Annan Spokesman Says Syria Peace Plan on Track, White House Claims Opposite
Al-Manar | May 4, 2012
UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s spokesman stated that Annan’s plan for Syria is on track, even though progress in implementing the ceasefire is slow.
Speaking before reporters in Geneva on Friday, Ahmad Fawzi said that “the Annan plan is on track and the crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week.”
“There are signs on the ground of movement, albeit slow and small,” he added, indicating that “some heavy weapons have been withdrawn, some heavy weapons remain. Some violence has receded, some violence continues. And that is not satisfactory; I’m not saying it is.”
Moreover, AFP quoted the spokesman as saying that “Annan would brief the UN Security Council on Tuesday by video teleconference from Geneva to give an update on progress implementing the plan… Overall, the plan and the UN military observers who are on the ground overseeing it have had an impact.”
On the other hand, the White accused Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad of making “no effort” to implement Annan’s peace plan.
“If the regime’s intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat and work to address the serious threat to peace and stability being perpetrated by the Assad regime,” White House Spokesman Jay Carney said, adding that “political transition is urgently needed in Syria. It is certainly our hope that the Annan plan succeeds.”
Related articles
- White House: Syria cease-fire plan ‘has not been succeeding’ (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
- Obama spokesman on Syria ceasefire: We may have to ‘admit defeat’ (abcnews.go.com)
What Really Happened at the Montréal May Day Protest?
From Peaceful Protest to Police Brutality
By Andrew Gavin Marshall | The Media Co-op | May 2, 2012
The police line as they are about to charge
On May 1, 2012, thousands of students and other protesters took to the streets for the Anti-Capitalist rally in downtown Montréal. I attended the protest with a couple friends, and having read the “news” emanating from the “stenographers of power” (the mainstream media), it’s important to set the record straight about what happened here in Montréal.
The Montreal Gazette reported the events with the headline, “Police respond as May Day anti-capitalist protesters turn violent in Montreal.” This exact story and headline were carried across the English-speaking media fresh for the morning’s papers: with the Vancouver Sun, the Province, the Calgary Herald, the Regina Leader-Post, the Edmonton Journal, and the Ottawa Citizen.
The story, as they tell it, goes like this: it started peacefully just after 5 p.m. (this part is true!), and then it “was declared illegal by police at two minutes after 6 p.m. following violent clashes.” A police spokesperson (who apparently is the only person the media chose to interview for their article) said that, “injuries to a citizen, police officers and vandalism on cars and property were the reasons for declaring the march illegal.” The article then blamed “black-clad youth [who] were seen hurling rocks at store windows,” after which the police began to launch flash grenades, and the riot police moved in after 6 p.m. “using batons to disperse the crowd.” At 7:10 p.m., “a full hour after declaring the demonstration illegal, police announced that anyone who refused to leave would be arrested.”
Peaceful beginnings
The CBC went with the headline, “More than 100 arrests in Montreal May Day riot.” CTV reported that of the 100+ arrests that took place, “75 were for unlawful assembly, while the remaining 34 were for criminal acts.”
So, arrested for “unlawful assembly”: what does that mean? It means that when the police unilaterally declare a protest to be “illegal,” everyone who is there is “unlawfully assembling,” and thus, mass and indiscriminate arrests can be made. In Part 1, Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it is stated that “[e]veryone has the following fundamental freedoms”: conscience, religion, thought, belief, expression, media, communication, association, and “freedom of peaceful assembly.”
Having been at the protest from its beginning, I can say that it was a peaceful march. While there were individual acts of vandalism (the worst I saw was drawing on a bank’s window with a black marker), if police action were to be taken, it should be to arrest the specific vandal. Instead, they implemented collective punishment for exercising our “fundamental freedoms.”
The protest began in the Old Port of the city of Montréal, and made it’s way down rue Notre-Dame, up St-Laurent, and down to the financial district. The mood was good, people were in high spirits, with music, drums, the occasional fire cracker, young and old alike.
As we entered the financial district, the presence of the riot police became more apparent. When the protest made it to McGill College Ave. – crossing a wide intersection – as the march continued in its consistently peaceful path, the riot police quickly assembled alone the street below us. The crowd quickly became nervous as the protest was declared “illegal.” Before I could even take a photo of the police down the street in a long line, they began charging the crowd. Protesters dropped their signs and began up the street toward McGill University, while another section branched off along the intended direction, and others scattered.
The march had been successfully split, and the small factions were then being isolated and surrounded. Suddenly, riot police were everywhere, marching up the street like storm troopers, police cars, vans, horses, motorcycles, and trucks were flying by. As one faction of the protest continued down another street, the riot police followed behind, while another massive onslaught of riot police went around to block off the protesters from the other side. When the police first charged, I had lost one of my friends simply by looking away for a moment. After having found each other up the street, we watched as the protest which descended down the street was surrounded by police from nearly every side. It was then that we saw flash grenades and tear gas being launched at the crowd of people. There was a notable smell that filled the air.
As we stood, shocked and disturbed by what had just happened, we made our way toward McGill to see where other protesters were headed when we saw a group of riot police “escort” three young protesters whom they had arrested behind a police barricade at the HSBC (protecting the banks, of course!).
Onward and Upward
Up the street, and across from McGill, one protester who had run to get on the bus was chased down by several riot police who then threw him face-first onto the pavement, and as a crowd quickly gathered around (of both protesters and pedestrian onlookers), the police formed a circle around the man and told everyone to “get back!” and then they began marching toward us, forcing the crowd of onlookers to scatter as well. The police then took the young man over to where the other protesters were being “collected” at the HSBC.
There was one young girl, with the notable red square patch on her jacket (the symbol of the Québec student movement) who had to be taken away on a stretcher into an ambulance. We don’t know what happened to her.
As more and more police gathered, we decided it was time to leave, walking down the street through which the police had chased the protesters, remnants of signs, red patches, and other debris spilled across the streets; the remains of a peaceful protest ended with police violence.
The first sign of trouble
This has become all too common in Montréal and across Québec, as the student protest enters its twelfth week, having had over 160 protests, an average of 2-3 per day. As the demonstrations take place, the police have used obscure and unconstitutional city by-laws in both Montréal and Québec City which are so vague in their descriptions that any peaceful assembly or march can be declared illegal. Those who are indiscriminately arrested are fined $500, and if arrested again, are charged between $3,500 and $10,500.
It is clear that the State has decided – unilaterally – that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly do not conform to their specific “by-laws,” and are clamping down on students and protesters in order to quiet and crush the student strike and the emerging social movement which is being referred to as the ‘Maple Spring’. The national media, for its part, has decided to demonize the students, the protesters, and the people; taking the word of a “police spokesperson” over everyone else. Having been at the protest, however, I must question whether these so-called “journalists” were at the same event, because we witnessed two entirely different scenarios.
We entered the march in good spirits, and the police ended it in violence and repression, leaving us standing still, scattered, and disturbed; but our spirits are not crushed, our resolve is only growing stronger, and for each act of violence the police and State impose upon the people, we begin to see them for what they truly are, and thus, what is truly at stake: our very freedom, itself!
Heading down the financial district
The Charge! (it’s blurry because we all had to run)
this “march” replaced the one they dispersed
protecting the bank
arresting protesters
throwing protester face-down on the ground
Girl taken away on stretcher
Also posted by AGMarshall:
The Québec Student Strike: From ‘Maple Spring’ to Summer Rebellion?
What Really Happened at the Montréal May Day Protest?
Canada’s Economic Collapse and Social Crisis
Student Strikes, Debt Domination, and Class War in Canada
Of Prophets, Power, and the Purpose of Intellectuals
The Purpose of Education: Social Uplift or Social Control?
The “Crisis of Democracy” and the Attack on Education
Related articles
Reuters bureau chief to appear in Tehran court over report on Ninjas
Press TV – April 30, 2012
The Reuters bureau chief in Iran is to appear before a Tehran court in the coming days over an earlier report by the London-based news agency describing female Iranian martial arts students as “assassins,” Press TV reports.
In a February 16 report, Reuters claimed that “thousands of female ninjas train as Iran’s assassins.”
The Reuters report also accused the Iranian government of training hired murderers, which the court will be addressing as well.
Judicial sources have told Press TV that Reuters bureau chief Parisa Hafezi will have to respond to the charges.
Earlier, a number of Iranian students shown in the Reuters video clip filed a lawsuit against the news agency over charges of defamation.
Iran has suspended the activities of the Reuters office in Tehran over the issue.
Related articles
- Reuters fails to rectify manipulated report on female Iranian ninjas (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- France refuses to give Press TV team visas; no explanation offered (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Recognizing Heroes
By Ralph Nader | The Nader Page | April 26, 2012
The media regularly cover awards for their reporters, editors and producers. They regularly cover award ceremonies for movie stars, athletes, and business leaders. But they regularly ignore the far more important awards for people who ethically blow the whistle on corruption and suppression in both business and government, risking their careers and more to tell the truth to the American people.
Sure, the Pulitzers, the Academy Awards, the Heisman Trophy and the many business awards may seem exciting. But protecting the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people is important and serious. It is hard to conclude that recalling millions of defective automobiles and dangerous pharmaceuticals, exposing serious contamination of drinking water, lies about the BushObama wars and the huge subprime mortgage crimes should be outside the realm of news coverage.
But this news or features blackout consistently prevails, at least in Washington, D.C., even when the annual Ridenhour prizes are given to heroic figures before packed audiences of notables at the National Press Club. Named after the late Ron Ridenhour, a Vietnam War veteran who wrote to Congress about the horrific massacre at the village of My Lai, this year’s recognitions went to truth-tellers from Countrywide Financial, Bank of America, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the Marine Corps.
Each of them delivered concise, eloquent remarks that would qualify for any “Style Page” feature that requires drama, courage, human interest, resolve and proposed reforms. C-SPAN, replete with astonishingly repetitive right-wing events, was not there. Some members of the fourth estate – reporters, columnists, editorial writers or profilers – were in attendance, but no major news outlets covered this splendid event.
The Ridenhour awardees did not indulge in sentiment and self-pity. They spoke cogently about widespread dereliction or institutional crimes, and they spoke of specific ways a democratic society can foresee and forestall further recurrences. These people know what they are talking about. They are not like the glib pundits, politicians and commentators who get abundant airtime or print column inches for their insipid, ignorant, repetitive or self-serving pontifications.
When Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis spoke about his assignment for the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force which resulted in a meticulous and well-documented report from the battlefields, contrary to the official “success” claims of the generals, he provided fresh material and a sensitive mind ready to elaborate on any questions by the press.
When Ali Soufan (former FBI interrogator) spoke about the uses of torture that backfire, fail to get useful information, risk the safety of soldiers, violate the laws and stain the reputation of the U.S., he can back it up with book-length details. Soufan’s New York Times op-ed was an eye-opener but the present situation is still festering and exhibiting prevarication. Extensive reporting is still needed on this subject.
Eileen Foster, hired in 2005 by Countrywide to become the executive vice president in charge of their fraud risk management division, proved that there was a “cult” of commission-hungry loan officers who created fraudulent financial papers that expanded toxic mortgages, helping to lead to the great Wall Street-U.S. economy crash of 2008. She showed the various law enforcement paths the Justice Department failed to take against any Wall Street executive, despite ample grounds for prosecution.
