Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • June 19, 2013 the immediate aftermath of a planned famine that killed seven to 10 million people. Duranty denied the famine -- which was meant to force landowner peasants onto collective farms -- had ever taken place. He called the Ukrainian famine, or Holomodor, “a big scare story in the American press.” Duranty described the situation as “Russians hungry, but not starving.” Gareth Jones, a young Welshman who spoke Russian, toured the same countryside where Duranty said there was no famine. “Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread. We are dying,’” Jones reported. “In a train, a Communist denied to me there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-traveler fished it out and ravenously ate it...‘We are waiting for death’ was my welcome, ‘but see, we still have our cattle fodder. (They had eaten the oxen) Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead.’” Jones was banned from covering the Soviet Union again. Duranty, warmly praised by the otherwise “reptilian” Stalin, as Farr called him, continued to receive news exclusives from the Soviet government. They made him look good. Two years later, Jones, investigating war crime allegations in Manchuria, was kidnapped and murdered by “Chinese guerillas.” The murder took place just before his birthday. He had spent 12 days, supposedly held in custody by people who could not read English. His family believed his murder was payback for honest reporting. Duranty -- an Anglo-Saxon Englishman and a former Harrow and Eton boy with a fake Cockney accent, dabbled in Satanism and sodomy before he settled for adultery, liquor, and narcotics. Duranty continued to be honored by Stalin and the Soviets, especially after the U.S. recognition. Duranty had said Stalin was authentically Russian, even though everybody who knew Russia knew that Stalin was a Georgian from South Russia with Ossetian ancestry. Duranty’s stories portrayed Russia as a rough-andtough democracy and Stalin as the greatest statesman of his era. This opinion ignored the Holomodor planned famine of 1931-32 in the Ukraine and Perm-12, a postwar labor camp in the Urals, each of which killed more people than the Holocaust. Kolima in Siberia killed 900,000 more. Vice President Henry Wallace thought it was a fun kind of place. When Stalin finally died, Duranty lost his credibility even with the Russians, who were sickened by Stalin’s atrocities and who shot his chief hatchet man, Lavrenti Beria. Duranty moved to Los Angeles and sponged off of leftists in the film colony and newspapers. According to his biography, written by S.J. Taylor and published by Oxford Press, an eminently reputable publisher, Duranty panhandled John Gunther for a $500 check while Gunther was distraught over the impending death of his son, as described in “Death Be Not Proud.” While Jones was honored by anybody who remembered who he was, Duranty was described as a Stalinist propagandist by Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, and as slovenly by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who recommended that Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize be rescinded. George Orwell put him on a British Intelligence don’t-trust-him list. Joseph Alsop called him a traitor to the profession, and Malcom Muggeridge said Duranty was the greatest liar he had seen in 50 years of reporting. The New York Times still lists a Pulitzer Prize for the reporting of Duranty. Now you all know why I never got a Pulitzer. Samuel Johnson said that “biography has lent new terrors to death.” TV coverage and CDs have lent new terrors to blaming the press. When in doubt, check them out. I can make mistakes. Keep an eye on me -- and everybody else. We do not need another Duranty, but we do need a lot more people like Farr and Jones. I will not say which birthday I recently celebrated, but my wife gave me a nice card decorated with some Van Gogh sunflowers, and my son and daughter-in-law took me to the park with my fearless grandson. In lieu of a birthday cake, I got the treat of a lifetime. Some folks who were being castigated by the audience at a public meeting blamed everything on the press, presumably including me. I felt powerful and validated. I love being the Bad Guy -- until somebody plays the CD, which can be utterly convenient. The press, of course, is always to blame. Reporters who invented the Adventures of Bill and Monica were the real culprits. How nasty were the reporters who asked why Governor McGreevey hired a handsome young foreign-born non-expert as a security advisor? My all-time favorite among Lost Reporters is Finis K. Farr, who vanished from the radar after writing acclaimed biographies of several American authors and a bluntly honest biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “FDR,” which may have gotten him the Deep Six in the literary community. He has all but vanished. Farr was an honors graduate of Princeton University and worked at NBC through the 1930s. He served as a U.S. Army officer in the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II and won the Bronze Star for service behind enemy lines against people who, at that stage of the war, were not in a playful mood and usually took prisoners only if they wanted information. Farr shrugged off Roosevelt’s death in April of 1945 as a non-event compared to his real problem at the moment. He was stuck behind enemy lines with a handful of American and Chinese Nationalist officers, while the hundreds of tribal mercenaries they had armed and