Update: Well, we did it. iWatch News corrected the order. Now Ron Paul is third from the top-as he should always have been. Not only that, they were ‘forced’ to correct the numbers as well, and use the correct quarter.The only thing left: changing that picture!

Update: Thanks to vigilant readers and their pressure, iWatch News has been scrambling since 3:00 PM EST, and the numbers on the post have been mysteriously changing …of course not the ‘order’ of listing, or the picture selection, or any explanation for such colossal belligerence …

Yesterday, as part of my daily news comb, I visited “iWatch News,” one of several dozen websites on my list of news outlets on government related scandals-revelations. I usually skim the headlines and stories to see whether anything gets my attention as coverage-worthy. Well, their top headline yesterday fit what I was looking for: “Candidate Super PACS.” It was brief, but boldly showcased data on how much money each major presidential candidate has raised and how much each has spent to date. I was happy to find an important but quick and hassle-free read without too many embellishing words or subjective spicing. So I began reading the list. Starting from the top they had the number 1 candidate based on money raised and spent:

 Barack Obama: Total Raised-$88.3 million Total Spent-$28.8 million  

Then came candidate number 2:

 Mitt Romney: Total Raised-$32.6 million Total Spent-$17.5 million  

After that came the third on the list, Number 3:

Newt Gingrich: Total Raised-$2.9 million Total Spent-$2.5 million  

Gingrich was followed by Number 4:

 Rick Santorum: Total Raised-$1.3 million Total Spent-$1.1 million  

And finally, there came the last one, the one all the way at the bottom, candidate Number 5, and naturally, I expected to see the loser of the bunch, the candidate with the least money raised and spent, in other words, the least viable candidate when it comes to raising money, which is one of the major indicators of the winner to come:

 Ron Paul: Total Raised-$12.7 million Total Spent-$9.1 million  

I was ready to get out of the site and move on to the next news site for my daily internet news surf, but then, my eyes caught the numbers listed as raised and spent for Ron Paul. As you know I usually don’t use cuss words, but the only way I can describe my strong reaction-surprise is ‘having a serious WTF!’ moment.

This list starts chronological, based on the amount of money raised and spent by each major candidate. The chronological ordering works as it is supposed to: starting with Obama with the biggest bucks raised, then to Romney with the second biggest money raised, and then something happens. What? They forget the number 3 candidate in the amount of money raised and spent, and instead list Gingrich as the Number 3 – who happens to have raised only a quarter of the amount raised by Ron Paul! Then, their chronological ordering starts working again, and they list the candidate with the least amount of money raised and spent- about 10% of Ron Paul’s amount. And finally, everything turns almost upside down: they list Ron Paul as the 5^th candidate, the last one, the bottom of the barrel, in raising money!

Not only that. I want you to look up and checkout the candidates’ photos above. I took these pictures from that same iWatch News story. Please do it. What do you see? A tough and confident looking number 1-Obama. A happy, confident and relaxed smiling Romney. Lip smacking and beaming Newt Gingrich. A typical silly male bimbo on his way out of the race, but too silly to realize it, thus semi-smiling-Santorum. And then, there comes the candidate they list as the last in money raising, bottom of the barrel, the one on the loser-spot – a real worried, grim and sour looking-Ron Paul.

Reality in this case: As far as raising money for the campaign goes, Ron Paul is the third candidate in the race overall, As far as Republican candidates are concerned, Ron Paul is number 2 in both raising and spending money.

We’ve been reading everyday on the establishment media’s belligerent attitude towards Ron Paul and all their attempts to avoid providing coverage when it comes to him. But this? At this level? Come on. This goes way beyond belligerence. It reaches ultimate pathetic levels and makes them look like fools. Or a better way to say it: their role as the establishment’s jokers. 

*You may want to check iWatch News’ fund-ers here to make a better sense of things. Here are two to give you an idea on what I mean by ‘establishment’:

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations

Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund

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Last week Boiling Frogs Post broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran involving an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan. Yesterday we had a follow up on the emerging ‘alleged’ details in the ‘alleged’ plot claiming Israeli diplomats and religious figures were the intended targets of the alleged Iranian assassination plot [All Emphasis Mine]:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador… The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran…Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

As with many stories, especially those involving ‘alleged’ terrorism operations conducted by the nations on the list of our to-be invaded-occupied nations it is important to pay specific attention to the context, and other ancillary and related details and facts. Before we do that let’s note the most important fact in the case of Iran: which actor in the current global imperial pursuits has been the primary and most active force against Iran and for its invasion? I believe everyone would unanimously and very easily answer this question. Israel.

While the pressure and the venues of attacks on Iran have been growing and escalating- think nuclear arms development accusations, meddling in Iraq accusations, alleged assassination attempt against Saudi Diplomat in the US accusations …, we suddenly get a brand new allegation accusing Iran of plotting a terror act in Azerbaijan. Not only that, the targets of this alleged terror plot happen to be none other than Israel. If that doesn’t give you pause, make it a long pause, followed by firm skepticism, well, your mental faculties may be in need of a serious check-up followed by a thorough tune-up.

Now, let’s review the latest details providing needed context in the new allegations pointed directly at Iran by Israel and Azerbaijan.

Four days after we brought the readers’ attention to this significant developing story, four days late, the mainstream media began its coverage, of course with their own version. Here is a report by Reuters:

Authorities in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic bordering Iran, have arrested two men suspected of plotting to attack prominent foreigners including Israel’s ambassador and a local rabbi, officials and media reported on Wednesday.

The National Security Ministry said the men were connected to an Iranian citizen who had links with Iran’s intelligence.

…

Here is an excerpt clarifying Azerbaijan’s position and its intimate ties to Israel and the US, but fails to mention its status as ‘To-Be-NATO Member’ soon:

Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim country, is home to more than 9,000 Jews and has friendly ties with Israel and the United States. A major energy producer, it exports oil to Israel and imports weapons and military hardware.

And here is the US setting the stage for the next wave of conspiracy in setting up Iran:

The U.S. embassy issued a warning to its citizens saying “the possibility remains for actions against U.S. or other high-profile foreign interests in Azerbaijan”.

…

Diplomatic ties between Azerbaijan and Iran are cool, but Iranian companies operate and have stakes in oil contracts in the Caspian Sea state, which exports around 1 million barrels of crude a day (bpd) westward through a pipeline operated by a consortium led by BP.

…

Also yesterday, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally saluted Azerbaijan for allegedly foiling the alleged terror plot:

Peres, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, told Ilham Aliyev that Israel saluted his country for “saving lives on your land from a murderous terrorist attack.” Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry revealed last week that it uncovered a cell planning terrorist attacks. Two Azerbaijanis and an Iranian citizen living in Iran were implicated in the plot. The two Azerbaijanis were arrested.

…

Here is what Aliyev emphasized:

Aliyev, according to Peres’s office, said the plot showed “to what degree we are in a difficult and dangerous neighborhood…Aliyev said Azerbaijan would continue to cooperate with Israel, especially on homeland security issues.

…

Speaking of relations getting more intimate between Azerbaijan and Israel:

During the signing ceremony SCC head noted that the State Customs Committee is interested in expanding cooperation with the Israeli Customs Directorate, “The agreement signed between the Azerbaijani and Israeli governments gives an impetus to bilateral relationships, and will accelerate the process of cooperation and integration of the parties.”

Azerbaijan has become an important trading partner with Israel on security and foreign affairs. Economic cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan has grown significantly. In 2011, the trade between the two countries totaled more than $2.5 billion.

…

Remember those ‘conflicting’ reports on the ‘alleged’ Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi Diplomat in the US? You can refresh your memory here.  Well, this ‘alleged’ plot is also filled with ‘conflicting’ reports and details, already:

Conflicting reports have emerged about the terror plot. While local media said an Iranian-backed terror cell had planned to kill Jewish teachers at the Or Avner Jewish schooll just outside the capital Baku, other reports in the media claimed the men were offered $150,000 by Iran to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador Michael Lotem.

A spokesman for the Or Avner network of Jewish schools, however, denied on Tuesday night any knowledge of a planned attack. “The Jews of Baku and the administrators of the school have no information on what was reported in Azeri media last Thursday,” said the spokesman. “The community’s routine has not changed.”

…

Here is a video clip on this new alleged Iranian Terror Plot:

In the UK, the Telegraph also reported on the ‘alleged’ story, and of course, it added the usual UK twist and spice:

If true, the plot will be seen as the latest evidence of Iran’s intentions to strike at its enemies abroad. Last October, the US justice ministry said it had uncovered an Iranian conspiracy to use members of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

…

Speaking of Britain, the following data is also noteworthy:

The volume of investments made by BP and its partners in Azerbaijan amounted to $ 35 billion during its activity in the country, BP Azerbaijan company head Rashid Javanshir said during a ceremony of signing the agreement on the support with the National Olympic and National Paralympic Committees… BP will continue its activity to develop the economy as a whole and oil and gas industry in particular in subsequent years, he said.

…

We were the first US site to break and cover this still-brewing story. We will continue our coverage and rely on you to disseminate this new scheme in our nation’s desperate attempt to invade-occupy yet another nation.  Please stay tuned.

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Last week we broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran here at Boiling Frogs Post. The new scenario was originated, disseminated and promoted by a known member of the loyal propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits, Radio Free Europe. According to the new story-line, our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives. The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Today, brewing in the background are new allegations and  further thickening of this new plot directed against Iran, providing further unsubstantiated details.  According to the unsubstantiated new claims those arrested by Azeri security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku, Michael Lotem:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador.

…

The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran. The Iranian regime claimed Israel was behind the assassination. Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

Azeri politicians are accusing Iran of creating provocations following the uncovering of an alleged terror plot to allegedly assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Baku.

“On one hand, Iran talks of Shiite Muslim brotherhood, but on the other it cooperates with and supports terrorists of Christian-Armenian,” said chairman of the country’s Civil Solidarity Party Sabir Rustamkhanly…

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, an alleged scary terror cell in Baku, and alleged Israeli targets. The powers up there seem desperate, and desperation can do stupid things with irreversible damage.

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The imperial establishment’s desperation to militarily go after and take over the last ‘real’ domino – Iran, has truly reached a peak, and with that desperation comes a new farfetched and fantastical scenario. Last time the script of their scenario was written based on a Saudi Diplomat actor. It was only three months ago when the puppet mainstream media jumped in with a made-up, dubious, far-reaching, murkily and vaguely-sourced story of the thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in US. Here are a few excerpts from CNN’s fabulous-ized headline story that played around the clock for days, beating the war drums for its masters:  

U.S. agents disrupted an Iranian assassination-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, U.S. officials said Tuesday…The Saudi ambassador was not the only intended target, U.S. officials said. The suspects also discussed attacking Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington and possibly Buenos Aires, Argentina, a senior U.S. official said.

…

Of course CNN was not the lone wolf in the intense broadcasting and dissemination of this Washington script. The rest of the MSM puppets followed the same trend: Washington Post, New York Times, FOX … Not only that, the pseudo-alternative con outlets did exactly the same thing. Just check out the verbatim dissemination by Huffington Post and other ‘popular’ so-called alternatives. Thankfully we had enough facts, critical thinkers, and independent news fronts to expose all the holes in that concocted story:

A close analysis of the FBI deposition reveals, however, that independent evidence for the charge that Arbabsiar was sent by the Qods Force on a mission to arrange for the assassination of Jubeir is lacking. The FBI account is full of holes and contradictions, moreover. The document gives good reason to doubt that Arbabsiar and his confederates in Iran had the intention of assassinating Jubeir, and to believe instead that the FBI hatched the plot as part of a sting operation.

…

So that scenario script kinda failed. Of course the other long-cooking concoction on Iran’s nuclear weapons development has not gotten the establishment hawks far either. Even the mainstream has been grudgingly admitting the holes-filled allegations on dangerous nuclear weapons armed Iran!

You’d think all the debunked allegations and failed attempts would give the imperial hawks a bit of a pause to come up with a better concoction. At least go away for a while and rethink their strategy; no? Obviously not. Desperation can do amazingly stupid things to greed-driven, wild-eyed and blood-thirsty bullies in pursuit of expanded turf.  They just came out with a new concocted scenario and allegations. This time their lead actor happens to be Azerbaijan.

Our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives.

The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Now, interestingly the first place/source to start to disseminate our script writers’ new concocted scenario involving another ‘Iranian Plot’ was no other than … yes, you guessed it: Radio Free Europe. Check out this news’ origination by this long-propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits here. The second source to pick up on it was no other than a Soros-Funded site on Central Asia here. Guaranteed: the other MSM outlets will be having a field day with this new propaganda. In fact, they’ve been hot on another related side story with the same actor written by the same writers. I kid you not; here it is: Azerbaijan claims that the recent cyber attacks that destroyed its government and news websites originated in … Iran! Let’s check out the headline on this today at …Business Week:

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Cyber attacks that destroyed government and news websites in Azerbaijan this week mostly originated in Iran, government minister Ali Abbasov said. An investigation by Abbasov’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology found that of 25 attacks, 24 came from Iran and one from the Netherlands, Abbasov told reporters in the Azeri capital, Baku, today.

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, a scary terror cell in Baku, and savvy Iranian cyber-terrorists obsessed with this dingy little country’s dingier-littler government and news websites.

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In the last few decades one never-changing modus operandi in our imperial pursuits and operations overseas has been the formation, financing, training, control and domination of our target countries’ military force. Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia … whether here right in our backyard under joint Pentagon and military industrial complex mega corporations or abroad, through our tentacles-NATO member nations, we’ve always ensured holding the most important string in ruling and managing our overseas puppetries- their military. Because, admit it, the figure-head dictators come and go; rise and fall; are made and destroyed, easily and frequently. On the other hand, their ruling military elite are more of a constant. Think Egypt: ‘Bye-bye Mubarak, stay put military regime.’ However, all that seems to be changing. We are getting savvier, more ambitious and far greedier. We want more: more control. Thus, welcome our new extended imperial sphere: Police Force a la USA.

According to the latest news, of course not covered by US media, our NATO Member Turkey will be training the new Libyan Police Force. Let’s read this extremely important new development with even more important implications [All Emphasis Mine]:

Turkey has started negotiations with Libya to begin training the country’s police force, which is being rebuilt after Libya’s violent revolution that began in February 2011 and ended the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi.

A delegation from the Turkish General Directorate of Security, headed by Deputy National Police Chief Ahmet Pek, traveled to the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Saturday to discuss projects related to Libyan police training in Turkey. The Turkish delegation considered the issue with Libyan Interior Affairs Minister Omar al-Hadravi on Sunday.

The meeting was also attended by high-ranking Libyan security officers. The officials talked about the resumption of Libyan police education, which was interrupted during the civil war, in Turkish police academies. They also discussed the possibility of including primary vocational training in the Libyan police force for former armed insurgents, in Turkey.

…

Pek stated that the Turkish delegation supplied necessary equipment for Libyan police forces during their recent visit and said they will be delivered to Libyan leaders during an official ceremony in Tripoli this week.

…

We all know about Turkey’s ‘water-bearer’ position for the West as an important and the only Muslim NATO member. However, what is not well-known here in the United States, thanks to its media’s complete submission to government, military mega corporations and foreign lobby powers, is Turkey’s internationally recognized status and fame for its atrocious police brutality and abuses.

In a damning report, Human Rights Watch said complaints against the police for excessive force had risen sharply since the start of last year while the number of officers convicted had dropped. A total of 3,339 people had complained about police ill-treatment in 2007, up from 2,854 the year before, but only 48 of those complaints had led to convictions.

The 80-page report, Closing Ranks Against Accountability, recounts numerous cases of suspects dying or suffering serious injury at the hands of police, sometimes after being stopped for routine identity checks. Police frequently cover up evidence while accused officers are routinely exonerated after internal disciplinary proceedings, the report says.

The rise in violent incidents was partly attributable, he said, to laws introduced by the governing Justice and Development party (AKP), which has built its image on a reform programme designed to aid Turkey’s EU membership bid. These include a law permitting police to use lethal force before it becomes a “last resort” necessary to prevent a threat to life, another allowing officers to conduct identity checks without reasonable grounds for suspicion, and anti-terrorism legislation enabling suspects to be detained for 24 hours without access to a lawyer.

…

Turkey has held on to its record as one of the world champions in extreme torture practices thanks to the direct financial and training support from its US masters:

When a harsh report asserting that torture is widespread in Turkey was released this week, the surprise was not just the amount of damning evidence it contained, but also the source. Rather than being prepared by a private advocacy group, the report was the work of the parliamentary committee on human rights.

For years, Turkish leaders have sought to play down accusations that torture is widely practiced here. That will be harder after what the parliamentary committee found. Its report contains transcripts of interviews with many prisoners who said they had been abused. It also includes photos of torture equipment and floor plans that show where torture cells are supposedly located in various police stations. No report by a government human rights body has ever been nearly this extensive or graphic.

Committee members and investigators interviewed more than 8,500 prisoners during a two-year period. They also conducted unannounced visits to 50 prisons and two dozen police stations, said the vice chairman, Sebgetullah Seydaoglu.

“This committee has existed for seven years but it hasn’t been functioning properly,” said Mr. Seydaoglu, who represents the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, where the mostly Kurdish population has long complained of bad treatment by police. “In the last year we’ve become very decisive about our mission.”

…

Even Turkey’s financial and procedural backers in torture practices couldn’t help but admit to its status:

The United States State Department said in its latest human rights report that during 1999 “torture, beatings and other abuses by security forces remained widespread, at times resulting in deaths.”

Human rights advocates are unhappy with the government’s record. The bluntness of the new parliamentary report suggests that impatience for change is growing.”This report says what we have been saying for years, that torture is extensive and systematic in Turkey,” said Nazmi Gur, chairman of the Human Rights Association, which has often been at odds with the government. “This could be the beginning of progress toward meeting European legal standards.”

…

Maybe a few videos would better depict the Turkish police’s claim to fame:

Rather than filling many hundreds of pages with examples and reports I invite all readers to run a search for credible reports and documentations on Turkish police and its record on torture, violence and other brutalities.  This is the kind of police force and practices that have been deemed appropriate for the New Libya by US-NATO powers. The new trend has begun – we not only form, train, finance and command these nations’ military forces, but we now extend our ruling into their daily lives on the street via selecting, training, arming, financing, and controlling their police forces.

The United States has fulfilled its main objective on Libya: regime change; replacing it with its own regime, one that will be equally if not more brutal and abusive of its people. The only difference – the strings will be fully in its hand.

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Our nation is famous for many things. Things that it is known for. Things that in one way or another represent it. Things that become synonymous with America or being Americans. Our foreign policy and our presidents are no exception. If you were to ask the recipients of our foreign policy there would be one adjective they’d all agree upon. Unanimously. There is one common and unanimously agreed upon ‘thing’ when it comes to US foreign policy and practices: It is called Hypocrisy. Granted there are slight variations here and there, but the never changing and ever present hypocrisy always remains.

Read the newspapers and watch the coverage of international news broadcast on our networks and cables. There it is. Glaring hypocrisy. Every single day. Hundreds of times a day. Listen to presidential and state department briefings and statements. There it is. Filled with it. Shameless hypocrisy. Check out our congressional records. Day in and Day out. Ever present. Consistent hypocrisy.

I could set up a whole new website to track US foreign policy hypocrisy examples, and it would be filled with them, tens of pages a day, and hundreds of instances. You don’t even need to have a well-developed hypocrisy-detector. It is so bold and obvious even way below-average processing minds can detect it! I am very serious.

This morning I found at least 32 bold examples of our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy, practices and rhetoric. And I was not even looking for them. They were everywhere: mainstream, pseudo-alternative streams, semi-alternative streams … You name it! I wanted to pick one and showcase it. I could have picked any of them: Bahrain, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Israel, Turkey … Basically any of our ‘intimate allies’ in ‘this and that’ part of the world. You name it. However, I exercised a bit of self-restrain and settled for one. And, here it is [All Emphasis Mine]:

Obama Gives Uzbekistan free Pass to Terrorize Press

Why is the Obama administration sanctioning one post-Soviet dictator with an atrocious human rights record and not another?

Barack Obama has signed a new bill banning some top Belarusian officials from visiting the United States — and requiring Washington to monitor restrictions on press freedom and human rights abuses in Belarus — because President Alexandr Lukashenko wantonly jails political opponents and journalists.

Sound familiar?

Those are hallmarks of Uzbekistan strongman Islam Karimov’s regime, where journalists are regularly imprisoned and critics tortured. Says the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ): “He personally oversaw the May 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan, and his regime virtually annihilated the independent press after it spread the word about those brutalities.” But instead of censure, Karimov “has received stunningly cordial treatment from the Obama administration,” including, in the past few months, a friendly phone call from the president and a visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

…

Here is what CPJ had to Say:

There are scores of examples to position the Uzbek leader as far more brutal and dictatorial than Lukashenko’s regime. The human rights abuses include forced child labor; arbitrary detentions and torture of detainees; harassment of lawyers and imprisonment of rights defenders; absolute state control over the media and Internet; and eviction of the last international monitor–Human Rights Watch–from its offices in Tashkent. All of these and other issues are listed in the U.S. State Department’s own 2010 Human Rights report for Uzbekistan, which brands the country as “an authoritarian state.”

Yet, in September, Karimov received a warm phone call from Obama, and heard appraisal on his “progress” in human rights from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her October visit to Tashkent. Also last year, the U.S. Congress removed what was left of the 2004 arms embargo imposed against Uzbekistan in connection with its grave human rights record.

And here is a bit of explanation (Not talking ‘justification’!) from Eurasia Net:

So why the double standard? The answer, as EurasiaNet readers know, is that Uzbekistan is essential to prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. Because Pakistan does not offer a reliable supply route to Afghanistan, Washington has turned to post-Soviet Central Asia for a transit corridor. Most supplies for the NATO war effort now arrive via the Northern Distribution Network, a web of rail and truck traffic that ultimately bottlenecks in Uzbekistan before crossing over into northern Afghanistan.

…

This isn’t the first time a respected watchdog has slammed the hypocrisy in Obama’s realpolitik. With Uzbekistan increasingly essential to the war, it won’t be the last.

…

Yah, call it realpolitik, call it forced by necessity, call it whatever – everyone, anyone with a semi-working brain, would tell you what this is: hypocrisy. You see, the atrocious practices cited for Uzbekistan could be grounds (read ‘excuses’) for sanctions, no fly zone, embargo, and ultimately outright war if it were Syria, Iran, and soon to join the list-Venezuela. In this case, it is our dictator, it is our regime, and it is our water-carrying nation for our nasty-dirty-shady operations and wars. Thus, our president-government goes into its ‘praise-financial aid-military support-trade’ mode. Consistency is the enemy of hypocrisy. Otherwise, Mr. Obama would be talking Central Asia League Observers, Sanctions, and War Threats for Uzbekistan.

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If you’ve been listening to our podcast with real experts and truly independent analysts, then you know all about this media trick: omit the context-disconnect the dots. Basically they give you the news and facts in bits and pieces, disconnected, minus the context. This is one of the main components of propaganda, and one of the major factors counted on by the establishment in conducting hidden world affairs and psychological wars. I have always emphasized the conscious efforts in play to prevent critical and independent thinking. For things to remain as they are, or actually escalate to worse, the establishment counts on a non-critical thinking populace. Call it stupid-ification of the masses. Call it the sheeple effect .Call it whatever you want. I truly don’t care how you tag-label-name it; as long as you recognize and acknowledge what it is they are doing.

Last week, during my brief interview with RT, I mentioned the almost-comical aspect of this entire ‘Arab League’ business. A bunch of Washington-Approved atrocious dictators being placed in charge of checking, determining, judging, and reporting on  a Washington-Disapproved dictator’s atrocious deeds. I referred to them as dictators because that’s what they are, and have been. Come on, Bahrain?! Jordan?! Saudi Arabia?! And I said Washington-Approved because they’ve been placed in power, maintained-supported-sustained by the United States of America. They’ve been provided with all the tools a dictator can dream of to practice dictatorship and commit atrocities. Think Bahrain’s Human Rights Record, and then, think US support for Bahrain. Think Saudi Arabia’s atrocities, and then, think US provided tools-means for this dictatorship and one of the largest arms deal in US history. And then, think about this atrocious dictator bunch holding hands and going over to a not-US-Backed dictator nation to issue a report on its abuses per their boss’ request. Thou shall not bite the hand that feeds you, ey?!

Now, with that frame of mind let’s take a look at the latest reports on Pakistan and our cold again, hot again, luke warm again, cold again, warm again relations, and of course what ultimately it comes down to: the aid-bribe-money factor.

Last month we had the killing of Pakistani military members by US-NATO forces; an incident that has “left U.S.-Pakistan relations in tatters.” The relationship went cold; obviously. In response to this attack, and to pacify the public outcry, Pakistan shut down US-NATO supply routes into Afghanistan and issued damning responses and warning to US-NATO. How much of this was just ‘barking’ to save face before the outraged Pakistanis? We don’t know. However, the relations seemed to go colder; icy- at least outwardly; on the front stage.

So let’s look at the intentionally fragmented news and developments on the US-Pakistan relations front, and let’s challenge the media-style reporting by putting the bits and pieces in one place.

Two days ago the media reported on the Pentagon’s confidence and optimism in ‘warming’ relations with Pakistan, and the signal for going back to old business- using Pakistan for our war machine operations:

The Pentagon has expressed confidence that US Pak ties can be improved, and hoped that Islamabad will re open NATO supply route on a border with Afghanistan. Pakistan had earlier sealed its two border crossings in Chaman and Torkham after the November 26 NATO airstrike that had killed 28 soldiers in Mohmand Agency.

…

As always, our predictable media reported this as isolated, singular, and sanitized news. While the behind the scenes mingling and discussions between US and Pakistani puppet regime are completely obscured from the public, especially from the still-outraged people in Pakistan, we have enough official reports and bits and pieces of media articles to fathom the ‘money, money, money’ aka ‘aid, aid, aid,’ in actuality ‘bribe, bribe, bribe’

The Dangling Carrots (Read ‘Bribe’)

Washington didn’t have much of a problem with Pakistan’s muscle flexing-tough talk/barking, shutting down the NATO supply route, semi-confrontation with the CIA  … Look, everyone involved knows this game. Our puppet regimes, our puppet dictators need a little bit of room to garner public support, or more accurately, prevent public backlash, in their home nations. They have to play to their people’s nationalistic and sovereignty expectations. They have to cater to religious pride. So once in a while they have to put on a ‘barking show’ and pretend to flex muscles they don’t even have. This may be for-show-only opposition to Israel’s abuses. This may be angrily pointing a finger at Washington and issuing hollow ultimatums. Or this may be a temporary closure of a US-NATO supply route to fake ‘toughness.’ Washington knows all that, and to a degree it plays along. It is one of those classic, cliché-like US foreign policy dances.

When it comes down to it Washington knows the ultimate game-determinant, and has been using it for decades. In the end our shrewdly-crafted bribery and dependency-creating foreign aid programs almost always win. They place these nations, whether Pakistan or Egypt or Jordan, on a continuous financial and military aid payroll. They make sure the rulers/monarchs/dictators grow highly dependent on these annual bribery packages. They know how these bribes, aka aid, end up in the deep pockets of these nations’ ruling elite, and they like it. And when the time comes, Washington knows how to pull this very strong string to maneuver its puppet dictators-regimes.

With Pakistan, take our latest ‘conditional’ financial aid development:

Pakistan aid linked to efforts against terrorism

Washington—The US Congress has passed a bill imposing more conditions on aid to Pakistan, especially linking it to Islamabad’s cooperation in war on terror and its efforts in curbing terrorists, including Haqqani network, a strong faction of Afghan Taliban.

The bill passed by the US House of Representatives attached condition of the US aid to Pakistan with a certification by the Secretary of State about Pakistan’s cooperation in the war against terrorism and Islamabad’s steps against terrorist groups. The bill hit around $53 billion US aid to various countries including Pakistan.

