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CBC journalists to 'swear allegiance' to Harper Government or risk being fired
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Incipient Fascist State: America Has Gone Away
by Paul Craig Roberts
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Anyone who doesn’t believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic).
Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com Dec. 28) that Fox News (sic) “no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state,” turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making “anti-American comments.”
The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker.
President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared: “you are with us or against us.”
Bush’s words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government’s respect for dissent since the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:
“No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary. . . Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.
That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.
And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.”
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Press not protected to amuse and entertain
The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear.
The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse “and sometimes even anger public opinion.”
In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers:
“I’m not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.”
The America of Kennedy’s day and the America of today are two different worlds.
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In America today the media are expected to lie for the government in order to prevent the people from finding out what the government is up to.
If polls can be believed, Americans brainwashed and programmed by O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh want Bradley Manning and Julian Assange torn limb from limb for informing Americans of the criminal acts of their government.
Politicians and journalists are screeching for their execution.
President Kennedy told the Newspaper Publishers Association that:
“it is to the printing press, the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: Free and Independent.”
Who can imagine a Bill Clinton, a George W. Bush, or a Barack Obama saying such a thing today?
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Propaganda ministry for the government
Today the press is a propaganda ministry for the government.
Any member who departs from his duty to lie and spin the news is expelled from the fraternity.
A public increasingly unemployed, broke and homeless is told that they have vast enemies plotting to destroy them in the absence of annual trillion dollar expenditures for the military/security complex, wars lasting decades, no-fly lists, unlimited spying and collecting of dossiers on citizens supplemented by neighbors reporting on neighbors, full body scanners at airports, shopping centers, metro and train stations, traffic checks, and the equivalence of treason with the uttering of a truth.
Obama coming up with a mission
Two years ago when he came into office President Obama admitted that no one knew what the military mission was in Afghanistan, including the president himself, but that he would find a mission and define it.
On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Obama came up with the mission: to make the families of the troops safe in America, his version of Bush’s “we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here.”
No one snorted with derision or even mildly giggled. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News (sic) dared to wonder if perhaps, maybe, murdering and displacing large numbers of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and US support for Israel’s similar treatment of Lebanese and Palestinians might be creating a hostile environment that could breed terrorists.
If there still is such a thing as the Newspaper Publishers Association, its members are incapable of such an unpatriotic thought.
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Today no one believes that our country’s success depends on an informed public and a free press. America’s success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world.
Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people’s god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.
Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens.
Fox News (sic)
Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech.
Washington’s assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution.
When we cheer for WikiLeaks’ demise, we are cheering for our own.
© Copyright 2005-2010 GlobalResearch.ca |
The New Orleans fire and the conditions of youth in America
— click here |
Kewe |
Hail all those who seek to open Illuminati treasured secrecy
What great courage this man, this young man, has!
A great hero of his generation!
What great tribute we pay to those who break with Illuminati authority!
How foul those who imprison this young man!
How I pray they will be brought to account for their traitorous action!
Kewe |
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Purple Heart For Moral Convictions
Pain so deep it cries a silent weep
Camouflaged in fear afraid to speak
In desperate hope a wounded heart revealed
In Bradley Manning's courageous light no longer concealed |
Bradley Manning's heroic fightclick here |
Bradley Manning Support Networkclick here |
Use of nuclear weapons would mean the end of humanity!
Meanwhile, coinciding with the release of Fidel's speech, there has been extensive coverage of the EU Parliament's 'human rights' prize granted to Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas.
Almost every single major Western news media has published the same Associated Press report out of Havana.
Visibly, nuclear war is not front-page news.
The overriding threat of war and destruction is overshadowed by a barrage of media disinformation.
The military agenda is presented as a humanitarian endeavor.
War criminals are rewarded for their contributions to World peace.
The corporate media is complicit in its biased coverage, particularly with regard to the loss of life resulting from the US-NATO led war in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The lie prevails.
In an utterly twisted logic, war is presented as a means to preserving World Peace. |
Media Blackout on Nuclear War
click here |
In a Nuclear War the Collateral Damage would be the Life of All Humanity
click here |
Throwing a non-Illuminati newspaper to Israel/American territory in occupied Palestine
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On the Road with Ahmadinejad in Lebanon
click here |
| US ISRAEL MASS WAR CRIMES Israel Caused Holocaust Palestine Lebanon US Israel massacres — desire to kill one and half million people They keep sucking off the teat of America and the banking systems of Europe |
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Atrocities Lebanon and Palestine
In their sickness they do this
Missiles to rain down upon Palestine women children and men |
Lies, damn lies John Pilger NewStatesman article — Click here |
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The propaganda war against Iran
Bill Van Auken June 24th, 2009 |
The US media, led by the New York Times, is continuing its concerted propaganda campaign against Iran over charges that the government stole the June 12 presidential election.
There is not even a semblance of objectivity in the media coverage, which parrots the charges of the opposition headed by defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi as fact and dismisses the government’s claims as lies.
The opposition is lauded as democratic and reformist, while incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters are portrayed as virtual fascists.
One would scarcely imagine that the two men represent rival factions within the same ruling establishment.
Responsibility for the violence in the streets of Tehran is attributed entirely to the government and its security forces.
No connection is drawn between these events and the broader situation in the region, where the US is waging two wars, on Iran’s eastern and western borders, both aimed at establishing American hegemony over the oil-rich territory.
Suggestions that the US and its intelligence agencies are involved in the turmoil in Iran are dismissed as ludicrous, fabrications by an Iranian government trying to divert public opinion.
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This, in a country where Washington overthrew a democratically elected government in 1953, propped up a brutal dictator, the Shah, for more than a quarter of a century, and has carried out covert CIA operations in the recent period involving the use of special operations troops on Iranian soil.
The New York Times and Venezuela
If all of this sounds familiar, it should.
Little more than seven years ago, a very similar media campaign, once again spearheaded by the New York Times, was carried out against the government of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.
