It’s therefore pretty depressing seeing MSNBC host Chris Matthews talking about the glories of cable TV to challenge official power:
As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting show, it’s a constant theme of mainstream journalism that America is never the aggressor always the victim.
As if.
This is remarkable. Returned US army vets giving back their medals of honour near this week’s NATO conference in Chicago. Powerful, poignant and the kind of voices almost never heard in the mainstream media. Much easier and safer to interview generals (hello ABC TV’s 7.30 last night) about a war in Afghanistan that they’ve ruined from day one.
ASH WOOLSON: No NATO, no war!
VETERANS: No NATO, no war!
ASH WOOLSON: We don’t work for you no more!
VETERANS: We don’t work for you no more!
ASH WOOLSON: N-A-T-O!
VETERANS: N-A-T-O!
ASH WOOLSON: We don’t kill for you no more!
VETERANS: We don’t kill for you no more!
ALEJANDRO VILLATORO: At this time, one by one, veterans of the wars of NATO will walk up on stage. They will tell us why they chose to return their medals to NATO. I urge you to honor them by listening to their stories. Nowhere else will you hear from so many who fought these wars about their journey from fighting a war to demanding peace. Some of us killed innocents. Some of us helped in continuing these wars from home. Some of us watched our friends die. Some of us are not here, because we took our own lives. We did not get the care promised to us by our government. All of us watched failed policies turn into bloodshed. Listen to us, hear us, and think: was any of this worth it?
CROWD: No!
ALEJANDRO VILLATORO: Do these medals thank us for a job well done?
CROWD: No!
ALEJANDRO VILLATORO: Do they mask lies, corruption, and abuse of young men and women who swore to defend their country?
CROWD: Yes!
ALEJANDRO VILLATORO: We tear off this mask. Hear us.
IRIS FELICIANO: My name is Iris Feliciano. I served in the Marine Corps. And in January of 2002, I deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. And I want to tell the folks behind us, in these enclosed walls, where they build more policies based on lies and fear, that we no longer stand for them. We no longer stand for their lies, their failed policies and these unjust wars. Bring our troops home and end the war now. They can have these back.
GREG MILLER: My name is Greg Miller. I’m a veteran of the United States Army infantry with service in Iraq 2009. The military hands out cheap tokens like this to soldiers, servicemembers, in an attempt to fill the void where their conscience used to be once they indoctrinate it out of you. But that didn’t work on me, so I’m here to return my Global War on Terrorism Medal and my National Defense Medal, because they’re both lies.
SCOTT KIMBALL: My name is Scott Kimball. I’m an Iraq war vet. And I’m turning in these medals today for the people of Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, and all victims of occupation across the world. And also, for all the servicemembers and veterans who are against these wars, you are not alone!
CHRISTOPHER MAY: My name is Christopher May. I left the Army as a conscientious objector. We were told that these medals represented, you know, democracy and justice and hope and change for the world. These medals represent a failure on behalf of the leaders of NATO to accurately represent the will of their own people. It represents a failure on the leaders of NATO to do what’s right by the disenfranchised people of this world. Instead of helping them, they take advantage of them, and they’re making things worse. I will not be a part of that anymore. These medals don’t mean anything to me, and they can have them back.
ASH WOOLSON: My name is Ash Woolson. I was a sergeant. I was in Iraq in ’03, and what I saw there crushed me. I don’t want us to suffer this again, and I don’t want our children to suffer this again, and so I’m giving these back!
MAGGIE MARTIN: My name is Maggie Martin. I was a sergeant in the Army. I did two tours in Iraq. No amount of medals, ribbons or flags can cover the amount of human suffering caused by these wars. We don’t want this garbage. We want our human rights. We want our right to heal.
JACOB CRAWFORD: I’m Jacob Crawford. I went to Iraq and Afghanistan. And when they gave me these medals, I knew they were meaningless. I only regret not starting to speak up about how silly the war is sooner. I’m giving these back. Free Bradley Manning!
JASON HURD: My name is Jason Hurd. I spent 10 years in the United States Army as a combat medic. I deployed to Baghdad in 2004. I’m here to return my Global War on Terrorism Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan. I am deeply sorry for the destruction that we have caused in those countries and around the globe. I am proud to stand on this stage with my fellow veterans and my Afghan sisters. These were lies. I’m giving them back.