The House of Representatives passed a comprehensive funding bill with solid bipartisan support – 296 lawmakers voted for it and 121 voted against it. According to the reports, the legislation freezes aid to Pakistan until Secretary can certify that Islamabad is cooperating on counterterrorism. The aid amount was unspecified in the legislation as Congress gave the Obama administration flexibility to figure out the funds. —NNI

…

I am sure you can read between the lines. You know in how many ways this ‘cooperation in war on terror’ condition can be interpreted. And of course you all know how far $53 Billion a year in foreign bribery, aka US foreign aid, can go. No? Basically Washington says, ‘yo, enough with the barking-allowance. You see the billions dangling here? You want it, right? Okay, then back to being a good loyal dog Pakistan…’  And of course Zardari and the rest of the corrupt sold-out puppet elites are salivating in anticipation of the next round of bribery, aka US foreign aid. If that ain’t incentive, what is?

Sometimes Washington fortifies its official bribery package, aka US foreign aid, with extras, aka compensation:

US Offers Compensation to Pakistan

WASHINGTON: The United States has offered to send a team to Pakistan to brief the military on the findings of its investigation into the NATO raid, the State Department said on Thursday. “We accept responsibility for mistakes committed by the US side in the NATO air strike incident” that led to the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers, the department’s deputy spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing.

The US, he said, was prepared to offer compensation to the families of troops who lost their lives.

…

But wait, Washington hands out its bribery packages in many ways and forms; sometimes directly, and sometimes through its tentacles. Think IMF. Think World Bank. Think our banking branch of our Imperialism Incorporated. Are you thinking? Good. Here is an additional multibillion bribe package for Pakistan’s elite rulers via our World Bank branch approved a few days ago:

World Bank Sets $5.5 Billion in Aid for Pakistan

The World Bank on Thursday said it would provide Pakistan with $5.5 billion in development aid over the next two years.“The Bank has responded flexibly in the face of the tremendous challenges Pakistan has gone through over the past year or so,” said its Pakistan country director Rachid Benmessaoud.

“We will continue our strong support to Pakistan, while keeping a keen eye on implementation to ensure that these efforts translate into real results on the ground,” he said.

…

Soon, that is, very soon, we’ll see the thawing relations with Pakistan: the supply routes will be open and humming with war trucks, and leaders on both sides will be back to fondly praising each other on successful collaboration and partnership in a war on so-called terror.

The Pakistanis appear to be far more informed and aware than our majority over here in the United States. As long-time recipients of our imperialistic pursuits and abuses they know how the game works: their national sovereignty, their civilians’ lives, their dignity and rights offered on the platter by their ruling elites to their ultimate bosses in Washington for a few billions here and a few billions there, and of course not for the public good but for the maintenance and sustenance of the ruling elites’ with big expanding pockets.  

Here in the United States things would start looking clearer and make far more sense if our media (both MSM and pseudo alternatives) would combine these facts and developments, and present them to the public in one place, rather than feeding them bits and pieces of reports and sound bites in isolation and with no context. But they don’t. And they won’t. They are the guardians of our imperialistic and hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy. They participate in preservation of the cosmetic masks before these policies, and one important task to accomplish this is the prevention of independent critical thinking. They see themselves as the preservers of the dumb and stupid-ified majority. And as long as the majority turn to them for their ‘news and facts’ they are doomed to remain dumb and stupid-ified.

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Let’s start with Jordan. Last week we broke the story on reported US-NATO troops and operations in Jordan- on the Jordanian-Syrian border. Follow-ups to our report were carried out by only a few select international news organizations. Pepe Escobar had an excellent article on that (see here).

Today I received this report on the generous financial aid granted to Jordan by the United States.

US to Provide Jordan with $660 Million in Aid in 2012

AMMAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) — The United States will provide Jordan with 660 million U.S. dollars in 2012 as economic and military assistance, Jordan’s ministry of planning and international cooperation said Tuesday…The U.S. assistance to Jordan from 2007 to 2011 reached 2.4 billion, according to the ministry.
…

You see, Jordan is fairly dependent on US generosity, aka military-financial aid. And as expected, that dependency tends to ‘color’ a lot of things. Come to think of it, almost every member of the so-called Arab League appears to have similar dependencies: US financial-military aid and support to maintain and sustain their regimes’ existence. Hello, you remember our atrocious Bahrain regime, no? Oh well, they too are part of this ‘Arab League.’ So basically, these dependent puppet dictator regimes are now in charge of determining Syria’s level of dictatorship and soon–to-come final destiny. Ironic, no? Okay, I’ll have more on this when I reach the ‘calm’ period…

Next, I want you to monitor the Antiwar.Com website for a while. This once-upon-a-time excellent website has been going through tremendous not so pretty changes. Coincidentally, these changes coincide with recent mysterious appearances of their donor angels. What I want you to look for and keep tabs on:

1- More and more they’ve been citing articles and news from their once-culprit foe US MSM. Their updates are filled with NYT, WP, CNN, Huffington Post …created twists and spins.

2- If you remember, a few months ago they put on this publicity and PR campaign for the Soros-Rockefeller funded NGO who actually gave Obama an award for being the most transparent president of the United States.

3- Check out their author column. Do you notice my name there? Well, since the unnamed mysterious donors showed up, about 2 years ago, to round up their half a million dollars a year fund, they have decided to keep my name but completely censor anything I write on their ‘once-upon-a-time’ issues: police state, perpetual wars, secrecy, whistleblowers…

4- Contrary to their title, name, they have been loudly and repeatedly and unquestioningly reporting only the unsupported numbers killed by the Assad regime in Syria, Assad’s alleged inflicted massacres, and …Now, for a site called AntiWar, they are either willingly or unintentionally beating the war drums and spreading unconfirmed propaganda, exactly the same way our infamous MSM has been doing…

It is truly a shame. I like and have been following a few of their excellent editorial writers such as Raimondo and Giraldi. They usually have a good selection of editorials. And as I said, they used to be exemplary as an independent news roundup site on civil liberties and war related topics. 

I’ll have more on AW, and will inquire about their unnamed mysterious funder angels, but please go and review their last two year archives, and start accumulating your own research data…You may also want to send them e-mails-notes and encourage them to go back to what they used to be: an alternative, not an echo wall for the MSM. Hopefully they are not beyond rescue, and if they are, and they prove to be, then, I suggest their public donors look elsewhere to support…

I’ll be on Russia Today for an interview. I’ll post the clip as soon as it becomes available.

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Yesterday we broke the developing story of US-NATO troop deployment on the Jordanian-Syrian Border. I’ve been monitoring the media for any relevant coverage. So far I have found ‘none.’ Then, today I found a very twisted, one-sided, and completely West-Driven video report on some developments along the Syrian-Jordanian border. The report comes from the long-bought and independent-imposter news agency Al-Jazeera, you know the one who heavily beat the war drums during the Libya development? Okay, please watch the following Faux Video Report by the Al-Jazeera Drummer Boys and Girls, and let me know all the things you find wrong, missing, and ‘influenced’ within it:

Allow me to go first: no comments asked or requested from the Syrian government. No mentioning of the recent developments in Jordan … I think these pretenders have some gene-pool connection to the US media. Maybe a distant cousin? An illegitimate child? Now your turn…

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Update 1: Today at 12:00 P.M. we contacted DOD Press Office via two voicemail messages and one e-mail asking for comment(s) on this story. As of 6:00 P.M. EST we have not heard back.

Update 2: Another journalist with a major mainstream media publication was told by his editors that there would be no coverage or follow up on these developments.

Update 3: DEBKA File Breaking News: US Units Exiting Iraq Deployed in Jordan to Forestall Syrian Attack

Update 4: Syrian Arab News Agency: Jordan denies troop presence and affirms rejecting foreign military intervention in Syria

According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border.

According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages ​other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border), the area around the dam of Sarhan, the villages of Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah adjacent to the Syrian border.

Another report received from our source in Amman identified an additional US-NATO Command Center in “al-Houshah,’ a village near Mafraq.

Our Iraqi journalist source in London provided us with the following related information:

“Some of the US forces that left the Ain al-Assad Air base in Iraq last Thursday, did not come back to the USA or its base in Germany, but were transferred to Jordan during the evening hours.”

The above information was further corroborated by our correspondent and advisor Nizar Nayouf who interviewed an employee in the London-based office of Royal Jordanian Airlines:

“At least one US aircraft carrying military personnel landed in the Prince Hassan Air base located about 100 km to the east of the city of Al-Mafraq.”

Earlier last week, Jordanian news websites disclosed that “Western officials have requested the King to allow establishing an electronic spy station in the north of Jordan (near the Syrian border) in order to access the Syrian army and contact Syrian high-rank officers for convincing them to make a military coup or (at least) rebel against the regime”. 

Nizar Nayouf, BFP advisor and correspondent on Syria in London, had the following statement on Al-Mafraq:

“The al-Mafraq air base, which now includes Air Force Academy, was a starting point for “conspiratorial activities” by Jordan, The UK and Israel against Syria in the past, particularly in the 1960s. In September 1968, a Syrian commando Major, Salim Hatoom, who fled to Jordan with a number of officers after a failed coup attempt, established a camp from which he started a rebel military against the then left-wing government of Syria under president Nureddin al-Atassi and Salah Jadid. By the end of 1970s and early 1980s, the Syrian Islamic Brotherhood and their military wing “At-Taleeah al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah” (the Islamic Militant Vanguard) used the same base for its military struggle against president Hafez a-Assad regime, in which they were being trained by the Jordanian and Israeli intelligence agents, and cars were being bombed before they were sent to the streets of Syrian cities for the killing of innocents and undermining state facilities.”

Mr. Nayouf went on to emphasize the irony of the situation:

“I guess history repeats itself but as farce…Last spring, that tens of Syrian soldiers, who fled to Jordan, were transferred to a camp west of the Jordanian city of “Salt”, in which officers from Israeli military intelligence (AMAN) began the investigation with them under the supervision of the Jordanian military intelligence. This was to extract information from them on issues related to the development of the Syrian army, weapons and training, especially after 2006.”

We contacted our expert sources on US media and intelligence-military and were told that the US media has been told not to report on this latest development until Tuesday, December 13. Boiling Frogs Post is the first news website to report on these latest developments.

This story is developing and we await further details and confirmation from our sources in Turkey and Jordan. For additional Boiling Frogs Post Syria coverage see here and here.

*Nizar Nayouf and James Corbett contributed to this exclusive Boiling Frogs Post report. 

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18 days ago, on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I had received the information for that story from multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. You can read the story here.

My follow up piece on December 3 included the intentional blackout of this multiple-sourced and well-documented exposé. Here are a few excerpts from that story:

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites- still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared. We sat and waited for a few weeks, and no one followed up. It is Turkey. It is NATO. It is our CIA guys. The media hot shots would not touch those cases without State Department sanction attached…

Now, 18 days later, there comes a decent coverage of this exposé. Guess where? Not in the US mainstream media. Not even the US alternative media…Well, here it is, Iran’s Press TV providing accurate and untwisted coverage, and doing so as part of its front page news:

A former employee with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has said that American and NATO forces are training Syrian rebels in southeastern Turkish city of Hakkari. Sibel Edmonds also said that she had received information from Turkish and US sources indicating that training Syrian opposition forces, led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad, had started in May, the Turkish daily Milliyet reported. Edmonds further added that the US is involved in smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey in addition to providing financial support for Syrian rebels…

…

Confessions by a number of Syrian rebels about foreign-sponsored plans to carry out armed operations and killing ordinary people as well as security forces prove that recent developments in the country are part of an attempt to incite a revolt in the strategic country neighboring the Israeli regime, aiming to overthrow the current government and replace it with a US-backed regime… Damascus blames the violence on foreign-sponsored terrorist groups, with the Syrian state TV broadcasting reports showing seized weapons caches and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources.

…

So, let’s review. Turkish media, right from the involved region, and after checking with their own sources, have picked up my exposé based on several highly credible sources in Turkey-US. We are not talking blogs or alternatives in Turkey. We are talking mainstream media over there. And this, despite similar censorship pressures there due to the Turkish government’s intense desire to keep its partnership in this deal a ‘secret.’

After Turkish media and Iran’s Press TV, several other international news organizations are reporting on this very significant story; see a few examples here and here.

Now, what do we have here in the US? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Again we are not talking MSM only. Included in this are all those quasi alternatives supported by the corporate and corporate foundation sugar daddies. You see that the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times have no balls, no guts, to pursue a solid story brought to them by credible military sources here and abroad. Now, even after getting a deflector by the international media taking the lead, they are sitting, shivering, and continuing the blackout.

Since my story here at Boiling Frogs Post I have been contacted by additional credible sources, including a former high-level military official in Syria. I will have more, and will continue the coverage. And I will provide our readers with more specifics on the US media and reporters who’ve been sitting on this story for several months. Please stay tuned.

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12 days ago, on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I had received the information for that story from multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. Here are a few excerpts from that story:

You see, those alternative news and blog sites put down by the first cited article had it exactly right. Col. Riad al-Assad has been in Turkey, working with U.S. & NATO, right inside the US Incirlik Base in Turkey, to do exactly what he vehemently denies: smuggle US weapons into Syria, participate in US psychological and information warfare inside Syria as the middle-man whom Syrian protesters tend to trust, and help with funneling intelligence and military operators across the border and night-time drop offs by air.

The joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. Since then, in addition to Col. Riad al-Assad, several other high-ranking Syrian military and intelligence officials have been added to operations’ headquarters in the US base. Weekly weapons smuggling operations have been carried out with full NATO-US participation since last May. The HQ also includes an information warfare division where US-NATO crafted communications are directed to dissidents in Syria via the core group of Syrian military and Intelligence defectors.

Yesterday the following report showed up on the Press TV Website:

‘Syrian saboteurs train in Turkey’

The head of Turkey’s main opposition group has accused the government of allowing the country’s soil to be used for training Syrian armed groups, Press TV reports. “Is it appropriate for Turkey to use its soil for training armed forces with the aim of creating unrest in another country?” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of Republican People’s Party (CHP), told reporters in Ankara on Thursday.

“While we have lots of problems ourselves, why do we meddle in the internal affairs of another country?” he added. His remarks came after Turkey’s Taraf daily reported that Ankara was establishing a ‘buffer zone’ in Syria to provide Syrian rebels with shelter.

“We say ‘Great Turkey’, ‘Powerful Turkey’. Can a great and powerful Turkey use its soil to support an armed force with the aim of meddling in another country? Is such an understanding possible?” Kilicdaroglu questioned…

…

The official also accused the Turkish government of having turned into a contractor for the ‘dominant powers.’

…

The story above only goes as far as ‘France’ and the French factor. It stops short of France and other NATO member nations led by the United States in NATO member country-Turkey.

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites- still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared. We sat and waited for a few weeks, and no one followed up. It is Turkey. It is NATO. It is our CIA guys. The media hot shots would not touch those cases without State Department sanction attached…

So, okay. I was the last resort. But that’s not the moral of this post. This goes down as one more example of very many cases of intentional, willful censorship by the US mainstream media and their so-many- times-proven role as distorters of reality and gravediggers of the truth.

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And why haven’t I done this before? As the saying goes ‘choose your enemies carefully’. How about ‘there’s so little time and so much to fight against’? Well, I’m sure you have heard various versions of those sayings and others, and you get my meaning, thus the reason I chose to remain fairly quiet on this important aspect of whistleblowing and whistleblowers.

It will take far more than one brief article/commentary to discuss and analyze the cases of ‘fairytale whistleblowers’ and the purpose of popping up and propping up those select whistleblowers with tremendous help and participation from the media-publishers-Hollywood, corporate-owned and government-managed NGOs. That’s right: it takes the entire village of establishment participants to create these fairytale whistleblowers, promote and market them, and succeed in selling them to the public as genuine. Thus, for the purpose of this warm-up, introduction, I am going to limit myself to a few macro points and examples.

The real whistleblower armed with information really dangerous to the establishment-government ends up with one or more of the following outcomes and consequences: mysterious death, prison, prosecution, persecution, gag order-blackmail- threats (including their family members), financial destruction, scandalization, censure, marginalization by the media-publishers… 

The fairytale whistleblower trap meets the exact opposite end: no ‘real’ threat of prosecution or imprisonment, no ‘real’ censorship-gag order, fame, enormous financial gain-reward, wide media coverage, hero-status granted by the media, mega dollars book and movie deal, position with big-name corporate-foundation owned and government-ruled NGOs, future high-dollar government contracts and positions, clear and present partisan status…

Okay, now I am going to move from the above general ground rules to a bit more specific distinction between real whistleblowers versus fairytale whistleblower traps.

I am going to start with a man who is considered ‘the father of all government whistleblowers.’ I am talking about Dan Ellsberg: “the Most Dangerous Man in America.” It doesn’t matter whether you agree with Ellsberg’s views, politics or style, you know, and so does everyone, that he put it all at risk; that is, enormous risk. They persecuted him, scandalized him, prosecuted him, and were about to imprison him for life. Wouldn’t you agree he is the most famous government whistleblower in our history? Right. Now let me tell you something as someone who knows Ellsberg, has spent personal time with him, and considers him a friend: Ellsberg lives and has been living an extremely modest and frugal life (Dan, I know you read everything I write, and I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing a few personal examples here):

This man traveled (and still does) from one part of the country to the other via the cheapest airfare available, obtained under financial strains and difficulties, and while he suffered from excruciating back/knee pain, to be there for whistleblowers who needed his support. He wears years old pants lovingly patched were needed. He and his family live a modest frugal life.

Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower of all time, was never offered a million-dollar movie deal. He was never given million-dollar book deals. He never took million-dollar positions in multi-million dollar establishment-front NGOs or the like. He has not held any position with government agencies since his case, and has never joined the government tentacle contractors or think-tanks offering mega bucks. You see, Ellsberg is still a very ‘dangerous man.’ And ‘they’ know that. He’d expose fraud and criminality today as fiercely as he did four decades ago. ‘They’ can’t afford having a ‘dangerous man’ like him inside the corrupt circle and extension of the establishment machine.

Then there was, and is, the FBI whistleblower, one of Time Magazine’s persons of the year, Coleen Rowley. She and I may not agree on everything, but a certain dynamic in our relationship remains a constant: I trust this lady, and I respect her integrity. What you see with Rowley is what you get, and what you get is this fierce and unrelenting adherence to integrity.

I remember one of our government whistleblowers’ congressional rallies in 2006 with Coleen Rowley as one of the participants. We had a short coffee recess in a café near one of the congressional buildings. An individual from one of the NGO circles bought a round of coffee for our group of 10-12 people. We offered to reimburse him but he waved us off. At the end of our coffee recess Rowley stopped by his table, placed 5 quarters on the table, and said something like until her official retirement she could not accept anything that could be considered as gift or contribution…

This may seem like an insignificant example to some, but it isn’t. It is a small representation of a much bigger picture of principle and integrity when it comes to Rowley. When she was offered generous speaking fees she’d ask to be compensated for her travel expenses (frugally arranged travel) and donate the fee to various charities. When she dared to challenge the political establishment by running for office at tremendous personal expense (time-energy-emotion), she refrained from being pocketed by anyone – whether those from the Israeli lobby groups who approached her or those from the big corporate fronts. Those of you who’ve known me and my writings know that I rarely compliment or list positives. The top adjectives I use to describe Rowley start with genuine, highly ethical, principled …

Coleen Rowley did not get millions of dollars for books and or Hollywood movie rights either. Her integrity has acted as a very strong repellent against corporate and corporate-foundations. And I have not detected any partisan marketing signal from this lady, and you know how sensitive my detectors for partisanship can be.

I could name and write about many other well-known and genuine whistleblower cases. Whether it is Richard Barlow, the CIA whistleblower who exposed AQ Khan’s nuclear network and paid an incredible price for doing so, or NSA whistleblower Russell Tice, these real heroes, genuine and well-known government whistleblowers, never received million-dollar book deals, multi-million-dollar movie deals, or became members of the mega-dollar contracting-consulting industry. It is as if they have these built-in and coded repellents that keep the establishment and their parasites at bay.

Then you have what I refer to as phony fairytale whistleblowers. Let me give you an example:

A former government insider who has set up a shop, his own firm, and becomes a lobbyist and a consultant, gets highly agitated when the new administration constantly leaves him out of mega-million dollar contract deals. Interestingly, his operations and activities, including his revenge plans against the new administration, were being recorded by the FBI due to nefarious foreign operations he was involved in. He cuts a deal with certain insiders, makes a pact with the ‘other’ political party, all together they get one of the top establishment mainstream media channels on board, and then he writes a true and semi-damaging commentary. Immediately after that, by design he is made out to be a heroic whistleblower.  And right after that, the involved establishment operators on his side concoct a partially-true scenario, and then they sell that as his scripted heroic whistleblowing. Now fast forward only a couple of years:

The man and his spouse collectively get a nearly $2 million book deal, regardless of tanking sale numbers in the end. Right after that they get another $2 million for a Hollywood deal; again, regardless of sinking outcome. Their collaborators pay for their entire legal costs for show only lawsuits. They buy a mansion and start living like their Hollywood impostors. Fast forward again:

Then comes 2008 and the fairytale whistleblower couple have to partially payback their collaborating masters. They sign up to actively campaign for one of the Democratic Party Presidential candidates, and they campaign for that dirty candidate big time. That Democratic Party candidate ends up not getting the presidency, but a lower position: Secretary of State. After a few months in office as Secretary of State, she starts forwarding lucrative government contract to the fairytale whistleblower couple.

It took an entire establishment village to concoct this fairytale whistleblower case. The entire establishment village participated: from the mainstream media providing the script-coverage, to Huffington Post spreading wings to go under, to publisher deal, to Hollywood deal, to Democratic Party position deals, to future lucrative government contract deals. The public was left with this grand and conning illusion. The concocted phony fairytale whistleblowers got a very fair deal and considered it a fair game to be engaged in. Those in the know did recognize the game, and they knew right from the start this was not a whistleblowing case, because real whistleblowing has never been a fair game. And it can never be- unless it is part of a fairytale-one concocted by the masters above.

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Taliban Did Not Kill Afghan President’s Brother: NATO

The man who killed the influential half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai three months ago carried out the attack for personal reasons and was not a Taliban fighter, a senior NATO official said Saturday.

“It was a murder, not an assassination,” the NATO official said of Karzai’s killing, in a briefing to unveil NATO statistics showing a fall in Taliban attacks. “It wasn’t politically motivated and it wasn’t an insurgent masterstroke.”

…

Well, we at Boiling Frogs Post did not need a half-baked NATO report, still far from being factual, to arrive at that conclusion. Three months ago I wrote the following commentary report on Ahmed Wali Karzai’s assassination:

The Assassination of Afghan Kingpin Karzai: A Case of CIA Liabilities Exceeding Its Asset? 

There is no point in wasting too many words and space rehashing what every media outlet has been reporting and recounting on the assassination of Afghan Heroin Kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai. The US media began reporting on the Kingpin, his heroin network and operations, his shady deals and even shadier connections over two years ago. This is how it always goes when the relationship between Kingpins like Karzai starts souring with their masters in Langley…

Then, right after that commentary, no longer able to stand the mainstream and pseudo alternative media’s nonstop spreading of that fantastical script made-up by Langley, I wrote my next analysis of the likely story:

Gimme a Break: The CIA Asset Turned Taliban Bodyguard Assassin?!

The entire scenario of a Taliban-Turned confidante bodyguard didn’t sit well with me; way too Langley. When you get a chance read a bit about the assassination of Vietnam’s Diem Brothers, and then you’ll understand what I mean when I say ‘Too Langley.’

Anyhow, this morning I read the following headline: Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Contact :

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA …

Everything made sense up to this point, but then came the following sentences:

…before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.

…

Utter nonsense; that is, if you start adding 2 and 2 and another 2, and then check the result against the one presented to you by the media. Let’s add up a few twos here:

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a CIA operative and trusted asset for years.

-We know that the CIA relationship- aka working arrangement soured with Ahmed Wali Karzai around 2008, so he was outed by Langley.

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai had a pretty good relationship with a certain group of Taliban figure-heads and was pro dialogue with the Taliban.

-We know that Ahmed Karzai’s bodyguard, Sardar Mohammad, spent years as a CIA trusted asset and US ally.

-We know that Karzai’s Bodyguard was a well-know Taliban Foe and played an important role as a snitch reporting on the Taliban and helping with their arrests.

Here is what the above twos add up to: The known Taliban Foe CIA Asset assassinates former CIA Asset-Operative whose relationship with the CIA had soured, and who had relationships and dialogue with certain Taliban figureheads.

And here is the add up by the media: The bodyguard turned out of the blue into a Taliban and assassinated former US operative who turned out to be a drug kingpin, Ahmed Wali Karzai.

…

So, do you think the MSM and their quasi siblings will go back and retract their previous fantasy-bologna; the one given to them by their Langley bosses? Right! Maybe a few years from now there will be another back-page story giving out other bits and pieces of the real deal, but no way-no chance for the publication of the entire ‘real story.’

By the way, do you remember our ‘Breaking News’ last month, on September 21, which exposed the identities of the CIA analysts at the heart of a notorious failure in the run-up to the September 11th tragedy? You know the one that was not touched by the MSM and pseudo lurkers? Well, finally, about a month later, one finally picked up the story. Pretty much it is the carbon copy of our reports on the case, nonetheless we are glad to see ‘some’ coverage, even though about a month late

We intend to remain fast and furiously truthful when it comes to reporting, analyzing and discussing the issues that remain blacked-out by the MSM-Pseudo misinformation market. And we hope you are resolved and determined to support our one-of-a-kind website with your contributions through your subscription to Boiling Frogs Post.

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Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds discuss the meaning of true alternative media, the role of corporate-foundations in mainstreaming the so-called alternative news, the shameful state of mainstream media as the mouthpiece for the government steered by mega corporations, the joint pseudo alternative-mainstream media black-outs on information pertaining to 9/11, government whistleblowers, secrecy, and the falsification of the truth by tentacles of our shadow government. We go on record with examples of establishment alternatives in disguise and real cases of operatives who sabotage true alternatives like Boiling Frogs Post. We talk about Boiling Frogs Post, our partners and team members, our goals, our pledge to complete independence from the corporates and their foundations, our stand on partisanship, and more!

Here are Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds unplugged & on Fire!

This is the final week of our Boiling Frogs Post subscription drive. As always I want to thank all our subscribers who believe in us; have faith in what we are doing, and have shown their support in action. We want to thank every single one of you who recognize, appreciate and support a true alternative without corporate or foundation ties.

We are entering the final week of our BFP Subscription Drive. We need 176 new subscribers to keep this home reachable to all. Please help us keep this ‘true alternative’ alive and kicking with your subscription. Without a single penny from corporate and their foundations we solely depend on you. Thank you!

Zambada Niebla, son of one of the leaders of the Sinaloa “Cartel,” arguably the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization on the planet, argues in his criminal case, now pending in federal court in Chicago, that he and the leadership of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization, were, in effect, working for the U.S. government for years by providing US agents with intelligence about rival drug organizations.

In exchange for that cooperation, Zambada Niebla contends, the US government granted the leadership of the Sinaloa “Cartel” immunity from prosecution for their criminal activities — including the narco-trafficking charges he now faces in Chicago.

The government, in court pleadings filed last month, denies that claim but at the same time has filed a motion in the case seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not become public during court proceedings.

CIPA, enacted 30 years ago, is designed to keep a lid on public disclosure in criminal cases of classified materials, such as details associated with clandestine FBI or CIA operations. In this case, however, the invocation appears to be for the purpose of covering up a scandalous and shady quid pro quo deal between the US government and a drug cartel. Not only that, the Niebla case also threatens to further expose another US government scandal:

It is important to note again that most of the weapons allowed to cross from the US unimpeded into Mexico by ATF’s Fast and Furious were going to the Sinaloa “Cartel,” according to a report issued in July by Issa and Grassley.

