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Whatever Happened to that Iranian Bomb Plot Case?

By MICHAEL KAUFMAN | October 10, 2012

“…it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.”

– FBI director Robert S. Mueller III

You’ve probably forgotten the plot: Mansour Arbabsiar, an  Iranian-American used car salesman living in Texas, is arrested and charged with acting on behalf of high ranking officials in Iran’s government to conspire with a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

This case begins dramatically, with Attorney General Holder announcing the arrest, stating that the plot was “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force.” This is followed by President Obama asserting that “we know that he had direct links, was paid by, and directed by individuals in the Iranian government.”  Thus, the utmost importance is conferred upon the arrest of Arbabsiar.

So, we have international intrigue spanning three countries, well-known villains mixed together in fresh combination and charismatic, award-winning stars hitting their marks in supporting roles—all indications point to a critically acclaimed blockbuster. Then Arbabsiar shuffles in front of the camera. Noooo! He’s all wrong for the part! Although his antics in a second tier reality show had once made him briefly popular, he can’t convey the cunning and menace necessary for the role of terrorist mastermind. This jarring bit of miscasting immediately brings greater scrutiny to the whole production and a realization that the entire plot doesn’t make any sense at all.

It becomes hard for the audience to concentrate on the intended theme– The Iranians are plotting against us– when fundamental questions of common sense are crowding the mind: Why would the Iranians be so careless as to use Arbabsiar, a man who seems singularly unqualified to carry out such a mission?  Why would they initiate such a dangerous escalation? What tangible benefits would be gained from killing the Ambassador?

Publicity didn’t go as planned, as reporting of events immediately began to diverge from the usual pattern. Most significant were the strong assertions of doubt about the plot from those cited in the media as experts. At the polite end of the spectrum, Iran expert Volker Perthes says, “I don’t regard it as impossible but rather improbable.”  Coverage was especially notable for how prominently the skeptics were featured and in how lacking most articles were in finding competing expert opinions to try to achieve the usual veneer of balance. (2 thumbs down!)  The response of the general public, as judged by the comments sections of the news articles, was overwhelmingly incredulous and dismissive of the charges.  Unsure of how to respond to the push-back, supporters of the administration’s claims appeared half-hearted at best, to the point that Hillary Clinton could only lamely offer that” nobody could make that up, right?”, implying that the story’s very improbability lent it credibility. To sum up, after a disastrous opening day, blasted by the critics, this film went straight to video.

But, of course, this is not a film but what should have been one of the most important stories of the year. Given the widespread disbelief of the government’s charges, it would have been reasonable to expect journalists to pursue the story with increased aggressiveness. That this story was allowed to fade out after such an auspicious beginning seems curious. A comparison with The New York Times’ coverage of the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, is instructive. In the aftermath of this attempted act of terror we saw numerous articles, which continued to develop throughout the days and weeks. These articles, with datelines from New York, London, Nigeria, Yemen and Lebanon, tried to piece together Abdulmutullab’s actions and movements across several continents, attempting to dig deeper into the details of the plot. Multiple authors tried to fill out the story and understand the process by which this young man reached his extremist position. On December 30, only 5 days after the incident, reporters are already printing information from the NSA discussing their previous four months tracking the plot; this in a case where there was huge intelligence failure!

In contrast, it seems as if after the first day very little coverage has been given to the Arbabsiar case, where claims of involvement at the highest levels of the Iranian government, if true, make it a much more serious matter than previous failed plots. We learned superficial details about Arbabsiar’s failed businesses, absent mindedness and difficulty in retaining his keys and cell phone, but very little of substance has come to light since that would help us make sense of the story. I haven’t seen any follow-up on a more serious discussion of who Mansour Arbabsiar is. Initially, a friend is quoted as saying Arbabsiar is a businessman and so he did it for money, not out of religious fanaticism. That’s all. Mystery, apparently, solved. Arbabsiar may not be a religious zealot, but surely it’s a complicated and fascinating question how a person with no history of violence progresses from pursuing his fortune through multiple small business ventures to being willing to blow up a crowded restaurant and saying if one hundred people are killed with the ambassador, “Fuck ‘em. No big deal.” as alleged in the criminal complaint filed against him. […]

Now at last, an article appears in the New York Times that whets the appetite for the coming trial, scheduled to begin October 22. It gives a fascinating description of Arbabsiar’s 32 hours of interviews with the government’s psychiatrist, depicting him as a person by turns naïve, likable, grandiose, charming, with a darker side with the potential to erupt. We see a man having only the thinnest thread of connection to the world we actually inhabit, seemingly unaware of the adversarial nature of his predicament, making it even harder to take a plot with such a character seriously. Suddenly Arbabsiar’s cinematic analogue occurs to me: Timothy Treadwell, the protagonist of Warner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man. Treadwell, like Arbabsiar, is a former “party boy” suffering from bi-polar disorder, but whose wildly fluctuating monologues and rants we actually got to see on camera. Imagine David Petraeus directing Treadwell to arrange with the Taliban to assassinate Venezuela’s ambassador to Iran. Now we’re getting somewhere.

