Mizgin’s Desk Reports:

Does anyone remember the Rendon Group? If not, let me refresh your memory.

The Rendon Group is a public relations firm that has specialized in creating propaganda for various US military interventions over the last few decades in places as varied as Panama, Haiti, Colombia, Zimbabwe, and Puerto Rico. Most recently, the Rendon group helped the US government to win hearts and minds for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Because it has worked with the US government for a long period of time, it has been willing to justify US military actions for both Democratic and Republican administrations, although the Rendon Group’s founder, John Rendon, got his start in the propaganda business back in the 1970s as a campaign consultant for the Democratic Party.

There is a lot more information on the Rendon Group at Sourcewatch. James Bamford, whom many will remember as the first guest on The Boiling Frogs podcast interviews, wrote what may be the most definitive article explaining the raison d’etre for the Rendon Group. Bamford named John Rendon as “The Man Who Sold the War” to the American public for the Bush Administration. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, indeed, long before September 11, the Rendon Group created the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and appointed Ahmed Chalabi as the head of the organization. It created the Iraqi Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and Radio Hurriah, both of which ineffectively broadcast propaganda against the Saddam regime in the early 1990s, first from Kuwait and later from Arbil in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. In 1996, Saddam’s army invaded Arbil and killed the vast majority of Rendon’s IBC employees and some 100 INC members. What prompted the response by Saddam’s army had less to do with the content of Radio Hurriah’s propaganda, which was described as “poorly run” by one Iraqi Harvard graduate student, and more to do with the fact that the CIA had poured millions of dollars into the Rendon Group, which then funneled the money into the INC.

According to Bamford, while the CIA dumped money into the INC through the Rendon Group, Ahmed Chalabi dumped questionable “intelligence” information into the New York Times’ now discredited war drummer, Judith Miller. Bamford later wrote about Chalabi’s secret dealings with Iran, including the possible passing of NSA code-breaking information.

As a result of the Rendon Group’s deep and widespread involvement with those who want to maufacture consent for any goal of any American administration, it should come as no surprise that last week the Reuters and the Washington Post revealed news from the US military’s Stars and Stripes indicating that the Rendon Group has been hired by the Pentagon to vet journalists for embedded reporting from Afghanistan. From the Reuters article:

The U.S. military in Afghanistan defended itself Thursday against accusations that a company it employs was rating the work of reporters and suggesting ways to make their war coverage more positive.

Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for U.S. troops, said it had obtained documents prepared for the U.S. military by the Rendon Group, a Washington-based communications firm that graded journalists’ work as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

The newspaper, partly funded by the Pentagon but editorially independent, said the journalists’ profiles included suggestions on how to “neutralise” negative stories and generate favourable coverage.

It published a pie chart which it said came from a Rendon report on the coverage of a reporter for an unidentified major U.S. newspaper until mid-May, judging it to be 83.33 percent neutral and 16.67 percent negative with respect to the military’s goals.

The U.S. military command in Afghanistan said the Rendon Group provided a range of services under a $1.5 million (921,330 pound) one-year contract, including analysis of news coverage — but it did not grade journalists.

Neither the Reuters report nor the Washington Post noted the Rendon Group’s previous propaganda work, particularly it’s long fiasco with planning regime change in Iraq. Unsurprisingly, National Public Radio, also failed to mention the Rendon Group’s history in a story it aired on its “All Things Considered” program on 27 August. It did include a quote from a press officer from the 101st Airborne Division, in which he admitted he relied on Rendon’s ratings:

Maj. Patrick Seiber, the press officer for the 101st Airborne Division, says that during his time in Afghanistan, he dealt with 62 different news agencies and 143 different reporters. He says he relied on the Rendon reports.

“Well, you got to have something, because we don’t have enough public affairs guys that can go through and do it our own self,” he says. “You got to know what you’re dealing with. Our soldiers are at risk. Information is also a risk.”

Seiber says he did pay some attention to negative ratings. If someone had many negative ratings, he says, he would want to know why.

“This didn’t happen that often,” he says. “Out of all those news agencies, I can only remember a couple of times there was somebody we didn’t take … because of their bent.”

Both times, he says, the news agencies sent a different reporter.

Seiber doesn’t know when the ratings started, but says Rendon has been doing the work for eight years.

So, they did use the Rendon Group’s “secret” profiles and they did deny reporters on the basis of their views. It must be problematic to have reporters who might not be willing to sell the Pentagon’s angle on a war to an American public that increasingly sees as “not worth fighting”.

