards of journalism.
He’s not defending the writer, at least I don’t think he is. He’s saying FAIR should be held to higher standards.
Alex Perry perhaps is the most self-righteous, pompous, complacent, sneering, lazy, corrupt and self-debasing scribbler ever to stain the page at Time magazine, a publication that could better serve African interests as latrine compost.
My goodness, Mr. Perry. I wonder if you understand how defensive and paranoid you sound. You do yourself more harm here in the comments than had you simply let the four grafs of criticism stand. I’ve been a journalist for decades and I’ve made public mistakes, comments that were misunderstood, imprecise, awkward. I’m pretty sure it’s just part of life.
God, Mr. Perry sounds even more childish and puerile than I was led to believe. Good for you!
“the Western way of helping has been with aid”
The “Western way” of helping usually comes in the form of cash import, namely, printing of green paper that disintegrates in about 18 months. None of it makes it as far as a local bank, let alone back to US. But with the locals it buys everything, especially, the politicians. And there is so much of this filth printed and exported by the CIA that the world is pretty much awash with grey dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar). Not only does it buy cheap labor and resources, but it undermines local currencies and their respective economies. Or is someone here naive enough to think that contractors from India cleaning the toilets in American superbases in Iraq are paid off with money that get added on to the US public debt??? Mr. Perry would appear to think so since he is a gullible sucker.
This “aid” comes at no sacrifice to US economy and certainly not to Western journalists, like Mr. Perry. In fact, since Western economies, awash with various pundits and intellectuals that do not produce anything and consume everything, cannot sustain themselves relying on their own manufacturing capacities, these “exports”, called “aid”, are they only thing that keeps parasites like Mr. Perry afloat.
So, yeah, go China! I’d welcome them with their engineers and their work ethic any day to my country.
The tragicomic highlight of Perry’s diatribe is his condescending admonition: “Kambale â┚¬” that, I presume, is everything you know about the DRC in one post. Bravo, old boy.” As Perry could have determined with one mouse-click, Kambale Musavuli is Congolese, and an activist, writer and speaker on the Congo.
Most alarming is that I see no mention of the once-secret blue-diamond containing temple deep in the jungle guarded by killer silverback gorillas.
Such an important mark in the Congo’s history as the discovery of this location being completely omitted from the article strong evidence that the author knows little about the region and its history.
Mr. Perry seems to be a character straight out of Evelyn Waugh’s scathing novel on foreign correspondents, Scoop (highly recommended). Only problem: he isn’t unintentionally funny enough to actually make it to Waugh’s account.
For the record, having seen many of these western “foreign correspondents” in action in various parts of Africa and Middle East, Mr. Perry’s claim of “living in Africa” doesn’t mean he actually experiences what happens there. All it means is that he (most likely) inhabits a White Mischief-style bubble filled with preening expats who all gather around in swish terrace bars to sip gin and tonics at sun down. The closest they come to a local is when they ask a waiter for a drink or their househelp to clean up after them.
Sorry, Mr. Perry, you just showed yourself in the worst light possible – and that is by faaaaar worse than anything your article had demonstrated.
This is a really horrible showing of vitriol.
FAIR was intended to evaluate and, when necessary, criticize the work of the press. Yet, the comments here are personal attacks on a person we don’t even know. Based on one story, he’s been described here as “lazy,” “pompous,” “a clown,” “racist,” and the list goes on.
He may have overreacted, but geez, c’mon. He’s a human being. And he’s shown a commitment to the place. I wonder how many of you have tried to report on something as complex in a foreign country that a U.S. audience has little understanding of … in 1000 words. And yet, FAIR jumps on him without giving him the chance to defend himself. And then they open the floodgates for personal attacks from nameless critics. Where’s the FAIRness?
Seedee Vee gave a link above to a rediff story on this “reporter”. (http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/jun/20alex.htm).
After he insulted the indian prime minister they decided to check him out and discovered he had entered the country on two different passports, and that he was one of the first two reporters to cover Afghanistan after 9/11.
“”The Pioneer reported that the Indian government was to start an investigation into Perry’s trips in and out of the country. The newspaper reported that he had traveled on two different passports while landing and taking off from the country.
Perry was traveling on a British passport, rediff was told, and that British passport holders are issued different booklets with different numbers when traveling. “It was totally legal,” a source said.
[..]
Perry was recently made Time’s New Delhi bureau chief. Before coming to India, he reported a number of stories from Afghanistan.
Among those stories was a first-person account — he was the first journalist to enter Mazar-I-Sharif after it fell to the Taliban — to the massacre of 300 Taliban at Sultan Raziya School and broke the story of CIA agent Mike Spann’s death in the prison uprising at Qala-i-Jangi.
“”
This tweeked my memory of an emptywheel.firedoglake.com post (Marcy covers torture and specializes in digging through weeds for timelines, and facts) where she covered the death of another reporter during a supposed uprising of 300 Taliban during the time when John Walker Lindh was captured, and prisoners were massacred (convoy of death) by Commander warlord Dostrum, while Americans looked on.
Photos( http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0203/photo7_popup.html)
Marcy Questioned the access these reporters had, as they apparently came in with special ops. They were recording and shoving microphones in their faces even after declining to comment, even taking pictures of them in embarrassing situations which in itself is a violation of international law. They even took pictures of the torture of John walker Lindh, naked and bound in the freezing temperatures of Afghanistan winter.
This guy lost his moral compass long ago. Don’t expect him to find it here.
