Dissident writer - Chris Floyd Sacked from Moscow Times - After Ten Years

[HongKonger]

Chris Floyd Sacked from Moscow Times - After Ten Years

by Richard Kastelein
Webmaster/Publisher
Empire Burlesque

This is a personal message from me. Chris can speak for himself, and I'm sure he will when the time is right, but I just wanted to let everyone know that today, after more than a decade of working with The Moscow Times, Chris Floyd was 'let go' by the new editor, who said Floyd's column no longer fits in with the paper's plans. So that's it. After 10 years of the "Global Eye" column, and 12 years overall with the paper, it's over. After August 11, Floyd will no longer be published in the Moscow Times or, presumably, The St. Petersburg Times, which picked up the Moscow column each week. He will, however, continue to publish his writings here at Empire Burlesque.

Feel free to write the editors at [e-mail] on their decision to end the work of a dissident American columnist who has held the beam firmly on the Bush Imperium since 2000. This came at a very strange time - since, we published the Third Edition of Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium earlier this morning. - this book that will be available on amazon.com later this month. It's been a rollercoaster of a day.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=769&Itemid=135#jc_allComments

_______________

Moskva Slezam Ne Verit": 0n Leaving the Moscow Times

Written by Chris Floyd

I wasn't going to address the issue of my being sacked from The Moscow Times until later, if at all. I'm not so vain as to think that the disappearance of the "Global Eye" is a matter of the slightest importance in the life of the world, however much it might affect me personally. But I've gotten so many messages of support and concern about the matter in the last 24 hours that it would seem churlish to put off some kind of response. I've also had further communication from the paper explaining more fully the reasoning behind the move, which was at first conveyed only in a terse, two-sentence email. Anyone who reads this blog knows my extreme distaste for injecting personal matters into it. You won't find my favorite recipes or reports on how I spent last weekend or cutesy pictures of my cat here. But a blog post seemed the quickest and easiest way of dealing with the subject and reaching those who might be interested, so I hope you will forgive this indulgence. I don't want to take space away from far more vital matters, so the rest of this story can be found after the jump. First, I want to say that I don't think the sacking was politically motivated, although that would be a natural assumption, given its controversial subject matter. But you must remember that the Moscow Times was publishing the column and its heated denunciations of the Bush Regime even in the first days after the 9/11 attacks, when practically the entire global media had rallied to Bush's standard. The week after the strike, in an article printed in the Times and sent out on its website, I blasted the dictatorial powers that Congress handed Bush in the panicky aftermath:

The Congressional lambkins of course believe that Bush will not abuse these powers. And no doubt he and his Praetorians will show the same tender concern for liberty, legality and constitutional authority they displayed last year when they sent hired thugs to break up the vote recount in Miami, then successfully urged the Supreme Court to strip Congress of its clearly defined constitutional responsibility to resolve disputed elections, thereby shutting down the vote and transforming callow Octavian into the manly Augustus who rules today.

Poor lambkins, so trusting. But what else can they do? What can any of us do? We must all now trust that this man who can't hold his liquor will be able to hold near-absolute power without getting drunk on it. We must trust that he will somehow ignore the counsels of the conservative faithful who have heretofore molded his thinking and guided all his actions.

For these wise guides have been busy defining just who is a terrorist – and a terrorist sympathizer. In newspapers, on radio and television, in weighty journals, they're naming and shaming the guilty. The list is long: Anyone who criticizes the president in this time of crisis. Anyone who has ever criticized him before. Anyone who gives information to the American people about what has happened to them and what is being done in their name – including a conservative senator like Orrin Hatch, who was publicly slapped down by the White House for speaking without permission. Anyone who suggests that there may be a complicated historical context to the tragedy, one in which America is not entirely without a tincture of culpability for helping create the scenario that belched forth this hell.

All of these constitute a "fifth column," an "internal enemy," a "corps of traitors," we are told by Bush's patrons and mentors. Every day, they pour this poison into Caesar's ear – but we must trust that he's not listening. We must trust that although he has always believed and embraced their Talibanic precepts before, he will now, miraculously, discard them.

SNIP

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=772&Itemid=135


This is the guy who fired Floyd.


http://www.exile.ru/2002-December-11/press_review.html

"Really, Mr McChesney!"