Then, as now, standards of journalistic objectivity were thrown out the window.
Chávez was vilified and his opponents, drawn largely from Venezuela’s oligarchy and privileged layers of the middle class, were portrayed as crusaders for democracy.
Statements by the opposition were reported as fact or treated with the utmost respect, while the government’s contentions were subjected to derision.
A few quotations from the New York Times of March and April 2002 give the flavor of this campaign.
On March 26, the newspaper published a story entitled “Venezuela’s President vs. Military: Is Breach Widening?”
The content of the piece made it clear that the answer was, hopefully, yes.
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When unidentified gunmen opened fire during a mass opposition march on the Miraflores presidential palace — a throng comparable in both its size and class composition to those that have taken to the streets of Iran — the 19 deaths that resulted were all attributed to government security forces or Chavez’s armed supporters.
It subsequently emerged that a number of the dead were among the crowd that had gathered to defend Chávez and that much of the fire had come from the Caracas metropolitan police force, loyal to the city’s mayor, Alfredo Peña, a fierce opponent of the president who enjoyed US support.
In its coverage of the clash, the Times sought out Peña, who, unsurprisingly, blamed all of the carnage on Chávez.
The purpose of all of this became clear in the wake of the demonstration, when a section of the military, together with Venezuela’s big business association and the US-sponsored bureaucracy of the right-wing union federation, joined in a coup that briefly overthrew Chávez.
In the immediate aftermath of the coup, the Times showed its hand in an editorial entitled “Hugo Chávez Departs.”
“Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator,” the Times crowed. “Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader...”
The newspaper insisted that Washington had no role in the overthrow, “denying him [Chávez] the role of nationalist martyr. Rightly, his removal was a purely Venezuelan affair.”
Nothing could more clearly express the conception of “democracy” shared by the Times and the US ruling establishment.
A regime created through the military overthrow of an elected government was “democratic” so long as it was more amenable to US interests.
In Venezuela, which supplies 15 percent of US imported oil, these interests are clear.
As for the claim that the coup was “purely Venezuelan,” this was a cover-up of a concerted and protracted US destabilization operation, in which the Times played an indispensable role.
The “democratic” coup, however, lasted just two days.
Chávez was restored to power as a result of masses of urban poor taking to the streets against the new regime and sections of the military turning against it.
The Times backpedaled slightly, admitting that it had greeted Chávez’s overthrow with “applause,” while regretting that it had “overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed.”
In Iran, the New York Times is following essentially the same script, albeit it on a grander scale.
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Once again: Who is the Nation’s Iran correspondent, Robert Dreyfuss?
The Nation has not provided any answer to the question posed by the World Socialist Web Site on Monday: “Who is Robert Dreyfuss?”
As we explained, Dreyfuss is a contributing editor of the magazine, which presents itself as the voice of “progressive” politics in America.
He wrote a book — Hostage to Khomeini — in 1981, calling for the Reagan administration to organize the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran and denouncing President Jimmy Carter for having betrayed the Shah.
At the time, Dreyfuss was a member of the fascistic organization led by Lyndon LaRouche, serving as “Middle East intelligence director” for its magazine Executive Intelligence Review.
This is the man that the Nation relies upon as its chief commentator on “politics and national security” and who it sent to Iran to cover the election.
He has echoed the line promoted by the New York Times, declaring himself in favor of a “color revolution” in Iran.
A comparison of what he wrote then and what he writes today only makes it all the more urgent that the Nation explain why such an individual is one of its editors.
This arises particularly in relation to one of Dreyfuss’s principal sources during his recent trip to Iran, Ibrahim Yazdi, Iran’s former foreign minister and a so-called “dissident.”
An article published by the Nation on June 13 entitled “Iran’s Ex-Foreign Minister Yazdi: It’s A Coup,” consisted largely of an interview with this man, who said the election was rigged and illegitimate.
In his book Hostage to Khomeini, however Dreyfuss said that Yazdi was part of a “coterie of experienced, Western-trained intelligence agents.”
He claimed that Yazdi’s “directions from Washington and London came via the ‘professors,’ men such as Professor Richard Cottam of the University of Pittsburgh,” whom he described as a former “field officer for the CIA attached to the US embassy in Tehran.”
Dreyfuss wrote: “Yazdi’s wife once described Cottam as ‘a very close friend of my husband, the one person who knows more about him than even I do.’”
Elsewhere in the book, Dreyfuss refers to Yazdi as “Mossad-tainted.”
The question is: which Dreyfuss are we to believe—the one who exposed Yazdi as an intelligence agent for the US, Britain and Israel, or the one who now quotes him at length as an advocate of “democracy” and “reform”?
Dreyfuss has never publicly repudiated what he wrote in 1981. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? The Nation is obliged to answer. Its readership deserves to know what Dreyfuss is doing at the magazine.
Source click here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/prop-j24.shtml
thepeoplesvoice.org — click here
©2009 by thepeoplesvoice.org |
Venezuela The elections of Hugo Chávez |
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Iran election truths As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting.
In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability.
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It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith — Ahmedinejad — four years ago, and the same yesterday. Most underreported fact of the year: Ahmadinejad introduced free health care for 22 million people
All the accusations about Ahmadinejad's mismanaging the economy e.g. inflation, basically come down to him actually handing out cash to people.
Maybe my memory isn't what it used to be, but I do remember complaints from clerics and other conservatives at the time Ahmadinejad was first elected that he wasn't religious enough, that he was almost secular.
If that's correct, it may account for his appeal to the liberal middle class as well.
Of course, the Western press would ignore that, wanting to make him some kind of Muslim wacko.
The more I think about it (why did I not do that beforehand?) the more does the result makes sense.
While in west seen as 'conservative,' Ahmadinejad is no such thing.
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His distribution policies are straight social-democratic — in that he is on the left.
His support is thereby with the poor and worker people.
