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?
 

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

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!

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

I am watching the first snow of the season fall as I’m typing this quick update for this past week. There’s so much to write about, and so many important articles and links to provide: Obama’s speech, the new administration continues its assault on transparency and liberties just like the old one, our ever failing foreign policy…and more. However, as always, I’m short in time and not able to cover them all. My part IV on the Makings of a Police State has been taking a backseat every week. It is almost done, but every time I make a resolution to sit down and just finish it, something comes up and gets in the way. This week it ended up being the infamous speech. I know thousands and thousands of people, websites, are covering it, but somehow I am not able to find among them the very few macro conclusions I see. I don’t mean to imply that I expect to see my exact points and conclusions when it comes to political issues like this one, or that my points are the right ones, however, knowing that I am not the only one seeing that the same cycle keeps repeating itself over and over, reading conclusions after conclusions showing up like carbon copies everywhere…well, I guess you get the point. Right?

I’ll start with the announcement of two great additions to our team here at Boiling Frogs Post:

Pepe Escobar & John Stanton Join Boiling Frogs Post

Author and investigative journalist Pepe Escobar is now a member of our investigative news and analysis team. Many of you know Pepe and his great work, whether on Afghanistan and Central Asia, or his muckraking of the Obama presidency and its lack of change on issues and policies that really matter. Some of you know his work through citations and references in my previous writings and updates, and a few of you know that I’ve been a big fan and a follower of his work. Please welcome Pepe Escobar – here is his bio:

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a 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 has 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 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.

When you get a chance read the latest by Pepe on Obama’s speech published by Asia Times: Vietnam-Lite Unveiled.

Author, analyst, and a good friend of mine, John Stanton, has joined our contributors, and will be writing on the military industrial complex and oil related revolving doors, foreign lobbies, US Deep State, and Central Asia, under his moniker Dr. Strangelovian. I’ve known John for several years, and I’m truly honored to have him join us and  to present his effective and original analyses here at Boiling Frogs. Here is John’s Bio:

John Stanton is an author and journalist covering the national security arena. He was a senior editor of American Politics Magazine, and has provided national security and political analysis for CBS Evening News, CNN, ABC, and CNN. Mr. Stanton’s commentaries have appeared on Washington Post’s Foreign Policy Magazine, the National, History News Network, NPR, and other media outlets worldwide. He is the author of four books of essays including: Talking Politics with God & the Devil in Washington, DC  and A Power But Not Super. His latest book is titled Inside the US Army Human Terrain System available here. He received his Masters in Political Science with minors in Economics & International Affairs from the University of Detroit Mercy.

Anti-War & Anti-Surge Rally in Washington DC

End US Wars, a new coalition of antiwar organizations, peace and justice advocates, and citizens of conscience are planning a major rally in Washington DC on Saturday, December 12. Here is an excerpt of their statement of purpose from their website:

“We call for active, non-violent non-cooperation with US war policy. As we vigorously oppose a military escalation in Afghanistan, we encourage mass political mobilization and high-profile antiwar.”

I quickly checked their list of member organizations and coalitions which is still expanding. I am not a member of any of those groups, but if it is anti-war, non-violent, and non-partisan, it is good for me. I plan to be there and add my voice. In fact, if the weather is cooperative I will take my 16-mo old daughter and make it her first political rally. We have said it many times over here at Boiling Frogs: ‘It ain’t enough to just sit, yak yak yak, and write and blog; we need to take it further; we need to take action(s).’ So I encourage you to participate if you stand against these wars and what’s being committed in your name.

Again here is their website:  http://www.enduswars.org/

Neocons’ Man Chalabi Cozying up to Obama?

I came across this article yesterday. It is still too early to evaluate the depth and implications, but it is certainly worth putting on our radar and watching closely:

Mr. Chalabi, who cultivated neoconservatives and the George W. Bush administration when he was an exile drumming up support against Saddam Hussein, told The Washington Times that he is a big fan of Mr. Obama.

Mr. Chalabi said he would have voted for Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential election and that his longtime aide, Francis Brooke, who lives in Washington, did.

Security contractors, in coordination with the U.S. military, arrested a close aide to Mr. Chalabi in August 2008. At the time, Mr. Chalabi was suspected of aiding Iranian-backed militias known as “special groups.” Mr. Chalabi denies the charge but makes no secret of his political group’s ties to Iran and that country’s influential Revolutionary Guards.

“We never hid our relationship with the Iranians,” he said. He added that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was “very [angry] about us having this office in Tehran” before the war. But he said the State Department was paying for the office. “They knew they were funding it. We got an [Office of Foreign Assets Control] exemption; it was not a secret.”

You can read the entire article here. You may want to check out Francis Brooke, Mr. Chalabi’s longtime aide, and see if he’s been receiving any special contracts or Whitehouse invitations…You never know when it comes to our new President; he could have made another change on one of his changes…

Vanity Fair Article: BlackWater Chief & CIA Asset Erik Prince

Considering the level of publicity on Blackwater (Xe) lately and how it’s been collectively declared to be safe and kosher to be treated as a media commodity, that is, after years of damage it inflicted, I suspect many of you have already read the article. In a way, Vanity Fair way that is, it is entertaining, easy to read, in a pretty much staged, simplified, and then staged again way.

Here is an excerpt from the intro:

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.
…

Here is what’s supposed to be the explosive part (I guess for the majority who watch ‘Dancing with the Stars’ it is):

Prince, according to sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A. asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than $1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence.

…

And here is what I found interesting to be questioned…but of course no question follows:

And up until two months ago [Emphasis Added]—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their mission: non-disclosable.
…

So, I’m going to go ahead and ask it: Until two months ago? Hmmmm. Doesn’t that make it more or less 9 months of operations sanctioned, granted, paid for, and endorsed by the new administration? Or is it that they don’t count Xe as Blackwater?

Coming Soon…

My reaction to the reaction to Obama’s speech …

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