So, given Zambada Niebla’s claim ithat “some of the [Fast and Furious] weapons were deliberately allowed by the FBI and other government representatives to end up in the hands of the Sinaloa “Cartel,” it seems his attorneys may want to pose some serious questions to witnesses suspected of having knowledge of that alleged act, including DEA’s Roberts, as well as the special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Mexico operations, Carol K.O. Lee and the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, Kenneth J. Gonzales.

Such a prospect can’t be very uplifting for the prosecution in Zambada Niebla’s case and might explain, in part, why there is an effort afoot by the US law-enforcement and intelligence officials to cloak the revelations, the evidence, that might surface in the case under the seal of national security.

Prosecutors on Monday, Oct. 3, filed a motion in federal court in Chicago rebutting the accused Mexican narco-trafficker’s argument that he has been denied access to critical evidence in preparing his defense:

In their pleadings, prosecutors again affirm the government’s position that there was no immunity deal offered to the accused narco-trafficker or to the leadership of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization. The pleadings filed by the prosecution do not address directly why the government is seeking to invoke national-security procedures for Zambada Niebla’s case
…

Monday’s filing by prosecutors confirms that Zambada Niebla’s case does raise national security issues that require, according to those prosecutors, that special procedures be established by the court — under a 30-year-old law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act — to assure that classified materials do not become public during the court proceedings.

There seems to be another equally troubling and scandalous angle to this story: the US media’s synchronized and orchestrated black out of this massive scandal, most likely at the behest of the US government:

To date, the US mainstream media has been completely silent on the US government’s effort to invoke CIPA in the Zambada Niebla case; so, kind readers, Narco News is the only authentic news publication providing you with the scoop.

…

Conroy’s final sentence succinctly sums up the reality in the US government’s so-called War on Drugs:

The future of the for-profit prohibition industry and the drug-war pretense that props it up could well depend on assuring that the public remains in the dark…

I am going to add my own little sentence to Conroy’s: …and the US media has been playing its role exceptionally well in this “assurance” project.

I am going to ask our readers to treat this Boiling Frogs Post update as a Code Red Alert for US Media Cover Up, and take the following actions:

1-    Visit Narcosphere and read my solid journalist friend Bill Conroy’s article here.

2-    If you have a website, FB, twitter or similar accounts, post the notice for Conroy’s article, and ask others to do the same.

3-    E-mail this notice and article links to your friends-groups and ask them to do the same.

4-    Go to ‘comments’ section of mainstream media websites, post comments with the link to this story, and put them to shame-although we know they know no shame.

5-    And finally, thank you all for your vigilance.

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Anyhow, today I am going to talk about another very confusing label-adjective that is being used too often, and most often too broadly, confusedly and inaccurately. The fashionable adjective is ‘progressive;’ being progressive. What does it really mean to be progressive? Once upon a time I was sure I knew what it meant. Then came a time when I was not sure what it was. And now, I don’t have a clue what it means to be a progressive. I’ll go even further and say, if it means what many people claim it does, and use it as, then, I consider it an adjective far from flattery.

Sure. You can look it up in any dictionary and give progressive a common definition. Progressive: Favoring or advocating change, improvement, or reform; employing or advocating more enlightened ideas… Or find the popular definition of progressivism as a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through governmental action. If you were to stop here, stay within this once-upon-a-time definition and usage frame, and then call me a progressive, I’d nod and say ‘thank you.’ However life is never that simple. And in this case the overly popular progressive does not mean what it used to mean, and is not used as it once was.

Allow me to put it in perspective. I am going to use real-life context and experiences; the real life being my life, and the experiences coming directly from me and my surroundings:

A few months ago I was having lunch with a good friend whom I’ve known for over 20 years. He has university degrees and a high-level position in an IT related company. I was telling him how happy I’d been without a TV and garbage propaganda sold as news for over the past six years. He agreed and said: “I try to limit myself and only watch progressive news delivered by real progressive reporters. Most of the time I tune in to the Daily Show- Jon Stewart.” I asked: “you mean for fun and satire?’ He said: ‘Not really. For a progressive take on major news.’

My friend used the word ‘progressive’ three times in describing himself and his choice for ‘news.’ I have heard Jon Stewart being described as a real progressive reporter, and a solid source for real news for some progressives more than a few times. Let’s move to another experience-context:

One of the mothers in my daughter’s play group is a teacher who considers herself politically savvy and an activist; that is, in a progressive way. A few weeks ago we were casually chatting about activism and alternative news sites for activism. She said: ‘I don’t like the mainstream. I go to a few progressive sites to get my real news and real take on political issues.’ I asked, ‘Which progressive site tops your list?’ And she replied: ‘Of course Huffington Post!’

To make a long story short on that particular experience: my daughter’s friend’s progressive mother considers Madame Huffington the mother of all progressives. And next:

A few days ago a former colleague stopped by for a cup of coffee. We started talking about the awfulness of our plentiful wars. I took the opportunity and asked him whether he regretted his Obama vote. He responded: ‘Of course not. That was a progressive thing to do. Even with all these wars and stuff we are better off. We proved to the world that yes we can elect a black man as our president, and that is a sign of a progressive nation. Electing Obama as a president is a win for all of us progressives; no matter what…’

Suffice it to say, my progressive friend is determined to vote progressive again in order to make a progressive statement to the rest of the world. He will vote a progressive vote; he will vote Obama.

I know more than a few activists who consider themselves progressive, and define their progressive activism as actively chatting at DailyKos on a daily basis. I also know progressive antiwar activists who consider our war in Libya a progressive intervention, not war. I know a few progressives who consider raising the debt ceiling while increasing government expenditures as we increase all taxes real progress…

[By the way if you are worried about my personal neighbors, friends and former colleagues who were exhibited in the examples above (albeit without their personal information) getting ticked off by what I am saying here, please don’t. They consider this site far from being progressive, thus never visit here.]

If Jon Stewart is a real progressive reporter delivering progressive news; if Arianna Huffington and her AOL-owned site is the mother of all progressive websites; if Obama is a progressive president and electing him a progressive thing to do; if our new wars can be written off as progressive interventions …Then, if you call me a progressive I’ll consider it a cuss word; a real insult!

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Go East Young Man, The Early Years: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas; (Random House, 1974)

The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas; (Random House, 1980)

William O. Douglas holds a few records for his U.S. Supreme Court Justice career, including the longest continuous service (36 years) ever.  Douglas was a passionate defender of the First Amendment and free speech.  That dedication coupled over time with growing concern for the abuse of government authority, as well as support for individuals facing arbitrary and capricious government behavior.

When it came to freedom of the press, well, Douglas walked the talk.  His prolific Supreme Court opinion writing coincided with a career that included 30 books and hundreds of articles.  It isn’t all that surprising that Douglas wrote not one, but two, autobiographies. 

Go East, Young Man, The Early Years (Random House, 1974) covers Douglas’ childhood roots, education, and his experience as a law professor at Columbia and Yale.  Douglas’ analysis of securities law and regulation on the heels of the Crash of 1929 and with the onset of the Great Depression prompted Joseph Kennedy to recruit him to the SEC staff.  Douglas was appointed a Commissioner of the SEC when Kennedy left the SEC in 1936, and Douglas was named the Chairman of the SEC in 1937.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt then nominated him to serve on the Supreme Court in 1939, where he sat until his retirement in 1975.

Douglas’ early enthusiasm for applying law and regulation to cure the markets’ ills grew tempered by experience, an evolution reflected in reflections in Go East, Young Man as well as the second autobiographical volume, The Court Years, 1939-1975.  Douglas watched and documented how idealistic regulatory goals were hijacked by special interest groups, muting his expectations for the value of an active government.  And this First Amendment champion was no innocent, spoon-fed consumer of newspapers, either.  Douglas’ accumulated experience left him likewise concerned about the Fourth Estate.

A recent re-reading of Douglas’ observations about the media in The Court Years sparked this review.  Many Boiling Frogs readers share concerns about the depth and honesty of mainstream journalism on important matters.  Sibel’s experience makes for one example, but there are certainly others.  In Chapter Eleven (“The Press”) of The Court Years, Douglas provides some remarkable observations that will likely resonate with many in the audience here.

Douglas introduced the chapter with a brief description of his basic philosophy, but the second paragraph left little doubt his respect was for the freedom of the press, not the press itself:

In time I wrote many opinions sustaining and defending the press. I, along with Hugo Black, was a strict constructionist who thought the First Amendment meant what it said when it commanded that Congress shall make ‘”no law … abridging” freedom of the press. …

My defense of the press did not stem from my personal opinion of its quality. It was, I thought, as depraved as it had been in Jefferson’s time. My feelings, however, were like Jefferson’s – that craven and abusive and self-seeking as the press is, a much worse press would result from governmental surveillance.

Speaking of surveillance, it is interesting to consider that last observation in light of the recent News Corporation news in the UK.  We may have more to learn about practices like that in the US.  And what if government outsources some of its surveillance as it partners with large media interests?  Some food for thought, perhaps. 

Douglas didn’t paint with an overly broad brush; he had significant respect for some of his contemporaries in journalism, and named and discussed them in the chapter.  Bernstein, Woodward and Graham gather high praise from Douglas for their work in Watergate, for example.  But Douglas’ overall appraisal was pretty bleak, and his concerns are shared by many in the Boiling Frogs community in light of media practices over the last decade or so:

…There were not many real reporters in Washington. A real reporter, as I use the term, is someone who searches out the facts on his or her own. In the capital there were a few solid muckrakers, notably I.F. Stone and Drew Pearson. But most reporters followed the course of least effort and lived on government handouts or curried favor with high officials like J. Edgar Hoover for tip-offs or leads. Presidents, Cabinet officers or agency heads handed out tidbits to favored reporters. Much classified, even top secret, material was leaked in this way. Government’s purpose was served and the reporter who reported faithfully, stressing precisely the right angle, could expect to be rewarded again.

The victim was the public, which did not know who the “undisclosed but reliable source” was. Full disclosure would have revealed the strategy being employed. Much of the disastrous build-up of public support for our activities in Vietnam was the product of these discreet “leaks” to the press.

New York Times, are you listening?  How well have you apologized for your reporting leading into the war with Iraq?  Have you reformed the kind of practices at work in that and other episodes?  Could a loss of public confidence be playing a more important role than the challenge from the Internet in explaining the 80% decline in your stock price since 2004?

Douglas’ observations on the implications of government/media collaboration and the implication for public policy in the Vietnam war years ring bells that are loud, clear, and timely in light of our national security and foreign policy in the last decade:

The official line that was pushed by the government as respects Vietnam was often half-truths or distorted facts or plain lies, as the Pentagon Papers later were to show. The lie was often believed on the inside as well, leading men whose personal opinions differed from the official line to drop out of government or accustom themselves to working in a system that produces cynicism and self-deceit. The fact that a Lyndon Johnson could have his way and mold the American mind as he did is as alarming as were Goebbels’ techniques under Hitler.

In The Court Years, Douglas criticized not just intent but also a tendency toward laziness.  There are exceptions today, to be sure, but in light of our major media’s treatment of issues like the events of September 11, the lead-up to the war with Iraq, and other matters, Douglas observations from 1980 still hold at least a grain of truth today:

… The American press, as I have suggested, is by and large a mimic, not an original research group. It prints handouts from government and from industry and expresses its opinions on those items. But the basic facts are seldom mined; the press does not have the initiative or the zeal to ferret out the original from the false or pretended.

It wasn’t just laziness.  Incentives against independent hard work were frequently part of the system:

… most of the “facts” disclosed in the Pentagon Papers were so well known in Vietnam that only a newsman’s decision (or his paper’s decision) to look the other way and parrot what the military told him, kept the American public from knowing full well what was going on there, at least during the sixties.

The key role in those years was played by the CIA. Yet there were no news stories out of Vietnam even by the New York Times to reveal a) which members of the Saigon government were on the CIA payroll, b) what the CIA rates of pay were, c) how the CIA organized riots, d) how much they paid those who shouted, those who carried banners, those who only marched. … In later years Americans were entitled to know these same facts about CIA activities in Laos and Cambodia. But few, very few, such facts filtered through until much later. The press was greatly remiss in our “war” in Southeast Asia.

Between 1959 and 1963 the New York Times had outstanding reporters in Vietnam. …. Yet few of the vital facts ever found their way into print. Why this great, this enormous default? It is hard to believe, but I think it is true that in those years our press in Vietnam was as much under the thumb of the armed services as Russia’s press is under the thumb of the politburo.

See also the following compilation of the Supreme Court opinions in the Pentagon Papers case in particular, Justice Douglas’ dissenting opinion in a 5-4 decision suggesting Beacon Press might be prosecuted for publishing the Pentagon Papers despite Sen. Mike Gravel had already read them into the Congressional Record. 

“The story of the Pentagon Papers is a chronicle of suppression of vital decisions to protect the reputations and political hides of men who worked an amazingly successful scheme of deception on the American people. They were successful not because they were astute but because the press had become a frightened, regimented, submissive instrument, fattening on favors from those in power and forgetting the great tradition of reporting.”

Douglas’ discussion in The Court Years amplified how his heightened concern for regulatory agency behavior joined at the hip with his concern for media quality:

…The press is very sensitive to its own First Amendment rights, but it has done very little to promote First Amendment values. … The role of the press is not to defend any institution or any party but to search for the truth involved in important public issues. Many of the “facts” lie buried in the files of the federal bureaus in Washington. The Freedom of Information Act of 1966 … was designed to make those agencies open their files. They did not fully do so in my time. While sporadic efforts have been made and some court contests ensued, the press at no time waged an all-out campaign to get at the truth. It was easier to “cover” the institutions, take their press releases, and accept the “official” version as the gospel. The result was that, in my time, the people knew less and less what forces were behind the decisions of the agencies. If the press had done its job, the pitiless spotlight of publicity would have exposed the cancerous condition of our government and disclosed the powerful and evil lobbies that more and more dictate policies.

The idealistic public servant that entered the SEC back in the early 1930s had grown sharply critical of the motivations and effect behind government’s role in the economy.  Douglas’ New Deal enthusiasm has drawn criticism from some quarters, but we would do well to learn from the lessons he learned over time. And since he wrote the book in the 1970s, the fact that his observations seem to ring so true today suggest we have yet to take those lessons to heart.  Douglas didn’t expect us to, either:

Yet looking ahead, the days seem dark to me. Great wealth controls most of our news outlets. The conservative influence of the press will continue; a Society of the Dialogue, as espoused by the First Amendment, will be increasingly difficult to stimulate.

…

Provocative and frequently controversial, Douglas has drawn heat as well as admiration.  His inspirational call for the press to serve the public by actively seeking the truth might be cheapened by critics who have challenged some elements of Douglas’ own memoirs.  But Douglas still serves as a valuable lighthouse, and his critique and challenge to the media matters today, 30 years after The Court Years. 

Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it, the saying goes.  The manufactured myth that shrouded the truth of the events of September 11, 2001 and helped shape our foreign policy over the last decade should be viewed in this light.  Again, there are exceptions in the media, and a recent article in Vanity Fair titled “The Kingdom and the Towers” indicates some stalwarts are still out there.  But in a democracy dependent on majority rule, where a majority of people were shown by survey to have believed that Saddam Hussein played a key role in the events of 9/11, the willingness of many elements of the media to serve or otherwise enable dishonest leaders shaping public perception calls out for a rebirth in journalism.  Douglas’s autobiographies can provide guidance on that quest.

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DailyKos has acted to ban commenters from linking to Mondoweiss, charging me with anti-Semitism. It is a disgraceful smear and hides DailyKos’s real anxiety: it cannot deal with the issue of Palestinian human rights, any more than the Democratic Party can, and so Israel supporters are striking at me.

            …

And this from another writer over there at Mondoweiss:

…Several times over the last few months I’ve been alerted by friends regarding ‘diaries’ by members of ‘Team Shalom’ at Daily Kos highly critical of Mondoweiss. Why does this matter? For our site, I don’t think it does. It’s clear some of our biggest detractors read this site avidly, including the comments that ultimately drive traffic.  Team Shalom has run a campaign to have this site banned from Daily Kos (even tho I am not aware posters there link to this site with any regularity, perhaps I am wrong) and yesterday one of my friends who posts there wrote to inform me they have achieved this goal.

…

You can read more on other recent censorship incidents by these Israeli Lobby parasites here.

Does this incident, this exposé, come as a surprise to me? Of course not. After Obama’s election any discussion threads about me or my case were also banned from this Parasitic-Zionist-Neoconistic mega establishment mini mouthpiece. I didn’t bother writing about it. With the reasons so obvious, with the pattern so very clear, and with the involved participants’ agenda extremely translucent, why waste time to dwell upon it?

It took one article to get on this extension of partisan status quo’s black-list. While foaming at the mouth they yelled ‘How dare she criticize Obama?! She should just focus on Bush-Cheney FBI and DOJ, and leave the rest of the politics to our experts….’

Any real criticism and exposure of Obama-Cons made it to the top of their ‘no-no’ list.

Same goes for other ‘dangerous’ topics. Even though, initially, this forum started off on the back of rational and legitimate 9/11 critics, despite milking the attention on 9/11 related topics at the time, it very quickly changed course and started banning and censoring any and all topics related to 9/11.

The real establishment is nonpartisan. It seeks power, control, and of course mega dollars. For them real independent and rational ‘ideas’ are dangerous. For them the ‘free exchange of ideas’ is extremely dangerous. For them the possibility of the exchange of independent rational ideas leading to ‘real action’ is detrimental. So be realistic and ask yourself what are they to do? Shouldn’t they rein in any forums and channels with any potential of becoming a place for any rational independent ideas that may lead to any real action? Right. Then, welcome the phony alternative news; welcome the little parasitic puppet forums; welcome the existence of sites such as the Daily Kos. Need I say more?

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Welcome. This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett for BoilingFrogsPost.com :

“Despite the faux-shock with which the mainstream media seems to be “discovering” the extent of Murdoch’s political clout, the facts about News Corporation’s ownership of a bewildering number of media outlets around the world has been a matter of public record for some time. Nor should the idea that Murdoch uses his political influence to shape public policy come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the admissions from his broadcasting networks and from Murdoch himself that this is precisely what he has been attempting to do.”

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Mainstream media is up in arms over the latest revelations in the ever-growing Murdoch scandal. In a firestorm of outrage, reporters are screaming at the top of their lungs about stunning privacy violations. Members of Congress passionately demand that everyone responsible be investigated and prosecuted. In his letter to FBI Director Mueller, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, had cited reports that News of the World journalists “attempted to obtain phone records of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping.”

He also cited reports that the reporters had solicited a New York police officer “to gain access to the content of private phone records” of the 9/11 victims. The NYPD does not intend to conduct an investigation into these shocking allegations. They’re leaving it up to the federal authorities, even though accusations of bribery against one of its own would certainly be within the police department’s purview. Ironically, the FBI has been aware of News Corp’s criminal misconduct for years, but elected not to pursue it until now.

We could only wish that our politicians, law enforcement and the mainstream media were eager to act when our own government engages in the same abuses against law-abiding citizens. Anyone responsible for conducting warrantless surveillance, wiretapping and hacking should be held accountable. The Department of Justice announced that it does not intend to prosecute any government officials responsible for unlawful acts committed under the guise of a “war on terror”. Instead, whistleblowers who exposed the very unlawful acts in question are the ones being prosecuted.

In the mean time, the Murdoch firestorm continues to spread high and wide, engulfing mainstream media’s power structure in its wake. Implications of this case go far beyond the unsavory tabloid tactics employed by the international media empire. It will mar and negatively alter the image of journalism, politics and law enforcement. This case exposed the corruption and media manipulation on a mind-boggling scale that involves 9/11 victims, politicians, celebrities, the royal family, police corruption, murdered children and victims of the 2005 London subway bombings. Murdoch tried to downplay the magnitude of this fiasco by telling his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, that his executives had made only “minor mistakes.” These peccadilloes went far beyond digging through garbage bins. They reportedly included unauthorized wiretapping, bribing the police to gain law enforcement access to confidential records (including medical and financial files of prominent politicians) and hacking.

While it’s only now exploding on such a massive scale in the worldwide media, the Murdoch case is actually quite old. News Corp. paid out more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits that accused their journalists of using information obtained by illegally hacking into mobile phones of public figures, politicians, sports stars and entertainers, as well as gaining unlawful access to tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills. According to the Guardian, Murdoch’s newspapers entered into confidential out-of-court settlement agreements with respect to three such cases, gagging their victims in the process.

During his Parliament testimony, Murdoch repeatedly slapped the table with his hand and did his best to appear indignant. He touted the number of his employees, made excuses for not knowing that they were breaking the law and denied having any responsibility whatsoever as the head of the company. These denials ring hollow, since Murdoch had to be aware of the lawsuits and investigations going on against his company for several years. The News of the World entered into settlement agreements, paid out huge amounts to its victims, was confronted with the evidence of unlawful activities by its reporters and took legal action to silence their targets. While Murdoch refuses to accept any responsibility, he claims to be the best person to stay in charge and “clean this up”. Why, then, didn’t he clean it up years earlier?

In 2008, when the high court ordered the News of the World to pay damages to one of its victims, the paper published the following message: “It is not for the powerful and the influential to run to the courts to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are TRUE…This is all about the public’s right to know.” At the same time, company’s lawyers were persuading the courts to seal the files containing evidence of their illegal actions and paying off its targets to ensure their silence.

In doing so, they prevented the public from knowing anything about criminal behavior by journalists on its payroll. Saying the right thing and doing the right thing is not quite the same.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Murdoch downfall is the elaborate cover-up that went on for years, including media blackouts, suppression of relevant information through avoidance and rampant police corruption. Free press turned out to be Scott-free, operating under the misapprehension that they are above the law. Their arrogance was bought with bribes, as well as close-knit connections to law enforcement, prominent politicians and the Saudi shadow government.

Since August 2006, the evidence of wrongdoing was gathering dust at Scotland Yard, including 11,000 pages of handwritten notes. They were filled with explosive revelations, listing nearly 4000 celebrities, politicians, sports players, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by News of the World. Interestingly enough, senior police officials claim that no one bothered to process and analyze the damning paperwork, because they were too busy with counterterrorism investigations. In reality, the police have become so intertwined with the tabloid that they had a common agenda of shutting down any investigations into their own wrongdoing.

Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, who previously served as the editor of the News of the World, appeared before the Commons media committee in 2003 and testified that her newspaper paid police for stories. She later retracted that statement and claimed that she was referring to the industry in general.

Members of Parliament are apoplectic over a ”revolving door” between the police and News International. Company executives enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the beginning of the hacking scandal in 2006, Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson shared meals with company executives and editors 18 times. Assistant Commissioner John Yates also regularly dined with editors from News International. Andy Hayman, who was running the hacking investigation as the chief of the counterterrorism unit, socialized with News International personnel as well. During the same time frame, senior police officials assured Parliament, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the news agency in question. Hayman left the Metropolitan Police, turning in his badge for a pen, in December 2007. He was hired to write a column for The Times of London, a News International paper. Apparently, loyalty to the Murdoch Empire is richly rewarded.

Faced with worldwide scrutiny, police later admitted that they botched up the case and acknowledged being inappropriately cozy with those they were obligated to investigate. Stephenson resigned because of his close ties to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World editor involved in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal. Stephenson hired Neil Wallis as his secret PR advisor, from whom he accepted lavish offerings.

Within 24 hours of Stephenson’s resignation, his deputy, John Yates, followed suit. Yates was set to be suspended because of his links with Wallis and his refusal to reopen the case into phone-hacking on two separate occasions. While he was working for the police on the hacking case, Wallis was reporting back to News International. He had also informed Murdoch’s former aide Rebekah Brooks about The New York Times’ reporting on the matter.

Brooks is one of ten participants arrested so far on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption. During her latest appointment with the police, she was arrested and promptly bailed out. Brooks is known to have many friends in high places. Those who know her describe Rebekah as a networker extraordinaire. “She buttered up a lot of middle-aged men, and she’s good at that. They probably each thought they were a special adviser and confidant. She was very good at keeping those old warhorses well and truly on her side,” said one former co-worker.

British Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly had dozens of interactions with News International executives and editors, including Rebekah Brooks. She defiantly continued to socialize with political figures amidst the furore over the Prime Minister’s ties to the Murdoch Empire. Brooks managed to keep her job even as the 168-year-old News of the World was shut down, displacing 200 other journalists. Dubbed Murdoch’s “fifth daughter“, Brooks’s closeness to the octogenarian magnate was apparent when Murdoch was asked what his priority was in the current crisis. He pointed to Brooks and said: “This one.”

Murdoch initially insisted that Brooks must not resign, but caved in to the pressure from News Corp.’s second biggest shareholder, Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. His slice of the pie is topped only by the holdings of Rupert Murdoch himself. As soon as Alwaleed called for the resignation of Brooks, Murdoch and Cameron concurred. In addition to appeasing the richest man of the Arab world and a longstanding Murdoch ally, these public statements appear to be an attempt to distance themselves from the frenzy prompted by the sensational allegations.

Alwaleed has financial links to the “Ground Zero Mosque”, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan. He was quoted asserting that Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making “if they unite through economic interests, not political…We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.”

Alwaleed has bragged that it only took a phone call to ensure that the Fox News Channel coverage of Muslims rioting in France not be described as “Muslim”. Money buys all kinds of undue influence over American and British mainstream media. Is anyone still surprised that there is virtually no open discussion as to the issues of Saudi influence in the western media and politics, as well as Saudi links to Al Qaeda and 9/11?

The Murdoch scandal took another dark turn, as the News of the World whistleblower, reporter Sean Hoare, was found dead at his home on July 18, 2011. Just one week before his demise he told the Guardian that “there’s more to come, this is not going to go away.” He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in general being cleaned up, stating that as his reason for blowing the whistle. Hoare said, “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation.” He emphasized that he was not making any money from telling his story.

Sean Hoare recently told the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were given access to police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals, in exchange for bribes to police officers. He explained that journalists were able to pinpoint the coordinates of their targets through the use of “pinging” by measuring the distance between a cell phone and a number of phone masts to determine the location of a person they were following.

After Hoare was found dead, there was a notable delay in the arrival of forensics officers at the scene. His death is currently being treated as “unexplained”, but police commented that they are not considering it “suspicious”.

To deal with the public scrutiny, Murdoch hired Steven Rubenstein, a PR guru, whose clients also include Robert De Niro, David Letterman, Paramount Pictures and its head, Brad Grey. Murdoch was also briefed by Dan Tench, one of the UK’s leading entertainment lawyers. Michael Wolff, Murdoch’s biographer, said the head of the media empire is “awful at this sort of stuff. He is pretty inarticulate, mumbles all the time and is incredibly defensive… that is the reason that when he does do interviews they tend to be to his own papers.”

The firestorm already crossed the ocean, as Les Hinton, CEO of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, resigned. Hinton has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and headed Murdoch’s British newspaper arm while the hacking and corruption took place. In 2009, Hinton testified to a Parliamentary Committee that phone hacking was an isolated incident involving solely one jailed reporter. Scotland Yard assigned a new team to the hacking allegations only after The New York Times published an article raising questions about the mishandling of the case.

The police are just now starting to notify nearly 4000 targets in the staggering scandal. More arrests are looming on the horizon, as the Metropolitan Police itself is the subject of a judicial inquiry into its handling of this case, as well as the allegations of bribes received by police officials in exchange for supplying confidential information to reporters.

Why didn’t anyone stop the corruption? The Murdoch Empire simply seemed too big to fail, too massive to expose. News International Limited owns the Sunday Times of London, the Times of London, the British tabloid The Sun and newspapers such as the News Limited in Australia and all over the world. It’s a subsidiary of News Corp, a publicly traded American company, whose U.S. holdings include the Wall Street Journal, Fox Broadcasting Co. network, Fox Entertainment Group, New York Post, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, HarperCollins Publishing and two dozen local television stations.