Still living on modest means himself, he is their hero.
At the same time he is the one who actually challenged the ruling mullah class when he attacked Rafsanjani.
His frequent visits in the provinces will have helped too.
He is pious and not afraid to show that.
Mousani is the economic conservative guy, mainly caring for the rich and bazaaris.
Being supported by Rafsanjani, the richest crook in Iran overall, obviously showed that.
In a land with a relatively small middle class it is therefore not astonishing to see Ahmadinejad win.
Ahmadinejad really was a populist leader and probably was rewarded for that.
To have to courage to call Rafsanjani and the other older clerics corrupt on national television during a debate may well have been impressive.
To the degree Ahmadinejad got Mousavi to defend Rafsanjani Ahmadinejad may have turned the election into another referendum on the corruption of the old-guard clerics, which is notorious in Iran, to his benefit.
My guess is foreign policy played almost no role in this election beyond that the general feeling in Iran is that there is not a serious foreign threat from the Americans.
Thanks for that link, slothrop.
You have to love those who define themselves as Liberals and/or Progressives.
Because Mousavi is painted as a Liberal Reformer, Liberals/Progressives in the West should throw their support behind him, and now we see he's just abother scumbag..... but he's their scumbag, so that makes it all good.
(comment above: shades of the US and Obama — Kewe)
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Iran generations Youth seeking Shopping in Tehran Iran New Year Norouz |
Photos of Iranian weapons Iran, Syria protected by Russia |
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But really, that was only the beginning.
Since then, as voter discontent with the war, stagnating wages, job outsourcing and the general direction of the country has escalated, Washington has battened the hatches, and gone from spitting bile to firing tank ordnance at the oncoming battalions of ordinary people who, goddamned them, dare to think they should be able to have some say in their own country.
Washington Post columnist David Broder — the so—called dean of the Washington press corps — called voters who want change "elitist insurgents" — a not-so-subtle attempt to conflate American voters with terrorists.
Then there was my personal favorite — David Brooks sitting there in his pink shirt with a smarmy half-grin in Northwest Washington telling the country "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Brooks breathed a sigh of relief that "the Clintonite centrists are reasserting their intellectual, financial and political supremacy" and that Hillary Clinton gave a speech that scholars at the fringe-right-wing American Enterprise institute "called remarkably centrist."
Thank god, said Brooks, that the "renegades who rail against the establishment are being eclipsed by the canny establishmentarians" because, according to him, "They're the ones who know how to use the levers of government to get things done."
Ah yes, with war raging in the Mideast, poverty rising in America, people struggling to pay their bills, Clinton-backed free trade deals shipping jobs overseas — thank the lord that the same old crew was supposedly reasserting itself because that record shows "they know how to get things done." |
| Do you know what kind of weapons causes this damage? |
He's not 100 percent wrong, of course - these people do know "how to get things done" — but only exclusively for the fat cats who pay to get a seat at the table — the fat cats that people like David Brooks feel most comfortable with.
The fat cats that way too many Democratic officials are more than happy to go brag to reporters about shaking down even as they deride the GOP's culture of corruption.
Incredibly, however, none of the establishment's old tricks seem to be working anymore.
All of the Jedi mind tricks, all of the false storylines, all of the Clockwork Orange-style indoctrination efforts just don't seem to be sticking.
And that's why it's gotten so ugly of late.
Today, we see David Broder quite literally losing control of his faculties on the pages of the Washington Post.
You can almost see the veins popping out of that shiny white forehead you've gotten so used to seeing on Meet the Press.
Like the bad, overdone stereotype of the crotchety senior who is angry that the world around him is changing, Broder declares that there needs to be "a new movement in this country" to "resist "the extremist elements in American society."
Who are these extremists?
Why, people who use the Internet to politically organize and engage.
Yes, according to Broder, "bloggers" are the moral equivalent of "doctrinaire religious extremists" — yet again, another not-so-subtle effort to portray anyone who dares to excercize their democratic rights as an Osama bin Laden supporter.
He then fires off a screed about various politicians such as Rep. Sherrod Brown.
He calls him "a loud advocate of protectionist policies that offer a false hope of solving our trade and job problems."
Right, because in David Broder's cloistered world, the "free" trade deals Brown has opposed have done such wonders for places like Ohio.
In David Broder's world, those hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers who have been thrown out onto the street thanks to NAFTA and China PNTR are the filth of the earth that high and mighty elite Washington journalists like him cannot be bothered with.
In David Broder's world, any request for our trade pacts to include restrictions on child slavery, environmental degradation, and pharmaceutical industry profiteering off desperately poor people, positively un-American.
Why?
Because David Broder lives in a place where all of these critical issues are merely just more fodder and gossip for a newspaper column — not real challenges in his life.
Nor in the life of the people he spends his time with in the Washington Beltway. |
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Al Qaeda Tapes: Direct Link To Military Psyops And Donald Rumsfeld
Following the trail for five minutes leads to Pentagon
Steve Watson / Infowars October 5, 2006
U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos
Following on from our three features on the latest dubious Al Qaeda video, We can reveal that further investigation into the origin of Al Qaeda video and tape release leads straight back to US military intelligence and Donald Rumsfeld.
The origin of the latest video, starring Mohammed Atta and flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah, has been swept under the carpet by the mainstream media who bizarrely admit that the government has had the tape since late 2001 but still suggest it is a new release by Al Qaeda.
Interesting also is the fact that in an NBC article, they admit that before receiving the "exclusive US analysis" of the London Sunday Times' tape, they had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the same tape of Atta earlier this year:
"The Sunday Times said it had obtained the video "through a previously tested channel" but gave no further details.
NBC News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the videotapes early this year, but the Pentagon has not yet turned them over. "
This is an open admission that it is the Pentagon that has released this tape and not Al Qaeda.