And when career Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger suspected that his nine-year-old daughter’s death might have an environmental cause at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he came upon a “cover-up by the Marine Corps of one of the largest drinking water contaminations in U.S. history.” The Marine Corps learned of the carcinogenic chemicals in the groundwater at the base in 1980 and refused to officially notify the residents for another 28 years, an admission finally provoked by Sgt. Ensminger’s indefatigable campaign that went national (see the documentary “Semper Fi: Always Faithful”).
Now compare these heroic stands of the human spirit with the regular, rancid portrayals in the media of misbehaving actors, actresses, and professional athletes. There isn’t even a semblance of balance between informing the moral and voyeuristic instincts of their readers and viewers.
Lt. Colonel Davis, still on active duty, urged the audience to go forth and expand the range of their common concerns represented by these awards to ever larger circles of Americans. He declared that “telling the truth and doing your duty are synonymous.”
(For the fully streamed event, visit Ridenhour)
2012 Ridenhour Prize Winners
- The Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling – Eileen Foster, Stood up Against Corruption at Countrywide
- The Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling – Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, Exposed Pentagon Deceptions About the Afghan War
- The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize – Semper Fi, One Marine’s Quest for the Truth
- The Ridenhour Book Prize – Ali Soufan, Former FBI Special Agent and Author of The Black Banners
- The Ridenhour Courage Prize – Rep. John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon and Fierce Advocate for Equality and Justice
Related articles
- Ridenhour Prizes Honor Courageous Truth Tellers (pogoblog.typepad.com)
- The White House Wants to Imprison the CIA Agent Who Blew the Whistle on Torture (motherboard.vice.com)
A citizens guide to understanding corporate media propaganda techniques
By George Orwell | earthblognews | 01.09.2010
A few decades ago, there were thousands of independent media outlets in the US. Today in America, six multinational global media mega corporations run by six individuals control 96% of the content Americans see on TV and watch at the movies; read in books, magazines and newspapers, and hear on the radio.
- Time Warner
- VIACOM
- CBS
- Walt Disney
- News Corp
- General Electric
Click the link below to see the details of who owns what.
These 6 corporations own the major entertainment theme parks, movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks, cable and satellite channels, video news, magazines, book publishers, sports entertainment, integrated telecommunications and the communications satellites themselves, wireless phones, video games software, electronic media, internet, record labels and the music industry, and more.
Everything you believe, more or less, is delivered to you by a monolithic six individuals running these corporations. They play golf together. They plot and scheme together. They are members of the same clubs and organizations. These cretins see the people, the citizens… as donkeys or Muppets who will believe anything. These demi-gods decide in advance what the donkeys should believe and what attitudes they should have about everything.
“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”- Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.
12,700,000 Google References“News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising” – former NBC news President Rubin Frank 147,000 Google References
“For better or worse, my company is a reflection of my character, my thinking, my values” – Rupert Murdoch 297,000,000 Google References
“We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d’etre” – CBS C.E.O. Michael Jordan 308,000 Google References
“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective” – Michael Eisner, CEO, The Walt Disney Co 364,000 Google References
“We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with.” – Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news. 1,360 Google references
“We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” – Katherine Meyer Graham, Washington Post publisher 41,500 Google References
“People shouldn’t expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the ‘fringe’ media.” – Ted Koppel – (American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline) 2770 Google References
“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”–William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy 167,000 Google References
Following this brief introduction is an attempt to enumerate powerful propaganda techniques being used on the American public and the world population by the corporate or so called “mainstream” (MSM) or mass media.
Having familiarized yourself with these techniques, you will be able to spot them as they are being deployed against you. The best way to counter propaganda is to understand the techniques and how they are used.
Framing [or re-framing] the debate
Debate a legitimate issue, and ostensibly have both sides represented, but instead on the continuum of opinion, have one from the middle and one from an extreme view and thus contain the debate to meet your ideological framing and goals. Alternatively, have a strong debater for one side, and a weak debater for the point of view you would like to suppress.
Framing (social sciences)
From Wikipedia:
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, a person has, through their lifetime, built a series of mental emotional filters. They use these filters to make sense of the world. The choices they then make are influenced by their frame or emotional filters.
Address
Alternatively, the power of the media can re frame the entire context of a debate if desired.
Example: a nuclear accident has occurred.
Instead of debating the effects of radiation release, float the idea using one of your “experts” or shills that radiation is good for you. Thus re frame the debate to whether or not radiation is good for you instead of how much it will take to cause cancer and disease.
Example: re frame a debate about torture by instead of debating the legality or morality of torture, debate the effectiveness of torture techniques.
Programming the viewers attitudes
This has become a very widely used propaganda technique. Cover a story, complete with your ideological spin, and then follow up with interviews of “ordinary people” who support your point of view but frame it as the popular point of view or the only point of view. If you have to do 1000 interviews to pick 2, the viewer never knows. The viewer walks away with a powerful form of sub conscious attitude programming as they hear the propaganda point regurgitated by someone “just like them”. This same technique can be used on letters to the editor, emails to TV news hosts, or wherever else cherry picking of public opinion can be conducted without tipping off the viewer, reader or listener. This powerful technique which is basically fraud, if deployed for long enough with consistent messages, can change an entire culture over time.
Distraction
Instead of covering stories that matter, cover irrelevant, trivial stories about entertainers or celebrities and blow them up into grand productions so you don’t have to discuss anything that really matters, or when something happens that you don’t want to discuss but ordinarily would be forced by popular opinion to discuss, generate a distraction of your own sensational making which you discuss instead. By using the volume and coordination technique, the media monopolists can entirely obfuscate or bury important stories and issues of their choosing.
Group think
TV programs often revolve around groups of people delivering the content or opinion because people programmed not to be able to think for themselves instinctively believe groups promoting a certain opinion more than one individual. They all nod their heads in agreement with whatever propaganda is to be pushed on you, and the idea is that you also will nod your head like a brain dead zombie.
This can all be punctuated by “experts”. The group of “experts” will collectively come to the “correct” conclusions for you so you don’t have to think for yourself, even if you still can.
Guided Interpretation for the reader or viewer
In this technique, a journalist or anchorman will tell you what someone else said.
In some cases, quotes will be taken out of context, but in many cases an entirely concocted version of what was said will be passed off as the truth to an unsuspecting reader, listener or viewer.
What was actually said will not be referenced, because if the viewer or reader has access to what the actual content was, it exposes the fraud. That being the case, this technique is dangerous, because if the reader or viewer does have access to the source, the propaganda becomes apparent leaving distrust.
Fluff and ice cream cones
Everyone loves an ice cream cone. Run feel good stories about puppies and teddy bears. Regardless of what really happens or the actual state of affairs, convey the message that all is good, America is great, and things are the same as they always have been. If cities decay, just don’t shoot wide shots of those cities any more. Always project a disneylandish, cartoonish, surreal version of reality.
Leverage what people like and what people are compassionate towards to build trust and leave the viewer feeling happy and complacent. Most importantly, establish trust and goodwill in your enterprise. Do everything necessary to give it the appearance of legitimacy no matter how fraudulent it is. Always.
Artificial reality
By framing the entire programming of the network, and by subtle editorializing over news stories, you can create an artificial reality, posing as the truth.
As a media mogul, you drive the programming and choose what to cover and how to cover it through your upper management, programming and editor selections. As a viewer, is is critically important to remember that every word read comes from a teleprompter, and the people who write, edit and select the copy are the ones actually delivering the content. The people who actually read the news to you are in that position because they are experts at reading propaganda and sounding convincing while doing it.
“For better or worse, my company is a reflection of my character, my thinking, my values” – Rupert Murdoch
Good looking, likable, trusted newscaster:
“here is a story about someone who did the right thing”.
According to whom? The programming director?
Ex: xyz is a desired reality or propaganda point….
Good looking, likable, trusted newscaster says on the most widely watched news channel in America:
“I believe xyz and I think the majority of Americans are right there with me”.
Not. This is pure propaganda in it’s most overt form.
“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves” – George Orwell
Direct programming
In this method, a story is covered with the specific intent of a viewer walking away holding a desired point of view. The actual coverage of the story as compared to the truth could range from slightly true to entirely untrue. The story is merely a tool to achieve an end result.
Special interest ads posing as news stories
In this technique, a special interest advertisement will be crafted as if it is a news story and presented as such. Only the astute viewer will be able to spot the fraud.
Video news release
From Wikipedia:
A video news release (VNR) is a video segment created by a PR firm, advertising agency, marketing firm, corporation, or government agency and provided to television news stations for the purpose of informing, shaping public opinion, or to promote and publicize individuals, commercial products and services, or other interests. In this way, VNRs are video versions of press releases.
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The big lie technique
Tell a lie so large that no one will question the authenticity because of the size of the lie. This is a time tested, proven propaganda technique and used by the most infamous of media controllers and propagandists.
Big Lie
From Wikipedia:
Omission
This is a simple, straightforward and effective technique. For news that doesn’t fit your agenda, or news that might cause your advertisers or special interest supporters to withhold support, for news that might not fit with the overall story line and talking points… just don’t cover the story. Alternatively, if a high profile person carries an opinion or message you would like to suppress, don’t ever invite that person as a guest. Since you and your peers didn’t cover it, it didn’t happen.
This very powerful tool combined with the volume and coordination technique gives a media mogul the ability to decide for everyone else what is and what is not important. Omission is often combined with the distraction technique.
Volume and coordination
This is the opposite of omission. The goal of this technique is to create broad awareness of a propaganda point through a media deluge. This is often punctuated by many or all of the big six joining in unison to promote or hype the same propaganda point, idea or story. In this way, even a small or trivial item can be boosted to the forefront of collective consciousness. If desired, through TV, Magazines, movies and sitcoms, any point can be focused in the forefront of the mind of the population. This technique can be used effectively for short term or more importantly for long term results. As with many techniques in this guide, this technique becomes more effective the more consolidated the media becomes.
Humanization and de-humanization or personalization and de-personalization
If you show dead bodies it generates a reaction. If you humanize a story, you generate sympathy for the victim. Alternatively if you avoid humanization or dehumanize atrocities or awful acts, you can avoid public sympathy being created. This technique is often used to report on war and decide on behalf of the viewer or reader who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys”. It doesn’t have to be used in wartime however. Propaganda pieces can be run to humanize bad guys or dehumanize good guys. This technique can and often does go so far as to frame a villain(s) as a victim(s) or vice versa. This is a very powerful technique which has been used with great effectiveness. Friends of the media are good. Enemies are bad.This technique alone can accomplish that goal when used by a skilled group of propagandists.
Friendly fire
Repeatedly have as guests, people who strongly support your causes, or alternatively have weak debaters appear to represent causes you don’t support. A weak debater combined with a hostile interview can decimate a legitimate topic of debate or point of view.