STEVEN LUNN: My name is Steven Lunn [phon.]. I’m a two-time Iraq combat veteran. This medal I’m dedicating to the children of Iraq that no longer have fathers and mothers.
After the show’s recent coverage of Israeli apartheid against Christians in Palestine caused a massive stir, it’s hard not to see this latest piece as a way of kissing and making up with the Zionist lobby. Despite the fact that the story features Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy telling US viewers that the Tel Aviv bubble allows Jews to ignore its brutal occupation down the road, racism in Israel continues apace. Just hear Netanyahu talking about “illegal” refugees poisoning the chances of Israel to thrive as a “Jewish and democratic state”:
On 16 May 2012 The Times published a piece claiming that information found in an embassy cable released by WikiLeaks directly led to the execution of Majid Jamli Fashi, an Iranian kickboxer. Within hours, media outlets around the world picked up the article and the story went viral.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Once the Times published, the Daily Mail picked it up, Rupert’s The Australian syndicated it, and then the Drudge got it, skyrocketing comments on Twitter.
The WikiLeaks twitter feed reacted swiftly and mercilessly. Spread over a succession of tweets:
“Murdoch’s Times tries to smear WikiLeaks for Iranian hanging. Media morons run with it without fact checking. The absolute contempt for the readers and the truth shows why there must be urgent reform. Let us consider the Iranian smear. We have: Wrong guy. This isn’t the guy in the cable. Wrong publication. Spiegel, not WL, selected the cable, but anyway, it was redacted. Wrong country. Israel isn’t even mentioned in the cable. In fact there’s no connection whatsoever with the story other than it mentions martial arts. And yet dozens of ‘press’ outlets are running with it. Idiots! Wrong timeline. The guy (that the cable, as far as can be determined, has nothing to do with) was sentenced last August.”
What seems to have happened is Rupert’s journalist Martin Fletcher decided to research the background to the Fashi case, found a transplanted Alabama professor in Birmingham (Scott Lucas) who’d been following it, read a few of his articles from last year on the subject, and contacted him. Rupert’s been keen to smear WikiLeaks for years, having failed at least twice before.
Memo to world; never believe White House spin over terrorism or the countless mainstream media hacks who blindly report it (via Reuters):
White House efforts to soft-pedal the danger from a new “underwear bomb” plot emanating from Yemen may have inadvertently broken the news they needed most to contain.
At about 5:45 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 7, just before the evening newscasts, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s top White House adviser on counter-terrorism, held a small, private teleconference to brief former counter-terrorism advisers who have become frequent commentators on TV news shows.
According to five people familiar with the call, Brennan stressed that the plot was never a threat to the U.S. public or air safety because Washington had “inside control” over it.
Brennan’s comment appears unintentionally to have helped lead to disclosure of the secret at the heart of a joint U.S.-British-Saudi undercover counter-terrorism operation.
A few minutes after Brennan’s teleconference, on ABC’s World News Tonight, Richard Clarke, former chief of counter-terrorism in the Clinton White House and a participant on the Brennan call, said the underwear bomb plot “never came close because they had insider information, insider control.”
A few hours later, Clarke, who is a regular consultant to the network, concluded on ABC’s Nightline that there was a Western spy or double-agent in on the plot: “The U.S. government is saying it never came close because they had insider information, insider control, which implies that they had somebody on the inside who wasn’t going to let it happen.”
DOUBLE AGENT
The next day’s headlines were filled with news of a U.S. spy planted inside Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), who had acquired the latest, non-metallic model of the underwear bomb and handed it over to U.S. authorities.
At stake was an operation that could not have been more sensitive – the successful penetration by Western spies of AQAP, al Qaeda’s most creative and lethal affiliate. As a result of leaks, the undercover operation had to be shut down.
The initial story of the foiling of an underwear-bomb plot was broken by the Associated Press.
According to National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, due to its sensitivity, the AP initially agreed to a White House request to delay publication of the story for several days.
But according to three government officials, a final deal on timing of publication fell apart over the AP’s insistence that no U.S. official would respond to the story for one clear hour after its release.
When the administration rejected that demand as “untenable,” two officials said, the AP said it was going public with the story. At that point, Brennan was immediately called out of a meeting to take charge of damage control.
