Pepe Escobar shares with us his background and experience as a roving journalist for over three decades. He provides us with an overview of President Obama’s recent trip to China, relevant analysis of ordinary Chinese people’s point of view and reaction, and China’s political and economic position today within the global context. Mr. Escobar discusses energy issues and the current struggle over the resource-rich Central Asia-Caspian regions as the new battle ground for the competing interests of Russia, China, Europe, and the United States, including various strategic alliances currently under way to tap into this oil-gas rich region. He talks about the absence of real coverage of the Eurasia region by the US media, the rarely-discussed and often obscured facts and realities involving the Bagram Prison in Afghanistan, and more!

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He is an investigative journalist with three decades of experience in covering politics and conflicts around the globe. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering stories and cases from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Mr. Escobar has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of three must-read books: Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, and Obama Does Globalistan.

Here is our guest Pepe Escobar unplugged!

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Gone with the previous administration are those coined, frequently used and misused, nauseating, and of course widely popularized by the media, phrases and terminologies such as Evil Doers and Axis of Evil. Yet, it hasn’t been the end of others, those geared to stereotype, misguide, and promote uninformed hatred. The latest with the Fort Hood Shooting has done just that: provide opportunity for those in the business of disseminating and breeding hatred and bigotry, who do so selectively and for the purpose of serving hidden agendas. Yes, I’m referring to the previously used and now again fashionable ignorant and nauseating term Islamo-Fascism.

My focus in this piece is not going to be the wrongness, the damaging, and the pure propaganda-making nature of the term, all of which it certainly is; some have covered this already and others are still doing it; my hat is off to them. I also don’t intend to dwell upon the notion of political correctness, since in some cases it is misused, goes way too far, and acts as hidden agenda-driven censorship. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on the propaganda machine’s selectivity when it comes to pairing up religion or nations with the word fascism, and have us all question the motives for and consequences of doing this.

Let me begin with a personal, in fact a very personal, story:

It was a breezy early spring evening in Tehran, in 1982. I was standing outside a very popular pizzeria with my mother and 8 year old sister, waiting for my dad who was inside, standing in line for our takeout pizza. While my mother was covered head to toe in compliance with the new Iranian regime’s dress code, I was loosely wearing a fashionable shawl which was covering my hair partially; call it the prelude to a soon-to-come teenage fashion consciousness, or defiance, or maybe even pure stupidity.

As we were standing and people watching a charcoal grey Range Rover with shaded glass came to a screeching halt right before us. We didn’t have to guess its occupants, since the regime’s police, known as ‘pasdaran’, were known to drive those vehicles, monitor the public outside for their compliance of dress code and behaviors, and arrest, jail, and punish the deviants. Four car doors opened at the same time, one of their modus operandi, practiced and perfected synchronization. Four bearded men in civilian clothes came out and surrounded us. One of them, the one in charge, stepped forward and motioned me to step forward, and said, ‘this is no way to dress for an honorable Muslim girl.’ My mother, whose face had turned chalky white, began pleading with the man – who pretended he was not hearing any of her words. He ordered me to get inside the car.

My father, who’d noticed the commotion from inside the pizzeria, stepped out, quickly walked to where we were standing, positioned himself right in between me and the pasdar in charge, and went on the offensive. First, he asked them to produce identification since they were clad in civilian clothes. The pasdar in charge obliged, and took out not one, but three official ID cards. Next, my father told them my age and that they had no right or justification to treat a child that way. The man in charge argued the opposite, and repeated his order for me to get inside the car. At this point, my father pulled out his ID cards, and told them who he was: the surgeon in charge of one of the largest hospitals, where many wounded and burned Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war were being treated. My father pointed his finger at the guy in charge and said, ‘You take her away, and I will make sure your comrades are taken care of just the same way; you catch my drift?’…

I won’t bore you with too many details, but suffice to say, amazingly, my dad’s offense worked. We were let go. But that was not the end of the story for me and my family. It was the beginning of a tumultuous journey to escape, to leave everything behind-savings, houses, cars…even photos, and go back to Turkey.
…

During that period my family used the word ‘fascism’ quite often. We referred to the pasdaran as the regime’s Gestapo and fascists. Even years after our migration our bitter first-hand experiences were thought of and articulated with that word: fascism. That said and admitted to, we never paired up, either in our thought processes or expressions, those fascistic practices with either the religion, in this case Islam, or the nationality, the Persians. My parents were what many coin Agnostic; we did not practice any religious rituals, nor did we follow any particular set of rules tied to a particular religion. That didn’t apply to my grandparents and the majority of our friends and neighbors, who were Muslims. Therefore we knew enough, had experience and knowledge enough, to know that what was done to us, what we experienced and escaped from, had nothing to do with religion; nothing whatsoever. The same principle applied to nationality. For us the phrase fascism applied to practices adopted by certain people or group(s) who happened to use religion (in our case ‘Islam’) to gain and maintain control and power – as simple as that.