Historical revision
Omit unflattering feedback and generate your own positive feedback. Dead people and historical events are a prime target for historical revision in news, movies, mini series, or any other venue where a fictionalized account of the past or a past personality can be configured as truth by the network, studio or publication.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell
Winning the viewer
Attempt to foster goodwill and viewer loyalty by covering fluff stories using likable or attractive people and personalities in a way that ordinary viewers or readers can identify with. In this way, people are more likely to swallow the dope. This extends to using disaster and tragedy for shameless self promotion, ratings boosts, and leveraging of the media empire. Ideally, the consumers of your propaganda will love you as you program them.
“The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering—a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face.” – George Orwell
Emphasis and repetition
Cover stories which match your agenda over and over and over… and over. People will remember repetition and will come to believe anything if it is repeated often enough.
Shills
Invite often, people with so called “credentials”, who pose as “experts”, “professors” or other lofty titles who support the network point of view as if it is the truth. Often, these so called experts will have a financial or career interest, or some other political or ideological affiliation regarding their point of view that is not disclosed. The Wikipedia entry below concentrates on “selling goods or services”. It is imperative to note that the “goods and services” could include a point of view, or an ideology, or a political, social or religious position.
Shill
From Wikipedia:
A shill is person who is paid to help another person or organization to sell goods or services.
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Gatekeepers
Employ “trusted” personalities who pretend to be on the side of exposing media or government corruption and who pretend to represent the common citizen but who is in fact, dealing sophisticated propaganda.
Gatekeeper
From Wikipedia:
A gatekeeper is defined as someone who controls access to something. It also refers to individuals who decide whether a given message will be distributed by a mass medium.
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Repeating a lie
George Orwell along with many infamous propagandists have said that if you repeat a lie frequently enough, people will take it to be true.
Telling the truth
If the media selectively tells the truth on points where an ideological agenda or sponsorship is not at risk, that opportunity can be used to tell the truth and gain viewer confidence. It is critically important to occasionally tell the truth in order to maintain credibility or legitimacy.
Fogging an issue
Sometimes special interest groups or sponsors will have an interest in making sure that as few people pay attention to an issue as possible, or alternatively that an issue is of little importance. A good propagandist can write a long, nonsensical article or offer a confusing video segment for the purpose of confusing the viewer or reader and obscuring any real issues through confusion or lack of interest. This technique can be used when the story is too big for the distraction or omission techniques.
Vilification and character assassination
This is an important tool that is often used to keep politicians in line by fear and intimidation of what they know has already happened to people with the “wrong” opinion. People or personalities whose opinion or positions are to be suppressed are subtly (or not so subtly) vilified and sabotaged, usually by over blowing a trivial issue relating to something people are sympathetic to. Vilification is most effective when used subtly and over a long period of time, so the audience or readership becomes slowly programmed as to who is “good” and who is “bad”. A broad array of techniques can be used ranging from hiring investigators to “dig up dirt”, then using the volume and coordination technique. The “He Said, She Said” technique is also employed for character assassination. Using this method, the author or newscaster can cast the backlash to someone else and say something they know isn’t true, or isn’t fair, but they want to say it anyway. As a media mogul, your enemies become the people’s enemies and your friends become the people’s friends. You can eject a politician or shame a public personality. This is an extremely effective and important arena. See also “character assassination via the question mark” under “cooking the headlines”.
Keep only team players
If a newscaster, commentator or journalist or editor has the wrong opinion, fire them and replace them with someone who has the correct opinion. The looming threat of un-personing acts as a powerful compliance tool for field reporters and editors. During the past several years in America, there have been a lot of high profile corporate reporters, anchormen and anchorwomen who have been un-personed within 24 hours of uttering the “wrong” opinion. Media mogul pimps hastily un-person rogue reporters because it has a chilling effect on the remainder of their stable of whores.
Embedded editorial views in news stories
In Journalism, the editorial page is where opinion is supposed to be expressed, but editorial views can be subtly introduced into “news” to program the viewer or reader.
As a media consumer, look for opinions which are stated as if they are fact. Facts can be substantiated, opinions cannot.
Also, be on the lookout for subtle inaccuracies, or a dismissive tone. Alternatively, editorial views can be injected into news by subtly misstating a topic, often a serious one, and pretending any objecting or concerned view of the treatment of the topic is silly, unrealistic, or just not necessary. This can become related to deciding who is sane on behalf of the viewer or reader. The more subtly these opinions and distortions can be substituted for facts, the more powerful the propaganda tool of editorialized news. This technique can be punctuated or made more potent by keeping in line with your friends in Government who echo the same views as truth.
The largest and supposedly most respected media outlets in America today routinely sell editorial views as news. Corporate media journalism in America has morphed from informing the public, into something entirely sinister. In spite of this, most Americans remain in the dark as to the fraud and advanced PR techniques being hoisted upon them.
Lies as truth
Run a story or headline that you know isn’t true to support your point of view. In a subtler form, mistranslate or misquote to suit. Alternatively, publish or sponsor polls intended to give a desired result.
Deciding who is sane on behalf of the viewer or reader
Portray points of view you would like to suppress as extreme, crazy, dangerous or not legitimate. If necessary, call in one or more of your “experts” for emphasis.
This effect can be multiplied by ensuring that members of the audience, even though they may have all collectively come to the same opinion, if it is not the desired opinion, you ensure that each viewer believes they are crazy and alone in holding that point of view. This is a potent technique used to form “mainstream” opinion.
Furthermore, as one of the six media owners, you can leverage the “correct mainstream opinion” by “behavior placement” in your sitcoms, magazine articles, and on the radio. In behavior placement, one out of your stable of celebrity actors holds certain behaviors, ideas or attitudes that are either condoned or maligned by the rest of the cast. This could be an attitude, an opinion they hold regarding anything, a product they use, ideas about religion or anything else.
Americans have become enamored with celebrities from decades of Hollywood propaganda. We have been conditioned to want to be like them. Celebrity behavior placement is a very, very powerful tool in the media owners arsenal.
Advertising as news
Run goodwill stories about advertisers, or for that matter about your parent company, as if you are covering news or human interest stories. Effectively as a media mogul you can have free stealth advertising throughout your enterprise. If you own a theme park, have your news division do a “story’ about how great the theme park is. Punctuate that by cherry picking interviews and broadcasting them in the segment so viewers can hear it from others who are “just like themselves”.
The hostile or friendly interview
Interview people whose views you support in a friendly manner. Interview people whose views you would like to suppress in a hostile manner. This technique is most effective when kept low key. A variation of this technique is to invite a guest for an “interview”, then have an aggressive personality talk over them the whole time and repeat as truth things they never said or things they said out of context.
A more advanced variation of this propaganda technique is to invite someone and label them as an “expert” or “professor” or any favorable handle for a “friendly” interview who does not well represent a cause or issue. The important distinction here is that the viewer sees a friendly interview and yet walks away unimpressed by the point of view.
Humor as a propaganda tool
Feature comedians who support your point of view, ideological or religious agenda. As a media mogul, it’s easy to get the Muppets to laugh as you deride and attack your enemies with so called humor from your stable of “comedians”. Use this “humor” for character assassination, vilification or to punctuate your propaganda regarding who is sane and who isn’t. If you tightly control your stable of prime time comedians, people will only laugh at what you want them to laugh at. If a comedian in your A list isn’t with the program, then they disappear forever into obscurity.
Unflattering (or flattering) handles
Corral an entire group of people into a pigeon hole, by crafting handles that carry positive or negative connotations.
Examples:
He is a “conspiracy theorist” (negative connotation) used to tar anyone who contradicts or attempts to expose the propaganda of the party line.
He is a “goldbug” (negative connotation) used to subliminally encourage the idea that someone favorable to owning gold is a kook or single minded extremist.
A “truther” – negative connotation label applied to any person who questions the government version of 911.
A “right wing (left wing) extremist” – to portray a given point of view as extreme, whether it is or not.
Use the power of words to emphasize or de-emphasize acts or information
The crowd was “peppered” with hellfire missiles.
Trusted anchorman – “They criticize us for using enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding” *. MSNBC 2/22/2010
*Please note that waterboarding is currently defined in international law not as an “enhanced interrogation technique” but as torture. The United States put to death Japanese commanders accused of waterboarding. The public is not OK with torture, so you just re-define it as an “enhanced interrogation technique”, and it’s fine.
Collateral damage – when innocent people are killed in wartime, a suitable, soft term is needed. If an army accidentally inflicts collateral damage, even if that means killing scores, hundreds or thousands of innocent people, a simple two word term called “collateral damage” makes it OK.
Divide and conquer
Create simple minded divisions between groups of people to keep them distracted and arguing among themselves over mostly trivial issues. Use black and white, good and evil, and particularly the faux left and right divide. Leave no room in the middle for discussion as if all opinions and issues are binary. When events happen, don’t ever discuss actual causes. As a media owner, you have your employees discuss the event, and make up the cause in your programming department.
Using anonymous sources
Generate “news” using anonymous sources. This technique could range from mis-quoting, to outright fabrication and lying such as an anonymous source that is entirely fictional and created to generate a certain reaction or artificial reality. Anonymous sources are used heavily in the US media to lay the propaganda groundwork and to manufacture the popular consent for wars of conquest and aggression.
Using guided imagery
This is an advanced technique which is now pervasive in all PR, advertising and corporate programming as well as central banking. The idea is a takeoff on the idea popularized by George Soros which is that “markets influence events they anticipate.” By the same token, there is an assumption that if the people are told something as if it is true, then it will in fact become true. You could call this molding public opinion. An example of this would be saying as if it is fact, “70 percent of the country is in favor of xyz”. The idea is that this repeated, will have the effect of causing the public opinion to actually be that. Another would be “we have green shoots” or “the country is out of the recession”, with the idea being that if you state this as fact, then people will have more confidence and spend and it will become true.
Using music, lighting and effects
Music and lighting effects can be powerful promoters of feelings and emotion. Both are heavily employed, and deployed against the public. For example, when promoting the party line, be sure to have the music set to create all the right feelings and emotions. Wave the flag. Set your color scheme to red, white and blue. Create emphasis by dramatic lighting or by talking loud and fast or soft and somber.
The privilege of being a media mogul means having your personal points of view represented and delivered by people who are “just like” the audience to be programmed.
Fabricated evidence
This technique is practiced by promoting as self sourced or repeating “evidence” that could range from non existent to fabricated. This could include doctored photographs to include, exclude or exaggerate information, audio recordings and video productions, as well as dossiers or written documents. Any or all of which are promoted as “the truth” though they may in fact have only some basis in truth or be entirely fabricated. It could in fact have been an entirely paid for promotion.
The preemptive strike
A journalist, anchor or interviewer attacks at the very outset of the article or segment with the “acceptable” view of the topic, prior to the topic. This is a brute force technique and is easy to spot. It usually involves some sort of angry tirade.
Leveraging the media empire
The media empire can be used by the parent company for advertising, propaganda and goodwill. This is a very broad arena where subtle or overt techniques can be used.
As a multinational media mega corporation, you can use your music empire to promote your viewpoint or more importantly, eliminate alternative points of view. If the musicians on your record label step out of line, quietly retire them. Sign acts that for whatever reason, have a message which you personally like.
