Keith Olbermann warns America that the Bush Administration is attempting to manufacture phony evidence linking American deaths in Iraq to weapons supplied by Iran. Why would they do this? Well, to justify attacking Iran, for starters.
YOU DO REALIZE, THEY ARE MAKING THIS UP ABOUT IRAN!
Please keep this video in mind in case the Bush (or, god forbid, McCain) Administration claims that Iran launched a terrorist attack on America somehow. It's clear that the Republican war profiteers want an excuse to invade Iran, and it's clear that they are willing to manufacture any excuse to do so.
Originally aired on May 13, 2008 on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Sorry about the Windows Media Center border around the video; I had to use screen capture software to get around all the DRM garbage built into Windows.
The Liar called out in this clip is US Major General Kevin J. Bergner, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Winter PatriotMistakes were made when the so-called "Liquid Bombers" were arrested, and in two instances, British national dailies reported information which turned out to be false. These false reports led to claims of defamation which have cost the publishers hundreds of thousands to settle out of court.
In the first instance, it was reported that a British man had been arrested, held overnight, and released without charges. But later a consortium of newspapers published an apology saying he had never been arrested at all, and they paid £170,000 (about $330,000) to settle a claim filed on his behalf.
The second instance concerned a man about whom many different reports were published. Thus it was variously reported that he had been arrested or detained for questioning, in Britain or in Pakistan. But later a group of newspapers apologized, saying that he had not been arrested or detained or even questioned by any police, anywhere. Again a substantial settlement was paid, but in this instance the amount was not disclosed.
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Monday, August 18, 2008
In covering the story of Iran's role in Iraq, far too many reporters have passed on blatant propaganda without the slightest effort to point out its inconsistency with documented facts, much less to try to uncover the truth. But a story by Pamela Hess of Associated Press distributed Aug. 15 sets a new standard for abetting official disinformation.
In the story, she acts as an enthusiastic megaphone for a patently phony story from an anonymous "senior intelligence officer."
Hess' hit-squad training story should be assigned to journalism classes for the next generation to open a discussion about what went wrong with American journalism before and during America's overtly imperial war in the Middle East. And Hess should be seen as a stunningly clear illustration of what happens when a reporter gives up any pretense of independence from the national-security state.
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Posted
Updated
While large-scale military operations may be coming to an end, the political war over Georgia is likely to escalate. (Reuters: Vasily Fedosenko, file photo)
On 12 August, President Dmitry Medvedev declared the end to Russian military operations in Georgia on the basis that they have accomplished set tasks: Georgian forces were pushed back from Southern Ossetia and their fighting capability was seriously curtailed. However, the end of the Russian counter-offensive will not halt the information war that carries on.
In his highly emotional article on the ongoing conflict in Southern Ossetia, Mr Grigol Ubiria was quick to identify Russia as the root cause of the problems in the south-eastern Caucasus and the world in general. The conflict over Southern Ossetia is a complex multi-layered phenomenon that requires a balanced analytical approach. To be able to get a comprehensive picture, apart from the viewpoints of the United States and Georgia, Russia's motives and strategic intentions have to be examined also.
Russia's claims about its traditional role in the area are based on the history of its engagement in regional affairs. The nation's influence over the Caucasus was established in the 18th century as a result of the nation's prolonged struggle with the Ottoman Empire. After yet another war with the Ottomans (1768-74), Russia secured the Crimean Peninsula, the Sea of Azov and further south along the Black Sea coast. In 1783, the Russian Empress Catherine II (the Great) and the ruler of two Georgian provinces (Kartly and Kakhetiya) Irakliy II signed the so-called Georgian Treaty, according to which Russia offered Eastern Georgia a status of a protectorate and guaranteed the safety of the local Orthodox Christian population against the neighbouring Ottoman Empire. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-91, the Russian protectorate was extended to the rest of Georgia.