This same general context can be expanded to include other fascistic practices throughout modern history. Hitler’s Germany certainly was a fascist regime, but it wasn’t called Germano-Fascism. Likewise Mussolini’s Italy was not labeled Italio-Fascism. Same with Stalin’s Russia and …Fascists use and exploit religion and or nationalism. They distort, manipulate, and misuse these pulse points to achieve their objectives: power and control.

Back to the hatred-breeding and selectively generalized term Islamo-Fascism. Whether it is Bin Laden and company, or the current Islamic Regime in Iran, or the Taliban, we are looking at the same phenomenon: the use of Islam to manipulate, gain control, expand, install fear, terrorize, exercise power…In almost all of these examples the manipulation starts with targeting the uneducated, uninformed, and underprivileged, which unfortunately constitutes the majority in third world nations.

Now, how about the educated elites with positions within the media and other channels of communications here in our country? What is their sorry excuse for crafting and disseminating this generalized and misguiding terminology, this propaganda, to elicit furor, misplaced anger and hatred, and increased bigotry?

The decision to use, package, and disseminate this lately popularized term, Islamo-Fascists, appears to be done consciously, and in a calculative way. Because let’s face it, if it were the fascism aspect of these practices and the used vehicle, the specific religion or nation, justifying and leading to the usage of the terminology, then why be so very consistently selective? Why depict the radicalization of Islam, but not other religions, as deploying and exercising fascism. Here is what I mean:

Is This a Case of Zionism Gone Fascism?

Here are a few excerpts from a fairly recent article exemplifying fascistic practices by a powerful group of Zionists in Israel and the US:

Right-wing groups in Israel want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the “witch-hunt” tactics of the U.S. academic monitoring group Campus Watch, Israeli professors warn. The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a U.S. newspaper of an Israeli professor’s call to boycott Israel.

Both groups have been alerting the universities’ external donors, mostly U.S. Jews, to what they describe as “subversive” professors as a way to bring pressure to bear on university administrations to sanction faculty staff who are critical of Israeli policies.

This is how an Israeli Professor describes the practice:

“I have no hesitation in calling this a McCarthyite campaign,” said David Newman, a politics professor at Ben Gurion University, in Israel’s southern city of Beersheva. “What they are doing is very dangerous.“

And here is how another Israeli Professor puts it:

“The goal is to transform our students into spies in the classroom to gather information and intimidate us,” a senior Israeli lecturer said. “It’s a model of ‘policing’ faculty staff that has been very successful in stifling academic freedom in the U.S.“

The powerful Zionist group with ‘McCarthyism’ practices has been successfully operating in the United States, and has done so with 100% immunity and the lack of real exposure thanks to the selective US media, when it comes to reporting fascistic practices:

Both Israel Academia Monitor, established in 2004, and the later IsraCampus model themselves on Campus Watch, a U.S. organization founded by Daniel Pipes, an academic closely identified with the U.S. neoconservative movement.

Campus Watch has been widely accused of intimidating U.S. scholars who have expressed views critical of U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East. The organization’s goal, according to critics, is to pressure U.S. universities to avoid hiring left-wing lecturers or awarding them tenure.

I strongly urge you to take the time and read this article. This is one of many practices by Zionist groups and related lobbies and organizations. Almost none of them get the deserved media coverage to shed light on Zionist practices that are either pure fascistic by any rational standards or border on fascistic by irrationally tolerant standards. Can you point me to articles and analysis in the US media where these culprits are coined and identified as Ziono-Fascists?

Here are two excerpts from a well-written and argued editorial on the Israeli political system and Lieberman’s rhetoric:

Jefferson thought any state could only derive conditional loyalty from its subjects, if it served them faithfully. Lieberman inverts this. The state should not serve the people. The state is inherently legitimate, and if the people disagree, they are disloyal, and should be punished for it. Whether or not such state worship is a sufficient condition for a political ideology to qualify as fascist, it is certainly a necessary condition. Lieberman also wants to strip the Palestinians of citizenship, and hopefully expel them too. Indeed, Israeli professor Neve Gordon suspects it is a matter of time until Jewish leftists are also accused of disloyalty and stripped of their citizenship. Lieberman combines his intolerance of dissent with his overriding imperative – to create a Jewish state as ethnically pure as possible. Let us also not forget his disturbing glorification of the military. He has said that the Gaza war would have been successful, but the valiant soldiers were betrayed by a cowardly civilian leadership. Who can fail to notice the historical echoes?