You can advertise your theme park in the name of news. You can interview people who wrote books you published, or interview people who produced movies for a subsidiary. You can promote your ideals with a consistent message throughout your subsidiaries and enterprises. You can promote or demote points of view you agree or disagree with. You can use behavior placement in the sitcoms, movies and other programming arenas to produce a consistent message of your choosing. As media empires become ever fewer, ever larger, and ever more powerful, this tactic becomes more and more potent.
Serialization of a related chain of events and the memory hole
This technique works to reconcile incompatible truths by deconstructing all events to a serial chain, and discarding all past information unless not doing so proves particularly useful. This is what George Orwell referred to as the “memory hole”.
If you remember the past version of the truth, then often the current version of the truth is not compatible with that version of the truth; therefore there should be no memory of the past unless it is a reverse engineered version. Otherwise, incongruence is generated. At least the news isn’t covering it. That’s the point.
You are supposed to forget the past and concentrate on what you are being told today. It’s all a serial chain of sound bites and propaganda intended and engineered to give desired current results. There are no causes and effects, only an unrelated serial chain of events.
Memory hole
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Address
Cooking the headlines
Headline tickers offer endless opportunities for revisionist or deceptive news and fast, efficient propaganda programming. There are more people reading the headline tickers than are following the actual stories. For example, hundreds of people in an airport may be just following the headline ticker… People receiving a news stream on the internet may be only looking at headlines. Therefore, if you can cook the headlines you effectively get “propaganda leverage”. Furthermore, people remember the headlines without necessarily following the actual story;
technique #1. – deceptive headlines designed to convey a certain message, but based on an actual event
technique #2 – false headlines ie “WMD found in Iraq”. Over 70 percent of the US population came to believe that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and the reason is that headlines were running which repeatedly made that claim, although it was entirely untrue.
technique #3 – embedding propaganda as reasons in headlines, ie “stocks soared today because… (made up propaganda reason follows)”
technique #4 – overplay some headlines and underplay other headlines to decide on behalf of the viewer or reader what is important
Repetition and trust
There are 300 million Americans in the United States and yet spanning the entire corporate media, the people invited on as regulars by the big six could fill a gymnasium. The point is that if “trusted” sources are developed and cultivated by the corporate media, people will come to believe what they say, regardless of what they say or how wrong they have been in the past.
Propagandists are held out by the corporate media to the public as “experts” who do not represent the centrist views of the majority of Americans, have been wrong about nearly everything they have ever said, and these people are never held to account. At the same time, people who have been correct or people who have views that represent mainstream America remain off the people’s radar, never or rarely invited as guests except maybe for a hostile interview.
In sum total this technique can be used to generate a heavy handed dose of artificial reality.
Subliminal messages
Anything you say while wearing an American Flag lapel pin is patriotic.
The topic of subliminal messages could probably justify a post in itself. In short, at the subliminal level, advertisers and the media like to link things together. In general, they want to link positive things, things you want to be, things you see yourself as, things you support, things you desire or desire to be, to themselves, to the dope they are pushing, or to their advertisers. Music, lighting or sounds can be employed to create subliminal hypnotic effects. Behavior placement can be used for subliminal effects. If they are doing their job well, you will never even be aware it’s happening.
Re-framing the question
By re-framing the question or subtly altering the question, or even by the possible answers offered to the question, a media enterprise can move the discussion to a different realm or even change the answer. This technique is often used for poll results to be used as propaganda. It can also be used to alter the subject of a debate.
Engineered reality
Using this brute force technique, camera angles, staged events and engineered real time and post production effects can be added to a video feed to dramatically alter the viewers perception. With the correct camera angle, a small crowd can be made to seem large or vice versa.
If your media company would like to minimize or maximize a protest to suit your ideological agenda, it can be covered using a camera angle minimizing or maximizing the crowd, along with a suitable dialogue which confirms the selected camera angle and desired viewer take away. This can be followed up using other techniques such as cherry picked interviews with participants to deliver whatever message is desired.
Using a laugh track you can program the viewers in terms of what is perceived to be funny. Other audio effects can also be added. Real time audio and video production techniques can augment or add elements to a video feed that weren’t present in the un-doctored feed.
Investigative journalism (or lack thereof) as a weapon or a tool
Using the guise of investigative journalism, corporate media can either bag a victim or let a friend off the hook. This can be used on politicians, people in the public spotlight, or anyone whose views are to be suppressed or promoted.
Of all the controversy surrounding 9/11, one of the most mysterious aspects is that there were very unusual large option bets placed prior to the incident which paid hundreds of millions, if not billions to the account holders who placed those bets. By law, every account holder who places a trade on a US exchange is known and can be easily traced by any federal law enforcement or regulatory body. To date, almost ten years after the event, these profiteers were never identified and there was never any effort by the corporate media using investigative journalism to force the disclosure to the American people, when there easily could have been. This is a glaring example of a lack of investigative journalism being used as a tool and corporate media complicity in nefarious, treasonous deeds.
“People shouldn’t expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the ‘fringe’ media.” – Ted Koppel – (American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline) 2770 Google References
Leading the viewer or reader
This is a powerful, simple technique which is used pervasively to introduce editorial content into news. This works by leading the viewer or reader in a subtle way to a pre-defined conclusion, or to make the subject look awkward for disagreeing with propaganda pre-established by the host.
From the newscaster to the interviewee:
Don’t you think that (thing to be agreed with follows).
Wouldn’t you agree with (high profile “expert” who has never been correct about anything and returns every week to spew propaganda) that (xyz propaganda point).
I know I (propaganda point), what about you?
Most Americans believe (propaganda point) what is your opinion?
Fewer and fewer people (propaganda point).
Everyone wants (propaganda point).
The best case is (propaganda point).
Planting seeds of doubt
Character assassination via the question mark. This is a very powerful technique which can be used for character assassination while avoiding lawsuits. The way it is done is to pose outrageous and libelous character assassination as a question, and thus plant seeds of doubt in the mind of the viewer or reader. This is best illustrated by example:
Ron Paul: Terrorist?
Token Equal Time
The goal of this technique is to create an appearance of fairness. It consists of an article or video segment written or broadcast with entirely one point of view, then at the end a meager statement from the opposing view is mentioned, then immediately refuted. In this way the reader absorbs the intended point of view while at the same time believing the topic has had fair treatment.
The “May Have” Technique
The words “may have” provide endless opportunities for programming a zombie audience. This is a form of character assassination and similar to character assassination via the question mark.
“Iran may have committed a cyber-attack on the BBC”
“AP: Iran may be cleaning up nuclear traces at military site”
“BBC News – Iran ‘may boost nuclear programme’, diplomat warns”
The double-talk “may have’s” convey the LIES (but with plausible deniability):As a viewer or listener, you should be acutely aware of the use of the words “may have” by the media propagandists.
Sex sells news
Pasty faced bimbos with silicone cleavage, bubbly personalities and enough botox to immobilize cattle… as fake as the half baked teleprompter propaganda they’re serving up to a nation of 300 million Muppets.
It doesn’t really matter what they say, and no one really cares… because the men aren’t listening. This is why programs which cater to a male audience like financial news channels are stacked with stacked bimbos who couldn’t tell a debenture from a derivative. Why else would anyone listen to a casino operator pimping their casino day in and day out? Men will go so far as to watch with the sound muted. It’s a cheap trick to gain viewers who otherwise would be disinterested in the endless, incessant propaganda pitch.
Enough said.
In total, when these potent techniques are used synergistically, the entire fabric of a society can be guided, shaped and molded. Your only defenses are awareness and even better, turning it off.
Related articles
- Western Journalist: Visa Denied (alethonews.wordpress.com)
MSNBC: Evidence of Multiple Shooters, Night Raid in Sgt. Bales Case
By Ralph Lopez – War is a Crime – April 23, 2012
The first story was shaky from the start, that Sgt. Robert Bales “sneaked” off a combat outpost into hostile, landmined territory in the middle of the night, walked north a little over a half mile to a village, engaged in bloody murder, then walked back that half mile, past the base, and another mile south, killed more people, then turned himself in at the gate, all within an hour. Sharp-eyed bloggers did the math and recalled from other reports that Bales has part of a foot missing from a wound in Iraq, making the feat all the more remarkable.
Among the dead were a number of children, including a two-year-old.
Two weeks later the Pentagon’s story changed, and Bales had managed to sneak off the base twice over a longer timeline:
“Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, who is suspected in the shooting deaths this month of 17 Afghans, sneaked off his remote outpost twice during his alleged 90-minute rampage in two Afghan villages, two senior U.S. officials told CNN on Monday.
The officials said that, after the March 11 shootings in one village in Kandahar province, Bales sneaked back onto his base. They said Bales was seen at that point by fellow troops.
One official said investigators believe Bales told other soldiers he had just killed military-aged Afghan men. The officials said they did not know whether those troops told anyone else.
Then Bales sneaked out again and headed to the second village; he was apprehended by a search party as he attempted to re-enter the combat outpost the second time, the officials said.
Before this account, an Afghan guard was believed to have been the sole person who saw Bales that night. The guard alerted U.S. troops on base.”
The UK Guardian noted around the same time:
“Members of the Afghan delegation investigating the killings said one Afghan guard working from midnight to 2am saw a US soldier return to the base around 1.30am. Another Afghan soldier who replaced the first and worked until 4am said he saw a US soldier leaving the base at 2.30am. It’s unknown whether the Afghan guards saw the same US soldier. If the gunman acted alone, information from the Afghan guards would suggest that he returned to base in between the shooting sprees.”
Never mind that this leaves open the question of whether security at a “hot” outpost is routinely left, in this era of attacks coming from inside the wire, to purely indigenous guard, while US troops sleep. Ho Chi Minh would have dreamed of this situation. CNN reported that a US official told them that Bales had returned to the base “unnoticed.”
“One U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation said an Afghan guard allegedly spotted Bales leaving his outpost around 1 a.m. It is not clear why Bales’ superiors weren’t alerted, and the official said Bales was not noticed when he allegedly returned to the compound an hour later.”
The NY Times report quoting one Afghan General Hameed seemed aimed at putting a bit of spin on how Bales could have sashayed on and off the base so easily, saying:
“In recent interviews, American and Afghan officials said that the outpost in the rural Panjwai district was guarded by Afghan soldiers that night, as it probably was on most nights, because there were relatively few American soldiers based there, possibly only a platoon. Platoons typically have between 25 and 40 soldiers. –“Details Offered on How Suspect Could Have Left Afghan Base”“
So let me get this straight. A base in one of the most hostile parts of a war zone is under indigenous guard at night because, out of 25 – 40 tough US soldiers, they all need to be get their beauty sleep? This isn’t the 21st Century Army. This is “F Troop.” If the Pentagon really wants to fool people, they should learn when to shut up.
Jefferson Morley of Salon.com was the first reliable American outlet to report President Karzai’s, and the members of an Afghan Parliament investigative team’s, insistence that there was more than one shooter:
“A group of Afghan parliamentary investigators has concluded that Bales was part of a group of 15-20 soldiers. As Outlook Afghanistan reported Monday, “The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidences at the site in Panjwai district.” One of the parliamentarians told Pajhwok Afghan News that investigators believed 15 to 20 American soldiers carried out the killings.”