Authorities were looking the other way while the media monopoly continued to grow. The Justice Department that was so eager to pursue a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft was not the least bit concerned with the worldwide reach of the Murdoch tentacles. During the last two decades, the number of corporations controlling most of America’s mainstream media outlets, book publishers and movie companies has dwindled from 50 to only 5.

Corporate news media skillfully creates an impression of being free, independent and objective. In reality, the mainstream is quite crafty at pursuing certain stories and blackballing the matters it elects to suppress. Unpopular topics are disposed of by omission, as the media moguls have perfected the art of avoidance. For example, the tragic demise of a child receives mind-numbing amounts of tedious coverage, pushing the populace to disregard multiple murders happening because of misguided wars. Stories that are truly sensational are being avoided or purposely downplayed, while the pieces that pose no threat to the establishment are unduly sensationalized.

The press tiptoes around the minefield of reports dealing with national security shortcomings, which are amongst the least likely topics to receive substantial media exposure. If suppressed stories receive coverage in the so-called “alternative media,” the mainstream reluctantly jumps on the bandwagon. They do so only to dismantle and discredit any politically inconvenient exposé that makes it past the silent treatment stage. The government gets exonerated for their unlawful activities under the guise of “the war on terror,” greedy corporations are defended as “job creators” and corrupt management is favored over “disgruntled” employees with an “axe to grind”.

When so few serve as the opinion-makers for so many, there is no true freedom of the media and no sincere representation of diverse points of view.

The mainstream loathes the alternative media’s use of the Internet, since it defies their blatant media manipulation – but they have a plan for dealing with any threats to their dominance. Meet the Protect IP Act or PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, also known as United States Senate Bill S.968). Senator Wyden placed a hold on this deceptive bill, noting that overreaching legislation poses a significant threat to Internet commerce, innovation and free speech.

The bill seeks to give control of the Internet to government agencies and corporations by allowing them to blacklist and deny public access to “rogue” websites, especially those registered outside the United States. It would give the United States Department of Justice the power to “expeditiously” make the target website invisible. It would also include the removal of hyperlinks to such websites from search engines and other sites linking to content.

The bill was criticized for not being specific about what constitutes an “infringing” web site and for providing sweeping new powers for removing Internet content without any notification to the alleged offenders. Similar legislation was previously introduced under the name of Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010 and was re-written under the new heading.  

PIPA is supported by government associations, unions, corporations and trade associations. It is opposed by individuals, consumer rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as Google, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch.  

Even without this legislation websites are already being seized by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE’s stated primary mission is “to protect national security, public safety and the integrity of our borders”. Instead, between 2008 and 2011, in the course of its operation “In Our Sites” ICE conducted 2,889 website investigations, devoting 834,360.00 hours to policing the Internet. This is a harbinger of bad things to come.

In the agency’s official presentation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), belligerent ICE bragged that it was “Kicking ass and seizing websites – While you were eating your turkey.” Terrorists must have been shaking in their boots reading about the Department of Homeland Security’s priorities. At the same time, the DHS is not the least bit concerned with Saudi involvement in continuing to fund terrorist activities, while they freely operate in the U.S. and abroad, exercising unprecedented control over our mainstream media.

Conflicts of interest that influence media and politics are prevalent on both sides of the shark-infested pond. Tony Blair attempted to downplay the Murdoch scandal by stating that he was surprised by the amount of attention it was receiving. According to Blair, such activities were business as usual for any newspaper and he learned to just “live with it”.

Surely that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Blair’s close relationship with Murdoch, widespread beliefs that Murdoch was secretly functioning as the hidden member of Tony Blair’s cabinet, the fact that Blair aided Murdoch in overcoming other investigations and the fact that Blair was promised a senior role in his News Corporation (which may no longer seem as such a tempting proposition). Blair is also well known for doing his best to protect the interests of his powerful Saudi friends and alliances, so his efforts to downplay the Murdoch debacle might serve a dual purpose.

Apparently, cartoonish plans of world domination exist not only in “Austin Powers” movies, but also in real life.

Now Rupert Murdoch is taking out ads to say “We are sorry.” I bet everyone responsible for the News of the World disaster is sorry – sorry they got caught. Whether justice prevails at the end of the day remains to be seen. At the very least, Murdoch should find out how his victims felt when their privacy was stolen by his unscrupulous henchmen. Unlike their unsuspecting targets, the Murdoch Empire actually deserves such exposure to let the world see that the Emperor has no clothes.    

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 I said I was not going to waste time writing about the Ahmed Wali Karzai assassination story and let the stenographers in our media spread the preapproved nonsense. I wrote my piece and provided you with my own humble two cents, and I was ready to move on:

…on the other hand, once things sour, when those liabilities begin to surpass the asset and the profits, you’ll see the media rush and begin swarming around the no-longer-a-favorite Kingpin. Then comes a short period of silence, and after that Bam: You have an assassinated, murdered, suicide-d, or disappeared Old Kingpin case. Alas; no surprise there since this is how these Kingpins ultimately meet their end- this one ‘supposedly’ by the currently fashionable enemy: the Taliban. I promise you won’t be hearing a single word about this in a few days and forever-The Langley Way.

            …

The entire scenario of a Taliban-Turned confidante bodyguard didn’t sit well with me; way too Langley. When you get a chance read a bit about the assassination of Vietnam’s Diem Brothers, and then you’ll understand what I mean when I say ‘Too Langley.’

Anyhow, this morning I read the following headline: Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Contact :

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA …

Everything made sense up to this point, but then came the following sentences:

…before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.

…

Utter nonsense; that is, if you start adding 2 and 2 and another 2, and then check the result against the one presented to you by the media. Let’s add up a few twos here:

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a CIA operative and trusted asset for years.

-We know that the CIA relationship- aka working arrangement soured with Ahmed Wali Karzai around 2008, so he was outed by Langley.

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai had a pretty good relationship with a certain group of Taliban figure-heads and was pro dialogue with the Taliban.

-We know that Ahmed Karzai’s bodyguard, Sardar Mohammad, spent years as a CIA trusted asset and US ally.

-We know that Karzai’s Bodyguard was a well-know Taliban Foe and played an important role as a snitch reporting on Taliban and helping with their arrest.

Here is what the above twos add up to:

The known Taliban Foe CIA Asset assassinates former CIA Asset-Operative whose relationship with the CIA had soured, and who had relationships and dialogue with certain Taliban figureheads.

And here is the add up by the media:

The bodyguard turned out of the blue into a Taliban and assassinated former US operative who turned out to be a drug kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai.

Now it is your turn. Please go ahead and do the math.

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****

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There is no point in wasting too many words and space rehashing what every media outlet has been reporting and recounting on the assassination of Afghan Heroin Kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai. The US media began reporting on the Kingpin, his heroin network and operations, his shady deals and even shadier connections over two years ago. This is how it always goes when the relationship between Kingpins like Karzai starts souring with their masters in Langley:

For years, or actually decades, while the relationships are prosperous and mutually beneficial, these Kingpins are miraculously shielded from the media; here and abroad. No matter how much evidence and legitimate reports from even more legitimate sources come available you can’t get the media to even mention Kingpins like Karzai; that is, when the Langley bosses see that their assets surpass all the negative liabilities. On the other hand, once things sour, when those liabilities begin to surpass the asset and the profits, you’ll see the media rush and begin swarming around the no-longer-a-favorite Kingpin. Then comes a short period of silence, and after that Bam: You have an assassinated, murdered, suicide-d, or disappeared Old Kingpin case. Alas; no surprise there since this is how these Kingpins ultimately meet their end- this one ‘supposedly’ by the currently fashionable enemy: the Taliban. I promise you won’t be hearing a single word about this in a few days and forever-The Langley Way.

That’s right. This is why I am not going to sit here and type away on this particular Kingpin; the Old Kingpin. While the media is busy getting the readers’ and listeners’ and watchers’ attention on the assassination of the Old Kingpin, Langley is busy installing their already groomed and prepared new Kingpin; while  no one is looking. Instead I am busy looking at several likely candidates; the possible new heirs to the Old Kingpin. I have a fairly short but fairly solid list. Today I’ll provide you with one from that list, in an attempt to get you to look at a possible new Kingpin the Media-Langley duo doesn’t want you to be looking at.

Langley’s “Chubby” Protégé: Hamed Wardak

About two years ago while no one was really looking at the people Langley didn’t want them to look at, I wrote a piece called: In the Name of a General, His Son, a Spook & the Godmother of Neocons. Please take some time and read the entire piece (it is fairly long and comprehensive) in order to get the entire picture on this potential Kingpin. Here are a few excerpts from what I wrote on Hamed Wardak:

Once upon a time there was an Afghani general named Abdul Rahim Wardak. He had studied in both US and Egyptian military schools before joining the army in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, a few years after he joined the army, he decided to defect and joined the Mujahideen movement. We don’t know exactly who in the United States gave him the order to defect, because no one is willing to go on record. However, we know very well that due to their fight against the Communist Soviet Union, the Mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, along with several other not as significant nations. We also know that back then, when we were supporting, financing, training and cheering for the Mujahideen as ‘freedom fighters,’ those labeled today as terrorist evil-doer radicals, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, were viewed and treated as our allies and entourage. 

…

Our General Wardak disappeared from the Afghan scene at the beginning of the civil war in the 1990s. He brought his family to the United States where he settled comfortably with enough wealth from undetermined sources, and he enrolled his son, Hamed, in Georgetown University.

Hamed Wardak, a quite chubby and ambitious young man, arrived at Georgetown University, and by the time he got to his senior level he was taken under the wings of one of his professors as her protégé. That professor was none other than our Jeane Kirkpatrick, the proud Godmother of the Neocons. Our savvy readers will understand that this was not due to chance and Hamed’s stars being all aligned. After all, his General father had done his job well serving Kirkpatrick’s and other Neocons’ foreign policy objectives at all costs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As mentioned earlier, his General father was flown to the US several times and coached by this crowd to give speeches before the US Congress to obtain funds for their overt and covert operations involving the Saudis, Pakistanis and Taliban. So no, these relationships don’t evaporate and disappear. Wardak and his family were accommodated quite well after they were brought to the US, and the Neocons’ future plans for Afghanistan would have plenty of roles for the Wardak family to fill.

Wardak Junior was a known figure among the radical pro-Taliban sympathizers in Washington DC circles. Here are a few quotes from an excellent piece written on the Wardak(s) and Karzai(s): …

…

The Karzai brothers took a great interest in Wardak Junior, and he enjoyed the benefits of the Karzais’ flashy and high-flying friends. After the September 11 Terror Attacks, the Karzais made Hamed the Vice President of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, which was founded by Mahmood Karzai. As I mentioned briefly in my piece, our Neocon Ex-Congressman Don Ritter happens to be the co-founder of this organization. Hamed was also appointed to an advisor’s post with President Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. No small accomplishment for the barely 30 year old Hamed!

Hamed Wardak’s most productive venture in tapping into the US Defense Sector Pot(s) of Gold began with joining a Washington DC contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, who happened to be a very close buddy of Qayum Karzai…

…

Our General Wardak was promoted and taken back to Afghanistan to serve in Karzai’s regime as the Minister of Defense. Was he given citizenship when he was brought back to the US to settle? No one is really talking. Did anyone in Afghanistan question having US citizens in their quasi democratic government posts? No one in the US media is reporting. If you are trusted within the Afghan Diaspora in the DC area you’ll hear hushed comments about Wardak, his corrupt practices, and the rumors, fairly consistent rumors, of his close connections to the poppy world.

Back to Wardak Junior in Washington DC; With his dad now in Afghanistan as the Defense Minister, and with his Karzai partners and friends, he was busy running from one pot of gold to another: …

…

Okay, enough excerpts for a bit of background, but as I mentioned you need to read the entire piece here to get the entire picture. Now let’s get a more up-to-date report on where Hamed Wardak is today and what he’s been doing.

A few months after my coverage of Wardaks-Karzai-Ritter the media began taking  notice of Langley’s “Chubby Boy” Hamed Wardak:

A major investigation has been launched into contracts awarded by coalition forces in Afghanistan that are worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The probe into construction and logistics contracts of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has been ordered by Major General Nick Carter, commander of Isaf forces in the south of the country.

Members of prominent Afghan families, including Hashmat and Ahmed Wali Karzai, brothers of President Karzai, and Hamed Wardak, the son of the Defence Minister, Rahim Wardak, are among those accused of controlling private security firms benefiting from lucrative security contracts by paying off the Taliban.

…

Then, in August 2010 the news of Hamed Wardak being arrested by the FBI came out, but where? Not in the US media. Not a peep. The news of the FBI raid resulting in the arrest of Langley’s Chubby Wardak and other Afghan operators only made it into a few foreign publications and in very small print:

Hamed Wardak, son of Afghan Defense Minister and the owner of NCL international company, has been detained in America. Also arrested in the US are Asaadullah Ramin, brother of a former Cabinet minister, and a brother of Hamidullah Farooqi, former Transport Minister.

…

Again, Chubby Wardak’s quiet release also didn’t make it into the US media. According to Langley former insiders: ‘FBI had to back off once the Langley men stepped in to rescue their very own boy.’

More recently a far more detailed profile of Hamed Wardak emerged in DC Guest of a Guest, and thankfully I had copied the content before it started disappearing and reappearing in the net archives:

While Mr. Wardak is in fact a refugee from Afghanistan, having come to the United States at age three, he is also profiting from the War in Afghanistan, now in its 10th year, to the tune of almost half a billion dollars, according to the Washington Post. In addition, he is connected to lobbying efforts (spearheaded by Patton Boggs, LLC – a sponsor of Wednesday’s event) to keep the United States involved in the Afghanistan conflict, according to The Nation.

… 

Guess where this “Chubby Billionaire’s” office for his billions of dollars operations is located? Right; in McLean Virginia, literally a few blocks from his Langley Operators:

Though Washington Life magazine, another sponsor of Wednesday night’s “Blue Key: Miami to DC“ event, called Wardak a “philanthropist,” the magazine makes no mention (and neither did Wardak) of his McLean-based “transportation company” that scored up to $360 million in defense contracts for safe transportation for U.S. trucks and convoys in Afghanistan. ..Wardak is profiled as a man of many connections, possibly to the Taliban and corrupt Afghan officials, and mysterious spending and accounting. Wardak’s money comes from a transportation company that, according to the Washington Post, is based in “a bare bones office” in McLean, VA “with no trucks.”

…

As with many Kingpins, “chubby” Wardak too appears to follow the ‘Front Businesses’ and ‘Glitzy Miami Circle’ trend:

Mired in scandal, Wardak would seemingly like for everyone to associate his name with Ludus Athletics, a new clothing company he founded recently in Miami. At this time, the Ludus Athletics Web site is merely a full-page advertisement for Wednesday’s event. He would also seemingly like for you to associate his name with peace efforts between the United States and Afghanistan. According to HamedWardak.com, in which he bills himself as CEO of Ludus Athletics (again, failing to mention NCL Holdings), Wardak says that he “plays an active role in the US-Afghanistan relations.

…

You know how the Hollywood movies depict kingpin types, usually those from Columbia: Big Miami homes and parties with go-go dancers entertaining the rich powerful ugly old men?  Now read this from a party thrown by Chubby Wardak at a hot DC club:

Dignitaries such as Zalmay Khalilzad, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, and Washington’s elite and social set nevertheless turned out on Wednesday to see the POV at the W Hotel “turned into an an ultrachic Miami lounge,” as the event invitation promised. It was rumored that Ludus imported young Miami women up the East Coast to the Nation’s capital to dance scantily-clad in new Ludus Athletic wear, while Miami’s “top DJ’s” helped Ludus and other sponsors to convert the POV at the W hotel “for the night into the hottest club in DC.” Other attendees and VIPs listed on the event press release include Qubad Talabany, son of President Jalal Talabany of Iraq, and Roman Popadiuk, US Ambassador to Ukraine. There were also assorted Ultimate Fighting Championship celebrities in attendance.

…

Of course even the savviest journalists wouldn’t have been able to discern the Langley guys among the big crowd, but trust me many of them were present according to my retired but active Langley source.

I guess you now understand why I don’t bother covering Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Old Kingpin that proved to exceed in liabilities for the CIA over assets. Instead I’ve been busy looking into identifying and following the current Kingpin(s), the valuable assets bringing high-value profits for our Langley. The Old Kingpin is dead, but not the operations, profits, and Langley’s new Kingpin(s) already hard at work while completely shielded from the media’s long-ceased-to-exist probing eyes.

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Russ Baker joins us to discuss the case of the former Israeli Spy Chief Meir Dagan, who contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment, considers a military attack on Iran “a stupid idea”, and criticizes Israel for having failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians by foolishly ignoring the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He talks about the Obama administration’s harsh and hawkish stand on Iran, the evidence pointing to a plan to create an “Arab Spring” for the Good Old Boys—CIA, banks, and oil companies, the poor journalism by the mainstream media in covering Libya and the alleged crimes committed by Qaddafi as a part of a larger disinformation effort of the sort that has always been part and parcel of war, and more!

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Family of Secrets- – the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the founder of WhoWhatWhy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.

Here is our guest Russ Baker unplugged!

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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Their recent book, Crossing Zero, focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration’s evolving military and political strategy, those who have been chosen to implement it, and the long-term consequences for the U.S. and the region. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media.

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Paul Craig Roberts joins us to discuss the September 11 terrorist attacks as the defining event of our time, which has launched our nation on interminable wars of aggression, a domestic police state where the American President is a Caesar and completely above the law. He describes the US corporate media’s role today, which is to serve the government and the interest groups that empower the government, their astonishing blackout on legitimate investigations regarding 9/11 such as the investigation results supported by more than 1500 architects, and how currently the majority of Americans are ruled by propaganda and with little regard for truth and little access to it. Mr. Roberts talks about the conflicting, ever-changing and in many ways dubious accounts of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Military Industrial Complex’ need for the next ‘black hat,’ the question of China, and more!

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has been reporting on executive branch and cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. He has written or co-written eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books, and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Mr. Roberts has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy, and has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations. His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews, Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, Lew Rockwell’s web site, CounterPunch, and the American Free Press.

Here is our guest Paul Craig Roberts unplugged!

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They say don’t count your chickens before they hatch. I say this doesn’t apply to the US political hatching machine, since there are more than chickens at stake. I’ll go even further and say we must start counting the eggs regardless of how many ultimately hatch. The cycle of laying eggs to hatched chickens is way too long in US political machinations hard at work towards the new world order. If one wants to keep up and be aware, one must pay close attention to the incubators and each entering egg. The Obama administration’s Bin Laden Death Script is the new designated incubator for a special batch of eggs. No matter how many will actually hatch. No matter how many will turn into specially designed future egg-laying chickens. What matters is the ultimate objective in engineering this latest designed political incubator. What matters is the path or paths set to follow the machine’s chicken delivery conveyor belts that will extend and wrap the globe, and deliver the new order.

We have had a few chickens hatch immediately following the death script; the early chicks. After the Osama Death Script release Obama’s job approval ratings jumped 11 percentage points to 57 percent according to a New York Times poll, and 9 percentage points according to a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. The Osama Death Script also brought a reversal in months of rising opposition to the war, when polls showed that record-low levels of Americans thought the war had  been worth it in the long run. Also, a slim majority of Americans now say things are going well for the United States in Afghanistan, a four-percentage-point increase from late March. This marks the first time in nearly two years that the majority has held this view, and only the second time since Gallup began tracking these opinions on the war in 2006.

Pakistan appears to be the batch about to hatch. I am going to reiterate what I wrote in my article, Bin Laden Death Script & the Needed Trigger for Next Step-Pakistan, neither party-US-China-Pakistan, has played all their cards yet:

The White House neocons are in the midst of age-old diplomatic games, bluffing, and hedging their bets. They have the ‘foreign & military aid’ card. They have the ‘ISI dirt files’ card. They have the ‘ultimate China leaning’ card. And of course, they have the ‘mighty power of preemptive occupation war’ card which is always blessed and supported by NATO and overlooked by their butlers in the UN.

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Sometimes we come across an odd egg or two standing out like a giant Ostrich egg among tiny chicken eggs; like the following strange case popping up with even stranger timing; could it be an egg from the Iran Batch? :

Two defectors from Iran’s intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials had “foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks,” according to a court filing Thursday in a federal lawsuit in Manhattan that seeks damages for Iran’s “direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history.”

Interestingly, despite all the contradictory, hole-filled and ever-changing Osama Death Script, and with so many eggs in the hatchery, we haven’t had any serious ‘Egg on the face’ case. One of the biggest reasons this hatchery-incubator had remained in a designed stage so long, until coming into the implementation stage recently, was the fear of losing a chicken or two that had been hatched from the 9/11 incubator. It was the question of what if the ‘Osama Death Script’ backfires and ends the motivation-reasons behind the many wars abroad and many newly gained government police powers here in the United States? It was the uncertainty as to whether we could continue this ‘Al-Qaeda Fear Brand’ and ‘war on terror’ without a healthy-wealthy and very alive Osama Man. The outcome, so far, has proved those fears baseless:

  Thanks to the real powers’ PR and propaganda machine, Al-Qaeda and the virtual terror machine have been deemed independent of Osama Bin Laden, and able to sustain, expand and grow ever increasingly and ever more powerful. The Bin Laden Chicken has been replaced by McQaeda Franchisees:

They kidnap Westerners in the deserts of Africa, turn Western-born Muslims into radicals, send bombs to the United States from Yemen and mount bloody attacks in Iraq and Pakistan.

These homegrown terror groups worldwide are informally dubbed Al Qaeda franchises – affiliates that do most of their own fundraising, recruiting and killing. The question now is this: What impact will the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden have on the ability and willingness of the franchises to mount attacks?

Emails found on flash drives from bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan two weeks ago show that he was communicating more than Western intelligence had thought. But Al Qaeda’s ideology plays a much bigger role in fostering terror than bin Laden’s personal involvement, said Gen. David Richards, Britain’s top military chief.”Yemen, Somalia and other places in the Middle East are today more important in a counter-terror context than what was going on…in Osama’s compound,” Richards told British lawmakers.

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However, Al Qaeda franchises were responsible for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166, and the 2002 attacks on a Bali island night club that killed 202 people, many foreign tourists.

The head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, Jonathan Evans, has said it’s only a matter of time before “we see terrorism on our streets” from the Al Qaeda movement in Somalia, known as al-Shabab. He also said it is likely that Al Qaeda supporters in the Arabian Peninsula will step up attacks on Western targets.

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And just to reassure our real hatchery and incubator-designers, a few days ago, after the supposed Bin Laden death, our supposed representatives from both houses and both parties reached a deal on a long-term extension of the PATRIOT Act without any of the inconvenient civil rights provisions and for an additional four years.

As any critical thinking and attention paying reader may already suspect, there were many eggs laid inside the Osama Death Script incubator. Some have already hatched; time will show how many will last long enough and grow into full chickens. Some are about to hatch; follow the news and developments around the world and you’ll see and recognize the chicks as they pop up. Some may take a while to hatch; patience is a virtue, if the only one, our ‘real’ rulers are known to have. And some will never hatch; well, they say no risk no rewards.

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U.S. Government Will Adopt Gold Standard in the Next Five Years, Forbes Predicts

Return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, since that move would help the nation to solve a variety of economic, fiscal and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview Monday with Human Events.

The only probable 2012 U.S. presidential candidate who has championed a return to the gold standard so far is Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. But the idea “makes too much sense” not to gain popularity as the U.S. economy struggles to create jobs, to recover from a housing bubble induced by the Federal Reserve’s easy-money monetary policies, to stop rising gasoline prices and to restore fiscal responsibility to U.S. government’s budget, Forbes explained.

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You can read the rest of this article here, but what really got my attention was the irony. For years, if not decades, the mainstream media has been ridiculing Representative Ron Paul’s reasoned arguments on monetary policy, the pitfalls of fiat money and the urgency of returning to ‘backed money’-the Gold Standard. Even the idea of returning to the Gold Standard has been greeted with a gasp, the life-vest of irrational gangs- the labeling game and name calling, and foaming mouths spitting mockery and or profanity-filled adjectives:

“Soon every citizen will have the right to have their own pot of gold as we convert America to a Leprechauny! Here to advocate for this bright future, please join me in welcoming live via satellite, Congressman Ron Paul…”

Here is Megan McArdle, in 2007, ridiculing Ron Paul’s categorization of certain financial-banking institutions as ‘shadowy’ in defense of the Banking institution:

Fiat money inflation benefits those shadowy figures who receive access to artificially inflated money before the inflationary effects kick in [Ron Paul]. Those shadowy figures being the bankers who loaned it to you so that you could buy your house [Megan McArdle]…

That’s right, and those shadowy figures were also the ones who brought about the massive foreclosures of your houses! McArdle, while foaming at the mouth, called Paul’s categorization of these banking institutions, the shadowy entities, wrong, ridiculous and with few or no support within the mainstream economist colony. Oh boy, only a year later, in a June 2008 speech, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then President and CEO of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, placed significant blame for the freezing of credit markets on a “run” on the entities in the shadow banking system by their counterparties!

Well, let’s see if the mainstream will be quick to get all over Steve Forbes and many others who have been joining the Gold Standard choir. For years they had a punching bag who remained consistent in his view of the desperate need for turning our sickly monetary policy upside down and considering a return to the Gold Standard. They called it wacky, nutty, a lone wolf howling …you name it. Now I want to see them take on the expanded group of believers in the face of the mess we’ve been sinking in deeper and deeper every day. Will it happen? You tell me.

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There are ‘experts’ views,’ and then there are experts’ views. There are ‘government sources,’ and then there are government sources. Not all experts are equal. And, not all sources are reliable. Am I talking in riddles? Of course not; give me a chance and I’ll explain.

We have members of the popular media (mainstream and quasi alternatives alike) ever anxious to market and disseminate government conspiracy and propaganda. They, members of the popular media, have their own rolodex of ‘experts’ and analysts, some on their payroll, to help them propagate the delivery and execution of government-given propaganda-conspiracy. The same principle applies to ‘sources.’ The popular media relies on their government sources who act as middle-men-government messengers who’ve been given a government written and approved script to be delivered; almost always anonymously. Well, this is exactly what we have been getting from our media, around the clock, since the announcement of the Bin Laden Death Operation: ever-changing government scripts, delivered mainly by anonymous government sources to the US media, and further embellished and expanded upon by government-connected experts and analysts on the payroll.

On the other hand, there are many independent real experts whose analyses and views you won’t, or rarely, get to hear or read about; at least not in the mainstream media or at quasi-alternative sites. And there are current and former government sources not tasked with messenger duties; many of whom don’t see the ‘calculated’ necessity to remain ‘anonymous.’ I can assure you, you do not, and will not, read or hear these experts’ and sources’ statements, analyses or views when it comes to government-written stories and their media buddies.

Last weekend Boiling Frogs Post contacted several independent sources and experts, and asked them for their straight-forward take on the absurdity-filled and ever-changing Bin Laden Death story. I say independent, because they are. As you’ll see these veterans and sources come from all different walks of Intelligence-Law Enforcement-Military, and as far as political orientation goes, they fall into every single category-liberal, conservative, libertarian and none. I want to thank them all for honoring the request given to them on extremely short notice, and for being honest, direct, commonsensical, and in some cases realistically humorous. Here is what they had to say, and say it briefly per my request, starting with my favorite investigative reporter and bestselling author, whom I respect tremendously and consider ‘truly independent,’ James Bamford:

I don’t know what happened, but here’s what I suspect.  The White House press office was horrified.  The image of an unarmed Bin Laden killed in his PJs, and his unarmed wife shot as she was trying to protect him, was too bland for prime time TV.  So after consulting with the “perception managers” at The Rendon Group, they quickly called together a team of experts for a conference in the Roosevelt Room to come up with a better narrative.