. This guy is every bit a CIA mouth piece as Judy Miller was, if not CIA considering the multiple passports he was using.
you guys are all pathetic really get a life and Viva Alex Perry
Name-call, feel superior, and froth at the mouth all you want.
You’re missing the point by a mile by jumping on the hate bandwagon and gunning for the guy who turned in this little magazine blurb.
China’s goals are its own, but its investments will have an effect on the region’s output and economic growth in ways that the most well-funded and well-intentioned “Western” (???) aid never, ever, ever did or ever could. That should make professional aid industry types extremely uncomfortable about their job security.
Alex may well have chosen to remain out of fray…but I do want to talk to a couple of things he brought up.
It may well be that FAIR’s article focuses on what Alex thought was a throwaway part of the article. The bulk of the article is about China’s investment strategy in Africa and not so much about Mobutu Sese-Soko and Congo. It would have been easy to point out that it was a throwaway comment and no offence was intended. But it is disingenuous at best to pretend that words don’t matter and then to criticize somebody’s spelling.
On his claim of spending weeks and months of research on the article: I thought the two main takeaways from the article were:
1) China does business differently from the West (deals not gifts)
2) China’s approach to Africa has changed how the world views it (a destination for Charity vs a Destination for business/investment)
There is some research supporting the first (not necessarily convincing…but atleast we can say it is not something he pulled out of thin air). But the second premise is completely unsubstantiated. His weeks/months of research could not find any evidence in terms of number of deals/dolllars in investment or anything else that has changed that could give rise to this perception….so color me unimpressed by your weeks/months of research on this article. I don’t deny that it is thought provoking…just that I don’t see evidence of extensive research.
What you say about Congo and Mobutu Sese Soko has little do with this.
Mr. Perry-
…sure. You won’t be writing comments here anymore, but I’d be shocked if you weren’t still reading.
…wouldn’t it have been just as easy to say to yourself, “you know, maybe I SHOULD have mentioned the crazy political climate western nations helped create in the Congo! You’re right- I wouldn’t have hurt to say that. My bad!”
…dude- calm down! nobody accused you of anything other than that! …you come across like your frothing at the mouth, tearing off your shirt like the Hulk, and hurling tables across the room. Relax! …just… goodness!
Why don’t some of you go out and DO SOMETHING about the various things you spend your time deploring, no doubt from some tenured academic perch, rather than kicking around reporters like Alex Perry who do more good than the lot of you will ever manage in a series of reincarnations. Peace!
Just so you know, before moving to Africa, Alex Perry was the Time correspondent in India – and he made an ass of himself there too. Thanks to the highly alert/active political and journalistic scene there, he couldn’t get away with it that easily though. I am sure there is a lot about that online, but here is a quick taste of it: http://www.dancewithshadows.com/alex_perry_time.asp
Another source for Mr. Perry:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/world/africa/24congo.html?ref=_mobutu_sese_seko
Note: This source also lived in Africa, at the relevant time working for the relevant organization.
“Kambale â┚¬” that, I presume, is everything you know about the DRC in one post. Bravo, old boy. Such knowledge. Such erudite depth. Such spelling.”
A Time Magazine bureau chief wrote that.
I’ve read your replies in these comments and I support you Alex Perry. Most of these comment by others are worthless. They think themselves experts after – at most – glancing at a wikipedia article about the Congo. Most just rant on and on about how the evil US and Europe did you fill in the blank to this country and that country.
As a side note, i’ve found that 99% of comments to articles – no matter the website – are complete stupidity. This comment is not one of them.
this should sum up this entire article and its comments:
HOW CAN SHE SLAP ME? HOW CAN SHE SLAP ME?
just incase you didn’t get it: one guy may or may not have given proper context for his article, gets slapped by someone whose way of life is different, slaps back rather than politely acknowledging his error and pointing out hers, and then things get a little… cray-cray. *goes back into the woodwork*
I must say Alex Perry has more sense staying out of this mess than being involved! These comments just prove how superficial and prejudiced people are to people that are living in Africa, such as myself.
Just leave the man alone! He has more important things to do than read about your damned harping that in the end will not achieve anything anyway.
Good write-up, I am regular visitor of one’s site, maintain up the excellent operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time.
Wow! Mr. Perry seems very sure of himself. Perhaps you should blame his superiors.
Such blatant lack of research makes me think he spends more time on the frankly more attractive
nightlife and beaches of Capetown. For an Oxford letter holder this very very poor work. Shame on TIME-CNN editors too.
Spot lets get started work on this write-up, I actually feel this website specifications a great deal way more consideration. I?Ô¹”°ll probably be as soon as once again to read quite a bit way more, thank you for that information.
I discovered your blog web site on google and confirm numerous of your early posts. Proceed to keep up the superb operate. I simply additional up your RSS feed to my MSN Information Reader. Searching for ahead to studying extra from you afterward!â┚¬Ã‚¦
Definitely believe that which you stated. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the net the simplest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I certainly get irked while people think about worries that they plainly do not know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and defined out the whole thing without having side-effects , people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks
If you had a “like” I would link this on Google+.
Was that the right video? Because I’ve seen this guy perform where he produces oodles of bananas to just look at.
Written well, for the most part, but don’t you feel as if the issue is more complex than that?
Deference to op, some excellent selective information.
One of the biggest faults guys help make in their interactions having women of all ages is usually http://www.yourpeoriacarpetcleaners.com/predicting into all of them their own man imagining. One of several strong functions many of them project into women of all ages is usually justness.