Relevant agencies were instructed to prepare public statements and urged to notify Congressional oversight panels. Brennan then started the teleconference with potential TV commentators.
White House officials and others on the call insist that Brennan disclosed no classified information during that conference call and chose his words carefully to avoid doing so.
The AP denies any quid pro quo was requested by them or rejected by the White House. “At no point did AP offer or propose a deal with regard to this story,” said AP spokesman Paul Colford.
It’s a theme I discuss in my chapter in the forthcoming book I’ve co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, Left Turn.
Foreign Policy’s Steve Walt addresses it:
I gave a lecture last night at the Cape Ann Forum, on the topic of America’s changing position in the world and what it might (should) mean for U.S. grand strategy. My hosts were gracious and the crowd asked plenty of good questions, which is what I’ve come to expect when I speak to non-academic groups. Indeed, I’m often impressed by how sensible many “ordinary” Americans are about international affairs in general and U.S. foreign policy in particular. And so it was last night.
One of the attendees was iconoclastic journalist Christopher Lydon, who’s been a friend for some years now. Chris asked a great question: Why is there so little accountability in contemporary U.S. policy-making, and especially regarding foreign policy? To be more specific: He wanted to know why some of the same people who got us into the Iraq debacle, mismanaged the Afghanistan war, and now clamor for war with Iran are still treated as respected experts, welcomed as pundits, and recruited to advise Presidential campaigns?
I didn’t have a particularly good answer for him, but I thought about it more as I drove home. I’m not sure why there seems to be so little accountability in the American establishment these days (though it is true that if you lose $2 billion dollars, it does affect your job security), but here are a few thoughts.
Part of the problem is institutionalized amnesia. The United States is busy all around the world, and if the short-term results of some action look okay then we tend to move on and forget about what we’ve left behind. We fought a proxy war in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and it was a controversial issue at the time, with 40,000 or so Nicaraguan perishing as a result. But eventually the war ended, and we moved on with nary a backward glance. We intervened in the Bosnian civil war, patched together a Rube Goldberg-like structure to govern the place, gave ourselves high-fives, and spend the next fifteen years telling ourselves what a success it was. Except that it wasn’t. Really. Last year we helped topple the Gaddafi regime in Libya, rejoiced at the fall of a despised and brutal dictator, and then moved on again, even as Libya descends into chaos. But it’s not our problem anymore, unless a contraband MANPAD eventually finds its way to some unfortunate civilian airline somewhere. And if that airliner doesn’t have Americans on board, we won’t worry about it very much.
…
A second reason is the incestuous clubbiness of the foreign policy establishment. Mainstream foreign policy organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations thrive by being inclusive: It’s not clear what a member in good standing would have to do in order not to be welcome there. This is actually a smart principle up to a point: Because none of us is infallible, you wouldn’t want to live in a society where being wrong rendered anyone a pariah for life. But neither does one want a system where conceiving and selling a disastrous war has no consequences at all.
Third, the incestuous relationship between mainstream journalists, policy wonks, and politicos reinforces this problem. All three groups live in a symbiotic relationship with each other, and you wouldn’t expect to see many people in this world donning their brass knuckles and saying what they really think about other members of the club. And because their livelihoods and well-being aren’t directly affected by catastrophes that happen Far Away, why should they worry about holding people accountable and conducting their relations in a more adversarial fashion? Bad for business, man….
Since 9/11, far too few journalists have questioned the avalanche of spin emerging from the White House and other official sources when it comes to so-called terror threats. This short story in the Guardian is necessary to challenge the narrative:
While serious questions remain about the origins and source of the Yemeni “bomb plot”, a clearer picture is emerging of an audacious and, as far as the CIA is concerned, a successful sting operation.
Sources familiar with the operation suggest that a CIA informant and putative suicide-bomber originally recruited by Saudi intelligence infiltrated al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) and said he wanted a bomb in order to explode an aircraft bound for the US.
The double agent was handed the latest bomb devised by AQAP and passed it on to his Saudi handlers and the CIA.
Western intelligence sources do not dispute it was a sting operation. But it seems it was more than that: the “suicide bomber”was an agent provocateur – that it is to say, there is no evidence that AQAP was already planning such a plot and that without his approach to the militant group, no such plot wouild have taken place, not yet at any rate.