One reporter working in Afghanistan managed to obtain a copy of his Rendon-generated dossier from a friend in the military. Here’s what he has to say:

Most reporters in Afghanistan know about these reports. I obtained a copy of my Rendon report about three months ago from a friend in the military and I’ve posted excerpts below. I don’t really think the reports are some kind of violation, in fact, I think the military is smart to look into the background’s of people who will be writing about them. Rating the coverage that reporters give the military–”positive,” “neutral,” “negative”–seems a bit silly and slightly Orwellian, but if thousands of reporters were covering my organization, I would want a simple shorthand to indentify them as well.

I do think the reports are creepy though. These guys have read almost everything I’ve written in the last few years, even interviews I’ve given to local news blogs. Reading this report is like perusing the diary of your stalker. Rendon also classifies certain publication as “left leaning” which I find odd.

Most troubling by far is that when S&S [Stars and Stripes] asked the military about Rendon, they denied the existence of these reports. I’m holding one of these reports in my hand right now, trust me, it exists. I’ve also met people who work for The Rendon Group in Kabul. In conversations, they deny that there is any nefarious objective to what they do. “We just help the military figure out what embed is right for a particular reporter,” one Rendon employee told me over drinks. “If a reporter is classified as “negative” they are less likely to go where the action is and more likely to be covering a platoon that guards sandbags in Herat.”

Other reporters, like freelancer Nir Rosen, were less than enthusiastic about their dossiers:

Last week Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon is employing Rendon to profile reporters. I was shown a copy of the memorandum the Rendon group prepared about me. It is two and a half pages. A public affairs officer told me it was the most alarming report about a journalist that he had ever seen, and as a result I was grateful that Colonel Bill Hix was open minded enough to approve my embed despite the red flags raised about me.

“The purpose of this updated memo is to provide an assessment of freelance journalist Nir Rosen, and give a profile of his work, both through a summary of content and analysis of style, in order to gauge the expected sentiment of his work while on embed mission in Afghanistan.”

In the background section the memorandum describes some of my past work, experience and skills. It also warned that “in late 2008 Rosen ‘embedded’ with the Taliban in several areas of Afghanistan. A lengthy report on his embedded experience appeared in Rolling Stone and was highly unfavorable to international efforts in Afghanistan.”

Despite denials from the military in both the Reuters and the Washington Post reports, it’s obvious that reporters and news corporations know that they are “rated” so that those providing reports that are most favorably viewed by the Rendon Group are assigned with units in the hottest areas. The “trustworthy” ones are given the plumb embeds, in other words. In fact, that’s exactly what Stars and Stripes reported on 29 August:

The secret profiles commissioned by the Pentagon to rate the work of journalists reporting from Afghanistan were used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008, an Army official acknowledged Friday.

What’s more, the official said, Army public affairs officers used the analyses of reporters’ work to decide how to steer them away from potentially negative stories.

“If a reporter has been focused on nothing but negative topics, you’re not going to send him into a unit that’s not your best,” Maj. Patrick Seiber, spokesman for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, told Stars and Stripes. “There’s no win-win there for us. We’re not trying to control what they report, but we are trying to put our best foot forward.”

[ . . . ]

The revelations are the latest twist in the controversy over how the military is gathering and using reporter profiles compiled by The Rendon Group, a Washington, D.C. public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to rate journalists’ work.

[ . . . ]

Pentagon officials repeatedly denied this week that the Rendon profiles are being used to rate reporters or determine whether they will be granted permission to embed with U.S. units in Afghanistan.

“There is no policy that stipulates in any way that embedding should be based in any way on a person’s work,” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters on Monday.

The only one who makes sense in this entire fiasco is Admiral Mullen:

Meanwhile, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Friday published an essay in a military journal that was sharply critical of the U.S. government’s attempts to use “strategic communications” to shape messages directed at the Muslim world.

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Mullen wrote in the essay in Joint Force Quarterly.

“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

It may be that Admiral Mullen’s words were heard loudly and clearly by the US military command in Afghanistan because on 31 August, Stars and Stripes reported that the contract with the Rendon Group in Afghanistan had been cancelled:

The U.S. military is canceling its contract with a controversial private firm that was producing background profiles of journalists seeking to cover the war that graded their past work as “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” Stars and Stripes has learned.

[ . . . ]

“The decision to terminate the Rendon contract was mine and mine alone. As the senior U.S. communicator in Afghanistan, it was clear that the issue of Rendon’s support to US forces in Afghanistan had become a distraction from our main mission,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, in an e-mail sent Sunday to Stars and Stripes.

TIME reported that the effective date of the cancellation of the contract would be 1 September.