The Gulf Times reported the Afghan investigative team’s findings immediately after the shootings, as did other outlets of the regional press:
“After our investigations, we came to know that the killings were not carried out by one single soldier. More than a dozen soldiers went, killed the villagers and then burnt the bodies,” lawmaker Naheem Lalai Hameedzai claimed…..
“All the villagers that we talked to said there were 15 to 20 men (who) had conducted a night raid operation in several areas in the village,” said Hameedzai.”
Disputing this is the governor of the province and the local police chief. The provincial governor who upholds the one gunman scenario says:
“It is time for Afghanistan to calm down and not let the insurgents take advantage of this case. They want foreign troops to leave such areas like this so they can hold those areas. We should be aware of their intentions and try to help the government, not the insurgents.”
The governor does not say where in “try to help the government” the truth figures in.
Interestingly, the initial Reuters report on the scene immediately after the killings made numerous references to multiple shooters, in addition to reporting that one staff sergeant was in custody, and that US officials were insisting on one shooter
“Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar’s Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.
An Afghan man who said his children were killed in the shooting spree accused soldiers of later burning the bodies.
…
“They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them,” Samad told Reuters at the scene.Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.
“They were all drunk and shooting all over the place,” said neighbor Agha Lala, who visited one of the homes where killings took place.””
Now the first western reporter to gain access to child witnesses in the shooting, which she says the military tried to block, gives accounts of many men with “flashlights” on the ends of their rifles and on their helmets. As carried by MSNBC:
“”the children told Hakim [Yalda Hakim, a journalist for SBS Dateline in Australia] that other Americans were present during the rampage, holding flashlights in the yard.
Noorbinak, 8, told Hakim that the shooter first shot her father’s dog. Then, Noorbinak said in the video, he shot her father in the foot and dragged her mother by the hair. When her father started screaming, he shot her father, the child says. Then he turned the gun on Noorbinak and shot her in the leg.
“One man entered the room and the others were standing in the yard, holding lights,” Noorbinak said in the video.
A brother of one victim told Hakim that his brother’s children mentioned more than one soldier wearing a headlamp. They also had lights at the end of their guns, he said.
“They don’t know whether there were 15 or 20, however many there were,” he said in the video.
Army officials have repeatedly denied that others were involved in the massacre, emphasizing that Bales acted alone.”
The interesting thing here is that Afghan children don’t have videogames. They don’t have TV. In most parts of the country they don’t even have electricity. So night-raid equipment like weapons lights are not likely to arise from their imaginations.
From SureFire catalog “Weapon Lights”, Standard night-raid equipment for US forces
VIDEO: The SureFire Story
Hakim told MSNBC that the reason American investigators gave for trying to prevent her from interviewing the children was that her questions could “traumatize them.”
Stop the presses. In this war of nightly drone attacks on compounds known to have children present, in which hundreds if not thousands of children have been killed, and killed in night raids on such compounds, the interviews might “traumatize” them. I am rarely at a loss for words. This is one of those times.
One story floated about a week after the killings puts down the sighting of more than one soldier to possible confusion with the search party looking for Bales.
“It is unclear whether the soldiers the villagers saw were part of a search party that left the base to look for Bales, who was reported missing.”
But numerous reports make clear that the search party never left the area of the base.
“About 3:30 a.m., the official said, a surveillance camera spotted Bales returning to the base, and the search team found him just outside the compound.”
The NY Times, quoting Afghan Gen. Abdul Hameed, the corps commander for the Afghan National Army in Kandahar, reported:
“When American commanders became aware that a soldier was missing, they first checked sleeping quarters, toilets and the kitchen area before organizing a patrol to look outside the compound, General Hameed said. But before the patrol left, a high-powered infrared camera on a small blimp spotted Sergeant Bales nearby.”
Salon.com’s Morley reports an “unnamed senior U.S. official’ telling the New York Times: “When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues,” leaving aside the question of how the senior official already knows how it will all “come out.”
Morley writes:
“The passing admission that two other soldiers face disciplinary action for drinking with Bales on the night of the massacre might cast doubt on the notion that no one else knew what Bales was going to do. Army spokeswoman Lt. Col Amy Hannah said in telephone interview that she could not confirm the Times’ account. “I am not aware of any releases of information” about other soldiers facing disciplinary action, Hannah said. If the U.S. official’s remarks to the Times were accurate, then the Army is refraining from disclosing how many soldiers are under investigation.
Then there is conflicting eyewitness testimony. In this CNN video, one man describes the actions of a group in carrying out the killings. “They took him my uncle out of the room and shot him,” he says. “They came to this room and martyred all the children.” But one boy seen on the tape says there was only a single gunman. Still other witnesses pointed out a place outside the home, where they said they found footprints of more than one U.S. soldier.
Journalists seeking to clarify the question have been thwarted. In Afghanistan, Pajhaowk Afghan News reports that Lewis Boone, the public affairs director for coalition forces, declined to answer questions about the massacre, saying that a joint Afghan-ISAF team was investigating the killings. As the Seattle Times noted yesterday, the Army has been struggling “to regulate information on the Afghanistan suspect.”
The laugh for the day in Morley’s report comes when Ryan Evans, who worked with ISAF in Afghanistan and is now a research fellow at the Center for National Policy in Washington, said he thought “a cover up is very unlikely.” Now why would anyone think that, after Lt. Col. Daniel Davis just told us in a major report on Afghanistan that:
“We seem significantly challenged to tell the truth in almost any situation.”
And in a fascinating McClatchy report, Karzai’s lead investigator seems to differ with the president’s conclusion of more than one shooter, but then apparently contradicts himself.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The chief Afghan investigator in last month’s slayings of 17 civilians says there’s strong evidence that only one killer was involved, a view that puts him at odds with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.
….
Afghan army chief Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, whom Karzai sent to Kandahar to investigate the massacre, told McClatchy that two survivors he interviewed offered credible accounts that the killings were the act of a lone person.“They told me the same thing,” Karimi said. “They both said there was (only) one individual who came to their house.”
….
At a meeting at the presidential palace with relatives of the victims days after the massacre, Karzai openly questioned the U.S. account of a lone gunman. The president pointed to one relative and said: “In his family, in four rooms people were killed — children and women were killed — and then they were all brought together in one room and then set on fire. That, one man cannot do.”Karimi said he returned to Kabul to deliver his interim report but the villagers had spoken to Karzai before he did.
“And everybody said (to the president), ‘Sir, it was not one person. … How can one guy shoot people in four rooms, kill them, then lift them, bring them to one room and set them on fire?'”
Underscoring how the incident has become a political football, Karimi himself appeared to parrot Karzai’s line in an interview with an Australian television program broadcast last week, in which he said, “I’m guessing — assumption — that (the killer was) helped by somebody. One person or two persons.”
There are a couple of possibilities here. Karimi could be honestly saying, interpreted by McClatchy as a contradiction, that two survivors said “there was (only) one individual who came to their house.” This would not rule out other men going to other houses or taking positions outside, and McClatchy could be wrong in its interpretation. Or, as McClatchy suggests, Harimi could be trying to play both sides of the fence. However, the rest of Harimi’s witness to the Australian reporter is clear, and MSNBC views it differently than McClatchy:
“Gen. Karimi, assigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the murders, told Hakim that he, too, wonders whether Bales acted alone and how he could left the base without notice.
“Village elders said several soldiers took part and that there is boot prints in the area,” Karimi told Hakim. He said villagers told him that they saw three or four individuals kneeling and that helicopters were overhead during the rampage.
“To search for him?” Karimi said he asked them.
“No,” he said they told him. “They were there from the very beginning.””
Other soldiers who have been stationed at the same base paint a different picture of how hard it would be to sneak off the base. The NY Times tells us:
“A Green Beret who has spent time in Panjwai in the past year said the combat outpost would have been relatively small, protected by dirt-filled containers known as Hesco barriers, with guard towers and perhaps a blimp with a high-powered camera capable of capturing images more than a mile away. It would have been difficult, but not impossible, for Sergeant Bales to slip away at night unnoticed, as the Army says he did.”
Okay. Not impossible. But now it’s twice.
As if this brew needs anymore spice, Bales’ attorney claims the government is withholding evidence:
“UPDATE: The attorney representing the American soldier accused of slaughtering 17 Afghan civilians accused the U.S. government on Friday of withholding evidence that would be crucial to his defense.
Speaking to the Associated Press, lawyer John Henry Browne detailed what he said were numerous examples of the government going out of their way to “hide evidence,” including denying his team access to video allegedly taken from a surveillance blimp showing Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on the night of the killings.”
Perhaps most damning of all, one might ask, isn’t this a simple matter of interviewing the many wounded witnesses? After all, we know beyond doubt that they saw what happened first hand. But Bales’ attorney Brown issued the following statement at the end of March:
“We are facing an almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client,” the defense team statement said.
“When we tried to interview the injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital we were denied access and told to coordinate with the prosecution team. The next day the prosecution team interviewed the civilian injured. We found out shortly after the prosecution interviews of the injured civilians that the civilians were all released from the hospital and there was no contact information for them,” the statement said.”
The LA Times reports attorney Browne saying:
“People on our staff in Afghanistan went to the hospital where there supposedly were eyewitnesses to this … and we were told by the prosecutors to come back the next day, which is fine. We went back the next day, and they’d all been released from the hospital and they’d all been scattered throughout Afghanistan. That was a violation of the trust we had in the prosecutors,”…
“We’ve been misled greatly…. They were promised to be there, and they were not,” he said, adding that there isn’t much hope of finding the witnesses now. “People just disappear into the Afghan countryside.”
Finally the Global Post, a project of long-time Boston Globe journalist Charles Sennott, turns in a report which seems to attempt to discount the value of Afghan witness testimony, but in the end relates detail from a witness which corroborates the behavior of soldiers intent on committing war crimes:
“Baran’s brother was killed in the shooting spree, but he didn’t see the shooting happen. Baran said he told Karzai what his sister-in-law, who was at the scene, had told him.
When GlobalPost asked Baran to speak directly with his sister-in-law, he initially refused.
“You don’t need to talk her,” Baran said. “I did, and I can tell you the story.”
Eventually Baran relented, allowing GlobalPost to interview her by phone.
Massouma, who lives in the neighboring village of Najiban, where 12 people were killed, said she heard helicopters fly overhead as a uniformed soldier entered her home. She said he flashed a “big, white light,” and yelled, “Taliban! Taliban! Taliban!”
Massouma said the soldier shouted “walkie-talkie, walkie-talkie.” The rules of engagement in hostile areas in Afghanistan permit US soldiers to shoot Afghans holding walkie-talkies because they could be Taliban spotters.
“He had a radio antenna on his shoulder. He had a walkie-talkie himself, and he was speaking into it,” she said.”
BBC says villagers say they heard helicopters in the night, explained by “correspondents” in the same report by the fact that helicopters are heard often in that part of the country. However helicopters in support of an operation would be distinctly closer and louder than those passing by at altitude.