“It seems the double agent was planted and offered himself up to AQAP, it was an opportunity for them to test new technology”, said Tobias Feakin, director of national security and resilience at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
He added that claims of an AQAP-inspired plot did not seem to quite fit as both core al-Qaida and AQAP were in the process of “regrouping”, adopting more of a role in support of the local population rather than planning ambitious bomb plots.
Western intelligence officials have made it clear that the “underwear” bomb, now in the hands of the FBI, will prove extremely useful in testing airport security measures, specifically over whether a bomb such as this one with no metallic content could be detected by existing screens.
The sting operation may be a morale-boosting propaganda coup. The alleged plot also served to defend the Obama administration’s decision last month to step up US drones on targets in Yemen. According to the New York Times reported, the double agent also provided intelligence that led the CIA to conduct a drone strike in Yemen on Sunday that killed the AQAP leader Fahd al-Quso.
But, it seems, he did not know of the whereabouts of the bombmaker himself, Hassan al-Asiri, who must now be the prime target of a US drone attack.
Judging by the responses of sources approached about the operation, it was set up by the CIA and the Saudis, and no other intelligence agency was involved.
It does, however, raise the spectre of crying wolf – will reports of the next plot refer to a sting, or a real terrorist operation?
Michael Hastings and Glenn Greenwald discuss how many in the mainstream media fuel the never-ending “war on terror”
I was interviewed last week by the independent program Earthwise. We discussed the importance of Wikileaks and its challenge to the mainstream media:
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Business reporting often ignores the vast bulk of human beings and focuses solely on company profits. Take this lead story in today’s Murdoch Australian:
Papua New Guinea specialist Highlands Pacific has long been known as an asset-rich, share-price-poor type of stock. There is a feeling out there that this year could well see that change for the better, due to a couple of milestones that are to be clocked up.
The first is the commissioning of the $US1.5 billion ($1.47bn) Ramu nickel-cobalt project in PNG, 8.56 per cent-owned by Highlands and with the ability for it to go to an eventual 20.55 per cent stake.
China’s MCC is the major partner and operator of the project, which has cost more than originally planned and is two years behind schedule.
None of that really matters to Highlands as it has been carried in the development.
Assume a long-term nickel price of $US9 a pound (now $US8 a pound) and Highlands could receive $US3 million-$US5m a year up until about 2018, when project debt is assumed to be paid off. After that, Highlands’ stake increases to 11.3 per cent and its share of free cashflow could be $US15m-$US20m a year, with the option to go to a 20.55 per cent equity interest should it desire.
All that is not bad in itself for a company that yesterday was being valued by the market at $106m (15.5c a share).
Given Ramu’s development cost, it seems fair enough to suggest Highland’s market cap is covered by the Ramu interest alone.
But just like a late-night TV ad throwing in steak knives as part of the deal, there is more to Highlands, most notably its 18.8 per cent stake in the Xstrata-led Frieda River copper-gold project in PNG.
It is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped copper-gold deposits (12.9 million tonnes of copper and 20 million ounces of gold). Xstrata delayed a feasibility study into its development to December this year.
That raised concerns in some quarters that Xstrata had gone cold on the project. But the reality is that Xstrata delayed it to study power options for Frieda River in greater depth. The emerging availability of gas in that part of the world means that the original plan for an $US810m hydro-power project could be replaced with the cheaper option of gas-fired power.
Like Ramu before it, the delay at Frieda River is neither here nor there, given that when it is developed it is going to be around for decades.
Throw in Highlands’ exploration hunt near the almost exhausted Ok Tedi copper-gold mine in the Star Mountains in PNG, and it is easy to see why valuations of Highlands runs well ahead of its current share price. Euroz settled on a 40c share price target in a recent research note on the company after first having arrived at a 51c valuation.
Understand any of that? Of course you didn’t, you’re a real person who actually wonders what social and environmental impact such explorations may have on the poor people of PNG.
Here’s the Oxford Business Group highlighting calls for the PNG government to make sure these vast revenues don’t all leave the country:
A series of significant mineral finds in Papua New Guinea (PNG) have highlighted the role exports are set to play in the nation’s economic future. However, there have been calls from industry players and opposition officials asking the government to do more to ensure revenues stay in the country.