Among those present was Nurse Nayirah, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., accompanied by several PR representatives from Hill & Knowlton.  It was her false claim that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leave them on the floor to die, a lie propagandized around the world by H&K, that helped push the U.S. into the first Gulf War.  Sitting next to her was Ahmed Chalabi, the man whose deceptions about Saddam and his WMD, heavily promoted by the New York Times, helped lead the country to war with Iraq.  Then there was Jim Wilkinson, the Bush master propagandist who needed to find a way to get the country behind the war.  He thus fed the story to the media of how Pvt. Jessica Lynch fearlessly mowed down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she ran out of ammo, whereupon she was shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped.  Unfortunately, through no fault of Lynch, it was later discovered to be totally made up. Finally, there was General Stanley McCrystal, largely responsible for promoting the fact that football star and Army private Pat Tillman was killed in a heroic battle in Afghanistan when in reality he was accidentally shot by his own men.  The false story was then ballyhooed by the press and used by the Army as a major recruiting tool for the Afghan War.

After a few hours going around the table for ideas, the White House press people finally had their story.  With one hand wrapped around his wife as a shield, Bin Laden used the other in a desperate effort to fight off capture by firing wildly at the commandos with an AK-47, but was finally taken down with a bullet right between his eyes. 

James Bamford- One of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues.

If you factor in growth in government and the actual costs of the military and intelligence effort that finally succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden after fifteen years of trying, the renowned terrorist becomes the $3 trillion dollar man.  Considering that he has not personally directed a successful terrorist operation since 9/11 that is quite impressive, somewhat like winning a lifetime achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony.  And even 9/11 is by no means a slam-dunk for Osama as the Justice Department never charged him with that particular crime because they knew they did not have enough evidence to convince a jury.  So his story ends, shot down in Pakistan while resisting or possibly surrendering, with his wife and son or alone, in a lavish mansion or a shack, as a result of a great spy operation or maybe not, and with the President of the United States personally directing the operation or possibly just sitting in for a photo op.  Requiescat in Pace Osama. 

Philip Giraldi- Former Counterterrorism Specialist & military Intelligence Officer  of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

The executive-ordered assassination of Osama bin Laden, in what is now described as a rubbish-strewn, dirt-infested and barely habitable compound, does free up a spot on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.   As a result of this grand and newsworthy success, after an interminable decade of really, really, really hard work, the flag-draped and platinum-plated military-industrial-intelligence complex is poised for even greater rewards, in both glory and gold.   Constitution-minded and economically strapped Americans, and those who oppose unnecessary undeclared wars of any kind, need to get back under the Bush-Obama bus, and quick.  Here’s why: President Obama will not remind Americans that bin Laden was never “wanted” by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks, and as such, bin Laden’s death is irrelevant to Washington’s long war in Afghanistan.  Likewise, former President Bush will not tell the country that the bin Laden connection to Saddam Hussein was manufactured in 2002 by neoconservatives bent on invasion, and as a result, bin Laden’s death has no bearing on Washington’s 9-year occupation and nation-building project in Iraq.    Come to think of it, not having Osama around anymore is stagnation we can believe in. 

Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski- Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a specialist on the Middle East 

Two UN guys are sitting in a bar in Kabul – and one turns to the other and says “Did you hear the one about the president, the terrorism advisor and the pope?” The second guy turns to the other and says “Well – no – I have not” – and the first guys says “Me neither  – but it cannot be any more funny than the way the White House has handled the narrative of the Bin Laden raid.”

Four days after the Bin Laden raid, and in the middle of what must have been the 10^th White House modification to the story, I was asked in an on-air interview “don’t you (in the Special Operations Community) have plans for dealing with the media?” – well yes, yes, we do…but this plan was not used due to the White House insinuation of their “academic smart guys and gals” – so the plan was not followed – because the raid became a White House center piece that was quickly (and badly) absorbed for purposes of supporting the President’s reelection.

National security – and what is best and necessary for the nation – should NOT be an issue that is used by either side for political gain…the harsh reality is that it often is.  As I have said many time: “I am not anti-war, I am anti-stupidity…” we have sycophants in the White House who will do or say anything to get the President re-elected and sacrifice the truth, and the nation’s best interests, in the process as they drive the clown car of freedom around the nation for a victory lap…

Lt Col Tony Shaffer- Intelligence Officer & recipient of the Bronze Star, with 25 years of field experience commanding and directing several key operational intelligence organizations
 

The “fog of war” excuse for the Obama Administration’s horrendous series of factual errors in reporting bin Laden’s killing was mostly due to rushing to make the U.S. press deadline and take credit before being upstaged by leaks from international press.  One small detail that reveals the over-arching importance placed on Obama’s need for a bold, decisive press image lies in his unqualified announcement about getting his man that was made even before the DNA testing was completed.  The White House later clarified that they were 90 to 95% certain it was bin Laden based on photo comparisons and later they upped that to 95% certainty but there’s nothing scientific about “facial analysis” photo comparisons.  Quite likely another reason the Administration doesn’t want the dead bin Laden photo out now is that it would invite scrutiny of the hasty announcement.  I think the series of errors was mostly based on the rush to frame this quickly for the press so Obama would appear bold and strong on terrorism and get what Charley Cook projected as a 13% “bounce” in the polls.

Coleen Rowley- Retired FBI Agent and Former Cchief Counsel of the FBI Minneapolis field office
So we come through the mountain passes that are being watched by tribal warlords who have our left over stinger missiles from the Soviet’s little adventure there, because if we fly too high the Pakistani defense radar network will pick us up.  We don’t know who is in this compound, so we shoot-to-kill every unarmed male resident on the spot, before we even know if Bin Laden is there.  And we insist Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service knew nothing of Bin Laden being in the middle of their retirement neighborhood for military generals and intelligence officials.  Oh, we wanted to do it one week earlier, but our government knew that on that day the Easter Bunny would be hiding multi colored eggs for all the little Pakistani children!

Russell D. Tice- Former Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency & National Security Agency

From my own 25-years experience on the inside much of it doing international covert operations, I’m pretty certain that the competing federal bureaucracies’ decades long, often bizarre war for headlines is at the root of this whole weird episode. Of course this is fueled by the ease with which mainstream media is manipulated into printing absolutely anything that comes from their “inside” usually “anonymous” sources.

With the Bin Laden hit, the media skirmish started with the scramble for “credit” by the public affairs offices of each of the parties involved a.  First the Pentagon (Defense Intelligence) and White House take the lead.  Then the CIA, the Criminal Inept Agency, sorely hurting from five decades of being total and abject losers and perpetually at war with DIA, grabs the whole ball and runs with it, like they invented it.   This pisses off the DIA and leaks and counter-leaks begin to spring in every direction from inside sources on both sides, sniping at each other’s “story.”

But you can’t count out the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, who has been totally and insultingly left out of the whole mix.  Rumor is they even had an FBI Files episode on “How the FBI killed Bin Laden, “ready to go into production, no matter how Bin Laden died.  All they needed was a body.  Leaving them totally out of the kill of the dude for whom they’ve spent half their PR budget hunting, is…well…insulting to say the least. And you do NOT want to piss off the FBI.  Remember Cointelpro?!

Finally. What really happened? My bet is that some Navy Seal captain in charge of the guys out there circling around Pakistan’s night skies in helicopters like sitting ducks waiting for the Washington suits to make up their minds, said, “Screw it!  I’ll take responsibility.  Let’s do it guys!”

Mike Levine- Retired supervisory agent, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); also served the U.S. Customs Service, IRS (Criminal Investigations Division) & the FBI/DEA Task Force

  Obama’s Idea — Whatabad!

Killing Osama in Abbottabad

Serves only to get a whole lottabad

guys planning in sync

To pay back Murder, Inc.

From Kandahar to Jalalabad.

Ray McGovern- Retired CIA Analyst, former Army Intelligence Officer & Founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A part of me is going to miss Bin Laden, at least I understood him.  I certainly do not condone his methods or his twisted logic; but his actions were extremely predictable (I was one of the few people that actively tried to prevent 9-11). But I do not understand our own government.  First we attack a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, we lower our moral standing in the eyes of the world, we violate our Constitution, we turn our military into the Peace Corps resulting in thousands of our own military casualties and tens of thousands of innocent civilian casualties overseas, we treat our own citizens as guilty of something until proven otherwise at airports, the list is endless.  The final straw, however, is the PR campaign of the killing of BL.  If ever there was a “black operation” in the traditional use of the term, this was it.  Our government should have said nothing about this assassination.  Oh, word would have leaked out over time and years from now we could have our day in the sun, but this isn’t the time.  We celebrate this killing like it’s the winning touch-down at the Super Bowl.  All this dog and pony show is a rallying cry for the same fanatics that rioted and killed over cartoons.  How many more innocent lives will be lost just so our politicians can make a little splash in the news?

Bogdan Dzakovic- Special Agent, Team Leader of the Red Team (terrorist team) and Federal Air Marshals for the Federal Aviation Administration(FAA), and  Former Coast Guard Officer & Federal Criminal Investigator

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The standard, call it classic, definition of PSYOP is badly in need of an update. When you look it up, you see something along these lines [Emphasis are mine]: planned propaganda operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. It is way past time to add ‘domestic’ in there. Isn’t it? Come on; remember our mini PSYOP cases like Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. I say ‘mini’ because they were mini, thus, eventually exposed. The ‘major’ ones, at least here in the US, tend to go unnoticed or not widely debated. Right now, we may be very well looking at one of those major ones as it is unfolding: White House Osama Death PSYOP Script.

On Monday, less than a day after the supposed operation, I started covering the Osama Death sensationalism. In my first post I said: “It is way too early for a comprehensive analysis or even a short commentary.” I wish others, the so-called media had exercised the same restraint, instead of spreading the far-fetched and fantastical script given to them by their masters to fire up and round up the gullible and easily hurray-ing majority. 

On Tuesday, I pointed out the uncanny resemblance between the script and method used in the Jessica Lynch PSYOP case and the latest Osama Death case: “It is too early. I can talk about the strange timing, absurdity of some mysterious burial at sea, questionable coincidences, and or our government’s pretty tainted record when it comes to facts: Remember Iraq’s WMD lies, Pentagon’s made-up script on Jessica Lynch, wrongfully accused Steven Hatfill, questionable Anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins, Niger Yellowcake fantasy…” Again, it took the resourceful media another 24-48 hours and tons of pounding to make the connections.

Here are the latest changes to the Obama administration’s lies-filled script. Let’s keep track of them, and keep them on the front burner, because as you know, as more come out, as we get more confirmed contradictions, the fantastical story tends to get pushed onto the backburner by the media, from front page stories-headlines to Page A2, and from there to B18, and pretty quickly into the usual black hole:

We have gone from the heavy and intensely fought operation against fighting armed men in the Bin Laden compound to no real fight and only one little armed man:

Four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, including the al-Qaida leader himself, were unarmed and never fired a shot…

We went from armed Bin Laden using his wife as a shield to armed Bin Laden using an anonymous woman as a shield, to unarmed Bin Laden using some kind of a woman as a shield, and now, unarmed Bin Laden in pajamas using no one as a shield!

But last night, the White House said Bin Laden was not armed when a U.S. Navy SEAL confronted and killed him during Sunday night’s assault on his compound.
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Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound and the 13-roomed house, during which they removed two buffalos, a cow and around 150 chickens.

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We were told that Bin Laden’s compound was a lavish mansion worth over one million dollars, and now we hear it was a humble mud –covered house with not even an air-conditioning system worth less than $250,000:

Bin Laden’s house, described by the US government as a $1m (£605,000) mansion, is in fact worth no more than $250,000 say property professionals in Abbottabad, the town where he was killed.

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Descriptions of Bin Laden’s hideout have also been prone to exaggeration. After Sunday night’s dramatic raid by US Navy Seals, a senior Obama administration official told reporters that the property, an “extraordinarily unique compound” in an “affluent suburb”, was valued at around $1m.But two property professionals in Abbottabad – a quiet, military-dominated town – said that much of that was incorrect. Based on the size of the plot and the house, which was built in 2005, and using recent property sales as a guide, they estimated that it would fetch no more than $250,000 on the current market.

“Twenty million rupees, maximum,” said property dealer Muhammad Anwar, a 22-year veteran of the local market, at his Abbottabad office. “No swimming pool. This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area.”

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We were given torture, traditional long-term interrogation techniques and surveillance as the major factors leading to the scripted victory, and now we get official statements from Pakistan indicating that they, the Pakistani intelligence, had provided Bin Laden’s location to Mr. Obama over 2 years ago, and again six months ago!

Pakistan hit back Wednesday about US fears that it could not be trusted with details of the raid on osama bin Laden’s compound and claimed it had identified the potential hideout as far back as 2009.

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Bashir went on to claim that the ISI passed on its suspicions about the compound in Abbottabad two years ago.

“The fact is, on this particular occasion, it was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the US intelligence,” he said. “We had indicated as far back as 2009 [it was] a possible place.” The ISI said it again warned just six months ago that “suspicious foreigners” and even “al Qaeda operatives” were potentially inside the compound but denied knowing bin Laden was among them, according to Sky News. There was no immediate response to that claim from the Obama administration.

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And last but not least, they told us our President and Presidents’ Men were watching the entire operation, second by second, via satellite and real time. Now, our President and Presidents’ Men are backpedaling in face of exposed lies and contradictions, and use ‘Fog of War’ for lack of truth and accuracy. Did the fog fog up the White House real-time TV show and mislead our popcorn-eating President and his Men?!

The White House Tuesday blamed “the fog of war” for conflicting statements in its recounting of the events surrounding the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden…

I will be covering this topic as it unfolds further, and I am asking you to help us with keeping this major domestic PSYOP on the front-burner, as you know, when sticky and revelatory facts come out contradicting our officials’ story line, things tend to get buried and transferred to the back-burners!
 

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I can’t help it. Every time I read or hear the lines on the White House Popcorn-Movie session with ‘Operation Osama Live’ being televised, I keep getting the same flashback. Hmmmm, I wonder why?

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The media spent the first two days of Bin Laden’s Death hailing and saluting the greatness of the Obama presidency. Bit by bit the White House PR script writers fed them Tom Clancy inspired bylines, each new bit more glorified than the previous one. Hollywood must be working on movies as I’m typing this post. Do they have to get any specific rights for this particular manuscript? Or is it considered free for all public info? Anyhow, now we are entering Chapter Two, Set Two, or Stage Two. Time to shine the spotlight on the other players: CIA Special Forces and maybe a few private contractors collectively known as Secret Kidnapping Torturers. You see, according to ‘ANONYMOUS’ government and White House sources, we have those black sites, the torturers and the brutal torture tactics to thank for Bin Laden’s action and mystery filled death and disappearance (aka secret burial at sea).

Obama’s buddy, his unofficial press secretary and favorite fundraiser, and the new queen of the AOL PR machine, has just released the second chapter of the Clancy-like manuscript-Glory, Glory Hallelujah, the Black Site Torturers Keep Marching on[emphasis are mine]:

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida’s operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.

…

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

…

As for Huffington’s wonderful source citation, journalistic work, we have the following declaration which says it all:

Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

…Story continues below

I am going to place one of my famous bets again. I bet you no one will ever go after these particular anonymous sources from our intelligence agencies. You see, they are disclosing what they are told to disclose, and it wouldn’t make the tiniest difference how classified or sensitive the intentionally leaked information is. When the government has a PR mission and a polished script to go with it, releasing all sorts of ‘classified or sensitive’ intelligence is kosher. But may God help those who release information classified to cover up government criminality such as NSA illegal wiretapping.

Please go and read this Clancy-Like novella chapter at Huffington Post. Pay special attention to anonymous sourcing and glorified kidnap-torture methods meant to program unknowing Americans: Torture, assassination, illegal operations are all good when the end justifies the means. Hail to President Bush for starting those programs, and hail to President Obama for continuing them!!

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My last post on Vanity Fair’s ‘Tin-Foil Hat’ article has gotten my friends at Vanity Fair very upset. Their interpretation of this piece is that I am putting down and attacking every single reporter or editor over there. That is simply not true. I was, and am, questioning the purpose, agenda, behind an irrational, ranting, and highly offensive propaganda piece written by one of their writers-Bruce Feirstein. I invite any expert or academic in journalism to take a look at Feirstein’s piece and tell me that what was written had even a shred of journalistic integrity. I’ll welcome all respect-worthy editorial authors to check this nonsensical babble and give it a grade, even those based on a trash and gossip reporting scale. And I invite any commonsensical reader to read it and rate it on a lack of rationality grading scale.

Look, I have not written a single piece on what really happened two days ago in Pakistan; because I don’t know and I don’t have all the details. I have not granted a single interview despite dozens of requests, because we only have a one paragraph official statement, and no details or even an explanatory context. It is too early. It is premature to either confirm the given story with one hundred percent certainty or counter or write it off with fact-supported confidence. It is too early. I can talk about the strange timing, absurdity of some mysterious burial at sea, questionable coincidences, and or our government’s pretty tainted record when it comes to facts: Remember Iraq’s WMD lies, Pentagon’s made-up script on Jessica Lynch, wrongfully accused Steven Hatfill, questionable Anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins, Niger Yellowcake fantasy…

Now considering our government’s well-established tainted record in providing stories-fantasies, especially those released immediately and sensationally and those timed strangely, how could a rational thinking person consider a logical hesitancy as conspiratorial? How could an unbiased and untainted reporter write off the questioning of official stories (with a darn tainted historical record) as ‘tin-foil hat’ conspiracy? The writer in question has to be either extremely dim-witted – bordering moronic, or, journalistically challenged and ignorant, or, a propaganda agent at work. Then the questions are: why is this person, Bruce Feirstein, allowed to work for Vanity Fair – damaging its reputation, and or, why he was allowed by his editor(s) to run this obscure rant, and or why hasn’t Vanity Fair issued a retraction-apology and kicked this guy out.

As far as Vanity Fair goes, there’s been good, bad, excellent, and awful reporting, as is the case with all publications. After all, they published a daring piece on my case and the then Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert! I don’t personally know this ranting Bruce Feirstein or other way below substandard writers over there at Vanity Fair. I know a few good journalists and editors at Vanity Fair who I respect and like. I hope to see a deserved public response on this debacle from the good ladies and gentlemen at Vanity Fair, and I certainly hope to see measures taken to contain the ranting Mr. Feirstein; maybe they can put him in the archives room-just a suggestion

When it comes to our government’s tainted record in truth-telling: Fool us once, shame on them, fool us twice shame on us, fool us three times shame on us, fool us four times shame on us…I believe you all catch my drift; no?
 

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Vanity Fair has declared war on anyone who dares to question the unanswered questions in the latest Bin Laden death development. Anyone. Doesn’t the least matter if the questions are completely rational. Doesn’t matter if the latest development leaves many unanswered questions and or unproved claims. It doesn’t matter. When the government is questioned, when the establishment is second-guessed, Vanity Fair comes running in defense of its masters by engaging in completely illogical offense. Now, the magazine is calling anyone with any questions or rational skepticism on the circumstances of Bin Laden’s death and burial at sea ‘Tin-Foil-Hat’ wearers. They have designated one bucket and are dropping everyone in it at the rate of 10000s per minute. This big bucket is reserved for: UFO believers, Birthers, Truthers, Taliban Sympathizers, Al Qaeda Sympathizers, terrorists, schizophrenic community, paranoid individuals, vegetarians… You see, it is a really big bucket:

With less than 24 hours on the clock since Osama bin Laden met his 72 virgins, the tin-foil-hat conspiracy brigade is out in full force on the Internet. I won’t provide links, as it only encourages these people, but the idiot speculation is both sad and unsurprising…

…

Osama bin Laden is dead. Alas, the same can’t be said for the Tin-Foil-Hat Brigade, who have put on their headgear and will continue merrily—and suspiciously—typing into the night.

…

You know how it is when crazy people view sane people as crazy? We have exactly the same phenomenon here: Vanity Fair, the same magazine that avidly sold the public the government’s Iraq WMD story- They subscribed to their masters crazy conspiracy, used their masters’ water-carriers such as Chalabi as their main sources, and they went about selling millions a purely fabricated conspiratorial story. You remember that, right? If not here it is: Click, and with David’s Rose’s honest confession and wise advice:

“Iraqi defectors tricked us with WMD lies, but we must not be fooled again.”

How about subscribing to their government sources’ conspiratorial lies and framing in the Anthrax case, and prescribing the conspiracy to millions of readers?

For Vanity Fair, a major Tin-Foil-Hat wearer when it comes to government conspiracy and lies, to come out so vehemently in defense of the hole-filled Bin Laden death story, and to label any critical thinker as a tin-foil-hat wearing nutcase, is quite telling. What do tin-foil-hat wearers see others as? RIGHT, you got it my friends!

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I believe when it comes to DC dirty politics, when it comes to the new world order machine, and when it comes to US presidents, timing is everything and there are no such things as coincidences. The one billion dollar question always remains the same: what’s the real game-what’s the real deal. Considering the mainstream media’s sensationalism and propaganda tactics and their cemented role as an extension of the establishment, one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing. Only after that, after putting the pieces together instead of dumbly staring at the images spread before us by the media, we have a chance to get a grasp of the reality-facts; or at least a chance to come up with real questions. Now, please help me make sense of some strange timing and coincidences in the latest developments:

5 days ago, on April 27, Obama released his infamous birth certificate after almost three years of adamant refusal (I for one could not care less, and was bewildered by the ridiculous hype!).

Yesterday Obama announced Bin Laden’s death as a result of some secret US military operations near Islamabad, and so far the evidence of his groundbreaking announcement has been either buried in the deep sea or obfuscation of mysterious relative detainees.

Today for the first time a sitting President-Obama and his wife will appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show for an hour long interview.

What’s the ‘real deal’ here? Are we looking at some souped-up PR campaign to repair long-slipping presidential approval rates? Is this a desperate and manic attempt for positioning in the next presidential elections 18 months away? You can never be cynical enough when it comes to dirty politics, so on that front:

Are these latest developments part of a preemptive operation to counter some ‘mysterious’ and soon to come embarrassing disclosure(s), a ready to break scandal, or a major government scandal?

Do they intend to use the recent staged developments to increase Obama’s chances in garnering higher public backing and support for a soon to come preemptive war, let’s say with Iran or Syria?

Okay, I am looking at these bewildering recent developments, and accordingly I am speculating. I invite you to join and add your interpretation and or speculations. What say you?
 

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A lot is happening and being discussed on the latest Bin Laden Killed development. It is way too early for a comprehensive analysis or even a short commentary. But …I can’t resist adding a ‘but’ here. A totally secret operation, only a few miles from Pakistan’s Islamabad, right under ISI’s nose; let’s call it a real quickie. Then, even quicker, supposedly in order not to offend the 24 hour deadline imposed by Islam, and to prevent shrine-ization, burial at sea. Just remember the televised full-coverage of Saddam, ok?  You’d think every effort would be placed on capturing Bin Laden alive, no? Gathering intelligence/information from the head of the Al Qaeda boogiemen, their supposed network, partners, cells, etc. Hmmmm. Or you’d think, based on historical examples, they’d make sensational videos-footage of the glorious fight, no?

Anyway, too much is happening, and of course too little attention is being paid by the government mouth piece, government PR machine- the US mainstream media. I’ll be reading, listening, watching, and more importantly, thinking…Stay tuned.

Osama Bin Laden Body Headed for Burial at Sea, Officials Say

To avoid that, an informed source tells me, the intention is the bury his body at sea — leaving no definitive location for the final resting place of his body.

A senior administration official tells my colleague Jake Tapper this about the body:  “We are ensuring it is handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition. It’s something we take seriously and therefore it’s being handled in an appropriate manner.”

…

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During the last two years I have been engaging in a certain ritual each time I get together with friends or acquaintances. Usually this is how it goes: we chat about how much ‘worse’ things have gotten since Obama became president, on issues from expansion of our imperialistic wars to illegal domestic spying to fiasco-ridden bailouts to the continuation of torture and assassination programs… At some point during these intense discussions I lean over the table, look directly in my companion’s eyes and say the following: ‘Come on, admit it, and admit it loud and clear, with no ifs or buts. Say it; say I wasted my vote.’ The reaction is usually something like this: ‘I really had hopes for this guy,’ or ‘considering the other evil I didn’t have much of a choice,’ or something along these lines. But as you may know I don’t give up that easily, so I press harder: ‘whatever the reason, do you now see your vote as completely misplaced and wasted?! If so, just say it.’ To make a long story short, I usually succeed. I get them to admit, loud and clear, with each syllable emphasized: Yes! I wasted my vote.

Let me explain my intentions before you take me as someone who gets some sort of a perverse pleasure in being proved right, or, rubbing people’s noses in their mistakes. Because I don’t take any pleasure whatsoever from this particular ritual, neither do I consider myself some sort of winner in a competition. I engage in this ritual because I truly believe in ‘admitting to our fallacies’ as the first step in getting over them and or not repeating our past mistakes. It is one thing to be objective enough to criticize one’s chosen candidate, but it is a totally different ball game when we take responsibility and own up to our own role in creating or putting in place the wrong candidate. And I believe three major mistakes we as a nation repeatedly commit are the following:

1-     Buying into our Media’s Marketing Scam in Creating a ‘Viability’ Illusion

2-     Believing in & Repeating the Myth of Wasting One’s Vote

3-     The Lesser of Two Evils Mentality

Two years ago I wrote the following on the self-defeating lesser of two evils mentality, and I still stand by it:

On the issue of casting votes, one of the points I keep hearing, over and over, is that ‘I knew it even back then, but I had to choose and vote for the lesser of two evils.’

Don’t you consider this, at least to a degree, to be acceptance of ‘no hope for real change’ when it matters the most, during elections? First, to readily accept that we are limited to only choices that have been declared as ‘viable’ by the same MSM and establishment we seek to change.
Second, to helplessly adopt a mindset that says ‘evilness’ is an inevitable prerequisite for ‘viable’ candidates.

When it comes to ‘evilness,’ there is no reliable standard of measurement. Let’s say, for example, that the pre-selected options are: Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, and Senator McCain. How do you measure their degree of ‘evilness?’ For arguments sake, let’s say there is a standard of “evilness” measurement, and when applied to these candidates you get the following data: on a scale of ‘0 to 100’ on the evilness measurement index (‘100’ being absolute evil, ‘0’ being no evil qualities), McCain ranks 98, Clinton 96, and Obama 94. Based on this do people feel justified in voting for the lesser of the ‘given’ three, even though that candidate still ranks extremely high in ‘evilness’?

And in that same article I summed up the myth of wasting one’s vote:

The second issue I want to bring up has to do with the notion shared by many: I didn’t want to ‘Waste’
“I know there are other candidates who are ‘much less evil’ and have much better track records. However, as you see, they don’t have a chance. The MSM and the establishment have either marginalized them or never acknowledged them in the first place. They have no chance, thus, I won’t ‘waste my vote and will choose between the ‘viable’ candidates declared ‘electable.’”

We don’t give those ‘better’ candidates a chance even when we believe in them and their competence. What if every one of us who’ve been active and pushing for ‘real changes’ disregarded the ‘established’ etiquette of candidate viability, went out and actually voted for the candidate we trusted ? What if by doing this that ‘nonviable’ candidate ended up with, lets’ say 15% of total votes? Granted he or she has not become the ultimate winner, elected, but what do you think that 15% would mean in the next election? Would it encourage more people to do the same, cast their vote based on what they really believe? Would it motivate better people to rise up and take on leadership? Would it help the current landscape of the MSM – promoting coverage of a ‘people’s candidate’? And finally, what if two election seasons later we get to see a ‘people’s candidate’ with 50% or more of votes cast?

Now, let’s talk about our ‘dependent’ media’s viability criteria when it comes to political candidates, since this may very well be the major factor shaping the other two fallacies. After all, they, the media, package, market and sell the two candidates deemed and stamped as viable by their bosses. I am saying ‘let’s talk about,’ since I want this to be a discussion with you as participants. I want us to look at previous ‘viable candidates’ we put in high office guided by the media’s systematic vote-shaping marketing scams, and I would like us to take note of how they currently are setting the stage for their bosses’ choice of ultimate finalists this time around. We are going to list ingredients that go into the establishment’s chosen viable candidate, and dissect the anatomy of a viable candidate. I’ll start the discussion and let you continue and expand upon it.