Given Rendon’s history with the Pentagon, particularly its assistance to Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), one has to wonder what it really means to cancel Rendon’s contract for the vetting of reporters in Afghanistan. The OSI was established in February of 2002, with Douglas Feith–whom a less diplomatic American general called “the f***ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth”–assuring the Defense Writers Group of this:

“First of all I want to clarify that when Defense Department officials speak to the public they tell the truth, and despite some of the reports about the Office of Strategic Influence that I’ve read over the last day or two, Defense Department officials don’t lie to the public. And we are confident that the truth serves our interests in the broadest sense of national security and specifically in this war.”

Oh, I know I believe him.

The fact is that Donald Rumsfeld merely killed the OSI in name only:

And then there was the office of strategic influence. You may recall that. And “oh my goodness gracious isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.” I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I’ll give you the corpse. There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.

According to James Bamford, the job that the OSI was intended to do was eventually transferred to the Information Operations Task Force. Where will the Rendon Group’s work on “secret” profiling be transferred now?

In spite of the claim that the Rendon Group’s contract is now terminated, the mainstream media should be held accountable for what it failed to say in any of its reporting of Rendon’s recent activity in Afghanistan for the Pentagon, particularly when the general consumer of American media has a notoriously short memory. Why didn’t the mainstream media remind the American public of the Rendon Group’s shady dealings in the past, how it helped manufacture consent for unpopular wars, how it funneled money for CIA operations, and how it promoted an Iranian double-agent to a position to hand over NSA code-breaking information to Teheran, or how it was involved with the Office of Strategic Information? Were these facts overlooked because of amnesia on the part of the mainstream media? Or was this oversight a case of the mainstream media’s bootlicking of the propaganda firm that can veto any reporter?

It’s ironic that the one publication to publish the truth about the Rendon Group’s operations in Afghanistan is the one publication whose reporters are not vetted by Rendon–the Stars and Stripes.

Just Asking

Last week Jeremy Scahill covered a very interesting story over at his blog titled ‘Paramilitary Thug with Long History with Top US Democrats Arrested for War Crimes.’ The story is about Agim Ceku who commanded the ethnic cleansing operations in Yugoslavia in 90s, and then headed KLA, an organization labeled ‘terrorist’ by the US government. I briefly covered the issues related to KLA and it’s tainted and biased coverage by the US MSM in ‘The Forbidden Apple of the US Press, and talked about their burial of the dark side of KLA and our government’s partnership with them as just another example of our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy.

Back to Scahill’s nicely-done piece, and a summary of the case provided in the introduction paragraph:

“A US-trained paramilitary figure from the Balkans with a lengthy history with leading Clinton-era Democrats, including some now in the Obama administration, has been arrestedin Europe on an Interpol warrant for war crimes. Agim Ceku, an Albanian from Kosovo, is a former Croatian Army General who was trained by the private US security firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI) during the Clinton Administration. Ceku, backed by the US, would go on to become the “prime minister” of Kosovo despite the fact that he was responsible for some of the worst acts of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and was the leader of a paramilitary organization with drug trade ties, which Clinton’s top envoy to Kosovo called a “terrorist” organization.”

For the purpose of my coverage please put your own emphasis on “…the leader of a paramilitary organization with drug trade ties.” Now a bit more on Ceku as the darling of the US government and its extension, NATO:

“Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, worked with Ceku when Clark led the bombing of Kosovo. “[Ceku] could have been in anybody’s army and done well,” saidClark in 2007.”

And two important excerpts for my purposes with emphasis added:

“Despite US intelligence that indicatedthat the KLA was a terrorist organization with ties to narco-trafficking and networks connected to Osama bin Laden, the Clinton Administration embraced the organization as its proxy armed force on the ground in Kosovo in 1998-1999.”
…

“This is not the first time Ceku has been arrested. In 2003, he was detained in an airport in Slovenia and in 2004 at the airport in Budapest. In May 2009, he was deported from Columbia.”

Since the story’s main focus is on Ceku’s role in ethnic cleansing and our shameful diplomatic relations – based on even more shameful objectives and foreign policy, there is no explanation for Ceku’s trip to and stay in Colombia. We already know he is connected to Narco-Trafficking, and we know the importance of the Balkan Route to the heroin industry. But what the hell was Ceku doing in Colombia? Is there some sort of a barter system, heroin-for cocaine and vice versa within the industry? Again, keep this thought for what’s to follow. Reported as an update by Scahill, interestingly but expectedly, due to “international intervention” Ceku was ordered released the next day, on Thursday, June 25.

Hmmmm, international intervention? That makes it NATO-US.