By Philby Burgess ( [e-mail] )

I've avoided certain easy targets in the Moscow expat press till now. It's a matter of pride, I suppose, a dimly-remembered childhood rule that one doesn't kick cripples. This reluctance to attack the easy target led me to exempt Andrew McChesney, whose columns grace every Thursday edition of the Moscow Times, from my embittered analyses of my fellow journalists' efforts. Most expats in Moscow share my former view that McChesney is harmless. He's a laughingstock, but most of the mockery is good-natured. His columns are trite, somewhat simple-minded -- but until this week, I'd have to say that McChesney did try to avoid the swaggering assumption of Western superiority which is the besetting sin of the expat press in Russia. Until this Thursday, his columns were harmless strolls through familiar Moscow terrain: a trip to the grocery store or some other everyday destination, in the course of which McChesney learns a lesson of some sort from one of his many "friends," Kolya or Vasya or Tanya. The lessons, though silly, were kindly -- like the one in which McChesney, irritated at a rude sales clerk, was reminded by Kolya or Tolya that until recently, Muscovites had nothing to shop for.

That's the benign McChesney I knew and tolerated: thick as two posts, but a decent old spaniel, after all. There's worse in this world, God knows. That's why it was such a shock to hear McChesney talking, in his most recent column (5 December 2002) about grasping Russian sluts and-ahem!-"oral sex." It was rather like hearing an epicene curate or Leftie start talking dirt about TV starlets. McChesney's column wore its newfound smuttiness on its sleeve, or rather title: "For Love, Money or Oral Sex." The topic, as you can probably guess, was that pub-blatherer's favourite: the way those desperate Russian women will do ANYTHING -- and I mean anything, mate -- to grab a Westerner.

It's an old story. You've probably told some version of it yourself -- if not here in the expat pubs of Moscow (where they know you too well to believe it), then during your visits home, where your old friends, dying by inches in dull jobs and grim marriages, will suspend their disbelief simply to be able to believe that somewhere, somehow, there must be a wilder, more decadent world. But I have to say, I never expected to hear such coarseness from our Mr McChesney.

Yet there it was in his most recent effort, McChesney boasting about his encounter with

"...Ira, a stunning 22-year-old brunette with a shy smile and gentle voice. She flattered me, offering to give me Russian lessons just minutes after we got acquainted. I readily accepted. Our first lesson was in her small bedroom at her parents' apartment. It consisted of my reciting the Russian alphabet and her inching closer and closer. When I reached 'ya,' she reached for my pants." That's as far as poor Ira got, McChesney explains: "I got a new job and threw myself into long workdays. I told Ira I wanted to postpone the lessons until I got settled in at work." Poor Ira. These Westerners aren't as easy to catch as they look, Ira. Don't blame yourself. You chose yourself a very tough target, Ira. If only you'd read McChesney's columns -- they've always been as chaste as a pastor's newsletter. McChesney is a man with lots of friends but nothing resembling a romantic interest. Unless, of course, one jumps to the conclusion that all those "friends," the interchangeable Kolyas and Dimas who play interlocutors in his columns, are friends in the raised-eyebrow sense. In which case, it's a pity McChesney can't simply say that he resisted these advances because he's gay, rather than implying that his resistance to the "stunning" Russian women who threw themselves at him was due to his high-mindedness.

snip

http://www.exile.ru/2002-December-11/press_review.html

[unhappycamper]

1. HongKonger:

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to six paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

You have one hour from the time of your original post to make changes.

In the future, please insure your posts adhere to this standard.

TIA,

unhappycamper
DU Moderator

[HongKonger]

4. No Worries

I think I have complied now.

[unhappycamper]

6. Thanks.

:thumbsup:

[Demeter]

2. The US IS Suffering A Great Loss Here

Truth is such a scarce commodity in BushWorld, we've had to import it for years. Oh, if only we had some local entrepreneurs who could create some home-grown organs of truth!

[HongKonger]

3. Floyd

Chris Floyd is an American journalist. He writes the weekly Global Eye political column for The Moscow Times and St. Petersburg Times. His work also appears in The Ecologist, The Nation, CounterPunch, Christian Science Monitor, Bergen Record, Columbia Journalism Review and elsewhere around the world. He is the author of the book, Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime. His columns are featured each week on Bush Watch. He has been a writer and editor for more than 20 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University.