Last February I came across a selectively picked and rather contained quasi debate posted at the Politico site on the viability of Republican candidates post CPAC. What caught my attention was not so much the quasi experts and agenda-driven analysts who are in on this marketing scam, but the terminology and adjectives long-used by our media to systematically shape the direction of election votes. I am talking about words and adjectives that become glued to candidates to create the myth or illusion of viability or non-viability which then, after being repeated thousands, no millions of times, become accepted reality by the unknowing majority. For this case, I am going to use Ron Paul as the perfect example. Here are a few phrases of ‘non-viable’ rhetoric with catch-words emphasized:

Paul’s occasional embrace of seemingly bizarre issues has created the impression among most voters that he is a fringe candidate… Dr. Paul would be hard pressed to be viewed as a viable candidate for president.

These voters see Dr. Paul as an outsider holding fringe views. Although the voters probably have more in common with Dr. Paul than not, they already have a soured view of him – a condition that isn’t likely to change.

…

He clearly has a niche among the electorate… I wouldn’t expect him to be the GOP nominee

…

Of course Ron Paul can never be elected president. He’s a quirky, schoolmarm-ish eccentric whose quixotic tangents – like a return to the gold standard – are too far removed from the average person’s day-to-day concerns. And he looks more like the clerk at a hardware store than a president.

…

No one can argue that Ron Paul had a real following in pockets of the country, but he has no chance in another presidential run…

…

He has a track record of wacky statements going back 30 years, and bizarre and racist associations… It’s tragic that the national hopes of libertarian conservatism are lodged in such an imperfect vessel as Ron Paul…

…

Ron Paul has some strong and populist views on issues that are unlikely to sweep him into office.

…

Ron Paul would make a great Republican presidential candidate…if he was running in 1924. Come to think of it, he does have that dry Calvin Coolidge routine down pat.

…

In the next year or so we’ll witness the following adjectives being attached to Ron Paul over and over, every day, and a hundred or more times a day: Not Viable, Fringe, Marginal, Eccentric, Nutty, Quack, Old, Ugly, Racist, Extremist, Radical, Sexist…

There are certain qualities that go completely against the opinion-shapers’ viability propaganda rules. Let’s list a few;

Consistency

Consistency is a major no-no when it comes to candidate viability as determined by the establishment and its media. A flip-flopping and contradictory statement-action record is viewed as a Must; it is considered a necessary characteristic of a good politician. Obama’s inconsistency is viewed and presented as a sign of him being a savvy politician. As a senator he supports NSA illegal wiretapping and protects the participating businesses, then he says he will stand against it and stop it as a president, and then, as president he continues and expands it. There you have it: a masterful politician. Now, Ron Paul has been exhibiting the opposite, and that is a problem; that makes him not politician-like and a fringe. How could he be so courageous (Radical) as to stand against the PATRIOT ACT and other similar police state practices when doing so was so politically unpopular! And, remain that way?! That is just craziness! Now apply that to the same consistent positions on NSA illegal wiretapping, FBI National Security Letters …How so boring, thus not viable!

War & The Military Industrial Complex

Let’s admit it: if you are not indebted to the Military Industrial Complex, thus, not committed to war, interventionism and imperialistic expansion, you are simply crazy, unrealistic, and simply not presidential material. Those drones, the bombs, the F-16s, tanks and armor cannot sit on shelves as un-liquidated inventory surplus, or even worse, unmade. That’s the position of the Military Industrial Complex and its tentacles and advocates in the US media. Now, you get a man who has consistently opposed wars, throughout his political career, who has been known as Anti War throughout his life, a man who calls war a racket, and you have a man considered not viable. To not make it sound what it is, anti-war, since that has some positive connotations, they’ll simply make him out to be a nutcase.

Powerful Foreign Lobby Influence-Israel

An absolute commitment to US interests and respect for all human life regardless of ethnicity or race is not tolerated if it gets in the way of certain powerful nation’s interests and lobby, and this applies mainly to Israel. No viable candidate in his or her right mind would criticize or speak against the interests of Israel that are in conflict with American’s interests. This is considered one of the most important 10 commandments of political viability, and those who dare to challenge it are stamped as Anti-Semitic Radicals. Ron Paul has dared, and dared this viability commandment consistently; in words and in actions, and that my friend is another sacred no-no no establishment candidate may cross.  

Constitutionality, Small Government & True Americanism

Today, our founding fathers, our first few presidents, would be considered absolutely Not Viable. Think about it, how could the men who said and did everything in their power to restrain government’s powers, advocated and fought for small government, and warned against the danger of big government and government becoming the domestic enemy of our Constitution, be considered viable by the military industrial complex, financial institution-federal reserve, powerful foreign lobbies, and of course, the government itself?! The same people, these same opinion shapers, who call Ron Paul a radical anarchist, would have used those same exact adjectives against the architects of our Constitution, and declared them all non-viable.

I am not going to try to make too many points, and I am not sitting here advocating and campaigning. You can switch the name to Kucinich or Nader, and see similar adjectives and labeling come pouring. Too short, too ugly, too strict, too naïve, way too radical, not politician enough, crazy, nutcase, eccentric, anal, ugly, old, uncharismatic…Instead, let’s flip this trend, and list what goes into a ‘viable’ candidate’s anatomy as far as the establishment, the same establishment that has gotten us into perpetual wars, illegal domestic spying practices, trillions in deficit and a tanking economy… is concerned.

I’ll start the list and have you add your items in the comments section:

Inconsistent & Convenient Flip Flopper

A Good Actor & a Great Pathological Liar (Think ‘Change, Change, Change’;-)

Indebted to the Military Industrial Complex

Committed to Perpetual Wars & Imperialistic Foreign Policy Practices

A Major Advocate of Big Government

Approved & Supported by the Israel Lobby

Polished & Groomed by the Political Marketing Industry

Disregard for the Constitution and or Savvy in Bypassing the Constitution

Trusted & Counted On by Financial Conglomerates & the Secret Federal Reserve 

There. You now have my initial list of US Political Market’s Viability Criteria. Please treat it as a starter, and add yours.

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To my good friends and supporters who have been warning and preparing me for the ‘siege to come’ after writing my last post on the Israel Lobby: Here I am still standing, stronger than ever, after speaking the ‘unspeakable.’ Granted some of those warnings were anything but friendly. I’d say they were more like ultimatums. Others reminded me of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride: watch out woman, the labeling Nazis are coming! As always I lost a few registered users and various forum followers, and gained some new forum friends and registered BFP followers; I’d say on balance I am up;-)

Here is what I have to say to those of you who have not very gracefully (and unsuccessfully) gone down the classic labeling attack route: your efforts were totally wasted. I don’t have a paid media job you can take away via your usual tactics. I don’t have a think tank or NGO position you can eliminate. I don’t have a book promotion you can try to sink. I don’t depend on advertisers to run this site, and you don’t have a way of putting it out of business…Basically I ain’t got nothing ‘you’ can take away. I would have thanked you if I were seeking publicity, since negative publicity is far better than no publicity, but since I don’t I don’t owe you a thank you either. And finally, I consider myself pretty much ‘label-proofed,’ and here is how: I’ve been every woman!

Despite many warnings by colleagues and friends I chose to report wrongdoing aka becoming a whistleblower. They said I’d be labeled a disgruntled employee. And some did try to stick that label to me, as they have done to all whistleblowers before and after me: the Disgruntled Government Employee.

My family warned me about disclosures concerning my home country Turkey. They said I’d be considered a Traitor. I chose to take that risk for what I believed to be the greater good (it’s debatable whether it was or not), and to some over there in Turkey, I became that; a Traitor.

When I went to the United States Senate with my documented disclosures both parties found me to be potentially worrisome. A Republican Senator told my legal representative: ‘on bringing up the issues regarding the Bush administration she sounds like a Bleeding Heart Liberal.’ A Senator from the other party had different worries: ‘Is she a trap set up by the Republicans? Because the stuff on the Clinton administration seems like a God Da.. Republican Ploy!’ So I became a God Da.. Republican Ploy and Bleeding Heart Liberal simultaneously. And to this date they haven’t come to any conclusion!

During my 7 years of legal and congressional battles with the Bush administration I may have become the left’s favorite whistleblower heroine, but I got tons of attacks from the blinded right for being a secret Democrats’ Puppet Woman. Then Obama came, and my unabashed criticism of him turned me into a villain in the blinded and wanna-be progressive Democrat community, and gave me a new name there: Anti Liberal Repug.

Then came this website, my articles, interviews, and commentaries:

I write on Imam Fethullah Gulen, and some attack me with Anti-Muslim & Anti-Islam labels.

I write on the Israel lobby contributions to candidates, and others come after me with Anti-Israel & Anti-Semite tags.

I write on the Turkish lobby and it’s octopus like tentacles in purchasing politicians, and I become Anti-Turkey & Anti-Turkish to some.

I interview a respected guest like Chris Hedges, and my new label becomes Socialist-Communist within certain circuits.

My Boiling Frogs Podcast presents an admirable expert Dr. Woods on significant issues, and I get Tea-Bagger labels thrown at me from various websites and forums.

I criticize certain Neocon policies, and I am an Unrealistic Liberal Fantasist to certain people who consider themselves realists.

I go after our out-of-control federal government police practices, and I am called Libertarian Anarchist by a few.

I stand by my rights and do my share by handing out information on TSA-DHS airport abuses, and many stop to call me Terrorist Sympathizer.

I choose to raise my daughter as a full-time stay at home mother, and to some I become a disgrace to the Feminist movement.

My whistleblower organization members happen to be mainly men, and I’m accused of being Sexist.

I could write pages and pages on the labels I have received, the things I’ve been accused of, and the names I’ve been called: Despicable Middle Eastern, Feminist, Anti-Feminist, Right Wing Mouthpiece, Left Wing Agent, Tea Bagger, Anarchist, Racist, Traditionalist, Modernist, Anti-Semite, Too Conservative, Too Liberal, Socialist, Communist, Islamist, CIA Mole, 9/11 Disinformation Agent, Sexist …

I am not going to disregard my long-term kind supporters and pass over the positives. It is just that it is hard to list nice and positive compliments (or labels), and not sound egotistical. You have kindly considered and called me: courageous, dignified, patriotic…and other similarly supportive adjectives. Even those of you who have complemented me in some strange ways with even stranger imagery to go with them, such as ‘when it comes to guts and courage far more testicularly endowed than most men in this country’!! I humbly thank you for all that.

So there you have it my recent Labelers. You see, I’ve been every woman, and I’ve lived through them all; I’m still standing. What are you gonna do about it, ey??!!
 

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According to our inside sources a new Bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Prozac will be launched before the end of the 112^th Congress. The primary purpose of the Prozac Caucus will be to raise awareness and advocate for this ‘miracle drug’ aka ‘happiness pill,’ on the grounds of combating homegrown terrorism and domestic violence, lowering the national divorce rate, and increasing the level of general job satisfaction among the restless American workforce. “Increasing the level of general satisfaction and happiness, while decreasing the effects of violence and despair inducing factors such as anxiety and depression, are the major keys to achieving long term national security, family unity, and work force stability. With Prozac we believe we can achieve all that and more,” said a congressional aide who wished to remain anonymous. The caucus will have an interactive website with easy-to-print promotional materials and a password protected section for physicians titled ‘Patriotic Physicians for a Secure America.’

Let’s start with what is a congressional caucus, or at least what it is supposed to be, in theory that is. A congressional caucus is a coalition of House and Senate members who meet to discuss specific legislative priorities and policy issues. Caucuses ‘supposedly’ allow members to discuss issues to determine their positions and make sure their votes are informed. They can also give ‘advocates’ a chance for a group of legislators to champion their cause on the Hill. You may go ahead and change ‘advocates’ to ‘lobby and you’ll be even more on target.

When we look at the long list of these caucuses, a list that initially had only a few but seems to lately  have taken off rapidly, we see some caucuses that seem rather ‘ordinary and expected;’ for example,  Children’s Environmental Health Caucus or Congressional Dairy Farmers Caucus. We also see some ‘amusing’ ones, such as Congressional Bike Caucus, Congressional Soccer Caucus, and Congressional Boating Caucus.

You follow me so far? Okay, then there are more than a few caucuses that are ‘confusing:’ Democratic Israel Working Group, Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, Congressional Friends of Jordan Caucus, and other ones for Turkey, Jordan, etc.  Why do I say ‘confusing’? Well, in the above paragraph we outlined the caucus definition, which includes ‘giving advocates, aka lobbies, a chance to influence, aka lobby, their cause through the members of their caucus. In this case, the advocates, aka lobbies, are foreign, and this means ‘direct foreign influence,’ and that in turn would make the representatives in these caucuses who then influence and lobby the rest of the Congress ‘foreign agents.’ Think of it as two-tiered foreign lobbies: First, the registered foreign lobby influencing the target caucus, then, the caucus acting as a lobby for that foreign lobby to influence and lobby the rest of the Congress.

Finally, there are some ‘just plain eyebrow-raising’ caucuses that have been popping up and gaining momentum recently. Probably you haven’t heard of them. Please don’t kick yourself for not knowing. Save that kick, or cancellation of subscription, for the news media you’ve been following. Okay, back to ‘eyebrow-raising’ caucuses. Here is one example:  The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Caucus, which has recently changed its name to the Unmanned Systems Caucus. Thanks to Corey Pein’s WarisBusiness site I was made aware of this scandalous caucus:

The motivation for members to join the UAV Caucus (not to be confused with the A/V Club) may be national security or job creation, but the caucus is also where members of Congress directly show their allegiance to an industry that donated generously to their war chests.

How much? In the 2010 election cycle alone, UAV-related political-action committees donate more than $1.7 million to the Caucus’ 42 members.

In February 2009, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), at the time the ranking Republican on House Armed Services, co-founded the UAV Caucus. He began to hold meetings on the future of the military systems and by the end of the year he had launched a website–on House servers–for the caucus, which was ostensibly designed to provide news on UAVs and connect members of Congress with the industry.

…

…caucus has served as the Congressional booster for the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The UAVSI “Advocacy” page gives am overview of all the ways its members can maximize that relationship;In addition to whatever legislation and appropriations, caucus support has manifested in the opportunity to give committee testimony, visits from Congressmen, keynote speeches, meetings with legislators on “AUVSI DAY,” roundtables, facility tours, but perhaps most notably, a tech fair sponsored by McKeon’s office at the Rayburn House…

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We filtered the 200 AUVSI corporate members to only the “Diamond” and “Platinum” members, then further narrowed the list to only those with corporate PACs. A stark picture emerged: Altogether, these PACs accounted for $1,788,800 in contributions in the 2010 to the members of the caucus. This figure doesn’t include members who weren’t reelected, such as AUV Caucus co-founder Rep. Allan Mollahan (D-WV), who was defeated in last year’s Democratic primary. Two of the newest members of the caucus—Rick Berg (R-ND) and Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)—received nothing from these PACs, probably because their incumbent opponents were the defense industry’s favorites.

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You can read the rest of Pein’s revelatory piece here, but I think you all get the point on ‘eyebrow-raising’ caucuses. I guess it wasn’t a really long leap from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Caucus to the Bipartisan Caucus for Prozac!

The expected chairman of the upcoming caucus who would neither deny nor confirm the formation of the Caucus for Prozac had the following to say (of course on the condition of anonymity):

“Listen, I’ve always taken pride in being a constitutionalist, and the formation of this caucus is further proof…Somewhere in the Constitution it says people should pursue happiness and their government should help them go get it. See? This is exactly what this caucus is about: help and encourage people to get happiness!”

The congressman may have been a bit under the ‘happiness pill’ influence. He must have meant the Declaration of Independence; not the ‘Constitution,’ and, the passage he must have been thinking of was probably this:  ‘All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…’Oh well, at least they are taking the pill they are anxious to sell others.

The expected co-chairman from the opposite party also commented off the record:

“As a nation we are losing our edge, our competitiveness, in so many areas; manufacturing, R & D, services…even in the Global Happiness Index!! We are America. We must be number one. It is time to declare war on unhappiness! With this caucus we are doing just that: declaring war on unhappiness, and getting competitive on the happiness front. If unhappiness is the enemy, this pill is the weapon to kill it…to quash the damn thing. With this caucus we’ll get Americans to swallow this pill… swallow it big time, and in no time they will rank number one again…at least in the happiness department…”

The expected cochairman was talking about the annual World Happiness Index report on countries. Judging from his hawkish tone and aggressive language, he was either not taking the pill, or, exhibiting one of the known adverse reactions to it. The follow up call to check on this was not returned.

With the new trend taking hold in the formation of congressional caucuses, some refer to them as neo-caucuses, other members are frantically working to stake out new territories and mark their turf. There are many empty caucus spots to grab: The Caucus for McDonalds, The Caucus for the F-35, The Caucus for JP Morgan, The Caucus for Pepsi Cola …So many caucuses to form, so little time!

Click here for our previous satirical pieces under Boiling Frogs Beltway Buzz.

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Corey Pein recounts the creation of the recently launched groundbreaking site warisbusiness.com, a nonpartisan site covering military contracting, the global arms trade and the lobby, and how he began the project with two assumptions: The first- a lot of people are making money from war, while enjoying the comforts of anonymity (such people were once plainly called profiteers), and the second: Privatizing war inevitably prolongs it, creating what economists call a “perverse incentive.” Mr. Pein discusses the bought out generals and the militarization of the economy, and the latest on the ‘Rent-A-Generals’ exposé. He talks about scandals such as Mina Corp and the subsequent cover up, US Embassies as marketing arms of military corporations, the win-win outcome of elections for the Pentagon contractors and arms makers, Wikileaks, and more!

Corey Pein is an award-winning investigative reporter and long-form narrative journalist who writes about the military industrial complex, money, politics and violence from London, UK. Previously, he has lived in New Mexico, Oregon, Georgia and in Southeast Asia. His latest project is warisbusiness.com, a startup news site covering military contracting and the global arms trade. Mr. Pein has worked on staff at Columbia Journalism Review, Willamette Week, the Santa Fe Reporter and IHT ThaiDay, and contributed to Salon, Slate, The American Prospect, and CounterPunch, among others.

Here is our guest Corey Pein unplugged!

Note- Boiling Frogs selects warisbusiness.com as the best website of 2010!

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A belated happy new year to all our readers and friends here at Boiling Frogs Post. As you can tell I am just coming up for air. The holiday season happens to be the busiest time for my part-time work which involves a retail business, and my full-time motherhood task which has gotten at least three-fold harder during this not-so-terrible-twos stage. You see I say harder, but I’ll never call it ‘terrible’ because despite the tasking aspect it still remains the best and most rewarding role I’ve ever had; ever. My daughter is now 2.5 years old, and I’m happy to report: she is outspoken, highly opinionated, and on her way to becoming a real activist. She is already stopping those engaged in littering in their tracks for an earful lecture, and orders them to stop, ‘Go home, time out, and take bath!’ I am sharing a few of her recent pictures here. Many of you know all about my ‘no venture into my private life’ over here at BFP…except for an occasional relevant experience(s), or, like these here and the ones from last year to mark a new year at Boiling Frogs Post. Again, Happy New Year.

For the past two months I’ve been collecting and saving lots of articles to share with you here at BFP. The collection kept getting larger, the list of links grew longer, and I kept falling behind and unable to post regular BFP Round Ups. Some of those articles were time sensitive so they got discarded as ‘stale and no longer relevant’. Some are still sitting on the list waiting for the addition of my comments and analyses. And here are a few important and interesting ones from the past few weeks without much need for added sound bites:

Obama’s Whistleblower-Hunt: Whistleblowers Long for Bush-Cheney Era Leniency?

You thought the Bush-Cheney administration was bad? Think again; especially if you happen to be a whistleblower. Despite its awful record, the current administration witch-hunt like pursuit of whistleblowers and truth-tellers has many whistleblowers and truth-telling advocates longing for the Bush era climate. After all, everything is relevant, right? There was the bad, now it is the worse, or probably worst ever. Despite all the threats and muscle-flexing not a single whistleblower, including myself, got arrested or even pursued criminally under the previous regime. With Obama the era of threats has changed into an era of Punishment-Imprisonment and in some cases even torture. Here is one of the latest:

Former CIA officer indicted for leaks to reporter 
Peter Haldis, RCFP

A former CIA officer was indicted last month for allegedly providing a New York Times reporter with classified information. He is the latest in a string of leakers prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Jeffrey Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted on 10 counts, including six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice. He was arrested Thursday in St. Louis.Sterling was indicted Dec. 22, 2010, and the indictment was unsealed Thursday.

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Sterling is the fifth leaker to be prosecuted by the Obama administration. The others include: former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who allegedly sent classified information to an unknown newspaper reporter; Stephen Kim, a former Department of State analyst who allegedly leaked an intelligence report to an unidentified reporter; Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private alleged to have leaked classified information to Wikileaks; and Shamai Leibowitz, a former FBI linguist who was convicted in May 2010 of charges related to the leaking of classified information to an unidentified blogger and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

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 ‘Rent-A-Generals’ Consulting Firms: An Industry in Its Own

Last month I came across the following coverage at War Is Business by Corey Pein. This Monday Peter and I will be interviewing Mr. Pein, meanwhile if you haven’t seen this great website check it out now, and put it in your ‘Favorite’ list of websites. I am really looking forward to this interview, too many topics of interest to cover!

‘Rent-A-Generals’ & ‘the Militarization of Economy’ 
By Corey Pein, War Is Business

This man is William B Burdeshaw, a retired US Army Brigadier General and founder of what the Boston Globe, in its must-read investigation of rampant corruption in Pentagon procurement, calls “one of the oldest ‘rent-a-general’ consulting firms” in the country.

His company, Burdeshaw Associates Ltd, is essentially a fixer for corporations looking to land military contracts. The firm is apparently so good at this, its influential “associates”—mostly retired, high-ranking officers—can sell the Pentagon things it didn’t even know it needed.

Read Globe reporter Bryan Bender describe how Burdeshaw cleverly wrung $109 million from the Pentagon for the firm’s client, Northrop Grumman, which wanted to build a remote-controlled helicopter called the Fire Scout.

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The Army wouldn’t comment. Northrop Grumman wouldn’t comment. Burdeshaw’s chief executive, retired Army General William Hartzog, wouldn’t comment. Bender did a remarkable job of putting this story together despite such obstacles.

Clearly, no one gained from this episode—except Northrop Grumman, the third-largest US military contractor, and Burdeshaw Associates. The firm’s eponym seems to be doing well for himself. Burdeshaw and his wife, Monica, own a massive $2 million home near the Potomac River in Maryland. Give the size of his firm, his personal wealth is likely many times that amount.

…

In its conclusion, Bender explains the growing demand for rent-a-generals as a consequence of “the increasing importance of the military to America’s industrial base.” Retired Army General and former Presidential candidate Wesley Clark calls it “the militarization of the economy.”

Too see what the militarization of the economy looks like, visit a discount grocer in any American city and count how many people pay with food stamps. Then ponder William Burdeshaw’s mansion.

Too see the effects of a simultaneous process—the commodification of the military—look no farther than Afghanistan, where contractors outnumber uniformed soldiers.

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Read the rest of this well-done coverage here.

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A Great Example of Intentionally Awful Journalism by New York Times … Again

The following story, titled ‘Propping Up a Drug Lord, Then Arresting Him’ by the New York Times is another perfect example of purposefully awful journalism. For some reason we get to see this trend ‘awfully’ a lot in Times’ coverage of Afghan Heroin related topics (which they rarely cover). When you are reading it think of a badly made B grade movie by a bunch of amateurs (but in this case switch the amateurs with pretenders); think about some of those home-made films where bits and pieces are copied and pasted into a hodgepodge of a documentary with no beginning (it starts in the middle omitting the intro/history) ending with a never-kept promise of ‘to be continued;’ think about a bunch of main actors being taken out with their empty spots still hanging in the picture like big gaping holes, and think about sci-fi elements such as real-life people mixed with fiction characters making it neither a documentary nor a fiction film. Okay?

Now, why am I covering this intentionally awful junk? 1- The topic itself is EXTREMELY important; 2- The main character is a crucial key to many censored facts regarding our ‘real’ activities and operations; 3- Turkey is mentioned is passing (must be a major unintended slip by the Times’ stenographers); 4- Our readers here know how to read in between the lineJ So here it is [Emphasis in Bold are mine]:

Propping Up a Drug Lord, Then Arresting Him
By James Risen, New York Times

When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep the Taliban in business with a steady stream of money and weapons.

But what the government did not say was that Mr. Juma Khan was also a longtime American informer, who provided information about the Taliban, Afghan corruption and other drug traffickers. Central Intelligence Agency officers and Drug Enforcement Administration agents relied on him as a valued source for years, even as he was building one of Afghanistan’s biggest drug operations after the United States-led invasion of the country, according to current and former American officials. Along the way, he was also paid a large amount of cash by the United States.

At the height of his power, Mr. Juma Khan was secretly flown to Washington for a series of clandestine meetings with C.I.A. and D.E.A. officials in 2006. Even then, the United States was receiving reports that he was on his way to becoming Afghanistan’s most important narcotics trafficker by taking over the drug operations of his rivals and paying off Taliban leaders and corrupt politicians in President Hamid Karzai’s government.

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By 2004, Mr. Juma Khan had gained control over routes from southern Afghanistan to Pakistan’s Makran Coast, where heroin is loaded onto freighters for the trip to the Middle East, as well as overland routes through western Afghanistan to Iran and Turkey. To keep his routes open and the drugs flowing, he lavished bribes on all the warring factions, from the Taliban to the Pakistani intelligence service to the Karzai government, according to current and former American officials.

The scale of his drug organization grew to stunning levels, according to the federal indictment against him. It was in both the wholesale and the retail drug businesses, providing raw materials for other drug organizations while also processing finished drugs on its own.

…

While the C.I.A. wanted information about the Taliban, the drug agency had its own agenda for the Washington meetings — information about other Afghan traffickers Mr. Juma Khan worked with, as well as contacts on the supply lines through Turkey and Europe.

One reason the Americans could justify bringing Mr. Juma Khan to Washington was that they claimed to have no solid evidence that he was smuggling drugs into the United States, and there were no criminal charges pending against him in this country.

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The following is a decent piece by Spiegel on the US courtship of Azerbaijan’s corrupt regime:

The US Befriends Azerbaijan’s Corrupt Elite

By Gregor Peter Schmitz, Spiegel

Azerbaijan is rife with corruption and comparisons to European feudalism in the Middle Ages are hardly a stretch. But with vast reserves of oil and natural gas at stake, the US is willing to risk the embarrassment that comes with courting the country.

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Azerbaijan, which lies in the Caspian basin and has a population of 9 million, is one of the US’s strategic energy partners, despite being located within Russia’s sphere of influence. The country boasts proven energy reserves of roughly 7 billion barrels of oil and 1.3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Millions of barrels of these natural resources flow to the West each year via a pipeline connecting the Azerbaijani capital with Ceyhan, a Turkish port on the Mediterranean Sea.

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The “Great Game” is what the 19th century battle between the British and the Russians over Central Asian influence was called. These days, the Americans are also on the frontlines of this battle — and the potential rewards are much larger. Unfortunately, as the State Department’s classified documents make clear, the price that American diplomats have to pay is also much greater.

Like the other oil-producing countries around the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan is an embarrassing partner to have. The country’s corrupt institutions are unable to deal with the oil boom and the billions of dollars it brings into the county, while the average annual growth rate of almost 15 percent is a much higher priority than enforcing and improving law and order. Independent media outlets are restricted, and dissidents are violently suppressed. Shortly before his death, Heydar Aliyev, the dictator who ruled Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003, naturally handed over power to his son Ilham, who does things exactly the way his father did.