This dovetails with our previous analysis that revealed that the footage has been seen before in a docudrama, the Road to Guantanamo, where it is shown to detainees at camp Delta as an intelligence surveillance tape.
Along with experts
on Islamic terrorist groups who are baffled by the video and have declared that it has come from a security agency, the very journalist who received the tape also says the source was not Al Qaeda.
Prior to joining iDefense, Mr. Melnick served with distinction for more than 16 years in the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
During this period, Mr. Melnick served in a variety of roles, including psychological operations, international warning issues with emphasis on foreign affairs and information operations and Russian affairs.
He also served in active political/military intelligence roles with an emphasis on foreign affairs.
Mr. Melnick is currently a U.S. Army Reserve Colonel with Military Intelligence, assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Mr. Melnick has been published in numerous military and foreign affairs journals, and has received numerous military and DIA awards.
Mr. Melnick has a Master of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College, a Master of Arts in Russian studies from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Political Science from Westminster College.
So here we have a company that by it's own admission has a senior military psy-op intelligence officer who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
As Intelcenter and Ben Venzke are directly connected to IDEFENSE, this puts Rumsfeld 3 small steps away from the Al Qaeda propaganda videos.
The NBC "US analysis" should be the focus of the latest tape and not the Times articles.
It is an astounding piece of psyop propaganda that attempts in a shoddy way to fill in the "gaps" in 9/11 intelligence.
The analyst, Evan Coleman, after admitting that the Pentagon has been "sitting on it" goes on to say:
"It is important for people to watch and realize that this video is conclusive proof that 9/11 was orchestrated by Al Qaeda at the most senior levels."
He then makes a direct assault on the 9/11 truth movement by saying:
"This is the kind of video proof that is going to put a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theorists out in the cold and for good reason."
Related: Surprise Surprise, It's Another Al Qaeda Blockbuster Release
Related: Atta's Father Says Video Fake, Credibility of 'Hijackers Tape' Crumbles
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Over time I was increasingly shocked by the speed and ease with which many intelligent and seemingly competent members of the CFR [ Council on Foreign Relations ] appeared to eagerly justify policies and actions that supported growing corruption.
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The regularity with which many CFR members would protect insiders from accountability regarding another appalling fraud surprised even me.
Many of them seemed delighted with the advantages of being an insider while being entirely indifferent to the extraordinary cost to all citizens of having our lives, health and resources drained to increase insider wealth in a manner that violated the most basic principles of fiduciary obligation and respect for the law.
In short, the CFR was operating in a win-lose economic paradigm that centralized economic and political power.
I was trying to find a way for us to shift to a win-win economic paradigm that was — by its nature — decentralizing.
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The reader can appreciate why Wall Street would welcome someone as accommodating as Gorelick at Fannie Mae.
This was a period when the profits rolled in from engineering the most spectacular growth in mortgage debt in U.S. history.
As one real estate broker said, “They have turned our homes into ATM machines.”
Fannie Mae has been a leading player in centralizing control of the mortgage markets into Washington D.C. and Wall Street.
And that means as people were rounded up and shipped to prison as part of Operation Safe Home, Fannie was right behind to finance the gentrification of neighborhoods.
And that is before we ask questions about the extent to which the estimated annual financial flows of $500 billion–$1 trillion money laundering through the U.S. financial system or money missing from the US government are reinvested into Fannie Mae securities.
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James Forrestal’s oil portrait always hung prominently in one of the private Dillon Read dining rooms for the eleven years that I worked at the firm. Forrestal, a highly regarded Dillon partner and President of the firm, had gone to Washington, D.C. in 1940 to lead the Navy during WWII and then played a critical role in creating the National Security Act of 1947.
He then became Secretary of War (later termed Secretary of Defense) in September 1947 and served until March 28, 1949.
Given the central banking-warfare investment model that rules our planet, it was appropriate that Dillon
partners at various times lead both the Treasury Department and the Defense Department.
Shortly after resigning from government, Forrestal died falling out of a window of the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside of Washington, D.C. on May 22, 1949.
There is some controversy around the official explanation of his death — ruled a suicide.
Some insist he had a nervous breakdown. Some say that he was opposed to the creation of the state of Israel.
Others say that he argued for transparency and accountability in government, and against the provisions instituted at this time to create a secrete “black budget.”
He lost and was pretty upset about it — and the loss was a violent one.
Since the professional killers who operate inside the Washington beltway have numerous techniques to get perfectly sane people to kill themselves, I am not sure it makes a big difference.
Approximately a month later, the CIA Act of 1949 was passed.
The Act created the CIA and endowed it with the statutory authority that became one of the chief components of financing the “black” budget — the power to claw monies from other agencies for the benefit of secretly funding the intelligence communities and their corporate contractors.
This was to turn out to be a devastating development for the forces of transparency, without which there can be no rule of law, free markets or democracy.
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Protecting the brand with dirty tricks — Enforcement Terrorism The profitable liquidation of every place — Coutts, bank for British Queen and royals Catherine Austin Fitts — Dillon Reid and Co. Inc. And the Aristocracy of Stock Profits |
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What Briody does not mention is allegations regarding Brown & Root's involvement in narcotics trafficking. Former LAPD narcotics investigator Mike Ruppert once described his break up with fiance Teddy — an agent dealing narcotics and weapons for the CIA while working with Brown & Root, as follows:
“Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiqués delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly.
She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran.
At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city.
The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel.
“The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root.
The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root.
And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days.
Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off.”
Source: "Halliburton’s Brown and Root is One of the Major Components of the Bush-Cheney Drug Empire" by Michael Ruppert, From the Wilderness
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Dark Alliance — The Story Behind the Crack Explosion The "Good Guys" Who Can Do No Wrong
Profoundest suspicions of white malfeasance were true |
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The Clinton Administration took the groundwork laid by Nixon, Reagan and Bush and embraced and blossomed the expansion and promotion of federal support for police, enforcement and the War on Drugs with a passion that was hard to understand unless and until you realized that the American financial system was deeply dependent on attracting an estimated $500 billion-$1 trillion of annual money laundering.