If you consider Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is an Apartheid state. It rules over these territories, but has not enfranchised their populations, and has even granted full citizenship rights only to the Jews who reside within the West Bank. Indeed, the Jews who live on colonies in the West Bank taking Palestinian land have roads built for their benefit, which the Palestinians in the West Bank cannot travel on…

Does the current status of Israel’s politics reflect the characteristics mostly found in fascism? The writer in this article seems to make his points based on the reality on the ground and undisputed facts:

One can expect little else from the Israeli mainstream, blinded as it is by decades of indoctrination and vested interests, or from Israel’s President Peres, whose political lexicon never included the T of Truth. But the world should be warned. Unlike Lebanon or Iran, Israel has not moved a single step forward in the Obama Era. On the contrary: With the rogue triumvirate of Netanyahu, Barak, and Lieberman, Israel is now ruled by the most nationalist, racist, and fanatical government it has ever had. On top of that, the main opposition party, led by the ultra-nationalist Livni and the opportunistic professional soldier Mofaz, offers yet another duplicate of the government’s narrative, so that the ever narrower public discourse is framed by two ideological and political twins, offering no alternative whatsoever. In fact, the Israeli far Right has now more than 80 percent of the seats in the Knesset – the rest being the Arab parties, Meretz, and a dubious dissenting faction within Labor. Thus the Israeli media consumer is not even exposed to anything but nationalist at best, racist at worst, anti-Palestinian, anti-peace, pro-occupation brainwashing.

…

The flow of laws and regulations against Israeli Arabs increased exponentially. A year ago, a forgotten British Mandate regulation from 1939, banning the import of books printed in enemy countries, was suddenly revived, closing the import gates on Arabic schoolbooks and all kinds of literature printed in Lebanon (a major publishing center in Arabic) and other Arab countries. No security issues are at stake: all imported books are subject to censorship anyway.

…

Netanyahu’s speech is just the tip of the iceberg. The war against the Israeli Palestinians is much wider than that. It is felt in the judicial system, where for example a Jewish farmer who shot Arab burglars in the back while they were fleeing from his farm, killing one and wounding another, was acquitted (and is now celebrated as a national hero). As Orly Noy writes (YNet, in Hebrew), “given the judicial and public atmosphere in Israel these days, nothing is more predictable than the acquittal of a Jew who exercised violence, even extreme, against an Arab citizen.” In another case, a Jewish man who murdered a taxi driver just because he was Arab was deemed “unfit to face trial.” A senior army officer who ordered his soldier to shoot a handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinian at point-blank range was merely accused of “improper conduct.” This accusation was found unreasonable even by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Let’s rewind and visit how these same Israeli practices were viewed and deservedly criticized by respect-worthy and highly regarded people more than six decades ago. I don’t think anyone reading this article can label or accuse Albert Einstein of Anti-Semitism or bias, so here he is, in his own words:

Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

…

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement. The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

…

A Shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants? 240men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin. The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.

Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.

…

Please read the entire letter, and marvel at the irony. If our agenda-driven media truly (but wrongly) believes in religion-driven fascistic practices, then let’s have them cover all these practices the same way and consistently. Because based on their standards this would certainly qualify to be termed Ziono-Fascism.

As I’ve said neither the horrendous records on Human Rights Abuses, nor war crimes, nor censorship, nor discrimination, nor assaults on free speech in Israel and abroad… is enough or grounds for the US mainstream media to use their beloved fascism word in conjunction with the nation, in this case Israel, or, religion, in this case extremist radical Zionists.

What happens when rarely some of these practices make their way into the US press? Well, the internet is your world so when you get a chance check out a few. I can assure you that you won’t find a single phrase like ‘Judeo-Fascism’ or ‘Ziono-Fascism’ or anything related to fascism, any derivation of the word fascism, being paired up with Israeli Zionists’ anti-democratic, anti-free speech, anti-humanitarian practices.

Why is that? Why the conscious and careful selectivity? Don’t get me wrong here. I truly despise seeing any nationality or religion being paired up with the term fascism for the purpose of creating perceptions based on stereotyping and bringing about hate-mongering. My first response and objective is to try to get these writers and speakers of the propaganda machine to stop it; period. When that proves to be futile, when they go on doing what they are doing, then, I ask them to at least be consistent. In this case the two wrongs won’t make it right, but at least it will make it consistent.
 

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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.

While we were busy covering the ‘Iranian Twitter Revolution’ and gobbling up the latest ‘sex’ news involving Sanford:

Robert Gates issued his anticipated order to establish the U.S. Cyber Command which ‘supposedly’ will be responsible for defending the military portion of cyberspace. Of course the preoccupation with Sanford’s hanky panky and playing cheerleader for our twitter buddies didn’t allow for any in-depth coverage of this gigantic development.