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While a few Azerbaijani clans are getting richer and richer, thanks to all the dollars pouring into the country, the rest of the population is barely scraping by. Over 40 percent of the country’s inhabitants are living in poverty; the average monthly income is just €24. As Lala Shevkat, the leader of the Liberal Party of Azerbaijan, says: “Oil is our tragedy.”The Americans, however, have not let such problems frighten them away. On the contrary, they are even pushing for greater cooperation on security. Following the visit of an American envoy to Baku, one diplomat noted with satisfaction that he “underscored to President Aliyev the value that the US government attached to the relationship with Azerbaijan.”

…

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The following two pieces are related to our continuing ‘Police State’ series:

Terrorist watch list: One tip now enough to put name in database, officials say
By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post

A year after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials say they have made it easier to add individuals’ names to a terrorist watch list and improved the government’s ability to thwart an attack in the United States.

The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government’s system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab’s father had told U.S. officials of his son’s radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person’s name on the watch list.

Since then, senior counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip, as long as it is deemed credible, can lead to a name being placed on the watch list.

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But civil liberties groups argue that the government’s new criteria, which went into effect over the summer, have made it even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the nation’s security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel.

“They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they’re on,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Officials insist they have been vigilant about keeping law-abiding people off the master list. The new criteria have led to only modest growth in the list, which stands at 440,000 people, about 5 percent larger than last year. The vast majority are non-U.S. citizens.

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A Nation of Paranoids?

Florida Professor Arrested for Having a “Suspicious” Bagel on a Plane
By Todd Wright, NBC-Miami

A Florida professor was arrested and removed from a plane Monday after his fellow passengers alerted crew members they thought he had a suspicious package in the overhead compartment.

That “suspicious package” turned out to be keys, a bagel with cream cheese and a hat.

Ognjen Milatovic, 35, was flying from Boston to Washington D.C. on US Airways when he was escorted off the plane for disorderly conduct following the incident.

Monday’s incident is another example of other passengers essentially becoming the authority on terrorist activity on planes.

…

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Ray McGovern shares with us his analysis of the recent article published in the Atlantic written by the infamous American-Israeli writer Jeffrey Goldberg on Israel’s case for bombing Iran and the reasons why the United States should join in. He talks about the ramifications of the recent and ongoing WikiLeaks disclosures, the pitiful state of the mainstream media, the Internet as the new fifth estate, and more.

Ray McGovern’s 27-year career as a CIA analyst spanned administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties at CIA included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’ Daily Brief (PDB). During the mid-eighties, Ray was one of the senior analysts conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Ray received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Fordham College, designated a Distinguished Military Graduate, he was commissioned upon graduation and served as an infantry/intelligence officer in the US Army from 1962-64. Ray holds an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham University and a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program.

Here is our guest Ray McGovern unplugged!

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John Young provides us with a brief overview of the history, purpose and mission of his well-known website Cryptome.Org. He talks about the recent controversy involving Microsoft Corporation’s attempted legal action against Cryptome, and the temporary shutdown of the site by the ISP Network Solutions. He speaks to the importance of the free flow of information and challenging the governments’ self-serving secrecy as prerequisites for an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy, the importance of whistleblowers and anonymous disclosures, the existence of various trap websites, impostors and false flag operators to manipulate information, trick whistleblowers, and or plant specific propaganda, and more.

John Young is a New York based architect and online archivist who owns and operates Cryptome.Org, a website that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance. In February 2010, the ISP Network Solutions shut down Mr. Young’s website after he posted a document summarizing Microsoft’s dealings with law enforcement agencies. Shortly after initiating legal action to suppress a document on how to subpoena online user data Microsoft withdrew the complaint, and the website was restored.

Here is our guest John Young unplugged!

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Phil Weiss provides us with his experience and analysis of the US media’s stand, and their one-sided coverage and one-sided censorship on issues and cases related to Israel and the Israel lobby. He discusses the parallels between the tactics used in Gaza by Israelis and those implemented during the holocaust. Mr. Weiss talks about the Jewish identity question around the Israel lobby, the Obama administration’s hypocritical stand on and lame no-response response to the Goldstone Report, the importance of Jewish money and the Israel lobby to Obama and the Democrats, the recent changing perception of Israel, and much more!

Philip Weiss is an investigative journalist who has written for The Nation, The New York Observer, The American Conservative, Harper’s Magazine, and New York Times Magazine among other publications. He is the author of American Taboo: A Murder in the Peace Corps and an editor of the website Mondoweiss, which covers the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Here is our guest Phil Weiss unplugged!

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Chris Hedges gives us a quick sketch of his latest book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”. He discusses the real role of the US media as one of the main culprits in promoting a sense of exceptionalism by disseminating fantasy, and poisoning civil and political discourse with entertainment and trivia. He talks about the spectacle surrounding Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign and his function as a brand just like any other commercial commodity brand advertised and promoted by corporations, the last decade’s coup d’état in slow motion, and much more!

Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and the Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University. He has written nine books, including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, and the best-selling American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. He spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and served for eight years as the Middle East bureau chief of The New York Times, where he shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, for coverage of terrorism. Hedges also received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. His weekly column is published on Truthdig

Here is our guest Chris Hedges unplugged!

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I am certain all of you know of the infamous New York Times reporter Judith Miller. You know, the dark lady who worked with the Bush administration’s Pentagon to sell us the war with Iraq – based on planted made-up stories on WMD; the one who was involved in the Plame case? The one who ended up not getting fired, but retired from the New York Times, took a job with the Fox News Channel, and joined the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank? Yes, that Judith Miller you all know about.

I am sure many of you are aware of the New York Times decision to cover up and bury the story on NSA’s illegal domestic wire tapping program. Right? They were later forced to admit that they held the story on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. Basically, they protected the Bush administration and helped them get reelected.

I believe some of you are also familiar with the New York Times’ decision to hire the disgraced LA Times editor, Dean Baquet, after he was exposed for killing AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein’s documented revelations, and voluntarily disclosing those revelations to Negroponte and the head of NSA, Michael Hayden. Exactly! This same man was later hired by the New York Times and put in charge as head of their Washington DC Bureau – the perfect place for a rat who buries stories and leaks whistleblowers and their information to government officials.

Well, here is the latest on another New York Times character with a questionable pedigree who is positioned by the paper in another strategically sensitive and important division:

New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief’s conflict of interest

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army. Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning:”Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”

The Electronic Intifada also wrote to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, to confirm the information and ask for an opinion on whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but had yet to receive a response.Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper’s reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the “Israel Defense Forces.”

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Read the rest here.

How should we characterize New York Times’ criteria when it comes to selecting, hiring, and promoting their reporters for strategically important divisions of reporting? Do they have an unwritten but consistently practiced policy which says ‘Thou shall be a government approved rat, tied to special interests and agenda, shady and unethical by any standards, to be selected and placed in high places?’

Am I being fair?

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If we human frogs are to escape boiling–or baking, frying, glowing and other fates our leaders are warming us up to–we need to heed the voices summoned by Sibel Edmonds on Boiling Frogs Post warning us to help each other jump out of the pot and off the stove.

Boiling Frogs brings to you crucial voices, viewpoints and stories that are blacked out elsewhere. In these times when truth seems to be harder to come by, and maintaining hope keeps getting harder to do, here is an oasis in the desert of spin, half-truths, and fabrications that sadly passes for the “free press” guaranteed by our Constitution. What you read here, what you hear here, and what you will soon see here is un-filtered by government or corporate interests and not driven by ideology – a breath of fresh air.

I want to congratulate Sibel on launching this much needed venue free of partisanship focused on issues that truly matter. I wholeheartedly endorse and support this site and the distinguished team of truth-reporters, and I invite all of you to do the same: join this movement, spread the word, and contribute what you can.

Dan Ellsberg

Dan Ellsberg graduated from Harvard in economics in 1952, served in the US Marine Corps from 1954-57, and obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard while working for the Rand Corporation in 1962. In 1964 he joined the Defense Department to work principally on decision-making in the Vietnam War. Mr. Ellsberg precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a Top-Secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to the New York Times and other publications. He was indicted facing 115 years in prison; charges were eventually dismissed on grounds of government misconduct, White House crimes against him which figured in President’s Nixon resignation facing impeachment. Ellsberg has ever since campaigned for peace, encouraging others to reveal truths that are wrongfully withheld by those in power.

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Last Friday as I was searching the headlines for noteworthy and interesting news articles I came across a fairly lengthy and detailed story on Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi. Considering the saturated state of this recent CIA slaying story and the reporting source, I almost skipped the article, but then, something caught my eye; something easy to miss with the naked eye, at least those of gullible US Media readers-believers. It wasn’t the story itself, nor was it the flowery details in an attempt to make it a possible future ‘Hollywood Action Drama’ worthy of a six figure movie rights offer. It also wasn’t due to the authors, since neither one of them was familiar to me. No, it was none of that. What caught my attention and held it there for the next few hours was the very calculative and selective usage of a word in the title; Victim:

“In Afghanistan attack, CIA fell victim to series of miscalculations about informant”

With that word, victim, in mind, I quickly checked a few other media sites, and sure enough the word was there. I will give you a couple of quick examples, starting with NY Daily News:

Among the CIA victims, including several contractors, was a mother of three who directed operations and intelligence gathering at Forward Operating Base Chapman, a secretive site in Khowst province on the Pakistan border that also houses a State Department reconstruction team.

An eighth American victim was a State Department worker. An Afghan also was killed in the attack and six other Americans were wounded.

…

And the next excerpt from the so-called lefty PBS:

Families of some of the CIA victims have released information about their lives. Harold Brown Jr., 37, from Massachusetts, had a wife and three children; Jeremy Wise, 35, was a former Navy SEAL and worked as a security contractor; Scott Michael Roberson, 39, worked as a security officer and had a wife who was eight months pregnant; and Dane Clak Paresi, 46, was a contractor and retired soldier.

…

First, let’s get the very simple facts straight here:

These were not some CIA paper pushers in some office building overseas, nor were they the stereotyped useless undercover social butterflies hanging out in embassies’ cocktail parties. These were the other breed: Combatants in the so-called war zone, actually in the heart of the combat zone, engaged in combat involving the deadliest of attacks using unmanned drones. As for the other two Blackwater contractors, I don’t have to tell you what they do. Do I?

With our military guys who get killed in wars, this same media reports using words such as combat casualties, killed, slain… Please be my guest and comb through the unfortunately plentiful reports on US military casualties. In fact here is the straight forward definition of casualty by the military:

A casualty is a member of personnel unable to fulfill their duties within a military organization due to death or incapacitation by injury or illness.

And here is how it is defined by encyclopedia

A hostile casualty is any person who is killed in action or wounded by any civilian, paramilitary, terrorist, or military force that may or may not represent a nation or state. Also included in this classification are persons killed or wounded accidentally either by friendly fire or by fratricide, which occurs when troops are mistakenly thought to be an enemy force.

As for general usage of Victims of War, this is what usually is meant:

…to those who may be described as the victims of war-that is, noncombatant civilians and those no longer able to take part in hostilities.

I know what you are thinking; kind of. Why split hairs over some terminology usage that may or may not have been calculated, selected, and then given to the public by the media.  And, that’s exactly why I ended up spending several hours researching after coming across that article by the Washington Post.

I spent a few hours combing through the Washington Post archives. I am sure I wasn’t able to check hundreds of their semi-fiction reportage, but I’d say dozens of articles should suffice to establish selective usage of the word victim when it hardly applies, and never using the word where it would be 100% correct and applicable.

Wouldn’t you, or almost anyone, even those with only a minute trace of comprehension-knowledge-brain-common sense, consider the civilian casualties, when it’s comprised of babies, toddlers, grandmothers, as victims of war? As victims? Every dictionary, encyclopedia, and everyone with certified expertise in the English language, would say ‘YES.’

Then how is it that when reporting on established, 100% confirmed, civilian casualties of US combat attacks that include innocent children, this same Washington Post does not use the word victim; not even once? Not in relation to the family members of those children and mothers killed; as in “…the uncle of one of the victims…’ or something like ‘these children fell victim to inaccurate…’ I could go on and list dozens of links from past articles on major heart wrenching civilian casualties of our senseless and perpetual war(s), and show you the absence of the word victim in all. Or you can easily do that yourself: visit Washington Post, enter the key words ‘Afghanistan civilian casualties war’ in the box, click on search, comb through tens if not hundreds of resultant articles on civilian casualties of our war, and look for the word ‘victim.’

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Mark Klein provides us with his personal account of the illegal spying apparatus installed at AT&T by the National Security Agency and his battle as a whistleblower to bring it to light. He talks about the difficulties in getting a reluctant media to report the story, the incredible betrayal by the L.A. Times, his role as a witness in a lawsuit brought against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the alarming state of our civil liberties today, the need for vigilant activism, and more.

Mark Klein is a former AT&T technician who disclosed knowledge of his company’s cooperation with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) in installing network hardware to monitor and process American telecommunications. The subsequent media coverage became a major story in May 2006. In recognition of his actions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation picked Klein as one of the winners of its 2008 Pioneer Awards. Klein worked for AT&T as a technician for over 22 years, first in New York and then in California, before retiring in 2004. He is the author of Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine And Fighting It.

Here is our guest Mark Klein unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Russ Baker discusses his book, Family of Secrets, the first complete historic portrait of the Bush dynasty, and provides us with an overview of how this dynasty shaped our politics. He tells us about the shadow government in the US, the real players, elites, and power centers within each president’s government, and the limitation on what and how much an American president can accomplish – considering the influence of these powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. Mr. Baker defines and explains the concept of Forensic Journalism, and talks about his nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy, the need for nonpartisan and independent journalism today, the current media landscape in the US, and more.

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Family of Secrets- – the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the founder of WhoWhatWhy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.

Here is our guest Russ Baker unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

“There is no recent credible first-hand information on when bin Laden was last seen,” writes Asia Times Online correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad in his December 12, 2009 article, “Osama Can Run, How Long Can He Hide?”. This line, however, is tucked seventeen paragraphs into an article in which early on Shahzad asserts, “There is little dispute that bin Laden and his close associates, including his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, move around in the vast and inhospitable mountainous territory that straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; the porous border exists only as a line on a map.”  

Shahzad quotes US national security advisor James Jones saying that “intelligence reports suggest that the Al-Qaeda chief is somewhere inside North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.”  Shahzad doesn’t indicate whether or not he followed up on Jones’s statement by asking Jones how credible those suggestive reports were and why they were credible. Instead, he lends his own organization’s credibility to Jones’s statement. “Interaction with generally well-connected militant sources,” he writes, “leads Asia Times Online to believe that bin Laden, 52, is alive and healthy, despite a history of kidney trouble.”  

What kinds of well-connected militant sources are they and why should they be believed?  What proof that bin Laden is alive have these sources offered?  How has Shahzad confirmed what they told him about bin Laden being alive?

No one seems willing or able to provide proof of life or verification of bin Laden’s existence or death, yet the speeches, agendas and reporting referring to him in the unconfirmed present persist.

In his piece, Shahzad goes on to write about Bin Laden’s “numerous safe houses” and how hard it is to find the Al Qaeda leader.  “All the same,” he claims, “the net might be getting tighter.”  He draws this conclusion based on a CBS News report about a Predator drone killing “a top Al Qaeda official in the Pakistani border area.”  “Unnamed officials tell CBS News that the Al Qaeda figure killed was not Osama bin Laden nor his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, but that he was “one of the top five terrorists on the US wanted list”.   The rest of the CBS report, however, is all about how the kill is unconfirmed.  In fact, the report’s title “Top Al Qaeda Official Believed Killed” carries a built-in qualifier: “believed”. So does its lead, “CBS News has confirmed a Hellfire missile was fired from an unmanned Predator Drone and likely killed a top Al Qaeda official in Pakistan”.  The only thing CBS is confirming is that a Hellfire missile was fired from an unmanned Predator Drone.  The rest is qualified as “likely” and therefore unconfirmed, even though the unnamed source calls the kill a “major hit” with a name “recognizable to many”.  CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier further confirms that the kill is unconfirmed by reporting that officials told her “they have to study the strike zone, and the behavior of the al Qaeda operatives left behind to see either if they hold a funeral for the suspected target or somehow move to replace him to be able to confirm the target’s identity.”

Why is Dozier even reporting this story if the kill is unconfirmed?  Why is Shahzad using this unconfirmed report as an indication of anything?  

Asia Times Online correspondents, including Shahzad, have done a spectacular job of reporting on the Middle East in general and the Afghan and Iraq conflicts in particular.  American correspondents covering those areas would gain immeasurably from following their reporting.  But in this instance, Shahzad has fallen down the Osama rabbit hole. 

Shahzad, however, may be among the very few up to the task of actually getting to the bottom of whether or not Osama bin Laden still lives.

That’s the story to pursue.

*Other editorials by Kristina Borjesson about unverified press coverage of Osama bin Laden can be found at http://tr.im/CHWr and http://tr.im/CI0c.

Internationally acclaimed for her work, Kristina Borjesson has produced for major American and European television networks and published two groundbreaking books on the problems of the U.S. press: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press and Feet to the Fire: the Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak out. Her awards include an Emmy and Murrow Award in TV, and the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse award for Media Criticism and two Independent Publishers Awards for her books.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

When I read Mizgin’s recent great post about Richard Armitage and his involvement in the Golden Triangle, I rolled my eyes.  “Some Daily Kos reader out there,” I thought, “is, at this very moment, shouting ‘conspiracy theory’ at their computer.” The “conspiracy theory” accusation comes up any time a journalist or a whistleblower points out that U.S. officials and agencies have been complicit in the global drug trade.  In fact, it has been an effective tool to try and silence truth tellers at least since Alfred McCoy was viciously attacked for writing the Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.  Never mind the fact that allegations against the Central Intelligence Agency or the State Department have often been vindicated with the passage of time.  It just can’t be true that America would support drug lords, can it?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a resounding YES, IT CAN.  American agencies, including the C.I.A. and the State Department, have given aid and comfort to international drug lords in the past and apparently continue to do so.  Just read what the New York Times reported on October 28^th about Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a known drug dealer, being on the C.I.A. payroll:

The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power [Emphasis Added] to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

Gee, do ya think? Any enterprising individual of reasonable intelligence, using a minimum of Google research skills, could have determined that the drug trade out of Afghanistan has skyrocketed since late 2001, shortly after the U.S. removed the Taliban from power and installed Hamid Karzai as its puppet.   If the Times had been a little bit bolder, they might have written something like this:

The C.I.A is complicit in the illegal drug trade in Afghanistan, but this should surprise no one, as a peek at the historical record demonstrates drug complicity has become routine.  Just look at these facts:

1950s, Southeast Asia: The C.I.A. supports the Kuomanting (KMT) drug running in Burma.

1960s-1970s, Vietnam-Laos: Richard Armitage, Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines finance a portion of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam through the Southeast Asian heroin trade.

1980s, Southwest Asia: The C.I.A. supports Afghan rebels, many of whom, along with the Pakistani ISI, are known to be deeply involved in opium and heroin trade.

1980s, Latin America: The U.S. backs Contras, even though cocaine turns out to be a key source of their funding, and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, also tied to the drug trade. Also in this time period, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Agent Michael Levine claims Attorney General Edwin Meese blew the cover of a DEA team investigating drug corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

1990s, Burma: DEA Agent Richard Horn, whose case was recently settled with the Justice Department, is spied on by the State Department and C.I.A., apparently because Horn was being too aggressive in trying to shut down the opium trade from Burma.

1996-2002: Sibel Edmonds testifies that criminal elements in Turkey tied to the drug trade, with knowledge and acquiescence of the State Department, bring drugs into the U.S. and Europe.

None of these past Agency misdeeds were mentioned by the Times to give its story context. The reason for these omissions is obvious: the Times or someone in the American government had an axe to grind either with the C.I.A. or the Karzai government itself, and the story was only trotted out because it was convenient for the moment.  A few months from now, if some really enterprising journalists accuse the U.S. government of aiding the Afghan opium trade, the major newspapers will likely ignore them, or, worse, accuse them of being conspiracy mongers.  This is exactly how our trusted mainstream press has treated C.I.A. drug stories in the past:  When it is convenient to promote one of their pet agendas, the establishment media admit the shocking facts.  Then, when it is no longer serving its purposes, the same press turns around and marginalizes anyone repeating the same.  Take the example of Oliver North, Gary Webb, and the Washington Post.

According to a 1998 book Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in order to torpedo Oliver North’s 1994 Virginia Senate candidacy, the Post published a hard-hitting article on October 22, 1994, entitled “North Didn’t Relay Drug Tips”.  The gist of the story (written by Lorraine Adams) was that while he was running the illegal Contra War from his post on the National Security Council, North failed to forward to the Drug Enforcement Agency the evidence that several members of the FDN (the main Contra organization) were involved in the cocaine business. North had claimed to have “turned over to the DEA all evidence of Contra drug running” during his Congressional testimony.  The Post found the story useful at the time, given the newspaper’s opposition to North’s candidacy.  However, two years later, when journalist Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News tied the Contras to a large crack cocaine ring in Los Angeles, the Post apparently forgot its own reporting, and (along with the New York Times and Los Angeles Times) ripped Webb’s career apart.  Cockburn and St. Clair wrote:

Friday, October 4 [1996] the Washington Post went to town on Webb and on the Mercury News. The onslaught carried no less than 5,000 words in five articles. The front page featured a lead article by Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus, headlined, “CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Contra-Tied Plot.”

The rest is history.  Webb was destroyed, which ultimately led to his suicide years later.  In the meantime, the U.S. Congress did nothing, which is something it is accustomed to doing in cases involving accusations of Executive Branch malfeasance.  Two years after Webb’s Dark Alliance series, the C.I.A. Inspector General actually released a report admitting aspects Contra drug running, but this report was barely covered by the same newspapers that had eviscerated the story in the first place.

The press gets away with their perpetual flip-flopping on drug-related issues for a simple reason: The “C.I.A. drug trade complicity” tale is not the kind of story the average citizen wants to believe.  This topic is a taboo because the public has been trained to have a visceral reaction to drugs.  Ever since propaganda films like Reefer Madness were released at the beginning of the 20^th Century, drug dealers have been made out to be public enemy number one and are hated perhaps even more than terrorists.  Recreational drugs are often portrayed as a weapon of mass destruction on America’s youth.  It just can’t be possible that our trusted officials — like Orrin Hatch, to cite one example, — would rail against drugs, claiming they endanger our children on the one hand, while moving in Congress to quash any attempt to hold federal agencies accountable for working with the pimps and pushers on the other. 

Wake up, America.  Our government’s acquiescence in the global drug trade is not just possible; it is an important part of our nation’s post-World War II history.  Obama’s surge in Afghanistan is doomed to failure, in part because our intelligence agencies are fostering the same poppy trade that helps finance our enemies, the Taliban.  We know it is doomed because all of the other C.I.A. drug operations have ended in similar catastrophes.  Of course, the one “success” the U.S. government could point to, if it were willing to admit the facts of its drug alliances, is the defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.  However, given what happened over a decade later on September 11, 2001, that “success” looks like an awful “short-sightedness” and “long-term failure”.  

It is sad to think how many of our young men and women are dying, or are permanently scarred, mentally or physically, in the false belief that they are engaged in some higher moral battle to bring democracy and an end to the heroin trade in Afghanistan.  Until the public realizes the truth about the dark history of U.S. intelligence agencies and drugs, such illusions about the morality of America’s endless wars will continue.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

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!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Kristina Borjesson relates her experiences and provides analysis of the current state of investigative and enterprise journalism in the US. She discusses the drastic decline in true investigative journalism, the role of the internet and the globalization of reporting, and the clashing of the two cultures: traditional media & independent reporters. Ms. Borjesson presents shocking real life examples illustrating behind the scene realities and pressures involved in Network TV, including HDNet and Dan Rather, and others. She talks about government and ownership pressures, and how these pressures successfully shape presented news, the two significant missing ingredients in news reporting today, and more!

Internationally acclaimed for her work, Kristina Borjesson has produced for major American and European television networks and published two groundbreaking books on the problems of the U.S. press: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press & Feet to the Fire: the Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak out. Her awards include an Emmy and Murrow Award in TV, and the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse award for Media Criticism and two Independent Publishers Awards for her books.

Here is our guest Kristina Borjesson unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

“Nine civilians including six children were killed in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban position in restive southern Afghanistan, the provincial governor’s office said on Thursday.”Six children and three women were killed and another three civilian men were wounded,” he said.”
…

“Ehsanullah, an elder from Khoshal village, where the strike took place, earlier told AFP that Haji Kot Aka’s house was hit late Wednesday.”They had four guests at home when the bombing took place. The bomb killed Aka, his wife, four children and three of the guests. One of the guests was wounded,” he said.

Civilian casualties are a sensitive issue in Afghanistan, creating a rift between President Hamid Karzai’s government and international forces as well as resentment on the ground against foreign troops.”

Here is a section from my op-ed piece last May on Mr. Obama’s presidency and the mounting casualties in Afghanistan:

Here is the first paragraph in a New York Times report on May 15, 2009:

“The number of civilians killed by the American air strikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.”

The report also includes the disagreement over the exact number of ‘Civilian Casualties’ in Afghanistan by our military airstrike:

“Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count.”

Does it really matter – the difference between 147 and 117 or just 100 when it comes to children, grandmothers…innocent lives lost in a war with no well-defined objectives or plans? If for some it indeed does matter, then here is a more specific and detailed

report:

“A copy of the government’s list of the names, ages and father’s names of each of the 140 dead was obtained by Reuters earlier this week. It shows that 93 of those killed were children — the youngest eight days old — and only 22 were adult males.”

Maybe releasing the photographs of the nameless unrepresented victims of these airstrikes should be as important as those of torture. Because, from what I see, they and their loss of lives have been reduced to some petty number to fight about.

…

Now I am going to ask the same question: Where are these photographs in the no-coverage coverage of Afghan casualties by our simply despicable mainstream media? Why don’t they show us the real ugly face of our aimless, objective-less, but nonetheless vicious assault tagged as a War on Terror in Afghanistan?

Remember this picture from the Vietnam War?

The picture above, and many similar pictures and war footage, helped shape our public opinion in regard to another senseless war and vicious assaults on civilians. It helped open our people’s eyes to the real horrors of war. It led to mounting pressure from our people demanding an end to these atrocities.

Well, after searching and searching, and searching more I found only a couple of pictures depicting the real face of our war in Afghanistan. For reasons I am sure you all are aware of our corporate media-Government Joint Venture, and in fact many pseudo alternative ones, don’t want our public to see these pictures, since they would speak more than a thousand words and help shape opinions again.

Here is one of the ‘real faces’ of our war in Afghanistan:

Now I am going to ask you to join me and ask the MSM the same question: Where have all the photos gone?

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.

Shielding our Multi-Daddy Statesmen & Generals

Some of you may be familiar with my past interviews, comments, or writings on the issue of ‘revolving doors.’ I started this blog by emphasizing the importance of separating ‘main causes’ from the multiple ‘symptoms’ we’ve been suffering from. Well, I consider the chronic revolving doors phenomena as one of those main causes leading to many of the ailments we suffer from today.

In November 2006 I wrote a two part series on this issue: ‘The Highjacking of a Nation. ‘In Part Two, ‘The Auctioning of Former Statesman & Dime a Dozen Generals’, I provided a few examples of how certain former statesmen and generals cash in on their connections and peddle their influence to the highest bidders turned clients. One of these cases involved General Joseph Ralston. He is the Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group. He serves on the board of Lockheed Martin, which paid the Cohen Group $550,000 in 2005, according to a Lockheed filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Ralston is also a member of the 2006 Advisory Board of the American Turkish Council (ATC), and one of Turkey’s top advocates and lobbyists.