Globalizing corporations and deepening deficits and housing bubbles required attracting vast amounts of capital.
Attracting capital also required making the world safe for the reinvestment of the profits of organized crime and the war machine.
Without growing organized crime and military activities through government budgets and contracts, the economy would stop centralizing.
The Clinton Administration was to govern a doubling of the federal prison population.
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View the video below:
MSNBC Fake News Interview with 'analyst' Evan Coleman. It smells of sulphur here!Presidente de la Bolivariana República de Venezuela Hugo Chávez
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Ludicrous Diversion - 7/7 London Bombings Documentary
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Alex Jones Terrorstorm America — from freedom to fascism |
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They're Scared The power that they are comfortable with is on the ropes. A failed war. A plethora of proven lies. A scandal that involves the very straw gay man that the Repubs like to wave at the voters. The media that keeps this power strong is expected to get benefits at the monetary level, and I'm sure they have. And what now? Will the money stop after they've stuffed as much as they can into themselves? Will their "acquired goods" disappear if a new type of power comes into play? http://mediamatters.org/ Comments: MickD October 7, 2006 |
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At the very least, Broder realizes that the American public is outraged at the twisted moral compass that govern him and his buddies.
That's why he is freaking out.
But there are still some who are prancing around, spewing happy talk, making a fast buck, totally unaware of what's really going on out here in the real world.
And perhaps even more insulting, totally unconcerned about their own naked hypocrisy.
For instance, just this week, we see former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now the head of Citigroup, standing on a stage with a straight face and holding a seminar about the best ways to alleviate international poverty.
That this man was the top architect of the international trade policies that have exacerbated both domestic and international poverty is an afterthought.
That this same man holding this seminar still refuses to acknowledge the culpability of the trade policies he has jammed down the world's throat is not to be mentioned.
All that matters to the fawning media and political establishment is that this much-worshipped moneyman is on stage saying we need to help poor people.
It makes you wonder if at some point soon, we'll be seeing Jack Abramoff holding a seminar on ethics and morals in the political arena.
Simultaneously, courageous reformers like Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) who has written a serious, bestselling book about how to really fix our economic policies are shoved to the side.
Barely getting mentioned in the press
While financial-industry-hack-turned-congressmen Rahm Emanuel and his buddy Bruce Reed who heads a corporate front group are given oodles of press attention.
Why?
For publishing a barely-selling pamphlet of warmed-over hollow talking points perpetuating the status quo and reinforcing negative stereotypes about those who want real change. |
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CNNI CNN, the domestic U.S. version, has clearly sacrificed its principles right up there with most of the rest of the U.S. media. However, as one who travels a great deal and also lives part-time outside the U.S., when I am moved to turn on the tv (not often) to see what's happening (usually when I don't have easy internet access), I usually end up watching CNN International. It's very clear to me that CNNI offers a substantially different product than CNN domestic. They have to, I would imagine, because the global, primarily high-end, audience that tunes them in simply wouldn't stand for the crap that's peddled within U.S. borders. My point in commenting is that I would find it extremely interesting if you were to do a compare and contrast of CNN domestic with its international sibling. We don't get nearly enough of that type of perspective and I think it's important enough to warrant your time. The domestic/international product variance surfaced just a short while ago in the matter of the covers of the various Newsweek international editions vs. the cover of their domestic edition. Another point. Most non-U.S. tv cable and satellite services around the world carry news services from many countries. I think it would be a terrific service to the American people if U.S. providers did the same. Subsisting on a diet of 100% American propaganda is like eating at McDonalds every day. Why not throw in propaganda from other countries as well? http://mediamatters.org/ Comments: profmarcus October 7, 2006 |
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At this same conference, we see images of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman laughing it up with Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf.
That's right, the columnist who piously champions his supposed commitment to spreading democracy is happily, publicly hamming it up with a brutal central Asian dictator.
Ah yes, because it's all just so goddamned hilarious to a New York Times columnist who can sit back in his 12,000 square foot Bethesda mansion: Count his $2 billion family fortune:
Tell the world how much he really truly cares about freedom,
Push American soldiers into the Baghdad shooting gallery,
Advocate destructive trade policies that he brags about not having even read,
And blaming Americans whose economic lives have been decimated by those trade policies for not better educating themselves.
It's all just so goddamned funny for Tom Friedman, because he gets to do all that, yet still also gets to ham it up every few weeks on national television with Tim Russert, and gets to be on stage with his good friend Bill Clinton and pretend to be serious.
Of course, Clinton, who convened the conference that featured Rubin and Friedman, was recently the recipient of a 20,000 word New Yorker article that was the journalistic equivalent of what Monica Lewinsky did to him in those steamy Oval Office days.
In the article, New Yorker editor David Remnick proclaims from the mountaintop Clinton's supposed devotion to solving the African AIDS crisis.
But never once - not once - bothers to take a moment in between lavish banquets and starfucking exchanges to actually ask Clinton why, if he was so committed to stopping this awful plague, he insisted on passing trade deals that included provisions specifically designed to allow pharmaceutical companies to inflate AIDS drug prices in the developing world?
But then, if you are David Remnick and all that really gives you a professional hard-on is getting to eat barbeque in Bill Clinton's private apartment in his palatial presidential library, why would you ask such a question?
Because really, the only ones who care about the answer to such a question are the millions of impoverished peasants who were never able to afford AIDS medications thanks to those trade provisions.