One key component of the government-created conspiracy has been the selection of deluded, marginal figures to entrap. It seems no stretch to believe that Arbabsiar fits snuggly into this demographic and it is quite easy to imagine him, with delusions of grandeur and eager to please, participating enthusiastically in such a fictitious plot. When the word terrorism is invoked, we are not supposed to care about the lives of a few unfortunate, hapless characters, who are quite easily disposed of with little protection or interference from the courts and minimal interest from the press and public. There’s no reason to believe Arbabsiar will be an exception.

What is extremely difficult to imagine, however, is any responsible party, especially one portrayed to be as ruthless and disciplined as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, involving him in its schemes. On the surface, there might appear to be more pressure on the administration to prove its case regarding involvement of the Iranian government. After all, President Obama himself has put his credibility on the line by stating categorically that “We would not be bringing forward a case unless we knew exactly how to support all the allegations that are contained in the indictment.” Although, as we saw with the dirty bomb allegations in the Jose Padilla case some pretty extraordinary claims can disappear quite easily without any challenge or uproar.

This time could be different. The government could proceed in an open trial and prove its case conclusively regarding both Arbabsiar and his Iranian co-conspirators. The press could take a skeptical, confrontational stance toward any charges which don’t withstand scrutiny, challenging those who propagated them and demanding accountability for such reckless behavior in the highly sensitive area of U. S.-Iran relations. While either of these could happen this time, you don’t need to be an expert to feel comfortable saying, “It’s possible, but not probable.”

Michael Kaufman can be reached at: mlkaufman0@yahoo.com.

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October 10, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Hall of Shame for Venezuelan Elections Coverage

By Keane Bhatt | Manufacturing Contempt | October 8, 2012

Hugo Chávez, as a number of us expected, won the Venezuelan presidential election in yet another landslide yesterday: 55.1% to his opponent Henrique Capriles’s 44.2%.

To understand why Chávez’s electoral victory would be apparent beforehand, consider that from 1980 to 1998, Venezuela’s per capita GDP declined by 14%, whereas since 2004, after the Chávez administration gained control over the nation’s oil revenues, the country’s GDP growth per person has averaged 2.5% each year.

At the same time, income inequality was reduced to the lowest in Latin America, and a combination of widely shared growth and government programs cut poverty in half and reduced absolute poverty by 70%—and that’s before accounting for vastly expanded access to health, education, and housing.

However, the establishment media broadly anticipated that yesterday’s election would be a repudiation of the Chávez administration’s policies. Consider The Guardian headline, “Hugo Chávez: A Strongman’s Last Stand,” for example. To be sure, if Chávez were to win, the press explained, it could be chalked up to a climate of fear and repression or voter suppression. Even with a tight victory, his now-anemic support would still augur the beginning of the end to a failed, 14-year experiment.

Inconveniently for this narrative, over 19 million people in a country of 29 million were registered to vote, and any supposed intimidation did not prevent a historic turnout of 81%. With 96% of the votes counted, the country’s National Electoral Council has shown that Chávez has thus far received 1.5 million more votes than Capriles. And the electoral system’s credentials are sterling—Jimmy Carter, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his democracy-promotion work with the Carter Center after his presidency, commended the record of Venezuela’s voting process a month before the elections:

Although some people have criticized the result—which is Hugo Chavez having won—there’s no doubt in our mind, having monitored very closely the election process, that he won fairly and squarely. As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world. They have a very wonderful voting system…

This, apparently, wasn’t as newsworthy as the inane question of whether Venezuela is a dictatorship. A LexisNexis search for all English-language news containing the terms “Jimmy Carter” and “Venezuela” between September 11, when Carter made those comments, and October 7, returned 45 results. In that same time period, 78 news items mentioning both the terms “Hugo Chavez” and “dictator” appeared. (To be fair, some of the 78 pieces refuted the notion that Chávez is a dictator, but even these articles are a reflection of the pervasiveness of the nonsensical topic.)

This contrast in the media’s priorities is symptomatic of the overwhelmingly disgraceful portrayal of Venezuela’s elections. The Hall of Shame that follows is a sampling of some of the most typical distortions, gratuitous slurs, and incorrect predictions that readers have been exposed to over the past few weeks:

• In a Saturday editorial, The Washington Post falsely attributed the question, “If Hugo Chavez is an autocrat, how could he be in danger of losing the Venezuelan presidency in an election on Sunday?” to economist Mark Weisbrot, “one of Mr. Chavez’s dwindling band of American supporters.” In fact, Weisbrot energetically argued, using statistical analysis of polling data, that there was virtually no chance that Chávez was in danger of losing. The editorial went on to compare Chávez to Putin and Ahmadinejad, incorrectly claiming that Chávez controls “most television channels.” In actuality, the BBC reported that “some 70% of Venezuela’s radio and TV stations are in private hands,” while “just under 5% are state-owned.” The Post misleadingly asserted that “many voters, too, are intimidated by high-tech polling machines that read their fingerprints; polls show that they suspect their votes will not be secret.” But whether these fears are well-founded was left unanswered. The editorial board ignored the Carter Center’s report on the technical features of Venezuela’s voting system, which concluded that “this concern has no basis…The software of the voting machines guarantees the secrecy of the vote.” Finally, the Post ended its editorial by conjuring up a menacing hypothetical scenario: “Venezuela’s neighbors, and the Obama administration, should be ready to react if [Chávez] attempts to remain in power by force.” Never mind that during the elections Chávez repeatedly said, “We will recognize the results, whatever they are,” and previously demonstrated this when, after losing a referendum vote in 2007, he publicly stated, “I congratulate my adversaries for this victory.”