--MORE--Cracking the Pentagon Pundit Code
Topics: activism | propaganda | secrecy | U.S. government | war/peace
As reporters and researchers know all too well, releasing information isn't necessarily the same thing as releasing useful information.
Pentagon pundit Ken AllardCase in point: the Pentagon's military analyst program. In early 2002, the Defense Department began cultivating "key influentials" -- retired military officers who are frequent media commentators -- to help the Bush administration make the case for invading Iraq. The program expanded over the years, briefing more participants on a wider range of Bush administration talking points, occasionally taking them overseas on the government's dime.
In April 2006, the group was used to counter criticism of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The apparent coordination between the Pentagon and the pundits piqued the interest of New York Times reporters. Two years later -- after wresting some 8,000 pages of internal documents from the Defense Department -- the Times exposed the Pentagon's covert attempts to shape public opinion through its so-called "message force multipliers." A few weeks later, the Defense Department posted the same documents publicly.
It wasn't the high-octane data dump it first appeared to be. Sure, paging through the emails, slides and briefing papers is interesting, and occasionally you come across something noteworthy. But the documents are formatted in such a way that systematically exploring them via keyword searches is impossible. A cynic (or realist) might think the Pentagon was doing damage control by putting the documents out in the open, while making it near-impossible to find crucial needles in a very large, chaotically-compiled haystack.
Spencer Ackerman | August 6, 2008 | web only
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An Iraqi boy moves through a gap between concrete blocks in the Sunni Arab quarter of Azamiyah, in Baghdad. (AP Photo/Asaad Muhsin) | |
Few governments have relied more on euphemism than the Bush administration. Euphemism is different from spin. Spin puts the best face forward on a given policy; euphemism uses its opposite to describe itself. Hence the Clear Skies Initiative to weaken the Clean Air Act; the Freedom Agenda to describe military domination of the Middle East; or Enhanced Interrogation to discuss torture.
The Iraq War has been characterized by euphemism since its inception. The name "Operation Iraqi Freedom" denotes a foreign military occupation of Iraq endlessly described as liberation -- a term that, in practice, means the absolute opposite of any common-sense definition of "freedom." For over five years, foreign troops have enjoyed the legal right to kill any Iraqi whom commanders deem fit to kill; to search any house commanders deem fit to search; and to detain any Iraqi whom commanders deem fit to detain. This is, clearly, a condition Americans would never accept for themselves. Debate can reasonably occur over whether the war is worth it or whether the rules of engagement are appropriate. But no one can responsibly call this condition "freedom" for Iraqis.
Here's a guide to some of the most pronounced, and pernicious, euphemisms of the Iraq War.
GATED COMMUNITIES
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And What You're Not Learning from Them
The Associated Press is a monstrous contradiction. On one hand, the 162-year-old, corporate-media collective feigns high concern for accuracy, objectivity, and other journalistic principles; on the other hand, it operates at the expense of same.
By way of its being a corporate collective, its top priority is to maximize revenues of its members. While this is not an illegal goal in and of itself, no corporate enterprise should be able to get away with accomplishing that goal at any cost and by any means, including deception and flat-out lies.
Too many people in the world are fooled by AP’s self-styled image of being the most trustworthy source for breaking news the world over. Sure, it is the world’s largest and most widely-distributed news service; but in light of certain patterns of shoddy and sometimes blatantly fraudulent reporting, this only makes it the most dangerous and subversive.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Last week former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and said the White House distributed "talking points" to friendly Fox journalists.McClellan's confirmation of an operation inside the White House of providing comprehensive talking points to Fox News and other Conservative talk show personalities to manipulate the media and control the message regarding the Iraq War and the "war on terror" is a violation of anti-propaganda laws. By law the government sources must be disclosed by the reporting news outlets.
Yesterday a report prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office found that a few aides to Alberto Gonzales and White House officials were actively involved in hiring decisions for non political positions at the DOJ. Being a loyal Republican was the main criteria for being hired, not education or experience.