I do follow Scahill’s reports and editorial pieces regularly, and he is one of very few journalists out there whom I respect. This piece got my attention especially, and brought back memories of another story I followed personally for over a year: Jan Willem Matser, another NATO Thug.

Jan Willem Matser, a Dutch Lieutenant Colonel in Staff to NATO Secretary General George Robertson in charge of Eastern Europe, whose job gave him access to classified NATO material, was arrested on February 2003 in Wemmel, Belgium, and charged with trying to launder at least $200 million for an international drug cartel from his office at the alliance’s HQ in Brussels. Other criminals involved in Matser’s case were Mohammed Kadem, a Moroccan, and Pietro Fedino, a wealthy Sicilian with a previous conviction for cocaine smuggling.

Here is some background as reported by Times UK :

“According to documents seen by The Sunday Times, the investigation began last September after customs police at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam received a tip-off about a FedEx parcel sent from Colombia [Emphasis Added] to an address in the Netherlands. The parcel was found to contain a receipt for a £120m deposit at a bank in Bogotá [Emphasis Added] and a fake document authorising the transfer of the same amount of money to Tender SA, a company registered in the Romanian town of Timisoara. The company is not suspected of any wrongdoing.”

And here some more background on the investigations from the same report by Times UK:

“The information was passed to a police unit working for the Dutch finance ministry that specializes in combating organised crime. The package was fitted with a bug and resealed. It was allegedly received by Fedino, who is suspected by the Dutch police of being an Italian mafia boss. Five agents monitored him around the clock and listened to his telephone calls. It was this surveillance that led police to Matser. In a call taped on September 7, a man later identified as Matser said he was “going to be leaving NATO in half an hour”.”

And more,

“In a further conversation, on December 27, Matser allegedly said: “I’ll make false documents for the entire transaction . . . It’s no problem; my computer’s very patient and I can even recreate the official notary seals from old documents.” Matser also held several meetings with his alleged accomplices. One meeting with Kadem on Christmas Eve at the Airport hotel in Rotterdam was filmed by the surveillance team. Kadem was already the focus of four international drug investigations and had been sought by Interpol since 1996.”Investigators believe Matser helped to set up the scheme when Nato sent him to Romania last year to instruct central European intelligence chiefs on how to raise standards.”

Here comes another very interesting connection:

“Matser — an assistant to Chris Donnelly, Robertson’s special adviser for central and eastern Europe — is believed to have used his contacts in Romania’s domestic secret service to arrange meetings with senior members of the government. He is thought to have told them of plans to launch a fund, backed by wealthy individuals and middle-ranking investors that would invest £1.8 billion in Romania. This was to begin with the purchase of Petrom, oil refining company, and Libra Bank [Emphasis Added]”

Interestingly Dick Cheney’s Halliburton happened to be another contender for control of Romania’s Petrom. Here is the ‘Interesting’ Connection:

“Matser and Tender are further connected by their failed attempt to gain control of PETROM National Society (SNP), a soon-to-be privatized Romanian oil-company, which produces 10% of the Romanian GDP. Tender, Matser and Halliburton formed a consortium in an effort to gain controlling stakes – 51% estimated to be worth approx. US$ 1 billion. A few days following the announcement of this trio’s interest, Matser was arrested. Subsequently, Romania’s Economy Ministry has made it known that the consortium had not met its criteria and was no longer being considered.”

Sanders Research has one of the very few analyses of Matser’s case, here are a few excerpts:

“Matser had a suspiciously large amount of money to invest, as the Dutch police found out. They discovered in Matser’s apartment papers from a Romanian holding company, Tender SA, owned by the tycoon Ovidiu Tender. Matser said that he had frequently carried out such money transfers with Tender, whom he had met at a NATO-related conference in the Romanian mountain resort of Sinaia in April 2002, [2] and who is often described as being “close” to the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu. Tender was interviewed by the Dutch investigators, and he told them that he had attended a meeting between Matser and the Romanian prime minister, Adrian Nastase, at which Matser had announced that he had no less than $2 – 3 billion to invest. In the latter half of 2002, Matser nearly concluded the purchase of a Libra Bank in Romania. [3] And it seems that he may have been interested in using his money to buy a stake in the Romanian oil giant, Petrom, in which Tender also has an interest. (Oddly enough, another contender for control of Romania’s petro-chemical industry was none other than Hallburton, the company which used to be headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney[Emphasis Added].”