recruited decided to either desert or change sides. This newsman paid his dues, and not behind a desk. Farr’s nastiness was non-partisan. He noted that Roosevelt and Eisenhower, both college football players, had pulled strings to stay out of combat in World War I. “Ike was yellow,” as Farr put it. This was not saloon talk. Farr really earned that Bronze Star and narrowly avoided a posthumous Purple Heart. Farr said Roosevelt’s first term at the beginning of the Great Depression, when Herbert Hoover seemed clueless, probably did the country a lot of good. Farr also claimed that Roosevelt lied his way into office for the third term by pledging to keep us out of war when he was palpably trying to get us into one. Farr said Roosevelt was visibly dying by the fourth election bid. In 1944, the president had already had a stroke that almost killed him. The stroke was not much reported, and he looked about 90 rather than 63 in his last photos. But FDR had a great team covering for him. The greatest cover-up man of the era conned Roosevelt rather than conning others on Roosevelt’s behalf. I refer to Walter Duranty, Pulitzer Prize winner for the New York Times and the man who influenced Roosevelt and Congress to officially recognize the Soviet Union in Made a mess? Blame the press! Township seeking funds (continued from page 3) voted to send the letter, but Councilman John Roth voted against the motion to request funding because he said he wasn’t clear on the pros and cons of establishing development centers. “I asked for an overview of the centers,” Roth said, “some sense of what we would be getting involved in and why we need centers. I want clarity on what centers are all about. I’m not comfortable and so I won’t vote for it.” Other members of the council voiced the opinion that the study would provide the information Roth is seeking. Campion emphasized that the study would not cost the Mahwah taxpayers any money. Darlene Green of Maser Consulting PA, the township’s professional planning firm, explained to the council at a previous meeting that a development center would be an area designated for growth development. The township could create its own zoning regulations for any development centers, which would not be subject to the restrictions of the Highlands Council’s master plan. Green also told the council that, if the township were to approve development centers, there would be more grant money available to the municipality and other state grants would be available on a priority basis. According to Campion, if the council later decided not to proceed with the centers, the funding for the study would not have to be returned to the Highlands Council. Three areas of Mahwah are being considered for development centers: one in the Fardale section of the township, one along Franklin Turnpike and Route 17, and one at Ramapo College east of Route 202. In December 2009, the Mahwah Council passed two resolutions that indicated the township’s ultimate intention to “opt-in” to the Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council plan by revising the township’s master plan and development regulations to conform to the Highlands Council Regional Master Plan for certain portions of the township. The council recognized that, if the township ultimately agrees to conform to the Highlands Council Regional Master Plan, the township would give up some control over its own zoning, but would obtain a more favorable obligation for affordable housing. Joseph Burgis, the township’s professional planner when the council was considering opting-in to the Highlands plan, had advised the council that the township’s affordable housing obligation previously set by the Council on Affordable Housing was 783 units. That number was expected to be reduced to 72 units when the township opted-in to the Highlands Council plan because of the more stringent development requirements of the Highlands Council Regional Master Plan. According to Burgis, those 72 units were expected to be reduced to zero because of the affordable housing credits the township has accumulated. The state’s affordable housing program has been entangled in a legal dispute, however, and it is not clear at this time what the township’s affordable housing obligation might be in the future. If the township ultimately opts-in to conforming to the Highlands Council’s plan it would have the obligation of maintaining its plans and ordinances in conformance with the Highlands Council’s master plan and obtaining the approval of the Highlands Council before adopting any ordinances or regulations relating to that master plan. The township would also have to get authorization from the Highlands Council before giving local approval to certain types of land use applications. The township could, however, withdraw from the Highlands Council’s master plan and from any approvals, rejections, or conditions of the township’s revised master plan or development regulations that were recommended by the Highlands Council at any time during the plan conformance process. Those approvals, rejections, or conditions would then not be binding on the township for the lands within the planning area. The Highlands area covers 1,343 square miles in the northwestern part of the state stretching from Phillipsburg in the southwest to Ringwood in the northeast, and lies within portions of seven counties and includes 88 municipalities. The area yields approximately 379 million gallons of water daily and is considered a vital source of drinking water for over five million New Jersey residents.