His career began in the hills and valleys of Tennessee and down in the piney swamps of southern Mississippi, covering moonshine raids, shotgun murders, drug-running evangelists, racial conflicts, the economic ravages of the Reagan Administration, and the relentless, turbulent campaign of the Religious Right to gain political power and cultural dominance throughout the "heartland." He returned to his home ground in the late 1990s, where he won awards for his coverage of a deadly hostage shootout and a bloody melee between county officials – swapping charges of corruption and adultery – at a school board meeting.

Floyd spent several years in the depths of the military-industrial complex, working for a security-restricted federal research laboratory on projects dealing with energy conservation, global warming, space travel, transportation, robotics, artificial intelligence and military logistics. On the side, he published fiction and poetry in various now-forgotten journals and taught Russian literature at the University of Tennessee. Later, he annotated Shakespeare, 19th century British poetry and American literature for a start-up company producing multi-media CD editions of literary works for colleges and schools.

In 1994, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Moscow Times, an English-language daily and one of the first independent newspapers of the post-Soviet era. There he spent two years – the high casino of the tumultuous Yeltsin era – and began writing the "Global Eye" column, which he continued after returning to the United States in 1996. He was also the Times' movie reviewer from 1996 to 2000.

From 1998 to 2000, Floyd was the editor of Science & Spirit, an Oxford quarterly journal dealing with the contentious relationship between science and religion. His work there included interviews with such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, V.S. Ramachandran and others. He also worked with contributors from around the world – Islamic scientists, Jewish theologians, militant atheists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and authors such as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Lisa Jardine, A.N. Wilson, John Polkinghorne and others.

Since 2000, Floyd has worked as a freelance journalist and as a writer and researcher for Oxford University. In addition to the "Global Eye," his work is also published weekly in CounterPunch and the Bergen Record, and he is a regular contributor to The Ecologist magazine and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, The Christian Science Monitor, the Baltimore Chronicle, and on innumerable websites around the world, including Common Dreams, Buzzflash, Democrats.com, BushWatch, The Smirking Chimp, Cursor, Make Them Accountable and many others.

His story, "Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism," was chosen as one of Project Censored's "Top 25 Stories of 2002/2003." His pieces have been anthologized in Media Democracy in Action: Censored 2004, and the I Hate Republicans Reader. He also speaks occasionally on American radio, where his mumbling Southern drawl has befuddled listeners in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[Norquist Nemesis]

5. Something is off in Floyd's piece

Is this old? Is the reference to sending in thugs to stop the FL recount last year an error or did I misread second paragraph? :shrug:

"The Congressional lambkins of course believe that Bush will not abuse these powers. And no doubt he and his Praetorians will show the same tender concern for liberty, legality and constitutional authority they displayed last year when they sent hired thugs to break up the vote recount in Miami, then successfully urged the Supreme Court to strip Congress of its clearly defined constitutional responsibility to resolve disputed elections, thereby shutting down the vote and transforming callow Octavian into the manly Augustus who rules today."

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. He was using a section of a piece of his from 2001

The formatting on the original web page makes it more obvious. The previous paragraph ends:

But you must remember that the Moscow Times was publishing the column and its heated denunciations of the Bush Regime even in the first days after the 9/11 attacks, when practically the entire global media had rallied to Bush's standard. The week after the strike, in an article printed in the Times and sent out on its website, I blasted the dictatorial powers that Congress handed Bush in the panicky aftermath:

[Norquist Nemesis]

9. Ah, makes more sense. Thanks!

[leesa]

8. That part was written 10 days after 9/11.

This is too bad. I will miss Chris Floyd. His writing kept me sane after America went insane post 9-11 and wanted to invade for vengence.

[HongKonger]

10. It is sad

But rumour has it truthout.org may pick him up. He has also had other offers...

[Norquist Nemesis]

12. That'ld be great!

At least from what I'm seeing/just learning of his writings. I wonder if The Nation would take a look at him.

[glitch]

14. It's the Moscow Time's loss. He is an excellent writer. He could work

for Rollingstone or Harpers, he's that good.

Edit: Truthout would be excellent too.

[Norquist Nemesis]

11. Thanks! Not familiar with him before this. n/t

[InternalDialogue]

13. DU is lucky -- he's a member

He has posted links to some of his animation/movie work from Empire Burlesque, which is how I first ran across his work. His columns (which I've read from Empire Burlesque) are excellent.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=user_profiles&u_id=180594