And those aren't the people David Remnick hangs out with or is writing for. |
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A Reporter's Job "In other words, reporters often refuse to offer their judgment about matters of fact, but they do offer their judgment about the potential political effects of events and actions." The lie is this. A reporter will say "I didn't have time to check out all of his claims. We had to run with what we had." This is just another way of saying the story is crappy and not complete and not ready to run. Or Lehrer's quote about just "reporting what they say." Lehrer's philosophy reduces the news media to a non questioning, non-independent, non thinking free public relations and message dissemination service, not much more than a text messager on a cellular phone. Obviously, Lehrer is right in that the journalist has to allow the source to "say something." But a reporter has no obligation to report a sources words unchallenged. Any reporter with a brain knows that sources often tell outright lies to reporters, or at minimum, make statements which are deliberately slanted, evasive and less than the whole truth and nothing but. Well aware that sources want to and will use rube reporters for their own purposes, at this stage the reporter then ... (drum roll please) ... CHECKS OUT THE STORY !!! Reporters use the lame excuse that questioning the veracity of a source's statement by backgrounding is "not objective" or "taking sides." Err ... it's called journalism. In political scandal reporting, a reporter knows by DEFINITION that a named principal in a scandal will likely lie to a reporter when making a public statement. That's the nature of a scandal. One side is lying. Many people are lying. A political scandal cannot exist without lying. THOU SHALT NOT LET SOURCES LIE TO YOU WITH IMPUNITY should be the screen saver on every reporter's computer. Because if a reporter lets a source lie to him with impunity, the loser is the reader, the customer, the public, the general information base we rely upon to engage in thoughtful, informed public discourse. When reporters unquestioningly air statements that are probably lies, the public commons becomes polluted, like a river used as the town dump and cesspool. Clean water gets mixed with the foul goo. The reporter has the job and unique opportunity to sniff out lies and evasions from sources BEFORE they enter the public commons. The public does not have that ability, although the Internet is changing that. For myself as a reporter, there is nothing better in the world than forcing a less than honest politician to retract a press release because I, the reporter, had found gross errors in it based upon my own independent research. THAT IS JOURNALISM. Failing to take this effort is not journalism. It's just picking up a paycheck and looking good in a suit. http://mediamatters.org/ Comments: Douglas Watts October 7, 2006 |
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A story that went almost unremarked on The resignation of the publisher of the Miami Herald, Jesus Diaz jr. Diaz had fired three staffers for El Nuevo Herald weeks ago for accepting money from the government's office for Cuba broadcasting. Diaz's resignation followed protests and cancelled subscriptions from the Cuban exile community, and the paper rescinded the firings. Reporter Wilfredo Cancio called the firings an attack on his "journalistic integrity". But you have no integrity when you are hiding the fact that you are being paid by an outside source with an agenda. http://mediamatters.org/ Comments: mefirst October 7, 2006 |
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The same disconnection from reality is prevalent among many politicians — which might explain why some of them now are reacting so angrily to the fact that yes, they do have to face voters for reelection.
Take Joe Lieberman.
When confronted with the fact that he skipped more than half of all U.S. Senate votes on the Iraq War and most of the votes on the destructive Medicare bill so as to attend fundraisers for himself, he angrily claimed there is a moral equivalence between him as a full-time, $160,000-a-year U.S. Senator skipping decisions on the most pressing national security and health care questions in American history, and his opponent missing 6 votes on a part-time town council 15 years ago.
He also says with a straight face that the reason he worked so hard to stop health care reform in the 1990s was because he cared about small business.
But then he conveniently forgets to mention that he authored legislation to raise taxes on small business health benefits.
Then there is Rep. Nancy Johnson (R) who is now airing television ads saying that asking President Bush to obtain search warrants after he's wiretapped phones as the law requires would dangerously slow down the original wiretapping.
Put another way, she's actually asking audiences to quite literally believe that the basic laws of space and time do not exist.
Meanwhile, chickenhawks who refused to serve in the military when they had the chance continue to sit comfortably in their Washington think tank offices and transform their sick insecurities of personal weakness and frailty into screams for more American soldiers to be sent to die in Iraq.
What you see here, folks, is that all of it — the elections, the public policies, the future of the country — is one big joke to the people in power.
And they are willing to lie, cheat and distort anything to protect the integrity of that joke they are so happily enjoying.
They don't want anyone asking questions of them.
They don't want anyone thinking they have a right to use democracy to change things.
They are fat and happy and putting the pedal to the metal in their sleek sports car on the great American highway overpass.
Anyone who tries to slow them down, run them off the road, or make them just glance at the blight below, gets the big, road-raged middle finger.
When I get up everyday at 5:30am to start working, it is still dark out.
I read through the clips and digest the daily dose of ever-more raw hatred coming from our nation's capital and directed at the majority of Americans.
Then I try to have some breakfast without feeling totally demoralized.
But as I look out on the darkness outside, I always remind myself of the famous parable: "It is always darkest before the dawn."
Win or lose, November 7th isn't going to change everything.
But win or lose, it's clear that things are already changing.
The rising anger coming from the halls of power are a reflection of the establishment's deep understanding that change is coming.
The screams from the angry pundits and the desperate politicians and the paying-to-play lobbyists are like the early warning sirens at a beach.
And just over the horizon, they see that tidal wave coming.
David Sirota WorkingforChange.com September 21, 2006 |
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December 27, 2005
Where Was the New York Times When It Mattered?
By NORMAN SOLOMON
D espite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency's domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush's illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Back then, after news of the NSA's targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major U.S. media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage — or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA's spying at the U.N. goes unmentioned: buried in an Orwellian memory hole.
The eavesdropping took place in Manhattan
A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate — which pointedly noted that "the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed."
But after dodging the story of the NSA's spying at the U.N. when it mattered most — before the invasion of Iraq — the New York Times and other major news organizations are hardly apt to examine it now. That's all the more reason for other media outlets to step into the breach.
In early March 2003, journalists at the London-based Observer reported that the NSA was secretly participating in the U.S. government's high-pressure campaign for the U.N. Security Council to approve a pro-war resolution. A few days after the Observer revealed the text of an NSA memo about U.S. spying on Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers." The key word was "timely."
Publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had been underway for many years. But with an invasion of Iraq still in the future, the leak about NSA spying on U.N. diplomats in New York could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council. (Ultimately, no such resolution passed before the invasion.) And media scrutiny in the United States could have shed light on how Washington's war push was based on subterfuge and manipulation.
"As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq," the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the U.S. government developed an "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of U.N. delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency — the U.S. body which intercepts communications around the world — and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency." The friendly agency was Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.
Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan
The Observer explained: "The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the U.N. headquarters in New York — the so-called Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for U.N. inspections, led by France, China and Russia."
The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council — "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."
Noting that the Bush administration "finds itself isolated" in its zeal for war on Iraq, the Times of London called the leak of the memo an "embarrassing disclosure." And, in early March 2003, the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
Well, it's not that we haven't been interested
Several days after the "embarrassing disclosure," not a word about it had appeared in the New York Times, the USA's supposed paper of record. "Well, it's not that we haven't been interested," Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale told me on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. But "we could get no confirmation or comment" on the memo from U.S. officials. Smale added: "We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting." Whatever the rationale, the New York Times opted not to cover the story at all.
Except for a high-quality Baltimore Sun article that appeared on March 4, the coverage in major U.S. media outlets downplayed the significance of the Observer's revelations. The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N." Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that didn't only depict U.S. surveillance at the United Nations as old hat; the LA Times story also reported "some experts suspected that it [the NSA memo] could be a forgery" — and "several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo's authenticity."
But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo's "authenticity" was gone. The British press reported that the U.K. government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By then, however, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream U.S. press had disappeared.
U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War
As it turned out, the Observer's expose — headlined "Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War" — came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began.
From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major U.S. news outlets provided very little coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun's name became public as the British press reported that she had been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act.
Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." She said: "I have only ever followed my conscience."
In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo — and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it — the most powerful U.S. news outlets gave the revelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of U.S. media concern about the NSA's illicit spying, must have been very encouraged.
Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, from which this article has been adapted.NSA Spied on UN Diplomats During Push for Invasion of Iraq |
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Friday, 27 January 2006
US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
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A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" — from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware.
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap".
It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003.
The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.
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The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.
And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.
The document says that information is "critical to military success".
Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.
Propaganda
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
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Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write.
But they don't seem to explain how.
"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States — even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.
Credibility problem
Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing — thanks to some operational clumsiness.
Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers.
The stories — all supportive of US policy — were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.
And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.
But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.
The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to — and the grand scale on which it's thinking.
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It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting.
It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.
It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives.
But no American diplomats here, thank you.
The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".
It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.
'Fight the net'
When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.
It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.
"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.
The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.
The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.
"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."
US digital ambition
And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".
US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.
Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?
The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.
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Protecting the brand with dirty tricks — 'Enforcement Terrorism' The profitable liquidation of every place — Coutts, bank for British Queen and royals Catherine Austin Fitts — Dillon Reid and Co. Inc. And the Aristocracy of Stock Profits |
US used white phosphorus chemical and thermobaric fuel-air weapons War Crimes — Fallujah — Graphic Images |
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Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One Woman's Role
Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert propaganda." These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.
Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after "reporter" for news segments produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the accountability office's recent inquiries.
The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies "designed and executed" their segments "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector television news organizations." A significant part of that execution, the office found, was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off — "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" — delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to television reporters everywhere.
Last March, when The New York Times first described her role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. In Cleveland, The Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline "Karen Ryan, You're a Phony," and she was the object of late-night jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail.
"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a recent interview.
In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video news release. "I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing."
It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London. It produces and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even gives an award, the Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release.
Several major television networks play crucial intermediary roles in the business. Fox, for example, has an arrangement with Medialink to distribute video news releases to 130 affiliates through its video feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN distributes releases to 750 stations in the United States and Canada through a similar feed service, CNN Newsource. Associated Press Television News does the same thing worldwide with its Global Video Wire.
"We look at them and determine whether we want them to be on the feed," David M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge, said of video news releases. "If I got one that said tobacco cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it."
In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters.
"No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story," one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on video news releases."
Federal agencies have been commissioning video news releases since at least the first Clinton administration. An increasing number of state agencies are producing television news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department alone has produced some 500 video news releases since 1993.
Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to be producing more releases, and on a broader array of topics.
A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way to determine what has been broadcast, and when and where.
Still, several large agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet appeared in such segments.
A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent.
Karen Ryan was part of this push — a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.
Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news — too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.
In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.
There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits.
Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.
The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."
The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.
And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets.
Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its reporters repeat the script almost word for word.
The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-mail message, "Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video." In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the government.
Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations willing to run her government segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when asked if she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she were a local news director.