Do you want to get a good chuckle? Here is how Matser tried to explain the source of his fortune:

“Matser claimed that he had such gigantic sums at his disposal because he ran a sort of freelance brokerage business in the short-term money markets. He claimed that he operated on a 40% commission for companies seeking short-term loans, and that with this business he had amassed a fortune which he wanted to invest. Specialists consulted during the trial said this was simply impossible. But because he was friendly with numerous notorious criminals, his activities started to arouse suspicion, in particular that he was involved in laundering money for drug dealers. Although Matser was in fact acquitted of complicity in organised crime, his two co-defendants had previous convictions for drug dealing and fraud. And he was friendly with Mohammed Kadem, a Moroccan who is alleged to be one of the biggest drug dealers in the Netherlands.”

And here is how NATO tried to wiggle its way out of this (well, as you will see later, in the end it did!):

“What is clear is that Matser not only had connections with numerous very powerful criminals – the phone number of his co-defendant, Pietro Fedino, the notorious Italian Mafioso [5], was in his mobile – but also that he had astonishingly high-level political contacts too. On his arrest and conviction, NATO insisted that he was merely a junior employee of the association, and thus tried to dissociate itself from his conviction. But if he was so junior, how did he manage to hold meetings with the Romanian prime minister, or to meet the most powerful men in the country? And how was it that he saw Lord Robertson, Secretary-General of the Atlantic Alliance, nearly every day? Matser even used to use the headed paper of the Secretary-General for his own personal notes.”

NATO or its defendants never answered the following question that arose from the Matser Case, I guess they didn’t have to; after all, they are ‘NATO’:

“The silence has been deafening which has greeted the revelation that NATO officials consort with some of the biggest gangsters in organised crime. Yet it is obvious what questions Matser’s convictions throws up. What did Matser’s bosses at NATO, including the Secretary-General, know about his criminal activities? How can a NATO official, with all the security controls which such a post implies, entertain friendship and business contacts with well-known gangsters and criminals? How can he amass such stupendous sums of money while holding down a full-time office job?”

Guess what? As with Scahill’s Agim Ceku, despite serious charges supported by tons of evidence Matser was mysteriously acquitted.

“A Dutch court on 27 January acquitted former NATO official Jan Willem Matser of charges he attempted to launder $200 million by channeling money from a Colombian bank account to Belgium via Romania, AP and AFP reported (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” 14 January 2004). The judge said prosecutors had failed to support the money-laundering charges. Matser was found guilty of forgery and fraud on two other accounts and was sentenced to 14 months in prison, but was ordered released because he has already served two-thirds of the sentence in pretrial detention. He was given three years’ probation.”

No ‘real’ explanation has ever been provided for his acquittal. Matser was convicted of forgery but acquitted of other charges, including belonging to a criminal organization. Yap, that’s the kind of immunity you get if you are a NATO man directly or indirectly. The organization seems to work like a network set up to advance large scale criminal operations.

And finally, even more interestingly, this story which became the front page news for days, even weeks, in Dutch and Romanian media, received ‘0,’ that is ‘zero,’ as in ‘zilch’ coverage in the USA media. Go check it for yourself. Enter Matser’s name in any news search engine of your choice and wait for the results. Seriously, go and do it. You’ll see 3 or 4 pieces in English, in UK papers, and NOTHING here in the United States of America. I don’t have to wonder why. Do you?

Cartoon by Paul Jamiol

I see the previous post I had on conducting a smell test on the latest intense coverage of Iran’s elections got quite a bit of traction, including some retorts from the ‘misinformed’ in a few places. First, let me remind you, I don’t disagree with the view of highly probable election fraud in this case. My main point in this was ‘the selective coverage’ of election fraud throughout the world and the typical riots and government attacks that tend to follow these incidents. Also, I have a real issue with the timing of this media focus. Why don’t we have similar coverage and discussion when identical, or in many cases worse, incidents take place elsewhere? Especially when it occurs in countries we consider allies and friends regardless of how dictatorial, corrupt, or atrocious.

I can provide tens if not hundreds of similar cases of election fraud followed by dictatorial repression of demonstrators/rioters who take a stand against such practices.

Here is an excerpt from the election fraud scandal and the following violence in Egypt as reported by Human Rights Watch in 2006:

“Egyptian authorities should drop threats to dismiss two senior judges protesting election fraud and investigate the violence and fraud that plagued elections last year, Human Rights Watch said today.
The organization also expressed grave concern about a police attack against peaceful demonstrators outside the Judges Club in the early hours of Monday morning. An eyewitness told Human Rights Watch that a large number of men, apparently plainclothes police, attacked around 40 persons who had been holding a round-the-clock vigil in support of the two judges threatened with dismissal. They beat 15 demonstrators and Judge Mahmud `Abd al-Latif Hamza, who came out from the club.”