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Info on Intel Center's home page about their operations is sparse, but one would think that some intelligence operation that spanned the planet, scooping up Islamic threat videos before even the world's assembled intelligence agencies had a clue would have a legit mailing address and not just a measly Post Office box, like this one:
PO Box 22572
Alexandria, VA 22304-9257
US
Here's some info from Source Watch on Ben Venzke and his IntelCenter and the various aL-CIA-duh videos this Jewish media group was able to ferret out even before the FBI, CIA, NSA and Britain's MI 5 knew the videos were available.
The perversion and demise of the U.S. Republic and the global shakedown of U.S.- and Israeli-chosen enemies would not be possible without the neocon-Likudnik empire’s Propaganda Ministry.
This three-part document makes a layman’s case against the members thereof — most notably, News Corporation, The Associated Press, and the various ideological agents that are keeping media and state incestuously bonded and heading down the road to fascist self-destruction and global immolation.
Bite the Lamb; Cry Wolf
On September 6, 2007, Israeli Air Forces (IAF) jets violated Syrian airspace and destroyed a construction site which was alleged by Israeli officials to have been a nuclear facility intended for weaponization. The evidence accompanying the Israeli allegations, which was not officially put forward until months later, showed no wrongdoing on Syria’s part. That any mainstream news outlet would report the Israeli accusations without a healthy dose of skepticism would be a travesty.
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John McCain Town Hall
St. Paul, Minnesota
June 19, 2008
Israel arrests six in alleged plot to assassinate Bush
Israel says would-be Qaeda network members arrested
Fake Al Qaeda
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli authorities have arrested six Arabs suspected of trying to build an al Qaeda-linked cell, including one person said to have asked about targeting President Bush's helicopter.
A helicopter that was part of a convoy carrying President Bush lands in Israel in January.
Shin Bet, Israel's security service, said in a news release that a 24-year-old student of Hebrew University in Jerusalem decided in January to try to attack a helicopter of a senior official landing on a helipad and took video of the helipad with a cell phone. Bush used that helipad -- near the dormitories at the university's Givat Ram campus -- during a visit in January, it said.
The student, identified as Muhammad Najam, turned to an Internet forum identified with al Qaeda and asked about the possibility of targeting an aircraft carrying Bush, Shin Bet said.
There was no immediate public statement on Najam's behalf.
H/tT Grim Reaper
The New York Times
July 16, 2008
NATO Hires a Coke Executive to Retool Its Brand
By STEPHEN CASTLE
BRUSSELS — During the cold war, when Western and Warsaw Pact tanks massed on either side of the Iron Curtain, the idea of a brand for NATO would have been ludicrous because everyone knew why it was important.
Not anymore.
Less than a year before its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is determined to revamp its image, establishing a media operations center for Afghanistan and hiring an executive from Coca-Cola to manage the way the alliance is seen around the world.
Nineteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, confronted by evidence of ignorance or indifference among many in its 26 member nations, NATO is rethinking how it communicates with the taxpayers who pay for it.
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By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ | AP Hispanic Affairs Writer
7:11 AM EDT, July 15, 2008
MIAMI (AP) _ Congress' investigative arm is raising concerns about contracts awarded to local TV and radio stations that broadcast to Cuba, according to a report released Tuesday.The Office of Cuba Broadcasting beams its Radio and TV Marti broadcasts to Cuba to provide an alternative to the communist island's government-run media. It awarded the noncompetitive contracts to the local Miami stations in 2006, following a push from the Bush administration to step up broadcasts to Cuba, as well as the announcement by former Cuban President Fidel Castro that he was stepping down due to health problems.
The contracts marked a major change in government practice, since the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau, which oversees the broadcasts, is generally not allowed to air its programs within the United States to avoid the appearance of domestic propaganda.