“A woman in one of the targeted villages told the BBC she first heard helicopters at 02:00 and then gunfire. Others said helicopters and gunfire could be heard from midnight….Some villagers say that helicopters were flying overhead as the killings took place. Many locals appear to believe that they were in fact supporting the operation rather than trying to stop the gunman.
But correspondents say helicopters are frequently heard overhead in parts of the country.”
Reports of Bales’ testimony and behavior seem an intriguing mix of admissions to guilt and confusion. Reuters:
“Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales initially asserted that he had shot several Afghan men outside a U.S. combat outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11 and did not mention that a dozen women and children were among the dead, according to a senior U.S. official briefed on the case.
“He indicated to his buddies that he had taken out some military-aged males,” the senior official said. Soldiers normally use that term to denote insurgents.
But Bales’ story soon broke down when commanders on the base learned details of the pre-dawn shooting spree in which 16 Afghan civilians were killed in their homes. At that point, the 38-year-old Army veteran was taken into custody. He refused to talk further and soon asked for a lawyer, two officials said.”
Bales’ wife has stood steadfastly by her husband, saying that whatever he had done, he loved children and could never harm them.
In 2007 after a battle in Iraq, Bales told the Fort Lewis Northwest Guardian:
“I’ve never been more proud to be a part of this unit … for the simple fact that we discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants,” he told the after a battle in Iraq in 2007. “Afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us.”
The Christian Science Monitor reports words from Bales which are startlingly contrary to the charges:
“The charges run contrary to Bales’ own words in the 2007 interview with his local newspaper as well, when he expressed disdain for any insurgent would could put “his family in harm’s way like that,” he said. “I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy.””
Publicintellligence.net notes the irony of the current lack of evidence against Bales when forensics against insurgents in Afghanistan are highly developed:
“A presentation from the U.S. Army’s Office of the Provost Marshal General indicates that as of August 2011 there were three Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities (JEFFs) throughout Afghanistan including one in Kandahar, the same province where Staff Sgt. Bales reportedly committed the massacre. These forensics facilities are capable of DNA analysis, latent print identification, photographic forensics, as well as chemical and ballistic analysis.
——-
… it remains to be seen whether the U.S. military will present the same level of forensic evidence that it routinely collects and analyzes when attempting to prosecute suspected insurgents.”
The families of the dead have been paid $50,000 for each victim, an extraordinary sum for most Afghans who often take work, when it is available, which pays one dollar a day. The country is the fifth poorest in the world and suffers a 60% rate of child malnutrition, according to Save the Children. Typical victim compensation in cases of civilian deaths is on the order of $2,000.
Dateline SBC interviews with child witnesses
Related articles
- RT: Bales in court as massacre body count mysteriously rises to 17 (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
UN Security Council Unanimously Adopts Resolution on Deploying 300 Unarmed Observers in Syria
SANA | April 21, 2012
NEW YORK, (SANA) – The UN security council on Saturday unanimously adopted a resolution on deploying 300 unarmed observers in Syria on preliminary basis for three months to monitor the ceasefire.
The resolution calls on the Syrian government to support the observers mission by helping deploy its members and provide transport for them without hindrances, calling upon the UN and Syria to reach an agreement on providing the planes needed by the mission.
The resolution also called on all sides in Syria to guarantee the safety of the mission members, stressing that the primary responsibility regarding the observers’ safety falls upon the government.
The Russian resolution stipulates that the deployment of the observer mission will be evaluated by the UN Secretary General based on relevant developments on the ground, including the cessation of violence.
The resolution called upon all sides in Syria to cease violence, saying that the cessation which has been achieved so far is clearly imperfect.
Al-Jaafari: Syria Showed Full Cooperation and Commitment to Annan’s Plan
In a speech during the Council session, Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari said that some of the statements made during this session called upon Syria to implement the Council’s resolution while those who made the statements themselves are moving away from it.
He said that he met with the UN Secretary General and senior aides on Saturday and appealed to him to exert good offices and be more involved in the efforts to guarantee applying the desired political and national solution to resolve the crisis, adding “this is a good opportunity to appeal to you all and address to you the same appeal which I addressed to the Secretary General.”
Al-Jaafari said that the Syrian government was open to any honest and neutral initiatives and efforts since the beginning of the crisis to help emerge from it while preserving Syria’s sovereignty, independent national decision, security and stability, with Syria showing great cooperation and commitment to Annan’s efforts.
He affirmed that Syria implemented its part of Annan’s plan and is still committed to this, and that it’s updating Annan on regular daily basis with written reports on steps taken in this regard, which includes releasing detainees who did not shed blood, delivering humanitarian aid to affected areas in cooperation with OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), and allowing over 600 media outlets to enter Syria.
Al-Jaafari said that the Syrian government on Sunday informed Annan that it carried out the second article of his plan completely, saying that police and law-enforcement forces will be charged with keeping peace and order and will show the utmost self-restraint while remaining ready to confront armed terrorist groups should they continue to breach the cessation of violence, while the Syrian Arab Army will remain prepared to defend Syria from any attack and secure strategic sites.
He noted that sending neutral observers was originally a Syrian demand based on self-confidence and a position of strength, and that the reason behind such a demand is to inform the world public opinion of the terrorists’ crimes away from media and political misdirection, noting that this happened with the Arab League observers who presented an objective report documenting the crimes of terrorists, which prompted Qatar and Saudi Arabia to withdraw their observers, suspend the entire mission, and ignore their report completely.
Al-Jaafari added that Syria renewed cooperation and openness by signing the preliminary agreement organizing the operations of UN observers in Syria, and that the Syrian government is ready to sign the protocol organizing the deployment of observers when the UN is ready, stressing that Syria has a true interest in ensuring the success of the observer mission, with emphasis on the need for the observers to be objective, neutral and profession.
“Some sides responded on this clear commitment by the Syrian government by carrying out a hysterical campaign of doubt that unveiled ill intentions on their parts on principle regarding Syria, accentuating their strong frustration over the signs of returning stability and calm to Syria,” he said.
He went on to note that terrorists answered the Syrian government’s commitment to Annan’s plan with a long series of violations, with them intensifying their terrorism and attacks against civilians, law-enforcement forces and public and private facilities, saying that the Syrian government provided Annan, Ki-moon and the Security Council with detailed information on the violations made by armed groups after the beginning of the ceasefire on April 12th, adding that the violations number over 593 as of Saturday.
Al-Jaafari voiced Syria’s deep concern over the continuing of the suspicious disregard of terrorist activities which were accompanied by a methodical media and political misdirection campaign aiming to demonize the Syrian authorities and army by blaming the terrorists’ crimes on the Syrian state and manipulate public opinion by twisting facts and employing a total media blackout regarding the terrorists’ crimes.
“All these practices aim at foiling Annan’s mission and ascribing the responsibility of this failure to the Syrian government in order to reach military action under humanitarian excuses, similarly to the lies that led to the destruction of Libya’s infrastructure and the death of 150,000 Libyan civilians at the hands of NATO with Qatar’s participation,” he said.
Syria’s Representative stressed the need for Annan and the Security Council to deal with the Syrian crisis comprehensively by exerting efforts to ensure that armed groups and those supporting them are committed to the cessation of violence in order for this cessation to be sustainable, reiterating that Syria’s support alone isn’t enough to ensure the success of Annan’s efforts, as Arab, regional and international sides must commit in words and actions to stopping the funding, arming, training and encouragement of armed groups, as well as stopping their instigation of the Syrian opposition to reject dialogue.
“Some who predict the failure of Annan’s plan are doing their best to fulfill this ominous prediction… the best example of this is the statements of the Emir of Qatar in Rome only two days after the Security Council adopted resolution no. 2042 when he said that the chances of Annan’s plan to succeed don’t exceed 3%,” al-Jaafari said, adding that some countries are also creating parallel tracks to Annan’s plan that could undermine it and waste the efforts for reaching a peaceful solution, with these tracks including the conferences held in Tunis, Istanbul and Paris which pass plans outside international legitimacy to arm the opposition, reject peaceful solutions, and imposing sanctions on the Syrian people.
He noted that sometimes there’s boasting of increasing sanctions as if harming the Syrians and taking away their livelihood and rights to development and stability is a major victory.
“It’s a paradox that after every Syrian openness in dealing with any political proposition, a conference is held in parallel to fan the flames of the crisis, push towards removing the solution from its peaceful outline, and undermine any positive solution to resolve the crisis without shedding the blood of Syrian civilians and military personnel,” al-Jaafari said.
He pointed out that the absolute truth among Syrians is their rejection of interference in their country’s internal affairs, commitment to protecting their country’s sovereignty, continuing with reform and national dialogue, and not allowing time to be turned back to any form of subjugation or custodianship or occupation, be it direct or indirect.
“The Syrians know full well that the forces who have ill intents for Syria are targeting them all and trading with their pain and legitimate ambitions in the bloody stock market controlled by the interests of Israel and its governments and allies,” he said.
Al-Jaafari concluded by addressing a statement made by Germany’s Representative who voiced his country’s commitments to protecting “minorities” in Syria, stressing that there are no minorities in Syria; rather only Syrians who are proud of their cultural and religious diversity and don’t want Wahabi and Salafi extremism to sneak among them through oil money and religious and sectarian incitement which is preached by some Qatari and Saudi channels.
Churkin: Countries that Have Influence on Opposition Should Encourage it to Stop Violence, Apply Annan Plan
Russia’s Permanent UN Envoy Vitaly Churkin stressed that the resolution adopted today by the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) on the deployment of UN observers in Syria sends an important international message.
In his speech before the UN Security Council, Churkin said this resolution shows that only the UNSC has the right to make resolutions for resolving regional crises such as the Syrian crisis.
The Russian Envoy added that any group of friends or countries with interests or any other party must clearly abide by the UNSC resolutions and not undermine the possibility of implementing it.
Churkin affirmed the importance of this resolution to push the process of peaceful settlement in Syria forward besides [its] being embodies a unity and consensus of the Council regarding Annan’s six point plan.
Churkin stressed that all external sides related to the crisis in Syria should act in a responsible manner, adding that “The Syrians themselves should determine the destiny of their country.”
He made it clear that any attempt to impose outside powers on the Syrian people could exacerbate the crisis, calling on countries that have an influence on the opposition to encourage it to stop violence and apply Annan’s plan.
Baodong Reiterates China’s Commitment to peaceful Solution to Syria’s Crisis
For his part, China’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Li Baodong, reiterated Beijing’s commitment to reaching a peaceful solution to Syria’s crisis and within the framework of respecting the will of the Syrian people and keenness on Syria’s territorial integrity.
In his speech before the UN Security Council, Baodong added that Annan represents an important channel to solve the crisis in Syria, calling upon all Syrian sides to completely cooperate with Annan in order to launch a political process led by Syria.
Baodong stressed his country’s rejection of all efforts and statements that could hinder Annan’s mission, hoping that the monitors’ mission will fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and work in accordance to the authorization granted by the Council.
For his part, South Africa’s Representative stressed the importance of supporting Annan’s plan in order to reach a peaceful solution for the crisis in Syria through political dialogue that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people and ensures the unity and the territorial integrity of the country.