The 2003 presidential election results in Azerbaijan dubiously declared Ilham Aliyev the president. Of course this was cheered by many in Western policy circles since they viewed Ilhan Aliyev ‘critical’ to the stability of billions of dollars of investments in Azerbaijan’s energy sector. This is an excerpt from another report:

“International and domestic monitors reported widespread irregularities in the Oct. 15 election. The government clearly stole the election, and then brutally beat hundreds of people who poured out in the streets in protest. The day after the election, I watched from the roof of a hotel in Baku as thousands of riot police beat protesters unconscious. Afterward the riot police raised their shields to the sky and turned their batons into drumsticks, celebrating the victory of intimidation.

Now hundreds have been arrested, while Isa Gambar, the opposition leader, is effectively under house arrest and activists from his Musavat party are being beaten and detained all over the country. Everyone I speak to is scared.”

And here is a further damning quote from Peter Bouckart:

“More astonishing, however, were the public assessments of the election made by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe. Their election-monitoring missions in Azerbaijan took due note of the violence and election irregularities, but their overall appraisals were alarmingly upbeat.”

Speaking of post election protests and the recent ‘bloody’ pictures in post election Iran that have been circulating, here are some that didn’t make it into our social awareness, since it involved another ally country, thus was avoided by our press:

Click here to watch a protest against election fraud in Agri, Turkey.

And where was the same level of ‘attention’ and coverage in cases like this one reported by Craig Murray, where the dictator government of Uzbekistan (supported by us), whom Murray rightfully calls a ‘fascist regime,’ was (and probably still is) engaged in atrocious human right abuses. Yes, we certainly were closely courting a dictator regime where the dissenters were/are boiled alive.

“The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were “beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask.” Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly: “Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights.””

And here is how elections are held in Uzbekistan:

“The Communist Party simply renamed itself the Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, and, after getting rid of

Muhammad Salih, his only rival for power by exiling him, engaging in massive election fraud, and banning his Erk (Freedom) party, Karimov, president of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and a Politboro member, seized the reins of power and refused to let go. A completely controlled “referendum,” in 1995, led to an extension of his term in office, and in January, 2002, a similar farce awarded him 92 percent of vote, with nominal opposition. Political parties that aim to “change the established order” are banned, including the “Birlik” Popular Unity

movement, which advocates democracy, religious tolerance, and economic liberty, as well as Islamist groups which the Karimov regime blames for the violence.”

And finally, for a bit of deja vu, remember Black Friday of 1978 in Iran? On September 8, 1978, a huge demonstration against the Shah’s regime was staged in Tehran. Thousands of students and progressive activists took part in this demonstration to peacefully express their dissent against the dictator monarch, Shah Pahlavi. The Shah’s military responded with extreme violent force, and even resorted to using tanks and helicopter gunships to respond. While the Shah Regime and Western media put the number of those massacred at around 80 or so, mainly students, other reports put that number in the range of thousands.

Again, I am inviting you all to join me for a ‘collective smelling test.’ I truly appreciated and enjoyed your informed comments and perspectives posted here. As for those people who chose to attack my previous points ‘elsewhere’: it is okay, unlike the regimes I mentioned above I do indeed welcome dissent. However, please do it with facts and logic, not as some loose lipped incoherent rant. Go buy a map, learn where Iran is located, then read a bit of history (not the ones written by the Neocons, that is), put aside what you are being fed by the propaganda machine and PR spin, take some vitamins and minerals to fortify your mental clarity, check with your grandparents and receive a tip or two on the value of giving respect in order to receive it in return, then come back and put forth your counterarguments and disagreements; I’ll be all ears.

Okay, I’ve been trying very hard to ignore the latest on Iran: Roxana’s highly publicized and dubious adventure (begging for a smell test), the pre-elections predictions making their way even onto the Sunday Talk Shows (A great Smell Test Indicator), and of course now, the intense and loud coverage of the post elections drama (The Smelliest of Alll)…

Why would I try to ignore this? Not because I am not interested in Iran, Iran Politics, or Iranians. Hey, I lived there for eight years. I speak Farsi as my second language. I had my primary education there. My Father is half Iranian, and through him, his family and friends, and his activities, I grew up with ‘lots of Iran politics’, not only in talk but in actual life. I witnessed the revolution unfold in 1978-79. In fact, along with my father, I participated in some demonstrations as an eight year old kid whose father was interrogated and tortured by the ruthless monarch, Shah. Contrary to what the US government has led citizens here to wrongly believe, the regime change in Iran did not occur through only Islamists. In the beginning, the liberals, the social democrats, the communists, socialists…many factions came together, united to get rid of the US-UK planted monarchy.