"Absolutely not." |
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| Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain Weight "Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders." Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for broadcast news directors in the United States. Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any outside material, especially entire reports. And spurred by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the news directors association is close to proposing a stricter rule, said its executive director, Barbara Cochran. Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the association has no enforcement powers. The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said. Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded." In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence. But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government. "They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow-up questions — or any questions at all," said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky. Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers. Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the air. "It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?" he said. Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments. "I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take more precautions. Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some said they were unable to find archive tapes that would help answer the question. Others promised to look into it, then stopped returning telephone messages. A few removed the segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in the future or pleaded ignorance. Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on the Air On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan. Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women. In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends. What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes. As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones in the dark. Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said. How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came to narrate a segment by the State Department reveals much about the extent to which government-produced news accounts have seeped into the broader new media landscape. The explanation begins inside the White House, where the president's communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq. An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so editors and technicians whose typical duties include distributing video from news conferences. But in early 2002, with close editorial direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the United States and around the world for use by local television stations. In all, the State Department has produced 59 such segments. United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast pro-government news to foreign audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event, said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman: "Our goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a propaganda agency." Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard such "good news" segments as "powerful strategic tools" for influencing public opinion. And a review of the department's segments reveals a body of work in sync with the political objectives set forth by the White House communications team after 9/11. In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the people of southern Iraq. "After living for decades in fear, they are now receiving assistance — and building trust — with their coalition liberators," the unidentified narrator concluded. Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women, which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a "prime example" of how "White House-led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror." Tracking precisely how a "good news" report on Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State Department is far from easy. The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates. "Once these products leave our hands, we have no control," Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an interview. The department, he said, never intended its segments to be shown unedited and without attribution by local news programs. "We do our utmost to identify them as State Department-produced products." Representatives for the networks insist that government-produced reports are clearly labeled when they are distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion. Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated Press Television News acknowledged that they might have distributed at least one segment about Afghanistan to the major United States networks without identifying it as the product of the State Department. A spokesman said it could have "slipped through our net because of a sourcing error." Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president for news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not explain how his station came to broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women. "It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it," he said in an interview, insisting that it would not happen again. Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one done first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It is not unusual, she said, for a local station to take network reports and then give them a hometown look. "I didn't actually go to Afghanistan," she said. "I took that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how it all started as far as women covering their faces and everything." At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting office is moving away from producing narrated feature segments. Instead, the department is increasingly supplying only the ingredients for reports — sound bites and raw video. Since the shift, he said, even more State Department material is making its way into news broadcasts. |
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| Meeting a Need: Rising Budget Pressures, Ready-to-Run Segments WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois. Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from 39. "We are doing more with the same," said Jim P. Gee, the news director. Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many demands, he said, "it is hard for us to justify having a reporter just focusing on agriculture." To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department, which has assembled one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government. The department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some 90 "mission messages" for local stations — mostly feature segments about the good works of the Agriculture Department. "I don't want to use the word 'filler,' per se, but they meet a need we have," Mr. Gee said. The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports, which are vetted by the department's office of communications before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage. "They cover the secretary just like any other reporter," she said. Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help Florida clean up after several hurricanes. ''They've done a fantastic job,'' a grateful local official said in the segment. More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the new agriculture secretary, and the White House were determined to reopen Japan to American beef products. Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, ''He called Bush the best envoy in the world.'' WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by the Agriculture Department over the past three months alone. Or put another way, WCIA has run 26 reports that did not cost it anything to produce. Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he added: ''We don't think they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're informative. They're balanced.'' More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture Department to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are the work of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of closing his report with ''I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the U.S.D.A.,'' Mr. Ellison says, ''With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show.''' Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise ''awareness of the name of our station.'' Could it give viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? ''We think viewers can make up their own minds,'' Mr. Gee said. Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary, said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy, she said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter works for the department. In any event, she added, she did not think there was much potential for viewer confusion. ''It's pretty clear to me,'' she said. |
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| The 'Good News' People: A Menu of Reports From Military Hot Spots The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States. The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed. Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members. ''We're the 'good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director. Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50 stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching 41 million households in the United States. The news service makes it easy for local stations to run its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never identified by their military titles. ''We know if we put a rank on there they're not going to put it on their air,'' Mr. Gilliam said. Each account is also specially tailored for local broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would include an interview with a service member from there. If the same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for one from Oklahoma City. ''We try to make the individual soldier a star in their hometown,'' Mr. Gilliam said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and cities selected by the service members interviewed. Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the segments. ''Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and it looks just like they went out and did the story,'' Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any particular political or policy agenda, he said. ''We don't editorialize at all,'' he said. Yet sometimes the ''good news'' approach carries political meaning, intended or not. Such was the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of military police officers. A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where some of the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had been trained. ''One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat prisoners strictly but fairly,'' the reporter said in the segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police officers were taught to ''treat others as they would want to be treated.'' The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or how the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort Leonard Wood. According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command failure. ''Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said, 'We need some good publicity?''' he asked. ''No, not at all.'' Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting for this article. |
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Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: February 19, 2005
 ASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — The comptroller general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce newscasts promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source.
Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the administration's role in developing and financing them.
And those were not isolated incidents, David M. Walker, the comptroller general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice.
In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and, as ready-made and cost-free reports, are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role.
Mr. Walker, who as comptroller general is chief of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, said in his letter: "While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
"It is not enough," he added, "that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable."
Mr. Walker's letter was made available late Friday afternoon by Democrats on Capitol Hill. Asked for a response Friday night, the White House had no immediate comment.
The two best-known cases of such video news releases — one concerning the new Medicare law, the other an antidrug campaign by the Bush administration — drew sharp rebukes from the G.A.O. after separate investigations last year found that the agencies involved had violated the law.
Those cases were followed by disclosures that the government had paid at least one conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind education measure and had put two other conservative writers on the federal payroll to help develop programs. These episodes have prompted calls from Democrats for stricter oversight of the administration's publicity practices, which have cost millions of dollars of federal revenue.
In the Medicare case, a video made in the style of a newscast featured a spokeswoman named Karen Ryan who claimed to be reporting from Washington on Medicare law changes strongly backed by the administration but opposed by many Democrats, who consider them a windfall for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In part of one script, she said that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."
Often there is an intermediary in the process: a public relations firm hired by a government agency to produce a polished video and direct other aspects of a publicity drive.
One centrally involved firm is Ketchum, a giant in the public relations industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare video and the contract with Mr. Williams, a pact that is now under investigation by three government agencies. Ketchum has received $97 million in government public relations contracts since 2001.
The G.A.O. letter did not caution agencies to curtail their publicity practices, telling them simply to adhere to disclosure requirements.
"Prepackaged news stories," Mr. Walker wrote, "can be utilized without violating the law, so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by or in cooperation with the government department or agency."
But Democrats said they hoped the letter would lead to tougher scrutiny of what they describe as an aggressive publicity machine within the administration.
"The G.A.O. is sending a clear message to the Bush administration: shut down the propaganda mill," Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said in a statement on Friday. "The G.A.O. is simply telling the White House to stop manipulating media, stop paying journalists and be straight with the American people." |
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For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.biz website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.
It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system
t is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