"IBB's approach for awarding the Radio Mambi and TV Azteca contracts did not reflect sound business practices," the report by the Congress' Government Accountability Office concluded. It urged greater oversight by the IBB of the contracting process.
The report found the noncompetitive agreements with local stations Radio Mambi and TV Azteca were generally completed by mid-October of 2006, but that the IBB, which also oversees the Voice of American and Radio Free Europe, did not notify its legal and contracting department until more than a month later — two days before the contract was to be signed.
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By Glenn L. Carle
Sunday, July 13, 2008; B07
Sen. John McCain has repeatedly characterized the threat of "radical Islamic extremism" as "the absolute gravest threat . . . that we're in against." Before we simply accept this, we need to examine the nature of the terrorist threat facing our country. If we do so, we will see how we have allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure.
The "Global War on Terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners.
The inclination to trust our leaders when they warn of danger is compelling, particularly when the specters of mushroom clouds and jihadists haunt every debate. McCain, accepting this view of the threats, pledges to continue the Bush administration's policy of few distinctions but ruthless actions.
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by Newsie8200
Sat Jul 12, 2008
This has been a long time coming. I've kept quiet about it for awhile now, but many major blogs and bloggers are increasingly becoming unreadable for me... because I know they're getting outraged over the wrong things, at the wrong time and at the wrong people. I want to avoid specific names for the obvious reasons, and I know there's some irony in what I'm posting. In any case, I think my overall message is important enough, so here it goes.
Quite frankly, some of the major bloggers who have "access" to consultants (DC or not in DC), campaign staffers or Congressional staffers, have been getting played.
Major bloggers become "trusted sources" for the rest of the blogosphere, and some of them converse with some major DC bigwigs or key Congressional staffers. A smart, savvy politico might curry favor with a major blogger who is considered to be a trusted source for the rest of the blogosphere, by giving undue credit to some bloggers for a House or Senate win. (There are several examples of this, but I'm thinking specifically of a House win where bloggers took a lot of credit that should have gone to EMILY's List, SEIU, and other third party groups.) Later, the savvy politico will push behind the scenes for major bloggers to blog about a different congressional race that the savvy politico is particularly interested in (for whatever reason).
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Johann Hari
You have been told that the Venezuelan President supports the Farc thugs
Monday, 7 July 2008
Sometimes you hear a stray sentence on the news that makes you realise you have been lied to. Deliberately lied to; systematically lied to; lied to for a purpose. If you listened closely over the past few days, you could have heard one such sentence passing in the night-time of news.
As Ingrid Betancourt emerged after six-and-a-half years – sunken and shrivelled but radiant with courage – one of the first people she thanked was Hugo Chavez. What? If you follow the news coverage, you have been told that the Venezuelan President supports the Farc thugs who have been holding her hostage. He paid them $300m to keep killing and to buy uranium for a dirty bomb, in a rare break from dismantling democracy at home and dealing drugs. So how can this moment of dissonance be explained?
Yes: you have been lied to – about one of the most exciting and original experiments in economic redistribution and direct democracy anywhere on earth. And the reason is crude: crude oil. The ability of democracy and freedom to spread to poor countries may depend on whether we can unscramble these propaganda fictions.
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July 2, 2008 1:19 PM PDT
McCain pushes for public safety network
Posted by Marguerite Reardon 2
Sen. John McCain said at a campaign stop Tuesday that he will push for a national broadband wireless network for public safety.
Speaking at the National Sheriff's Association Annual Conference, McCain, who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said a national, interoperable public safety broadband network was long overdue.
"You and all your colleagues in law enforcement need seamless communication across every agency and jurisdiction for emergency response," he said, according to a transcript of the event. "For more than a decade now, I have tried to persuade the Congress to provide dedicated radio spectrum and funding for communications equipment to local, state, and federal law enforcement officers."
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July 01, 2008
MSNBC Keith Olbermann
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mparent7777_1- CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
- Marc Parent