In mid-April, state-owned Petromin announced that it had found a 364-metre intersection of porphyry copper, molybdenum and gold mineralisation at its Ipi River prospect, located 50 km north of its Tolukuma gold mine in Central Province.
In the same month, Australia-based Indochine Mining announced that gold and silver finds at Mount Kare had underlined the “outstanding potential” of the project to become one of PNG’s next major mining operations. Officials also revealed that KULA Gold’s Woodlark Island project, which has estimated reserves of 700,000 ounces, was on track to start producing in 2014.
…Issuing subpoenas to journalists to force them to reveal their sources is now obsolete — unnecessary — because the U.S. Government’s Surveillance State is so vast, so comprehensive, that it already knows who is talking to whom. It now subpoenas and harasses reporters simply to force them to confirm in court what they have already learned through surveillance, but the limitless Surveillance State it has created has rendered undetected whistleblowing — or undetected anything — virtually impossible.
The latest report by Reporters Without Borders finds the ever-increasing numbers of journalists being murdered around the world.
It is therefore the responsibility of reporters who work in challenging environments – and that includes me, who’s just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan and needs to become more familiar with protecting sources who work in dangerous conditions – to remember who we are dealing with; repressive states. A timely investigation by Matthieu Atkins in the Columbia Journalism Review:
Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones like Yemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in Syria, and asked if Kardokh would help him.
At the time, the situation in Syria was deteriorating rapidly, as protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s repressive regime turned violent following a vicious crackdown by security forces. The Syrian government had drastically curtailed visits by foreign journalists, but McAllister had managed to get in undercover. Kardokh was grateful for a chance to tell his story. “Any journalist who was making the effort to show the world what was happening, that was a very important thing for us,” he told me in February.
At the time, Kardokh was providing computer expertise and secure communications to the resistance. He agreed to be interviewed about his work on camera by McAllister, who filmed his face, telling Kardokh that he would blur it out before publishing the footage. McAllister also asked Kardokh to put him in touch with other activists.
But some of McAllister’s practices made him uneasy, Kardokh said. He worried that the filmmaker didn’t realize how aggressive and pervasive the regime’s surveillance was. Kardokh and his fellow activists took elaborate measures with their digital security, encrypting their communications and using special software to hide their identities online. “I started to feel that Sean was careless,” Kardokh told me. He said he had urged McAllister to take more precautions in his communications and to encrypt his footage. “He was using his mobile and SMS, without any protections.”
Then, in October, McAllister was arrested by Syrian security agents. He wasn’t harmed, but was held for five days and said that he could hear the cries of prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms. Eventually, he was released and returned to the UK. “I didn’t realize exactly what they were risking until I went into that experience,” McAllister said in an interview on Channel 4 after his release.
The Syrians had interrogated McAllister about his activities, and seized his laptop, mobile phone, camera, and footage. All of McAllister’s research was now at the disposal of Syrian intelligence. When Kardokh heard that McAllister had been arrested, he didn’t hesitate—he turned off his mobile phone, packed his bag, and fled Damascus, staying with relatives in a nearby town before escaping to Lebanon. He said that other activists who had been in touch with McAllister fled the country as well, and several of those who didn’t were arrested. “I was happy that I hadn’t put him in contact with more people,” Kardokh said.
…
It’s easy to argue that McAllister should have taken stronger precautions, but what, exactly? How many reporters are familiar enough with the technical aspects of digital security that they could protect their computers and phones from the Syrian intelligence service? The fact that McAllister, an experienced and committed journalist, jeopardized his sources with inadequate digital precautions is indicative of a broader problem in journalism today: We haven’t kept pace with technological advancements that have revolutionized both information-gathering and surveillance.
After researching the subject of digital security, I realized that there have been occasions in my own work as a freelancer covering the conflicts in Libya and Afghanistan when I’ve exposed myself and my sources by carrying unencrypted data or e-mailing sensitive information over insecure channels. It’s unclear what, if anything, major news organizations are doing about it.When CJR’s Alysia Santo recently tried asking outlets like The New York Times, she got a firm “no comment.” Curious, I e-mailed an informal survey to journalist friends and colleagues, and several who’ve worked as senior correspondents in Afghanistan for major US news outlets said they’d had little-to-no formal training or assistance from their organizations in digital security.