Here is what my friend and a member of NSWBC, Russ Tice, Former NSA Senior Intelligence Analyst & Action Officer, had to say about this latest development:

“As StratCom has neither the expertise nor technical resources to conduct this mission, the default control of CyberCom will fall, by design, into the lap of NSA. This was similarly true of StratCom being given responsibility for military space after the demise of US Space Command, which effectively ceded control of space to the Air Force. Are we to believe that CyberCom being headquartered not at Omaha, NE, but rather at Fort Meade, MD, right next to NSA; and with NSA’s current director, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, promoted to a four star general, as its head, is a coincidence?

NSA has coveted control of cyber operations for some time and already exerts considerable influence in the mission field. Illegally, NSA has tapped into all domestic e-mail traffic within the United States. To allow them the ability to subject all U.S. domestic computer communications to offensive cyber attacks and the many other aspects of digital “information warfare” should make all of America shutter in fear. Of course this supposedly will be subject to congressional oversight, federal statutes, executive orders, and agency regulations, and we all now know how steadfastly NSA is committed to these safeguards and to our constitutional liberties. With NSA now pulling the wool over our new president’s eyes, in conjunction with their contempt for congressional oversight, I am truly horrified of the prospect that NSA will usher us into a new dystopia where we will soon learn the mandatory newspeak language that will alter the concluding line of our national anthem from “… the land of the free and home of the brave” to, “… the land of the fear and the home of the depraved”.

This development indicates that SecDef Robert Gates is truly a creature of his former master. Be afraid America, be very afraid, as NSA will soon be the number one “clear and present danger” to your freedom and liberty. “

For the first time, Tice goes on record and reveals his exact job title and mission concentration while working for the NSA & DIA:

“At NSA and while at DIA, I worked as an Intelligence Analyst & Capabilities Operations Officer specializing in all aspects of OFFENSIVE INFORMATION WARFARE (O-IW).”

I had a meeting with James Bamford and got a ‘real’ education on how alarming this really is. I am also in touch with a few other NSA sources and friends, so more on this later…

Next

US drone attacks on a funeral in South Waziristan piled up at least 35 more civilian bodies. Let’s add these up as we go. Jeremy Scahill has a solid piece on this:

“In the first 99 days of 2009, more than 150 people were reportedly killed in these drone attacks. The most recent documented attack was Tuesday in Waziristan. Since 2006, the US drone strikes have killed 687 people (as of April). That amounts to about 38 deaths a month just from drone attacks.”

So yes, let’s take the responsibility of adding these up since our media and many blogosphere activists are currently busy with Sanford’s escapade and ‘twitter land.’

Back to Iran

And, for the final update I am choosing a couple of relevant reports in line with our own ‘twitter’ coverage:

Chip Pitts has an interesting analysis on ‘Twitter Factor’ over at CSR LAW. It is extensively documented and linked. I plan to go back and read it a second time.

Philip Giraldi has a refreshing perspective on the latest concerning Iran over at AntiWar.

Giraldi appropriately bashes the newly found expertise among those who’ve been muddying historical facts and what’s really happening on the ground with their intentional fiction, spin, or, ignorant interpretation reeking with naivety or plain old stupidity:

“Having spent much of my working life as an intelligence officer on the street in places like Istanbul, I am astonished at what passes for expertise in the debate over what to do about Iran. It is clear that even the few genuine experts on Iran don’t really know what is going on there because they are slaves to their sources of information, which tend to reflect their own philosophical viewpoints and are, in any event, narrowly based.”

Here are a few excerpts on ‘Twitter Hero’ Mousavi:

“He is, in reality, a defender of extremely corrupt vested interests. That he has attracted the support of the so-called “Gucci crowd” of twentyish twitterers does not mean that he has embraced western values.”

I love his right on target characterization here: “Gucci Crowd of Twentyish Twitterers”!! Well-said, Phil, totally in line with what I’ve been getting from my Iranian sources here and over there.

“And then there is the corruption issue, Iran’s six hundred pound gorilla. Mousavi is heir to the corrupt Iran of the post- revolutionary period when the country was looted by the senior clerics cooperating with the business class, the bazaaris.”

The corruption charges on Mousavi are valid; have been established. He appears to fit the “State Department Viable Candidate Criteria,’ don’t you agree? And, here is another good observation:

“If there was one thing I learned from twenty years of experience as a military intelligence and CIA officer it is that nothing is ever what it seems. If a situation appears to be clear cut, with good guys and bad guys arrayed against each other it is probably anything but. So maybe black and white comes out gray. All the more reason to step back.”

And this is how Giraldi nicely wraps up his piece:

“The old Hippocratic advice to doctors to “do no harm” should perhaps be the best advice for the American political chattering classes and the media. Doing no harm regarding events in Iran is to stay out of it.”

That’s it for a quick round up of a few select issues while Sanford Gate & the Iran Spin machine are busy at work, taking up space and time all over the news and much of the blogosphere…