In turn, Azerbaijan’s Representative stressed his country’s support to Annan’s mission and the importance of respecting Syria’s sovereignty and unity.
India’s Representative said that the efforts of Annan contributed to improving the situation in Syria, calling upon all sides to adhere to Annan’s plan in order to reach a full ceasefire.
He highlighted that the international observers should implement their duties in an objective and neutral manner with the aim of starting a comprehensive political process led by Syria to meet the aspirations of the Syrian people.
For his part, Pakistan’s Representative expressed his country’s hope that Annan’s plan will lead to a full cessation of violence and creating the appropriate circumstances to carry out a political process that will respect Syria’s sovereignty and lead to a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Guatemala’s Representative stressed his country’s support to Annan’s mission and to all efforts exerted with the aim of restoring peace and stability to Syria.
Colombia’s Representative also stressed his country’s support to the monitors’ mission in Syria, adding that the current proposal is ideal and typical.
As for the western countries’ representatives, they continued their deliberate disregard of the acts committed by the armed terrorist groups which claimed the lives of hundreds of citizens and army and law-enforcement personnel.
The French Representative renewed his country’s incitement against Syria, laying the responsibility of the armed terrorist groups’ violence on the Syrian government.
He urged the Syrian government to immediately adhere to Annan’s plan and mentioned nothing about the fact that the opposition didn’t show any commitment to the same plan until now.
Similarly, Germany’s Representative recited a stream of lies and false allegations against the Syrian government, twisting the facts by alleging that the Syrian government is the side that is committing kidnapping, torture and violence against children, women and “minorities.”
The U.S. Representative, oblivious to her country’s deception of the international community when it waged a war on Iraq under false allegations of nuclear weapons, announced the failure of the observers’ mission before it even started, alleging that their presence will not make the Syrian government stop violence.
The U.S. representative, whose country murdered millions of innocent around the world, defended the acts of the armed opposition, alleging that the opposition welcomed the presence of the observers.
Churkin: This is the First Time During the Syrian Crisis that the Security Council was Able to Express Itself in Support of a Positive Political Plan
In a press conference following the Security Council session, Churkin said that this session marks the first time during the Syrian crisis that the Security Council was able to express itself in support of a positive political plan and strategy and to support with practical steps through the deployment of observers.
Churkin said that when the Council adopted resolution no. 2043, it affirmed its responsibility for security and peace in the Syrian crisis, hoping that the international community and various groups will respect the Council’s decision and authority and act accordingly.
He welcomed the decision and hoped that the observer mission will play its role in supporting stability in Syria, noting that the resolution doesn’t address only the Syrian government, but also the opposition, asking it to cease violence, support observers and commit to Annan’s plan.
Churkin noted that the observer mission’s jurisdiction suits the arrangements made by the UN General Secretariat and the Syrian government, adding that the decision is the responsibility of the UN and the Syrian government and that they should work to make all necessary arrangements.
On the U.S. stance, Churkin said that he had hoped that the statements would be more in line with the spirit of the resolution, but some of the speakers wasted a chance to address the opposition, adding that negative expectations are more akin to predictions.
He added that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem informed Annan that the Syrian government carried out the second article of the plan and withdrew armored vehicles and military forces from cities.
Churkin hoped that the political momentum is a positive sign, calling for abandoning threats and negative expectations and staying the course which the Security Council finally managed to support rather than returning to conflict scenarios which proved to be dangerous and likely to lead to further escalation.
He stressed that Russia isn’t against the opposition, saying “we’re doing the right thing and we’re comfortable for our stance,” noting that Russia worked hard to put the Security Council on the right track, adding that there are forces who don’t want this strategy to succeed and have other plans which aren’t useful and will weaken Annan’s plan.
Churkin said that the observers are facing monumental tasks, thus they must be respected and provided with all the conditions needed by them to carry out their work successfully.
On the observers’ nationalities, he said that there are no information of specific agreements in this regard, noting that the Syrian government approved of the candidates.
In response to a question on a full ban on weapons, Churkin said that even if such a ban succeeded with the Syrian government, then there will be those who deny that and continue to provide weapons to opposition groups, similar to what happened in prior experiences.
M.Nassr / Ghossoun / H. Sabbagh
Related articles
- Syria Welcomes New UN Resolution, Observers to Arrive Late Sunday (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- UN Security Council Votes To Send 300 Observers To Syria (eurasiareview.com)
- Security Council changed prerogatives in Syrian crisis – Churkin to RT (rt.com)
US Shelters Venezuelan Fugitive, Criticises Existence of “Drug Kingpins” in Venezuela
By Rachael Boothroyd | Venezuelanalysis | April 19th 2012
Caracas – A Venezuelan judge has fled to the United States after he was dismissed as a Supreme Court Magistrate on March 20th, when an investigation was launched into his links to Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled. Venezuelan born Makled is currently on trial in the country for crimes including narco-trafficking and murder, after being extradited from Colombia to Venezuela in May last year.
According to the charges levelled at the ex-magistrate, Eladio Aponte, the judge granted a falsified identification document to Makled which named him as a member of the magistrate’s staff, permitting him free passage to anywhere in the country.
In an interview on Wednesday night for US television channel SOiTV, the ex-judge hit out at Venezuelan politicians and high ranking members of the army, accusing them of having intervened and manipulated the Venezuelan judicial system. He also added that he thought Makled to be a “reputable businessman”.
The government has categorically refuted the claims, which they say are an attempt to smear the Chavez administration.
“He is an ex-magistrate being prosecuted for his links to drug trafficking, and who has sold his soul to the devil,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Nicolas Maduro, whilst defending the country’s judicial institutions as independent.
“We can say with total certainty that in the case of Aponte, the decisions taken by our public institutions were in total compliance with the law, demonstrating that there are laws in Venezuela, that here there or no privileges and that no one is protected by narco gangs”. “Aponte is a totally discredited man,” he added.
The minister also went on to criticise the role of the U.S.’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in engineering Aponte’s escape after it emerged that a DEA plane had transported the fugitive from Costa Rica to the United States.
“The DEA now takes away this man accused of being linked to drugs trafficking mafias to turn him into a spokesman against Venezuela… The United States continues to be a sanctuary for drug traffickers, the corrupt, traitors and terrorists,” he said.
Maduro’s sentiments have been echoed by other members of the Venezuelan government and armed forces, as well as by US- Venezuelan attorney and investigative journalist Eva Golinger, who said that Aponte’s claims were part of a “systematic” campaign by Washington to depict Venezuela as a “narco-state” using whatever means possible.
OFAC Criticises “Worrying Trend”
Aponte’s flight to the U.S. comes as the Director of the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Adam Szubin, criticised a “worrying trend” in Venezuela, relating to the presence of “drugs kingpins” in the country.
In an interview with opposition newspaper El Universal earlier this week, Szubin stated that the organization was particularly concerned with individuals who were in violation of the “Kingpin Act,” which “goes after foreign persons” accused of financially aiding or supporting the international trafficking of narcotics. Several Venezuelan government officials have been controversially added to the organisation’s sanctions list since 2008.
“The designations made over the last two years,” said Szubin, “conform to the Kingpin Act and point towards a worrying trend in Venezuela.”
“Nobody is added to the list by mistake,” he continued, although conceding that 400 individuals had been removed from the list since 2009.
Szubin went on to cite current Venezuelan Defence Minister, Henry Rangel Silva, who was placed on the agency’s sanctions list in 2008 for allegedly attempting to increase cooperation between the Venezuelan government and Colombia’s FARC guerrillas as proof of this trend. To date, no evidence has been presented by the OFAC in support of these allegations.
As a division of the Treasury Department’s “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence” agency, the OFAC is responsible for administering and enforcing sanctions against states, individuals and groups accused of terrorism, such as those currently being enforced against Iran. The agency is described by the Washington Post as being an institution that “U.S. policymakers increasingly rely on to advance national security and foreign policy goals in the post-9/11 era”.
Since 2008, six other members of the Venezuelan government, including former Caracas mayor Freddy Bernal, have also been added to the OFAC sanction list.
Relations between the United States and Venezuela in the fight against the international drugs trade have been strained since the latter expelled the U.S.’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 2005 for acts of espionage, with the Venezuelan government charging the agency with maintaining a consistent campaign against the left wing politics of the government, as opposed to focusing on counter-narcotics operations.
Western Journalist: Visa Denied
By Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar | 2012-04-21
Item number five on UN Envoy Kofi Annan’s 6-point plan for Syria is the following:
“(5) Ensure freedom of movement throughout the country for journalists and a non-discriminatory visa policy for them.”
At a delicate moment in the hard-fought Syrian conflict that could potentially destabilize the entire Middle East, the United Nations believes getting more journalists into Syria is one of the six most urgent actions to consider?
Why? Are foreign reporters trained in special “observer” skills – with unique truth-detecting abilities bubble-wrapped in bullet and mortar-proof goop? And what will they see that Syrians – who know Syria best – cannot observe for themselves?
What the UN is really demanding – let’s be honest here – is for the Syrian government to open up the country to “Western” journalists. Yet, in all the conflicts covered in recent years, I cannot recall one that has been more badly covered by the mainstream western media than this Syrian crisis.
Almost to a person, western journalists are blaming their substandard coverage on the fact that they have been denied entry into Syria. And also – to a person – they seem to think that the world needs them there to understand what is going on inside the country.
Paul Conroy, the Sunday Times freelance cameraman who was injured by an explosive in Homs in February, tells the BBC’s Hard Talk that Syrians need their events verified by people like himself and his now-deceased colleague, war correspondent Marie Colvin, in order to be believed:
“It is a sad state of affairs that it does need people to go in… and actually be Western and be official journalists to make it real in the public eye.”
Is that like a Western-journalist-verification-stamp of some sort? Does it come with a guarantee – for accuracy in reporting?
Because, right now, I honestly cannot think of a group of people less capable of verifying things in Syria than western journalists. And it is not because they aren’t physically there or can’t string together more than two words in Arabic. It is largely because they feast at the trough of their own governments’ narratives on All Things. Western journalists are heady with a sense of righteousness leached from the oxymoronic “western values” shoved down our collective throats. Those same western values that demand “accountability” and “transparency” from all nations – while offering cover for western governments to hack their way through Muslim and Arab bodies in endless “national security” wars.
Do tell… Which major mainstream western media outlet has ever fundamentally questioned their government’s narratives on these wars? Which major western journalist risked career for truth on affairs related to the Middle East? Give me the name of that brave western network reporter who disrupts press conferences regularly with inconvenient questions on weapons sales to Gulf dictatorships – and has his bosses go to the wall to ensure he remains in the White House press pool. Show me the western reporter at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, BBC, France 24 who has made a career of doggedly questioning Israel’s disproportionate use of force against civilian populations – a journalist who sticks a microphone under Sarkozy, Obama or Cameron’s nose and bellows: “What fucking Peace Process are you chaps banging on about?”
No? Not one? Come on!
“No Syrian Visa” is just a convenient excuse for the lazy and sloppy reporting of western media in this Syrian conflict. It is a handy sound bite these days – one that quite deliberately ignores the Arab League Monitors’ January 2012 Report that 147 foreign and Arab media organizations were operating in Syria during their month-long observations.