The country had its chance at having a democratic form of government, via Mossadegh. But hey, back then, the United States, driven by its Cold War, didn’t want democracies in that region. Are you kidding me??! Our business back then was ‘toppling democracies’; and replacing them with puppet monarchists, dictators, and the like. Back then we loved Islamic Fanaticism. It worked magically against the commie Soviets; Right?! So yes, due to my background, experience, education, family, friends, and past activities, Iran is not a subject I would ever ignore.

Back to ignoring the current publicity wave involving Iran. This one is no different than the previous wave towards the end of the Bush Presidency; only a tactic change, and this in a very sneaky and shrewd way. The ‘Nuke Scare’ didn’t quite work for the previous administration; neither domestically nor internationally. With Israel as adamant as ever, with President Obama as eager as his predecessor, only a bit savvier, and with the new neocons under new names and faces leading the way – and let’s not forget several disgruntled Iranian factions actively lobbying – it was about time to see the Iran topic resurface, but a bit differently. Thus, we have the new wave of recent publicity, although much more dangerous than before, since the appearance of the current method and operations do not seem nearly as bold as the old one – and so far it seems to be working and garnering public support for the neocon establishment and their agenda.

A recent survey which was conducted about three weeks before the elections showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin, even greater than his actual margin of victory in Friday’s election.

Here is what Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty had to say about the legitimacy of the survey:

“Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”

Are allegations of election fraud designed to further isolate Iran? Are they meant to be used to massage and shape domestic and international public opinion to lead the way for ‘further action’ on Iran? Let’s face it, the timing and the latest events don’t pass the smell test. We just had the ‘Free Roxana’ episode, with both the mainstream media and the alternative press carrying it as a campaign not dissimilar to Bush’s campaign on ‘Exporting Democracy’ to ‘oil-rich’ regions. This lady never actually denied working for Intelligence (based on my two CIA sources she indeed did), and in fact, in a way, she accepted the espionage charges brought against her by the Iranian government.

Remember the covert action program against Iran reported by Seymour Hersh? How about the report by Telegraph on how the US has been funding terror groups and other factions in Iran to create chaos? Do you think those are only ‘military’ operations?

With the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq the majority among our military leaders have been opposing another war in the region. The ‘Nuclear Iran’ campaign didn’t prove to be that fruitful for the previous administration in garnering public support to pave the way for our next attack in the next oil rich Middle Eastern country. And of course, using the same tactic would have been too much for the Obama administration to expect to have swallowed by the public. So what better alternative than pursuing a ‘Humanitarian & Democratization’ campaign to change the ‘hearts & minds’ of our people and garner ‘liberal’ support against Iran?

Give them a martyr self-declared reporter in the form of ‘Roxana.’

All of a sudden get on our high horse and preach vehemently on elections’ lack of integrity in Iran, never mind the same conditions exist in two thirds of the world’s phony democracies.

Start displaying a few selective pictures of ‘bloody noses and arms’ taken in Iran and cry ‘atrocities,’ never mind our 2000+ torture pictures with not only bloody and torn up bodies, but actual corpses.

What are they going to do next? Well, if they run out of ‘dramatic’ pictures, they may go back and recycle their favorite footages from the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979! They certainly love that one; nothing like it when it comes to inducing misinformed passion to bring about wrongly expressed patriotism in the form of consent to another war.

We have Ann Coulter of the Right – I just finished reading her recent typical hate mongering article which includes some bizarre garbage misinformation on Iran and Mossadegh. Talk about ignorance combined with psychotic behavior! Here is another one – equally twisted.

Then, there are those Ann Coulters of the left, writing about issues and an area they know zilch about, and whether intentionally or unintentionally they beat the war drums for their President of Change in need of a ‘pretext’ to bring to fruition the objectives put in place before him by the previous administration. I just checked out one of these popular ‘lefty’ blog sites, and here is the list of what this ignorant lady has been writing about (as a pundit) just in the past two weeks, all with a ‘pretense’ of expertise; preposterously and ignorantly analyzing and attacking the Iran elections, analyzing the health care bill, the current economic crisis, some Hoax Blogger Baby Scandal (I have no idea what it is, since I don’t read stuff like that), Dr. Tiller Analyses, Torture Pictures & DOJ, Mass Production of Food, Sarah Palin and why she is a ‘slut,’ Palin’s daughter and why she is a ‘slut,’ Iraq, Drinking Coke vs. Water…I guess you get my point, right? Of course it’s okay for anyone to write about anything. What is not okay is the pretense of expertise with the intention of propaganda when it is advertised and supported by an ‘agenda driven’ establishment…Can’t they please go back and chase Rove, Libby, etc.?!!!