• Jon Lee Anderson, writing for The New Yorker’s News Desk, erroneously declared that “Venezuela leads Latin America in homicides.” That distinction actually goes to Honduras, which leads the world in per capita homicides. But a mention of this would have been off message, as Honduras’s illegitimate post-coup regime receives $50 million a year in arms and training from the United States for its repressive security forces. And unlike in Venezuela, being an opposition activist in Honduras carries a significant chance of being disappeared or killed. Anderson continues by predicting that, irrespective of the election’s outcome, “this will probably represent the final eclipse of the long, heady reality show that his leadership has become.” Capriles “or someone else like him,” says Anderson, can “carry on with the task of making Venezuela a fairer and safer society.” His piece (originally titled, “The End of Chavez?,” but quietly revised to “Chavez The Survivor”) concludes with a quote from a journalist who ponders the prospect of a defeat for Chávez, while also using the term “autocrat” in reference to him—somehow, a ruler who by definition has absolute power can also be defeated in a competitive election. This is not the first time that Anderson has obscured the differences between democratically elected leaders and actual autocrats: he once lumped Haiti’s ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, with the country’s Duvalier dictators—in Anderson’s rendering, they were all “despots and cheats.”

1282

Google result of Anderson’s title, now renamed “Chavez The Survivor”

• The New York Times, a day before the election, ran an op-ed with the instantly dated headline, “How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant.” Its author, Francisco Toro, offers a confused attempt to separate Latin America’s left into “radical revolutionary regimes”—Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba—and a “more moderate set of leaders”: Brazil, Uruguay, and Guatemala. In Toro’s account, apparently, Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, a School of the Americas–trained special forces officer once in charge of counterinsurgency operations under military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, is now one of the left-leaning Latin American leaders who do not turn “their backs on democratic institutions.” Toro also contends, without providing evidence, that “behind closed doors,” Brazilians “sneer” at Chávez. While it is impossible to refute such a claim, it is worth noting the effusiveness with which, at least publicly, former Brazilian president Lula Da Silva endorsed Chávez’s reelection bid in July. In a video statement, Da Silva said: “Chavez, count on me…Your victory will be ours… and thanks, comrade, for everything you have done for Latin America.”

• The Times also ran an October 5 news article by William Neuman, reporting that a young law student intended to vote for Chávez for fear that voting on a secret ballot for her preferred candidate, Capriles, would expose her to professional retribution. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research found, however, a quick search on Twitter showed that the law student had no qualms about publicly uploading a photo of herself kissing a poster of Capriles. (William Neuman might be remembered as the author of a Times piece on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, which bizarrely claimed that Assange “had refused to flush the toilet during his entire stay” at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The sentence was later erased on the Times‘ website with no explanation.)

• And as a final example (even though there are countless more articles to criticize), one of the most glaring acts of journalistic misconduct within the mainstream press appeared in U.S. News & World Report. Other prominent media outlets have taken some small steps to veil their denunciations against Chávez. U.S. News & World Report was much more brazen: it published a news, not opinion, article by Seth Cline on October 1 that put Venezuela’s “fair and free elections” in quotation marks but offered no scare-quotes in its very first sentence, which introduces the reader to “President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator.”

* Update (10-8):

Bloomberg Businessweek published a 994-word report by Charlie Devereux last evening on Bloomberg.com, following the election. Surprisingly, the piece included this paragraph:

Under Chavez, poverty fell to 31.6 percent at the end of 2011 from about 50 percent when he first took office, according to the national statistics institute. Extreme poverty declined to 8.5 percent from about 20 percent over the same period. Venezuela has the lowest level of inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the United Nations.

Today, however, a reworked 960-word article, now co-authored by Charlie Devereux and Alexander Cuadros, occupies the original hyperlink at Bloomberg.com. The segment above on poverty and inequality has been eliminated (although it can be still be found in a version republished on the website of the San Fransico Chronicle).

Keane Bhatt is an activist in Washington, D.C. He has worked in the United States and Latin America on a variety of campaigns related to community development and social justice. His analyses and opinions have appeared in a range of outlets, including NPR, The Nation, The St. Petersburg Times and CNN En Español. He is the author of the NACLA blog “Manufacturing Contempt,” which critically analyzes the U.S. press and its portrayal of the hemisphere. Follow his blog on Twitter @KeaneBhatt

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October 9, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

CNN seems to consider damaged motorcycle more important than injured Palestinian children

By Allison Weir | October 8, 2012

CNN’s choice of a photo for its latest online news story on Israel-Palestine is revealing.

In its report on the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, “Palestinians: Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 1, wound 15,” CNN features one photo. It is a picture of a charred motorcycle.

CNN reports: “Palestinian militants say they have fired 20 mortar rounds from Gaza into Israel in retaliation for airstrikes that killed one person and wounded 15 others.”

Later in the story CNN mentions that some of the “others” were children but gives no additional details. According to reports from other sources, at least five of the injured were children, including one infant.

There are a number of photographs of these children.

Yet, CNN didn’t publish any of them, and instead used a photo of a motorcycle.

Below are some of the photos CNN missed. (Click on each photo to see the source.)

In the last paragraph of its story, CNN reports: “On the Israeli side, there were no injuries and only minor property damage…”

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October 8, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NY Times headline reverses chronology, story leaves out important information

Does the New York Times consider Israeli goats more important than Palestinian children?

By Allison Weir | October 8, 2012

Today’s New York Times features a headline that reverses the sequence of events described in the story it is allegedly representing. It also omits significant information.

The headline reads: “Israel Launches Airstrikes After Attacks From Gaza” in a story bylined by Isabel Kershner. In other words, in its usual fashion, the New York Times headline tells readers that Israeli violence is defensive and came after Palestinians initiated the violence.

In reality, it was the opposite, as the lead paragraph states: “Palestinian militants from Gaza fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli territory on Monday, causing no casualties but some property damage, AFTER an Israeli airstrike wounded at least 10 Palestinians in southern Gaza on Sunday [emphasis added].”

Farther down, the story reports, “The latest flare-up began with the [Israeli] missile strike on Sunday against two men who Israel said were members of jihadist groups…. at least eight passers-by were also injured.”

In addition to reversing the party responsible for the initiation of violence, the Times story also omits information about the 8 people who were “also injured.” Were they old men? Women? Children? What is the nature of their injuries? Will any be permanent?

The Times doesn’t tell us. Yet, while reporter Isabel Kershner didn’t bother to obtain or convey this information, she does tell us, “Several goats were killed in a petting zoo in an Israeli communal farm…”

Other news media provide some of the missing information. According to the Middle East Media Center (IMEMC), an infant and four other children were among the injured. Three of the injured are in serious condition. IMEMC reports that the missiles were fired into a crowded area that included school students heading home from evening school.

The New York Times story also doesn’t disclose the fact that the reporter, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli citizen. (The Times refuses to answer questions about whether she has served in the Israeli military, or whether she has family members currently serving in the Israeli military or that served in it in the past.)

The previous New York Times bureau chief for the region, Ethan Bronner, had a son serving in the Israeli army, and many of the journalists in the area have similar personal connections to the Israeli military. The New York Times has a history of appointing bureau chiefs with ties to Israel.

A 2005 study found that the Times had reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate seven times greater than it reported on Palestinian children’s deaths.

While the New York Times and other US media frequently report that Palestinian violence has interrupted what the media call “a period of calm,” a 2009 study by an MIT professor revealed, “[I]t is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict.”

The study found, “79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day).

In addition, the researchers stated, “…of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.”

An alternative headline, and story, could have been something like: “Israeli airstrikes injure infant and 4 other children.” This might be the kind of reporting we would get if the Times would ever stop assigning partisans to cover the conflict.

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October 8, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu was wrong about Iraq having nuclear weapons

So what makes him think he is right about Iran developing nuclear weapons?

Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on September 12 2002.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the main investigative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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October 8, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

German state TV reports: Syrian rebels claim responsibility for attack on Turkey

By R. Teichmann | Global Research News | October 05, 2012

On Oct. 4th, the German state TV channel ZDF reported on the attack on Turkey several times.

In its “Mittagsmagazin” at 1300 hours it reports as follows:

02:06 – 02:32
German:

“Raketen- und Granatfeuer. Die Türkei übt Vergeltung für einen Angriff von syrischer Seite. Gestern Nachmittag hatten syrische Rebellen einen türkischen Ort in Grenznähe beschossen. Seit Wochen schon warnt Ankara davor, die Türkei zu provozieren. Inzwischen haben sich die syrischen Rebellen ganz offiziell zu der Provokation bekannt.”

Translation: (emphasis added)

“Rocket and mortar fire. Turkey takes revenge after an attack from the Syrian side. Yesterday afternoon Syrian rebels fired on a Turkish village close to the border. For weeks Ankara had warned against provoking Turkey. Meanwhile Syrian rebels officially claimed responsibility for the provocation.”

Only 3 hours later in its “Heute in Europa”  at 1600 hours it reports:

01:40 – 01:52

German:

“Raketen und Granatfeuer. Vergangene Nacht übte die Türkei Vergeltung für einen Angriff von syrischer Seite. Gestern Nachmittag hatten Rebellen einen türkischen Ort in Grenznähe beschossen.”

Translation:

“Rocket and mortar fire. Last night Turkey took revenge for an attack from the Syrian side. Yesterday afternoon rebels fired on a Turkish village close to the border.”

0220 – 0227
German:

“Aussage eines Einheimischen (Türke): „Die syrischen Rebellen versuchen, uns in ihren Konflikt zu verwickeln. Wir müssen da sehr vorsichtig sein.”

Translation:

Testimony of a local Turk: “The Syrian rebels try to draw us into their  conflict. We have to be very careful here.”

In their main evening news  “Heute” at 1900 hours they report:

01:40 – 01:53

German:

„Raketen- und Granatfeuer. Vergangene Nacht übte die Türkei Vergeltung. Gestern Nachmittag hatten die Syrer einen Ort in Grenznähe beschossen. Die Spannungen zwischen den Nachbarn waren eskaliert – Ankara schlug zurück.“

Translation:

“Rocket and mortar fire. Last night Turkey took revenge. Yesterday afternoon the Syrians fired on a Turkish village close to the border. The tensions between the neighbours had escalated – Ankara retaliated.”

In the late evening news “Heute Journal” at 2300 hours they reported:

0154 – 0205
German:

“Raketen und Granatfeuer. Vergangene Nacht übte die Türkei Vergeltung. Gestern Nachmittag war von syrischer Seite ein Ort in Grenznähe beschossen worden. Die Spannung eskalierte. Ankara schlug zurück.”

Translation:

“Rocket and mortar fire. Last night Turkey took revenge. Yesterday afternoon a village close to the border had been fired upon from the Syrian side. The tension escalated – Ankara retaliated.”

0235 – 0242
German:

“Zerschossene Häuser und menschenleere Straßen. Noch ist nicht einmal klar, wer eigentlich geschossen hat, die syrische Armee oder die Rebellen.”

Translation:

“Houses shot to pieces and streets devoid of people. It is not even clear yet who really fired, the Syrian army or the rebels.” 

The first victim of war is the truth

The first report clearly states that the rebels officially claimed responsibility for the attack on Turkey.

It is telling to see how the pressure on this TV station worked. They had to back-paddle:

At 1300 it was the Syrian Rebels officially claiming responsibility.

In the main evening news at 1900 it was the Syrians (suggesting the Syrian army). This is a prime example of how the first and probably most authentic and truthful report is turned and twisted by the spin doctors to come to the desired result. In these times of Orwellian double speak we have to give credit to the ZDF that they did not stick with “The Syrians did it” but at least ended with a question mark – in the late evening they leave it open who was responsible.

Supporting the original ZDF report that the rebels are responsible for the attack is another video  (Source: Syria News) which shows that the rebels have the equipment to carry out such an attack.

These mortar shells are Russian-made, at least, the armed Western-backed fighters state this in this video on YouTube. It seems that they use ammunition that they got by attacks of arms depots of the Syrian Arab Army.

The author is a member of Awaken Ireland and a frequent contributor to this blog. He can be contacted via brtirl@eircom.net

October 8, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Make-Believe Crisis in Iran

By PATRICK FOY | CounterPunch | October 5, 2012

What if the White House were deliberately misleading America and the world about a major foreign policy issue involving war and peace, would it not be something worth investigating? What if, on top of that, the US Congress and Senate were going along with the subterfuge, remaining silent and not questioning it in the slightest? Wouldn’t that phenomenon be remarkable?

What if the mainstream news media, both television and print, were also enabling the same White House campaign of misrepresentation? Would this not be even more shocking? Should not a free press be checking the facts, asking basic questions, instead of blindly parroting a government party line which could be little more than war propaganda?

If you guessed I am describing Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, hyped at every opportunity by the Obama White House and the Congress and by the Republicans and Mitt Romney, you would be on target. The nonstop campaign of harassing and demonizing Tehran, premised upon the existential threat supposedly posed by an Iranian atomic bomb, is a determined bipartisan affair in Washington.

Every Tom, Dick and Jane has a stake in the game, the only difference being the extent to which a particular Tom, Dick and Jane is willing to proclaim his or her outrage and commit the United States to punitive action, ranging from ruinous economic sanctions to a bunker-busting military assault in tandem with our dauntless nuclearized ally[sic], Israel.

True, this scenario has been in place for years and is becoming tedious, but we now seem to have arrived at a new plateau of mass hysteria thanks to the 2012 U.S. Presidential campaign. Why? In a word, leverage. The leverage to determine who gets elected in Washington and under what conditions. I am referring in part to a foreign leader who is acting in concert with his American lobbyists and financial backers.

As part of this electioneering process, extravagant commitments have been extracted from craven American officials to further the interests and expand the greater territorial ambitions of the nuclear-armed foreign entity at issue, in exchange for campaign contributions and votes. Nothing new here, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Let me dramatize the problem with a recent example. I have not spoken with John McLaughlin in over ten years, but I believe we remain on good terms. I watch his weekly Washington-based show, the McLaughlin Group, to hear in particular what Patrick Buchanan has to say about the week’s events. The Group remains informative and a partial antidote to the mainstream media. McLaughlin often wanders off the MSM reservation, but never too far.

Last Friday, September 28th, something occurred on the program which blew this fake Iranian crisis sky high. Issue One was, naturally, the interminable and largely irrelevant 2012 Presidential campaign. Issue Two was Iran and Bibi Netanyahu’s speech the day before, at the UN General Assembly, in which he explained why the world must set “red lines” to Iran’s enrichment of uranium to halt its quest for an atomic bomb.

Two days prior to Bibi’s speech, President Barack Obama had proclaimed from the same dais: “… America wants to resolve this issue through diplomacy… there is still time and space to do so. But that time is not unlimited… Make no mistake: a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained… And that is why the United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Where’s the daylight between the two?

John McLaughlin turned to Mort Zuckerman for a comment. Zuckerman repeated the party line that the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb would be an existential threat to Israel which must be stopped. As in all such pronouncements, just like those of Barack and Bibi at the UN, the indisputable assumption was that the Iranians are, of course, working to build The Bomb. Then Buchanan weighed in with this bombshell:

“But John, Iran has no nuclear weapons program. There is no nuclear weapons program according to 16 United States intelligence agencies in 2007, reaffirmed in 2011. Even the Israelis are now saying we think the Americans were right. They don’t have a nuclear weapons program. The Ayatollah [Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] has said nuclear weapons on Iran’s part would be immoral, unjust and un-Islamic. So why are we now considering talking about a war on a country to deprive it of weapons of mass destruction it does not have?

So I’m thinking, whoa, we have arrived at the Emperor-has-no-clothes moment. It is out in the open at last. Buchanan has challenged the undeniable: the premise that Tehran has a program underway to build The Bomb. What’s more, he has done it by pointing to the conclusions of the U.S. Government itself, as embodied in its 16 intelligence agencies. Buchanan did not rely upon his own research or idle speculation. He cited the best available conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community.

All right, this is not new information. I wrote an article about it in 2007 for Taki’s Magazine when the news first broke regarding the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE was a true revelation back then as well as a wake-up call. It demonstrated that Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush and their Neoconservative foreign-policy brain trust were actively deceiving their fellow-Americans by attempting to entice the country into yet another war, on top of Iraq, under false premises.

It was assumed at the time that the NIE ended this deceit and that the project to smack Iran could not go forward. How could it? There were no nuclear weapons in Iran and no program underway to develop them, just like there had been no WMD in Iraq when Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched at the beginning of 2003. Now we knew. The 2007 NIE was reaffirmed in a 2011 NIE update. The Neoconservatives had a cow. Where was the threat needed to start another conflict and continue their undertaking to remake the Middle East?

Please note, however, that during the interim since Peace Prize Obama was handed the torch in 2008, no one in the Executive Branch–not Obama or Hillary Clinton, and no one on Capitol Hill–dares mention these NIE conclusions. It is as if they do not exist. Only the disinformation from misguided and suborned office-holders matters. At the end of the day, only that counts, not reality. In essence, Peace Prize Obama and the Democrats have continued, under different packaging, the same Neoconized foreign policy of Dick Cheney and the Republicans. The question you might ask yourself is, why?

What was the reaction to Buchanan’s assertions? For me, the reaction of his fellow panelists was more interesting and eye-opening than what Buchanan actually said. You could have expected the Group to react in horror at Buchanan’s denial of what everyone else in Washington was taking for granted. But no, that is not what happened. No one challenged Buchanan. No one challenged the veracity of his pronouncement.

Not Mort Zuckerman, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Zuckerman is one of the top Zionists in the country and a personal friend of Netanyahu. Not Rich Lowry, the editor of the Neoconservative outlet, National Review, which competes with the Weekly Standard and Commentary for warmongering and American exceptionalism. And not the liberal columnist and professional Democrat, Eleanor Clift, who idolizes Obama. And not the former Jesuit priest and host, John McLaughlin.

All of them simply ignored what Buchanan had said, did not address it, even though its implications blew the legs out from under long-standing U.S. foreign policy and reduced the speeches of Barack and Bibi at the UN to nonsense.

The only reason I can think of why Zuckerman, Lowry, Clift and McLaughlin did not confront Buchanan is that they knew what Buchanan had said was the truth. To enter into a discussion with Buchanan would be to acknowledge the possibility that his view might be correct. This would reveal that a colossal con game was underway in which both political parties and the press were enablers.

The principal con man in this game would be the President of the United States, followed by his Secretary of State. The victims of the con game would be the American people, just like they were under Bush and Cheney. And of course the Iranians, who now must cope with crippling economic sanctions for no legitimate reason. The larger question remains, why is this happening? Why is the deception continuing from one Administration to the next? Cui bono?

PATRICK FOY is an essayist and short story writer as well as a former altar boy. He graduated from Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut and from Columbia University in New York City, where he studied English literature, European history and American diplomatic history. His work can be found at www.PatrickFoyDossier.com.

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October 5, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuela Election Polls by “Respected” Consultores 21 Unreliable

By Erik Sperling | Venezuelanalysis | October 3rd 2012

With the Venezuelan presidential elections looming this Sunday, the U.S. press is dedicating increasing attention to the campaign between Hugo Chavez and opposition challenger Henrique Capriles. While nearly all polling companies, including the opposition-aligned Datanalisis, give double-digit leads for Chavez, many news organizations continue to give the impression that the race is a toss-up. Countless news agencies have focused heavily on polls conducted by Consultores 21, whose latest poll shows Capriles ahead 49.9 percent to 45.7 percent, to demonstrate that the contest is neck-and-neck.

Consultores 21 is “respected,” “reputable,” and “well-regarded,” according to the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, and Washington Post, respectively. Capriles himself has said “personally, I believe in Consultores. I’ve been looking at Consultores’ polls for many years.”

In a meeting with U.S. election monitors on Monday, influential opposition media figure Teodoro Petkoff said that Consultores is one of the only “serious” pollsters in Venezuela today (discounting Datanalisis as corrupt). It is entirely unclear how they come to this conclusion, however, as Consultores has an extremely poor record in previous Venezuelan electoral contests. For example: In the 2004 vote to recall Chavez mid-term, Consultores predicted a tie between those wanting Chavez to finish his term and those voting to recall. But the recall vote failed with Chavez garnering 60 percent of the vote.

In the 2006 presidential election between Chavez and opposition candidate Manuel Rosales, Consultores maintained that Chavez had just a 13% lead over his opponent. Chavez won that contest with a nearly 26 percent margin over Rosales (62.8% to 36.9%).

In the 2009 constitutional referendum to remove term limits for president, Consultores polls a month beforehand showed just 41.8 backing the referendum, with 56.20 opposed. The referendum passed with a 54 percent majority–almost a polar opposite result from the one predicted by Consultores.

Grave errors such as these by a polling company should have been more than enough to put them out of business. The continued existence of Consultores 21, despite their consistent lack of any semblance of accuracy, demonstrates its purpose as a mere campaign tool for opponents of Chavez. News organizations should be able to uncover and identify this type of blatant bias, and now must take steps to correct their misrepresentation of the status of the Venezuelan presidential election.

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October 4, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reuters Fails the “Find-Replace” Game for Recycling Iraq Propaganda about Iran

By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America | October 1, 2012

When recycling decade-old allegations, lies, and threats that preceded invasion and occupation, sometimes sloppy mistakes happen.

In a short report posted this afternoon, Reuters quotes U.S. State department spokesperson Victoria Nuland praising the detrimental and destructive effects of its sanctions regime against Iran and claiming once again that Iran is building nuclear weapons, despite her own government’s assessments that this is not the case.

Nuland is thrilled that “the Iranian currency has dropped to a historic low today against the dollar,” as she believes “this speaks to the unrelenting and increasingly successful international pressure that we are all bringing to bear on the Iranian economy” which she adds is “under incredible strain.”

While much can (and should) be discussed regarding the continued collective punishment of Iranians over its wholly legal, safeguarded and monitored nuclear program, the real gem of the Reuters piece comes in the last paragraph.  Reporter Arshad Mohammed, whose article was edited by both Doina Chiacu and Cynthia Osterman, shorthands Nuland’s own imperious demands to the Iranian government:

Catch that?  The “international community” is trying to “intensify pressure on Baghdad” so that Iran won’t choose to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Apparently, either these fine Reuters staffers are unaware that Tehran is the capital of Iran, or – perhaps more plausibly – they merely forgot to replace the Iraqi capital with the Iranian one when reusing these old propaganda talking points about a Middle Eastern country supposedly building weapons of mass destruction.

With so much recycled material from 2002 flooding the mainstream, how can we expect poor Reuters to keep track of which country we’re supposed to be lying about and threatening now?

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October 1, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

National Pentagon Radio (NPR) Watch

By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | October 1, 2012

Friday brought another report of the civil war in Syria by Kelly McEvers of NPR’s Morning Edition.

The opening summary tells us that rebels “captured a third major border crossing between Syria and Turkey. The rebels are trying to restore services to a recently liberated town.”

Let’s hold on right there. “Liberated town”? According to Miriam Webster’s online dictionary, the first definition of “liberate,” is to set at liberty: free.; specifically : to free (as a country) from domination by a foreign power.” (The phrase “domination by a foreign power” is more than a touch ironic, given the role of the U.S., Turkey, Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council in bankrolling and supplying the rebels. )

One need not even probe into the connotations of “liberate” which by its very denotation tells us that liberation is the work of the “good guys.” Right there in a subtle, or not so subtle, way, National Pentagon Radio is taking sides. And it is not too far into the reportage before journalist ace Kelly McEvers repeats the formulation: “Inside the building, we sit down with Abu Azzam, one of the rebel commanders who helped liberate the border crossing (with Turkey, Jw) and the town beyond.”

So what kind of “liberation” has come to this town of about 20,000 people called Tal Abyad? As we get deeper into the story, the “liberation” becomes ever stranger. McEvers reports:

Once inside the town, the only civilians we see are a handful of people in a pickup truck, and they’re on their way out. The bakeries have reopened, but apparently just to make bread for the fighters. One of two functioning stores clearly caters to the rebels, too. Otherwise, the town is almost completely empty…. Our guide, Abu Yazen, shows us the blackened, pockmarked government buildings that were taken by the rebels. We ask Abu Yazen why the town is so empty. He says it’s because 80 percent of the people in town actually sided with the government, not with the rebels (emphasis, jw)…. What happens when those 80 percent of the people come back and they want their houses back? What’s going to happen to them?….

The guide Yazen replies and McEvers offers the translation, “Those who have blood on their hands will be tried, he says. The others will come back and help us build a new country.” Hardly a reassuring invitation to those who have fled from the “liberation” of their town.

McEvers hastily concludes her piece:

Someone rushes in to tell us they’ve spotted a column of trucks with mounted machine guns that belong to the regime’s army. (Soundbite of truck motor) We have to hurry out of town before we know the end of the story.

The operative term this time is “regime.”  The routine usage on NPR is that official enemies have “regimes,” so both Iran and Syria routinely have regimes but Israel, for example, has a “government.” Here we must look at the connotation of the word; and as Wikipedia informs us under “modern usage,”: “While the word regime originates as a synonym for any form of government, modern usage often gives the term a negative connotation…” (There was a time when the antiwar movement referred to the “Bush regime,” but that usage has gone missing with the ascension of Obama, the candidate of the “progressive” Democrats.)

This sort of vocabulary is not trivial as George Orwell long ago pointed out. It is usage which, repeated endlessly, reinforces the idea of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Such propaganda molds opinions and is preparation for war and conflict.

If you have examples of such biased reports or discussions from NPR, please send them to me at moc.liamg@rawdnE.nhoJ . Besides Morning Edition and All Things Considered, Neal Conan’s Talk of the Nation, which reaches millions, appears to offer plenty of low hanging fruit. I am interested not only in bias based on word choice, but also outright falsification and coverage of only one side of an issue, often using two guests who, in fact, agree on basics which go unquestioned, a very effective form of propaganda. China bashing, Russia bashing, Iran bashing and Muslim bashing are especially worth being on the lookout for.

October 1, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia must close NED, other US fronts for money laundering

Next to exit Russia should be the National Endowment for Democracy

By Veronika Krasheninnikova | RT | October 1, 2012

Russia’s decision to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Moscow, starting October 1st, was immediately followed by Washington’s “pledge to maneuver around the Kremlin,” according to a New York Times report.

Indeed, State Department Press Secretary Victoria Nuland assured: “We will continue to be vigilant in supporting democracy, human rights, civil society in Russia. We’ll just do it another way.” Other US officials named possible avenues for such maneuvering: The National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and others.

Let’s take a closer look at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an umbrella organization that includes the two aforementioned institutes. It came to existence in quite a peculiar a way: US Code Title 22, ‘Foreign Relations and Intercourse,’ section 4411, ‘Findings,’ states, “The Congress finds that there has been established in the District of Columbia a private, nonprofit corporation known as the National Endowment for Democracy which is not an agency or establishment of the United States Government.”

How exactly did this happen, that Congress found this agency suddenly established?

The Reagan administration, after coming to power in 1981, was looking for a civilian cover for conducting subversive operations in the USSR after a vast plot involving the CIA funding of public organizations was uncovered by investigative journalists. As President of NED Carl Gershman stated in 1986, “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly. It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the ‘60s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.” (The New York Times, June 1, 1986.)

One of NED’s architects was Walter Raymond, Jr. According to the Washington Post, “From 1970 to 1982, he worked for the CIA, becoming an authority on overseas media operations.” In 1982, Raymond transferred to the National Security Council as Senior Director of International Communications and Information. In Gershman’s doublespeak, that reads as: “He was the democracy person at the White House, and his job, among other things, was to help the NED family take its first steps.” (Carl Gershman’s tribute to Walt Raymond, April 24, 2003, http://www.ned.org)

This new ‘private’ corporation was concocted in other ‘private’ circles as well. The establishment of NED was recommended by the Democracy Program, a project of the American Political Foundation that consisted of a “broad cross-section of participants in American politics and foreign policy making.” The seed funding for the Democracy Program came from, naturally, USAID.

NED has been funded by the US Congress ever since, initially through the US Information Agency. After 1999, NED got its funds through the Department of State’s Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act. In 2011, the NED budget totaled $118 million, and $104 million this year. Just like any other government agency, NED directs its annual reports to the president and Congress. And one of NED’s founding fathers, Allen Weinstein, even confessed to the Washington Post in 1991 that, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Who is running NED? Carl Gershman has held this position for almost thirty years, since 1984. What better shows to show Washington’s continuity, where “people is policy.”

NED is supervised at the State Department by an Assistant Secretary in charge of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Barry F. Lowenkron held this position and oversaw NED from 2005 to 2007. According to his official biography, prior to this appointment Mr. Lowenkron served in the intelligence community, including two tours as Director of European Security Affairs on the National Security Council (1988-89, 1991-93 – both critical times in Russia); Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence; Director of the National Intelligence Council’s Analytic Staff; Civilian Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and other similar positions,

Michael Posner currently supervises NED at the State Department. Previously, Mr. Posner was president of Human Rights First, whose stated mission is to “advance universal rights and freedoms.” Every year, Human Rights First presents their ‘Next Generation of Human Rights Defenders’ award. In 2008, Posner gave this award to a coordinator of Oborona, a leading Russian movement in the effort to foment a color revolution and oust Vladimir Putin.

NED is so clearly part of the US government that legislators had to pass a specific law stating that it was not. ‘Private’ organizations like NED are nothing but funding channels for activities that used to be run by the CIA under the title of ‘subversion.’ The fact that Washington is planning to redirect USAID funding through ‘private’ organizations reflects an outrageous level of disrespect for the decision of the Russian government.

Russia needs to enforce its decision and shut operations of NED and its all four mandated grantees, namely the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). The process of concealing an institution’s income or funding is called money laundering, and is forbidden by international law.

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October 1, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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