“No Syrian Visa” tries hard to distract from the reality that most western journalists never actually go out to the front lines of conflict when filing their stories. Increasingly, reporters are sent out in organized pools by host governments – or in the case of recent US-initiated wars in the Middle East – by the invading armies.
“No Syrian Visa” selectively forgets that entering US-foe Syria as a journalist today is no more difficult than waltzing into US-ally Saudi Arabia – or US-ally Bahrain, when Formula One cars are not racing there.
And “No Syrian Visa” will blush hard when recalling that there was no similar collective western media outrage when the government of Israel declared “No Gaza Entry” as it pounded Palestinian populations in 2009.
Glossy Journalists Seek Content Not Facts
No. The problem with western reporters is that they are past their due date – remnants of an industry we once believed brandished standards of objectivity we never actually witnessed.
They are news-as-entertainment professionals – packaging glossy corporate content for maximum distribution and big bucks. The goal is not objective reportage. Their targets are quantifiable and highlighted in a business plan somewhere. Success is based on a simple formula: stay within parameters “understandable” to a wide audience that devours sound bites and familiar storylines on the hour, every hour. Like trained seals whose every desire, instinct and buying pattern has been measured by corporate media’s marketing department for the consumption of its advertisers, the audience demands satisfaction – and western media delivers it.
With the exception of a few proud holdouts, western media has made a beeline for the sexy story in Syria – which is essentially the fairytale of the “Arab Spring” with a little twist: Bad regime, good activists – but kick out this dictator and it’s a three-for-one, with Iran and Hezbollah tossed in as a bonus.
There are only three guiding rules for most western journalists inside or outside of Syria: 1) only quote anti-regime populations, 2) do not seek out independent domestic opposition figures, 3) evidence is unimportant, as long as you loosely “source” it:
They head straight for the Syrian activist, the anti-regime demonstration, the man with the gun in a “hot spot.” These are one side of the Syrian story, for sure. But you will not find mainstream western journalism broadcasting a pro-regime rally of tens of thousands, the national flag painted on the faces of Assad supporters – young and old – waving posters of their president. Pro-regime Syrians, a majority of whom voted in a national referendum in February to adopt constitutional reforms, are never interviewed by these reporters.
You will not find western journalists side-stepping the NATO-friendly Syrian National Council (SNC) “opposition” to interview the dozens of domestic Syrian opposition figures – most who have spent years in regime prisons – but who also unanimously reject the militarization and internationalization of the conflict; i.e., “non-Syrians butt out.”
And most importantly, you will never find mainstream western journalism seeking out “evidence” to support the false narratives of their governments. Who is included in the daily death count reported around the world? Who has killed thousands of Syrian soldiers? Who is killing children in Syria? Who is killing journalists in Syria? Who stands to gain from these deaths? Who stands to gain from this video footage or still photo emailed to my desktop? How do I know that plume of smoke was caused by a regime mortar? Who is the sniper? Why do so many Syrians still support Bashar al-Assad?
Propaganda As a Weapon of War
The “Big Lie” is a propaganda technique used liberally by western governments in the Middle East. The Big Lie refers to “the repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of truth, and the Big Lie generalizations merge and eventually supplant the public’s accurate perception of the underlying events.”
Using Big Lie techniques in the Middle East are particularly easy because western media is so happily complicit in propagating one-dimensional stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. These assumptions are programmed so deeply, that even after months of watching on our TV screens disparate populations of all backgrounds and political convictions rally to reshape their governing systems… we still see regional events only through the prism of a one-size-fits-all Arab Spring.
The US Military’s Special Forces Unconventional Warfare manual describes ways to overthrow a government outside of a conventional combat format. In a section headlined Will of the Population, the manual explains ways to overcome popular support for the existing national government and alter natural hostility to foreign intervention:
“Information activities that increase dissatisfaction with the hostile regime or occupier and portray the resistance as a viable alternative are important components of the resistance effort. These activities can increase support for the resistance through persuasive messages that generate sympathy among populations.”
The manual expounds on this in another area:
“The USG (US Government) begins to shape the target environment as far in advance as possible. The shaping effort may include operations to increase the legitimacy of U.S. operations and the resistance movement, building internal and external support for the movement, and setting conditions for the introduction of U.S. forces. … The population of a recently occupied country may already be psychologically ready to accept U.S. sponsorship, particularly if the country was a U.S. ally before its occupation. In other cases, psychological preparation may require a protracted period before yielding any favorable results.”
The Syrian crisis is not about reforms any longer – it has become a geopolitical battle for influence in the Middle East, with NATO, the GCC and BRIC nations taking sides. Western media fails to address this larger picture, so glaringly obvious to people in the region. Instead it focuses almost entirely on the “David vs Goliath” or “good vs evil” themes that appeal to a broad audience of dumbed-down media consumers. These populations in turn become perception “leaders” when they back foreign military adventures in opinion polls broadcast back to us by – you guessed it – western media. And in that neat trick, your western government checks off a tick-box called “citizen approval.”
But Syrians have approved no such thing. More than a year after the first anti-government protests – which have never grown into the hundreds of thousands and millions experienced elsewhere in the region – Syrians have not ejected their leader, nor is there any evidence that the majority of Syrians wish to do so. The constitutional referendum in February, which a small majority of Syrians approved in an excellent turnout, should have been some indication for the media that popular sentiment is not necessarily reflected in an unverifiable cellphone image.
The daily casualty statistics coming out of Syria are deliberately misrepresented as regime “kills,” satellite photos of alleged regime shelling contradict the dominant narratives, activists faking events begs the question “why would they need to falsify evidence if the regime is so brutal?” But western media hears and sees nothing that doesn’t suit their formulaic narrative.
There is no better example of how mentally embedded western media has become with the Syrian “opposition” (itself a very broad and mixed bag), than a recent incident with CNN in Homs. Correspondent Arwa Damon and her non-Arab crew were tipped off about a potential pipeline explosion, so they pre-positioned their camera in a window frame facing the exact location of the anticipated bombing. When the pipeline explodes some time later, Damon and her crew look exultant – almost drunk on their success. Scoop? Try complicity in an act of terrorism. Can you imagine them doing this if the target was an American installation in Iraq or a NATO depot in Afghanistan? They would never live it down.
Reality Check
A year after the first small protests in Syria, the Syrian government stands strong, bolstered by its many constituencies, and spared the mass defections experienced by other Arab leaders. It appears that propaganda is not enough to shake the foundations of all Arab states. Now is the time for western media to ask why they got it so wrong. And some are indeed questioning their information, sources and assumptions.
There are western journalists who are doing a more than creditable job of writing about Syria from outside the country – the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn and The Guardian’s Seumas Milne come to mind. Please feel free to list other responsible, professional western journalists in the comments section below – I am sure we all want to celebrate their courage and increase their page views.
As for the others, their arrogance and cowardice is dangerous. False narratives have emboldened Syrians and other regional actors to act incautiously, angrily, even euphorically, when they might have benefited from nuance and calculation. People have died in the spinning of this conflict.
It is clearly time to challenge the dated concept that mainstream western media is impartial, objective or professional in their coverage of Mideast affairs. But we shouldn’t just bemoan this injustice in yet another stream of impotent essays and editorials. We must drag this industry of disinformation into the public arena, and make them accountable throughout the region by acting to affect ratings and readership.
Kofi Annan needs to immediately drop item number 5 on his Syria plan. While freedom of speech is important to uphold – even more so in times of strife – today, mainstream western journalism is nothing more than another face of the “external intervention” he so gravely warns against. Toss those western journos out of Syria unless they can demonstrate independent, objective, responsible reporting of this conflict. False narratives are costing Arab and Muslim lives. And media “combatants” need not apply to practice their craft in this region any longer.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow Sharmine on twitter @snarwani.
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No Justice for Muslims under Obama
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | April 18, 2012
The FBI and the Justice Department are still up to their old tricks. Not only do they continue to entrap Muslims in terror cases that wouldn’t exist without FBI involvement, but now they silence anyone who complains, charging them with trumped up offenses and insuring that the assault on law continues.
Khalifa al-Kalili is an American Muslim from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beginning in January of this year he was stalked by a man calling himself Muhammad but who has now been identified as Shahed Hussain. Hussain was on the verge of being convicted of a felony when he became an FBI informant in 2002. It was Hussain who entrapped four African American men from Newburgh, New York, into a phony plot to bomb synagogues in the Bronx.
Al-Kalili was rightly suspicious when Hussain and another informant befriended him and spoke of the need for jihad. Al-Kalili was not as naïve as the Newburgh Four or the dozens of other people who were charged and convicted of committing terror acts which were created solely by the government.
Al-Kalili voiced his concerns very publicly, to the Albany Times Union newspaper and posted his fears on his Facebook page. He used Google to identify the cell phone number of the man who was stalking him and discovered that he was in fact Shahed Hussain. Al-Kalili’s attempts to protect himself were of no avail. After he scheduled a press conference to announce his plans to sue the FBI, he was suddenly arrested for a firearm violation and remains held behind bars without bail.
This case is one of many in which the American government has created a separate and decidedly unequal system of justice for Muslims. Shahed Hussain is now well known and notorious for tricking people into committing crimes. He is so brazen that he felt no need to hide or to even get a new cell phone number. Obviously he knows that the FBI is his protector and that he need not take any precaution to avoid detection. Even when his victims use legal means to avoid being ensnared, they go to jail anyway.
These entrapment tactics began during the Bush administration, but as in other instances, the Obama administration is nothing more than Bush part two. The president of the United States, the attorney general and the FBI director are all complicit in violating not only the protections granted to Americans in the constitution, but in establishing a system of separate and unequal justice for Muslims in this country. Once again, the value of having a former constitutional law professor sitting behind the desk in the oval office is less than negligible and an insult to anyone who cares about justice.
The story of Khalifa al-Kalili is an example of the rot which permeates the American political and judicial systems. Mass incarceration, selective prosecution, prosecutorial misconduct and police brutality all make a mockery of the claim that there is equal justice under American law. There have always been groups who were subject to brutality and injustice and now the first black president has proven that the system cannot be changed from within. It must be uprooted by people who first are willing to call the evil by its name and who are willing to dedicate themselves to eradicating it once and for all.
There are a multitude of reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, but his decision to continue a wholesale subversion of what is left of the justice system is one of the most important. How does anyone claim that the Democrats are our saviors and the Republicans are the evil doers, when all evidence points to criminality on both sides?
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are fit to govern this country. It is useless to continue revealing the injustices suffered by al-Kalili and others if the end result is a continuation of the status quo. Good journalism brought this case to light, but if must go further. A laundry list of people who have been turned into criminals by our government is useless unless a call to action comes along with it.
What will the call to action be for al-Kalili? Will people who excoriate Obama because of the injustice perpetrated by his Justice Department still make the case for his re-election? If so, they need not have bothered with al-Kalili at all. They should have swept his case under the rug and forgotten him. Voting for Obama and the Democratic party is tantamount to doing that anyway.
Margaret Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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- Entrapment blues: Documents provide rare insight into FBI’s terrorism stings! (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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