In late summer of 2006, while serving as the Vice Chairman for the Cohen Group, while serving on Lockheed Martin’s Board, while sitting on the Advisory Board of the Turkish Lobby Group, ATC and lobbying for Turkey, this ‘Dime a Dozen’ General, was appointed to be US Special Envoy for Countering the Kurdistan Workers Party conflict with Turkey. Here is an excerpt from my piece:

“Our government sent this man, Ralston, as a special envoy to help resolve the highly critical Northern Iraq situation with possible dire consequences in the near future. Considering Ralston’s livelihood and his loyalties, as a member of the board of the directors of Lockheed Martin, as the vice chairman of a lobbying firm with foreign interests, as an advisor and board member for the most powerful Turkish Lobby group, ATC, who did this man represent while in Turkey as the special envoy? What interests did he really represent; Iraq’s situation, Lockheed’s livelihood, which depends on further conflicts and bloodshed; the corrupt and criminal government of Turkey and its representation via ATC; or, the furthering of the Cohen Group’s future pimping opportunities?”

Why am I revisiting Ralston and this major case of conflict of interest now? It is because I intend to re-illustrate it within the framework and as an example in the discussion we’ve been having on ‘Dissecting the MSM.’

While the implications of Ralston’s appointment caused a major stir within the Kurdish community and organizations, pointing to Ralston’s position with the Turkish lobby in the US, and within Turkey’s own communities and pointing to Ralston’s position with Lockheed Martin, our own media and watchdog organizations let this gargantuan conflict of interest pass under the radar.

Also from ‘Hijacking of a Nation: Part Two’

“Why in the world did no one within the U.S. mainstream media give even the slightest coverage of this conflict of interest? Why haven’t we heard anyone asking Ralston the most important question, in dire need of an answer: ‘Who’s your daddy Ralston; boy?’ Ralston’s position is no different than what is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A person conceived and born out of wedlock.” With the possibility of any one of four daddies, and without the benefit of a DNA test, how do we go about determining Ralston’s real daddy?”

Ken Silverstein of Harper Magazine wrote a piece on this in November of 2006, titled ‘Lost in the Valley of the Wolves’. He touched the most important aspects of this case:

“…But it appears that Ralston is representing the interests of the shareholders of Lockheed Martin rather than the interests of the American people.”

“Then came the mid-September announcement (just weeks after Ralston’s appointment) that Turkeywould be purchasing thirty new F-16′s from Lockheed Martin. Weeks later, the Turkish government ruled out purchasing any Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes. This leaves only one option—Lockheed Martin’s new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A deal between Lockheed and Turkey would be worth as much as $10 billion.”

… and he asked the ‘real question’ any MSM reporter with even a half of a brain should have asked:

“Did Special Envoy Ralston lobby on behalf of Lockheed Martin during his encounters with Turkish officials? It seems likely. Ralston sits on the Board of Directorsof Lockheed Martin and serves as vice chairman of The Cohen Group, a lobbying firm that has represented Lockheed since 2004. On August 11 of this year, seventeen days before he was named Special Envoy, Ralston was appointed to The Cohen Group team that lobbies for Lockheed.”

…and he emphasized the unmentionable as far as the US MSM is concerned, the Turkish Lobby:

“As Kurdish activist and blogger Mizgin Yilmaz has explained in detail , Ralston has close ties to Turkey through his military service and through his seat on the advisory board of the American Turkish Council. Lockheed Martin is a leading member and financial sponsor of this council, which “is dedicated to effectively strengthening U.S.-Turkish relations through the promotion of commercial, defense, technology and cultural relations.””

…and he concluded it with a punch absent in the work (stenography) of all other MSM players:

“It’s hard to understand how the Bush Administration could appoint a special envoy with so many conflicts of interest, but Lockheed’s corporate slogan says it all: “We never forget who we’re working for.” Neither, it seems, does General Ralston.”

Aside from Harper’s Silverstein, one other publication, the Boston Globe, did an excellent hard-hitting report on this. Kevin McKiernan begins the piece with a great punch line:

“MOST PEOPLE would agree that it’s bad ethics for government officials to invest in companies that they regulate. But what about a US special envoy to a Middle East trouble spot who happens to be a director of an arms company selling weapons to one of the parties in the conflict?”

Here is more from McKiernan’s report:

“The problem is that General Ralston is on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms maker, which just last month finalized a $2.9 billion sale for advanced F-16 fighters that may well be used in the Kurdish region (the State Department acknowledges that F-16 s were involved in human rights abuses in Turkey in the 1990s). This gives the ex-general the appearance of holding a financial interest in his shuttle diplomacy.”

“General Ralston is on the board of the American Turkish Council, the powerful Capitol Hill lobby, and he is vice chairman of the Cohen Group, a corporation founded by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, with close ties to the Turkish military. Unfortunately, Ralston carries too much baggage to be special envoy, and he should step down before he alienates the Kurds of Iraq, the best — and perhaps only — friend the US government has in the country.”

And even a punchier finale:

“Our new man in Ankara will be seen as an arms merchant in diplomat’s clothing. He should be replaced.”

Now, here is a list of links to some of the major news coverage involving Ralston’s bastardization of military honor:

McClatchy

CBS News

CNN

New York Times

NPR

Time Magazine

I can go on and list more, but I’m sure you get the picture. They all went with the transcript faxed to them by the State Department like good little stenographers! Didn’t they have access to Ralston’s background, which is listed even in Wikipedia and his employer’s, Cohen Group, website? Surely they did! Weren’t they given reports and tips by those who’ve been acting as watchdogs on this case? Surely they were!

Here is a statement from ‘Mizgin’ who not only followed the case from the beginning as it was unfolding, but took it upon herself to contact these MSM reporters, supplying them with all the background on Four-Daddy General Ralston, and underlining all the issues of ‘conflicts of interests’:

At the end of September 2006, a friend in the UK who writes the Hevallo blog had sent me a link to an article in the Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram on the sale of F-16s to Turkey. At the same time, Turkey was considering a purchase of the new Lockheed Martin F-35 but was not scheduled to make a decision on this purchase until the end of 2006. This news came almost one month after former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Joseph Ralston was named by the State Department as the “special envoy” to “coordinate” the PKK for Turkey.

Since the PKK was preparing to declare a 1 October 2006 unilateral ceasefire, and since I was working on an English translation of Ocalan’s statement regarding the ceasefire, I didn’t have time to immediately investigate the F-16 story and the connection to Ralston. However, by 1 October, I had completed some initial investigation and noted the conflict of interest that Ralston’s appointment created.

In researching Ralston’s background, I found that he was working for The Cohen Group, a lobbying firm founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen, and that Ralston was one of two vice-chairmen for The Cohen Group. The other was Marc Grossman. I had come across a Washington Post article from May 2006 on Cohen and his firm which was written by David Hilzenrath. The article described the revolving-door syndrome between government and private business. In writing the article, I thought Hilzenrath would have the background to see that there was an obvious conflict of interest with Ralston’s appointment and his connection to a private company that was listed with the US Senate, in accordance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, as a lobbyist hired to sell Lockheed Martin tactical fighter aircraft. In fact, Ralston was listed as a lobbyist with the Senate for this very purpose at least as late as 31 July 2006.

I contacted Hilzenrath with the information I had managed to search out within a couple of days and suggested that he write something about the appointment since he had written about the people involved with The Cohen Group. He was interested initially and asked for a phone number where he could contact me. I gave him a “throw-away” number where he could reach me, but never heard from him again.

In the meantime and out of frustration with trying to get the mainstream media interested in an appointment that was obviously very wrong, I wrote an article myself with was first published on KurdishInfo and then on KurdishMedia. Hevallo managed to get the article published in the UK’s Socialist Worker. A friend from Diyarbakir translated the article into Turkish and I sent it to Ozgur Gundem, where it was published. I also posted the Turkish version on Istanbul Indymedia. Another friend persuaded the Kurdish National Congress of North America to call for Ralston’s resignation as “special envoy.”

Before the end of October 2006, Ralston had secured Turkey’s purchase of F-35 aircraft for $10 billion and the official announcement of the purchase came in December 2006. This meant that within a matter of a few weeks, Ralston had squeezed some $13 billion out of the Turkish Defense Ministry.

From the UK, Hevallo had contacted a reporter for the LA Times, Kim Murphy, after she wrote a piece on Ralston and the Kurdish situation while she had been in Iraq. This also looked promising as Murphy appeared interested initially. Hevallo sent her the information that we had collected on Ralston and the Lockheed deals with Turkey and she was going to present the information to her editor in Washington DC. From that point on the information was buried and we heard nothing else from Murphy or the LA Times.

Did the reporters themselves make the decision to sit on the information about this conflict of interest or did they, honestly, pass it to their editors, who made the final decisions? I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter because our experience proves that somewhere along the line, someone in the mainstream media is going to sit on this kind of information to keep it from the public.

Considering that most of Turkey’s purchases of military hardware during the Clinton administration were subsidized by up to 80% by the US taxpayer, Americans themselves should have an interest in what happens when retired generals-turned lobbyists are appointed to handle situations that deal in matters of life and death.

There were those whom we contacted who did take up the pen to write about the Ralston problem and I am grateful to them for their help. Among those were Ken Silverstein at Harper’s; Kevin McKiernan, a longtime advocate for the Kurdish people, writing in the Boston Globe; Chris Deliso, who included information about Lockheed Martin’s public relations firm, Public Strategies, Inc., who took a great interest in the things I was writing about Ralston and Lockheed–hence the need for “throw-away” phone numbers when you have to deal with these bloodsuckers; and Luke Ryland, who managed to link the Ralston conflict of interest with the Sibel Edmonds case. For all of these, I have nothing but praise and the greatest thanks

So what did they do instead? They all went by the transcript faxed and or e-mailed to them by the State Department like good little stenographers! That’s exactly what they did, and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing when it comes to shielding our multi-daddy Statesmen & Generals.

Is Ralston an isolated case? Of course not! There is an extensive list of these multi-daddy ex government officials who double or maybe even triple dip. Here, check out a few of these dime-a-dozen public servants turned foreign lobbyists:

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert: Here, here, and here.

Former Undersecretary of State & Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman: Here, here, and here.

Retired General Brent Scowcroft: Here, here, here, and here.

On a beautiful sunny spring afternoon in 2006, I was sitting outside in the deck area of a neighborhood café in Alexandria with a friend who is a well-known journalist and an accomplished writer, for whom I happen to have the utmost respect. We were discussing the topical ‘Afghanistan & Terror Financing’ issue. Based on well-established trust between us my friend felt comfortable and open in sharing some ‘significant’ tidbits gathered from ‘credible’ sources within the CIA and DIA, and from British Intelligence officers. As I listened, the extent of credible information and documented incriminating evidence gathered excited me to the point where I had to stop this friend to ask:

‘When are you going to have this published?!’

The response was: ‘This was not the main topic I was investigating for my work. These ‘tidbits’ came to me as an ‘inevitable attachment’ due to relevancy…’

I had to stop the conversation again: ‘So? This is explosive. Even bigger than the main topic you’ve been chasing for the last year or so. No one has ever reported this, so you’ll be the first.’

My friend shook her/his head and said: ‘No one has done it because this topic is considered a ‘career ender.’ You know what happens to naïve reporters who actually try to get into this area, don’t you?’

Amazed by this line of reasoning and unable to really process it all I pressed harder: ‘What are you really afraid of?! Government interference? Classification?’
The answer that followed was even more amazing to me – due to my own naivety back then.

‘Government is the least of my worries. It’s the industry – the media. They go after anyone who dares touch this area – CIA, narcotics and terrorism. They will attack, label, and marginalize you, and before you know it your career as a reporter is over. For good.’

That day and in the days that followed I spent hours upon hours researching the topic; this ‘forbidden zone.’ I studied several cases where reporting on government-narcotics relationships, even though obtained and reported based on thoroughly documented credible sources and witnesses, had proven to be ‘career suicide.’ I met with several veteran DEA agents who presented me with even more cases and unreported criminal deeds, buried in the same journalistic ‘forbidden zone’ in the U.S. press. In the months and years that followed I paid much closer attention to reporting on current topics that skirt upon this forbidden area, and in my own time I analyzed and dissected these reports based on my own research and on information received from intelligence sources who are friends and members of my organization. And since I’ve been covering the U.S. MSM topic in ‘Dissecting the Mainstream Media’ series, I am going to present you with a few cases, reports, and analyses, and have your thoughts and views on this ‘Forbidden Apple of the U.S. Press.’

***

Gary Webb

In Part 3 of my ‘Dissecting the MSM’ series I discussed Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series and its consequences in detail, so I won’t repeat the details here. If you haven’t read it I strongly encourage you to go back and do so. In 1996, after publishing his three-part investigative series, “Dark Alliance,” a thoroughly documented and diligently sourced story, he was attacked, ostracized, and pushed out of the media circle by his colleagues in the mainstream media. Despite the damning information contained in the content of the CIA IG Report, the corroborating findings of the DOJ IG Report, various congressional hearings and investigations filled with direct or indirect admissions, the MSM never eased up on its attacks and criticism of Webb’s report, until they successfully ended his career.

In a well-executed piece written by Barbara Osborn she sites the following exchange which took place between Post Dark Alliance Gary Webb and his supportive colleague Robert Parry:

“…Gary Webb didn’t know what was at risk. When he first spoke with Bob Parry–the Associated Press reporter who, along with Brian Barger, broke the Contragate and Contra/drug stories–Webb thought Parry was being “overly cautious.” “I thought he was being kind of foolish,” Webb recalled, when Parry asked him: “Are you sure you want to ruin your career?”

Unfortunately Parry proved to be the ‘realist.’ He was proven right. After all, he had gone through a rough journey of his own during and after his solid reporting on Iran Contra – for taking a bite off the ‘forbidden apple’ of the U.S. mainstream media.

***

Robert Parry

More or less a decade earlier another major case involving a direct government and narcotics relationship had emerged. In 1985, Robert Parry as an AP reporter teamed up with Brian Berger and broke the Iran Contra Affair. He later exposed Oliver North’s involvement in the scandal while reporting for Newsweek. For his impeccable investigative journalism he won a Polk Award, and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

You would think a reporter with Parry’s credentials and solid track record would be revered and fought over by publishers in the U.S. mainstream media, no? Not so fast. First, this is what happened at the Associated Press where Parry broke the Contra scandal:

In late 1985, Parry teamed up with another reporter to report on a detailed and documented expose of drug-trafficking involving the Nicaraguan Contras. However, the AP editors blocked the story. Later Parry found out that his boss was regularly in touch with Oliver North and that he was conferring with him on a regular basis. Parry left the Associated Press.

And let’s read Parry’s own words gathered from an interview he gave on what took place at Newsweek:

,“As for my hiring at Newsweek, I think it resulted from how poorly the magazine had done on the scandal to that point. That said, Newsweek never liked the story and wanted it put to rest as soon as possible. Editor Maynard Parker was very sympathetic to the neoconservatives and became my nemesis. Evan felt that my presence so angered Parker that I had become an obstacle for Evan’s plans for the Washington bureau.”

Here is more:

“Though my finished article contained new information about the CIA’s relationship with Manuel Contreras, Chile’s intelligence chief and a key Letelier murder suspect, Maynard Parker and other Newsweek editors killed the story. I was told that Parker made some disparaging comment about me being “out to get” Bush.”

Of course, once again putting integrity in journalism first, Parry left Newsweek in 1990.

The Contra Scandal, especially the related Government-Narcotics relationship, was treated as an absolute ‘Forbidden Apple’ by the MSM. Webb and Parry were not the only ones; there were others. Here is another example involving reporter Ray Bonner and the New York Times – cited by Parry during an interview:

,“There were a number of journalists in the field in Central America, who were doing courageous work, people like Ray Bonner of the New York Times, who had been digging into the human rights problems in El Salvador, in particular. And he was—his career was very badly damaged, and he was made a sort of an example of what happens to you if you go into these areas too aggressively. Some reporters said that they were warned off from going after the North story, because that was seen as a career-ender.”

And of course Time Magazine as always, as an inseparable member of the MSM gang, followed the same trend:

“In the fall of 1987, Time assigned a staff reporter to assemble any evidence that the Oliver North network supplying guns to the Contras was also bringing cocaine into the U.S. The reporter found serious evidence, and wrote it up. As the former Time reporter explained to Extra!, after the article was written and rewritten, finally, a senior editor told the reporter to give up on the story. “The senior editor leveled with me,” the reporter told Extra!. “His words were: Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.’”

Here is a punchy and so very factual quote from Robert Parry:

“It used to be that you were admired if you took on a tough story. Now you’re portrayed as a nut.”

That’s right. Thanks to the U.S. MSM even today many don’t know the facts involving the Contra Affair. Despite numerous reports, congressional investigations and statements, and tons of proven evidence, some people still consider the Iran Contra scandal a conspiracy theory or mere allegations, and those who had dared to touch it as ‘nuts.’ They owe their ignorance to the mainstream media.

The Walsh Report, the Independent Counsel for the Iran Contra Scandal, began it’s conclusion with this paragraph:

“The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President’s willful activities.”

The establishment did not have to concern itself with reports such as the Walsh Report or others produced by various IGs and Congress. These reports, the surfacing of facts exposing our Government’s direct hand in narcotics and illegal arms trade, did not matter a bit. Neither did they have to pay much attention to a handful of true investigative journalists who were determined and capable of informing the masses with their reporting. Of course not. Their extension, the United States Press, made certain that any concerns would be taken care of, thus the ‘real’ stories were quashed and blacked out, and those who dared to touch them were quickly attacked, labeled, marginalized, and ‘taken out.’

***

KLA, Narcotics, and the U.S. MSM

Remember our military intervention in Kosovo during 1998-1999 in order to stop what was referred to as ‘ethnic cleansing’? Our main ally, partner, over there was the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Kosovar Albanian guerilla group which sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia in the 90s. Up until 1998 the U.S. regarded the KLA as a terrorist group. Then, before the actual NATO-U.S. military intervention, while preparing for that ‘intervention,’ as U.S. Intelligence started establishing its intimate relationship with the KLA in the background, KLA’a terrorist label came off the U.S. government list. In effect our government ‘de-terroristed’ the KLA and cultivated ‘mutually beneficial’ diplomatic relations with KLA leaders.

Here are some excerpts from one of the very few articles printed by the U.S. MSM mentioning this, and ironically it is from the Washington Times, in May 1999:

“Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an “insurgency” organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.”

James Bissett, Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, wrote the following:

“…as early as 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted by the British Special Armed Services were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo. The hope was that with Kosovo in flames NATO could intervene …”

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, published extensively sourced and documented analyses of KLA as a gangster and terrorist entity, and its close ties to the CIA. The following except refers to what followed the State Department’s ‘de-terrorization’ of KLA:

“While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.”

Chossudovsky provides report after report from the DEA and Europol, Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency and reports from Belgrade, establishing KLA as a high profile global narcotics and money laundering cartel:

“The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA “funneled through a so-called “Government of Kosovo” based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn–notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government”.”

“75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe.” A recent intelligence report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: “Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.”

He then provides an excellent overview for this entire picture:

“Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where “freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.”

Here is an explosive article exposing the relationship between the CIA and the KLA before the NATO bombing. Not only that, the article exposes a very familiar figure: William Walker, the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor the ceasefire in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Walker was nominated by Madeleine Albright, American Secretary of State. Guess what? A decade earlier, in 1988, Mr. Walker was the American Ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there suppress leftist rebels, ‘while supporting the contra guerrillas’ against the government in Nicaragua. Coincidence? Not. This is the same Walker who served as Elliott Abrams’ Deputy Assistant Secretary for ‘Central American Affairs’ and accompanied him to all those Contra related meetings. During the investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair several felony charges were brought against Abrams by the special prosecutor, but he was not indicted because he entered into a plea agreement, had a conviction without imprisonment, and eventually was pardoned by President Bush.

Now back to the article for a few excerpts:

“AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia . The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.”

And this on William Walker:

“Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade… Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, concluded from Walker ‘s background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American “diplomatic observers” from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.”

“Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.”

And here is the real punch line on this entire article: This article, this news, was not published in the U.S. MSM. This was reported by the Sunday Times in March 2000. These facts, revelations, and scandalous ties were never truly touched by the U.S. MSM. There was an ‘action alert’ issued by FAIR in 1999 on Time Magazine’s censorship of the established facts and evidence on the ‘Real’ KLA, under the title ‘Time Magazine Ignores KLA Drug Charges’ and subtitle ‘Are editors following Contra tradition?’:

“Time magazine’s May 17 issue ran a feature on the funding of the Kosovo Liberation Army, titled “A Fighting Chance,” suggesting that the KLA is sustained by donations from ethnic Albanians outside of Kosovo. The article reports that the Republic of Kosova Fund holds “more than $33 million” in a bank in Albania, yet in a graphic titled “How the KLA Gets Its Money,” Time cheerfully reports that the KLA gets its money from “fund raisers, mailings and other sources.” What “other sources”? Bake sales? Time doesn’t say.”

“Fortunately, there has been some investigation into the question. The London Times on March 24 cited an intelligence report that indicated as much as half of the funding for the KLA’s guerrilla war comes from drug proceeds. And the San Francisco Chronicle on May 5 reported that European and U.S. law enforcement groups see officers of the KLA as “a major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of narcotics through an underworld network that reaches into the heart of Europe.””

Here is how FAIR appropriately questioned Time’s motives and drew an even more appropriate parallel to show the ‘real’ reason:

“Why didn’t Time mention the ongoing international investigations of the KLA’s suspected role in the heroin trade? A look back at Time’s Iran-Contra coverage sheds some light.”

“In a 1987 investigation into allegations of drug-smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contras, Time staff writer Laurence Zuckerman found serious evidence of Contra-cocaine links, but his story was never run. Why not? A senior editor acknowledged to Zuckerman: “Time is institutionally behind the contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.””

Pretty hard-hitting piece, right? Can anyone question its validity? I certainly can’t see how. One more time the U.S. MSM showed it’s claws when it came to their ‘forbidden apple,’ – CIA and its narcotics and laundering deeds…

***

Afghanistan & Heroin: The journey from Freedom Fighters to Fanatic Villains

I invite anyone who is interested in understanding the axis of U.S. Government, mainstream media, and our foreign policy involving unholy alliances to look at the last three decades of U.S. media coverage of Afghanistan’s Taliban-Al Qaeda, previously known and promoted as ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ and the Mujahidin.
In the 1980s the U.S. government supported the Afghan resistance forces, the Mujahidin, today known as Taliban and Al Qaeda, in the fight against the Soviet occupation. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence (ISS) and worked with these guerilla groups who were close to the ISS.

In his well-researched book, The Politics of Heroin, Professor Alfred McCoy documents the parallel increase in Heroin production in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s when the U.S. Government collaborated and supported the Mujahidin directly and indirectly. While in 1979 Pakistan had a small and local opium trade and produced no heroin, by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan emerged as the world’s leading supplier of heroin, became the supplier of nearly 60% of U.S. heroin supply, and took over major sections of the market in Europe.

“Who were the manufacturers? They were all either military factions connected with Pakistan intelligence, CIA allies, or Afghan resistance groups connected with the CIA and Pakistan intelligence. In May of 1990, ten years after this began, the Washington Post finally ran a front page story saying high U.S. officials admit that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [leader of the Hezbi-i Islami guerilla group], and other leaders of the Afghan resistance are leading heroin manufacturers. This had been known for years, reported in the Pakistan press, indeed in 1980 reported in McClean’s magazine. In fact in 1980 a White House narcotics advisor, Dr. David Musto of Yale University, went on the record demanding that we not ally with Afghan guerilla groups that were involved in narcotics.”

McCoy also documents interesting phenomena involving the DEA operations and actions (or inaction) in Afghanistan during the 80s:

“During the 1980′s from the time that heroin trade started, there were 17 DEA agents based in Pakistan. They neither made nor participated in any major seizures or arrests. At a time when other police forces, particularly Scandinavian forces, made some major seizures and brought down a very major syndicate connected with former president Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.”

In an excellent article published by FAIR David Gibbs provides the following documented facts and analyses:

“Despite CIA denials of any direct Agency support for Bin Laden’s activities, a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests the contrary. During the 1980s, Bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan closely paralleled those of the CIA. Bin Laden held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the bank the CIA used to finance its own covert actions (London Daily Telegraph, 9/27/01). Bin Laden worked especially closely with Hekmatyar–the CIA’s favored Mujahiddin commander (The Economist, 9/15/01). In 1989, the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden, according to a former bin Laden aide (AP, 10/16/01).”

Now let’s go back and search U.S. press coverage of Afghanistan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ during the 80s and try to find any coverage related to these U.S. backed and supported operations’ intersection with the global narcotics trade. Are there any? I’m afraid we know the answer to this question. Here is further coverage based on the report by FAIR:

“The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether. While some newspapers favored some restraint in the degree of U.S. military support for the Mujahiddin (notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post) and others (like the Wall Street Journal) favored a more open-ended policy, these differences were only matters of degree. Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were “heroic,” “courageous” and above all “freedom fighters.””

“According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): “The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle…. The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware.””

And here the axis of U.S. Government-U.S. Press- and the information spin or black-out:

“Another problem was direct manipulation of reporting by the U.S. government, which was supporting the Mujahiddin guerrillas during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. (Indeed, we now know that U.S. aid to the Mujahiddin was secretly begun in July 1979, six months before the Soviets invaded–International Politics, 6/00.) This press manipulation began early in the conflict. In January 1980, the New York Times (1/26/80) reported that the State Department had “relaxed” its accuracy code for reporting information on Afghanistan. As a result, the Carter administration generated “accounts suggesting Soviet actions for which the administration itself has no solid foundation.””

I am tempted to continue, keep going, and cover this same trend in a more current context, but I’ll limit myself to only highlights since this piece is already longer than what I intended it to be.

Afghanistan’s $40-50 billion worth of poppy production today is a gigantic leap from it’s approximately $5-10 billion before our invasion after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Similar to cases shown above our media’s selective coverage has been limiting it’s reporting to a few hundred million dollars of this industry which directly involves the Afghan farmers and warlords. Yet, uniformly missing from the coverage is the remaining $40+ billion! Based on numerous reports publicized by Europol, UN, and even our own State Department, over 90% of this industry is operated, managed and carried out by ‘others.’ These ‘others’ happen to include Turkey, Pakistan, and Albania; currently none of them on our ‘terrorist’ or ‘axis of evil’ list, thus the censored coverage.

As we can see, the U.S. press censorship trend when it comes to Government-Narcotics relationships has been replicated over and over: Contra-Cocaine, Cold War era Afghanistan-Heroin, KLA-Heroin, Post 911 Afghanistan-Heroin. This trend goes above and beyond the usual censorship and/or spins regularly exercised by our media. They seem to have collectively designated U.S. Government-Narcotics-Terrorist relations and operations as a ‘Forbidden Apple.’ Moreover, they seem to have been successful in ensuring the marginalization and downfall of any of their colleagues who have been bold and brave enough to take a bite of it. As stated by my good journalist friend ‘…can’t touch this.’

Editorial Cartoons, also known as political cartoons, can be powerful and effective in explaining political issues and current events. Cartoons can evoke compassion and ignite outrage. They can promote ideals and act as catalysts to propel action for change through creative use of visual art.
They help shape public opinion (positively and negatively).

A few days ago, after publishing my latest op-ed piece on President Obama’s Changes on Change, I received an e-mail from Paul Jamiol, a great cartoonist who has done some really good work in depicting our nation’s downslide. He sent me the link to his recent cartoon which is related to the op-ed piece I wrote; great job, indeed! Check it out below:

Here is another good one published a while ago during one of my MSM related campaigns:

I encourage you to check out Paul’s website to see his activism expressed so effectively in cartoons – summing up important issues better than 1000 word pieces.

Now here is your turn: What do you think of political cartoons and their role today? Who is/are your favorite cartoonist(s)? Why? Also, if you can, share (provide the link) with all of us your favorite cartoon (only one cartoon, please!) related to the topics we’ve been discussing (MSM, Need for ‘Real Change,’ Campaign lies and ‘pre-selected’ candidates…). If you don’t have one already, you may want to spend a few minutes browsing the Net – it is fun, uplifting, and also highly stimulating-nothing like a well-executed punchy cartoon to get that critical thinking going….