Now your turn: What’s your take on the recent intensive coverage of Roxana followed by even more intense coverage of the elections in Iran by both the MSM and the blogosphere? Do they pass your smell test? If yes, please tell me how and why? If no, let me hear your points and arguments.

Hard to believe it’s already been a month since I finally got down to it, joined the blogosphere, and started this blog. Originally I thought the blog would be limited to a few posts per month, mainly short commentaries on issues and topics of interest to me, and maybe an op-ed piece or two. Well, that changed, and did so quickly!

The lengthy series on ‘Dissecting the MSM’ ended up becoming a project of its own. I have 3 parts done, and one last post, part 4, Corporate Ownership & Public Demand, to go. I think I should be able to wrap that one up before the end of this month. I already have an idea and notes on my next series, and I think you will find it interesting and controversial; at least I hope you will. I won’t give out more but please stay tuned.

I have two reports on Project Expose MSM and am reviewing two other cases to see whether they are ‘solid’ and supported sufficiently to be published. It is quite difficult, but interesting and fun nonetheless. Exposing these cases is only step one. What we need to do is decide how to translate the knowledge of these cases into action. More on this later…

We have also had a few fun TGIF posts. For these I am running out of ‘fun’ but relevant ideas, and welcome your suggestions on our future TGIF topics. The criteria: Fun, humorous, and relevant to our general discussion areas. Please bring in your ideas. You can post them under the ‘comments’ section of our last TGIF on June 5.

We have had over 25,000 visitors here in one month. This really exceeded my expectations for the first month. Most importantly I have been truly amazed by the depth of the comments you’ve posted: articulate, thought provoking, independent, and all that expressed and communicated respectfully and civilly. I have to admit, my biggest fear was to end up with lots of ‘one-liner’ shallow, ultra partisan, and or propagandist comments; the ultimate turn off and at times nauseating trend I’ve observed on many sites/blogs throughout the years. I am delighted to have you and your voice. I am learning a lot from you. Please don’t stop. For those of you among the 25,000 who have not added your voice yet: please join us. Let us hear and learn from you. Whether you are conservative, liberal, libertarian, realist, neocon…doesn’t matter, join the discussion and add your voice; enrich the discussion we are having here.

I have a few ideas and projects for the future of this blog. Some of them may be considered ambitious, but so what? I’ll do my best to implement them. One of these ideas will involve participation of a few solid investigative journalists I know and consider friends. Another one has to do with weekly Podcast interviews…However, before I start pitching and implementing them I need to get this blog, the number of visitors, and the number of posted comments to the next benchmark. I am hoping to establish a monthly average of 50,000 unique ID visitors by this fall. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Surely. This also will largely depend on you and your support to get us there. Again please bring your ideas and suggestions. Those of you who happen to be savvy (I am certainly not savvy) in blogging and website promotion (cross-posting, RSS Feed, Digg, Reddit, etc.): I appreciate any help you can provide in this area…E-mail me if you are interested and can spare a little time to pitch in and help implement these ideas.

This is it for my brief monthly round up on this blog’s monthiversary. Now, it is your turn. Let me know what you think.

P.S.

Peter Lance’s ‘Triple Cross’ & Patrick Fitzgerald

This coming week the paperback edition of Peter Lance’s latest HarperCollins investigative book TRIPLE CROSS is being released. The book is highly critical of Fitzgerald, particularly with respect to his interaction with al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed, and is already creating lots of controversy. I just received my signed copy from Peter, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

So far Patrick Fitzgerald has sent four threat letters to HarperCollins, Lance’s publisher, threatening to sue if the book is published. He claims the book has defamed him and put him in a “false light.”

Here is an article covering the latest on Lance’s book and Fitzgerald:

Ann Sparanese, the New Jersey Librarian who has waged anti-censorship campaigns in the past, sent an email to thousands of librarians nationwide chastising Fitzgerald for his attempt to pulp the book and calling it “A Book to Watch.” Here is the link: http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=1454#comments

Lance’s Press Conference will be held this Tuesday, June 16, at 9:30 a.m., in the John Zenger Room of the National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045. I am invited to attend, and hopefully will make it there and report on it further here.

Okay, this was supposed to be a brief monthly round up! I’ll wrap it up here before it turns into a novella, and leave you with the latest from

Paul Jamiol: