Finding Order in the Orwellian Chaos
By Eric Blair | Activist Post | April 10, 2011
It has become nearly impossible to determine the “truth” in our increasingly chaotic world. Reality is seemingly being twisted and flipped on its head in this rapid unfolding of multi-front crises. The world is facing a new world war in the Arab world, nuclear holocaust from the Fukushima meltdown, total economic collapse/takeover, and a stunning rise in the cost of essential commodities.
In each case, the public is being told directly the opposite of basic human understanding. In fact, it’s so blatant that it appears to be a test to see how fast and far the collective human psyche can be warped. George Orwell would be impressed with the level of doublespeak manipulation that has taken place concerning these recent catastrophic events.
War is now classified as a humanitarian action. Nuclear radiation is now good for your health. Private and government financial collapse is the fault of the taxpayer. And the price for food and oil are dependent on gambling, not actual supply and demand.
Never before, that I and others can recall, have we been hit with so many crises at once with previously unacceptable explanations coming from the people’s supposed leaders. The U.S. president can now put American soldiers into combat and spend tax dollars on war without even consulting the citizens’ elected officials. The EPA can autocratically adjust acceptable radiation levels for human health despite all evidence to the contrary. The private bankers can demand bailouts and austerity cuts from an already ailing population who had nothing to do with their debts. The price of food and oil are allowed to be determined in Wall Street’s casino at the expense of humanity. And we’re being told it’s for our own good, our personal safety, and our economic security.
This insane warping of morals and common sense can only occur under the direction of a force which requires mass confusion and a compromise in human morality to accomplish an unpopular agenda. A force whose motto is “Order Out of Chaos.” A force whose deliberate purpose for creating such calamitous situations is more consolidated control. And clearly, it’s a force with great access to the mainstream media megaphone to propagate their desired reaction to these crises.
What’s different about these events compared to the past is their size, scope, and coalescence at the same time. What David Icke refers to as the “Totalitarian Tiptoe” in his explanation of the establishment’s creeping tyranny through problem-reaction-solution engineering of crises, has seemingly turned into the “Last Leap.” In other words, it can’t be more obvious that we’re quickly moving toward a malevolent global dictatorship with or without the acceptance of the masses. Yet, efforts to defuse and desensitize the population with morally-conflicting messaging appear to be intensifying.
In order to induce hypnosis, a hypnotist must overload the participant’s mind with unknown “message units” to trigger the primitive survival instincts of “fight, flight, or play dead.” As the mind attempts to interpret these foreign message units it becomes overwhelmed. The hypnotist then senses the peak of the overload and releases the subject to flee-and-play-dead with the command to “sleep.” However, it is likely that the participant would have chosen this path regardless of the command, because the participant began the process in a relaxed position and, as a domesticated animal, has certain preconditioning to escape to flight when overwhelmed.
Once in this state of message unit overload, the part of the mind required for critical thinking is defused and the subject is willing to accept nearly any suggestion — as comically seen in stage hypnosis shows. During this stage show by the elite, we have witnessed rabid anti-war liberals turn into lapdogs for preemptive killing. We’ve witnessed health community officials promote a variety of poisons as normal. And we’ve witnessed free market economists promote monopoly cartels as genuine capitalism.
Accepted knowns are remarkably easy to manipulate using suggestive messaging, especially if attached to a strong emotional response like fear. Make no mistake, this method is a well-understood science; being human, we are all certainly susceptible to these manipulative techniques. So how do we keep our moral bearings during this calculated onslaught of reprogramming?
First, we must recognize when fear, which is the most powerful of emotional triggers, is being used to influence our perception of a given policy, or reality in general. We must not allow ourselves to feel the fear, but instead recognize it as the tool of control that it is. Once mastered, you will notice other less-potent emotional triggers being aimed at convincing your mind to accept unknowns. You will be amazed at how many of your peers fall for it and will desperately try to argue that the fear justifies some inhumane action.
Secondly, it seems wise to drop our perceived meaning of all labels like Democrat or Republican, or capitalism or communism, etc. And we must stop rooting for a team or blindly following a leader based on certain labels. For example, does an aggressive war become righteous if a Democrat with a Peace Prize launches it? Or even if religious leaders promote its cause? Don’t be blinded by mindless groupthink that is often directed by authority in all its forms. Think for yourself.
Ultimately, we must narrowly focus our compass toward the core human beliefs of peace, love, and liberty. When our bias is always being pulled by those forces, we are less likely to be led off course. Believers in peace cannot possibly justify violence unless a direct threat requires immediate self-defense; and only then as a last resort. Believers in love respect their neighbors as equals and would never stand for injustices perpetrated against them — socially, economically, environmentally etc. Believers in liberty would rather die as a consequence of their own decisions than have their essential freedom confined by authority. Significantly, when our compass is dialed into these human principles, we’ll typically find ourselves in a polar conflict with the establishment version of events and desired solutions. These extreme opposite forces allow us to see the real agenda more clearly.
Recognizing the game that is being played for our minds allows us to filter out previously unknown message units as trash so that they never bring about an overload. It allows you to live a life of your own accord. And that is the key to transforming the prevailing system. In other words, we can’t defeat this powerful negative force by playing into their reality. We must, individually, live by our principles even when others frown upon it. Don’t worry, the others will break their trance eventually, as the manufactured anger to justify war, engineered hatred of their neighbors, and the constant bombardment of injustices upon them will eventually grow old. And you, as one living example of purity, will disprove a thousand lies.
New York Times stands by Ethan Bronner’s Facebook fabrications
By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 07/13/2011
Ethan Bronner(Flickr)
The New York Times has told The Electronic Intifada it stands fully behind an article by its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner despite compelling evidence that the article contains fabrications, misleading statements, and gross exaggerations.
In a series of emails between The Electronic Intifada and The New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira, the newspaper defended the article and denied that any corrections or clarifications were required. This is despite the fact that additional data presented by The Electronic Intifada shows that the central premise of the article is false.
In a 9 July article, Bronner profiled a Facebook page called YaLa – Young Leaders. The article suggested that an “enthusiastic” response to the page from thousands of people all over the Arab world indicated an upsurge of interest in coexistence with Israelis that brought to mind the “Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
On 10 July, The Electronic Intifada cast severe doubts on many aspects of Bronner’s story.
Not only is there no evidence of a groundswell of interest in online dialogue between Israelis and Arabs, there is substantial evidence to contradict Bronner’s narrative. Additional data collected by The Electronic Intifada and presented to The New York Times found that only a handful of Facebook users had anything more than a cursory relationship with the page before Bronner’s article appeared.
Moreover, The New York Times did not respond to a direct question as to whether it believed a key anecdote in Bronner’s story, after The Electronic Intifada published evidence suggesting it is false.
This post lays out the key issues we asked The New York Times about, analyzes its responses and presents new evidence contradicting Bronner’s central narrative.
How many “active users” does the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page have and what does that mean?
In his article, Bronner claimed that the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page:
has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs – mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.
The Electronic Intifada asked The New York Times for the source of this information and to define what constituted an “active user.”
We also presented The New York Times with a study we did of every post and comment on the YaLa – Young Leaders page’s Wall from 4 May through 9 July (the full study is included at the end of this post).
The study found that in total there were 146 Facebook users who made a total of 519 posts/comments on the Wall. Eighty-six of these users (58%) made only a single post/comment and another 25 (17%) made 2 comments/posts. So 75% of active users made only 1 or 2 comments or posts.
The top ten most active commenters/posters accounted for 51% of the posts/comments (265 out of 519). The most active poster/commenter was the Yala – Young Leaders page owner, while Hamze Awawde and Moad Arqoub were the third and fourth most prolific. They, along with two other top ten users were quoted in Bronner’s article.
In contrast to the claims of broad participation from across the Arab world, we found only two Facebook users who identified themselves as coming from an Arab country other than Palestine – both from Egypt. One made a single comment, and the other a small handful. Neither were among the top ten users.
In response to these data, foreign editor Susan Chira wrote:
Despite your own study, we believe the article remains factually correct. You assert that the only way to participate in a Facebook page is to “like” it. However, Facebook users can engage with a page in multiple ways, including commenting on a status update, liking a post, and other ways without “liking” the page, according to Facebook and to my colleagues who have been administrators of Facebook pages. That activity is described in the article as monthly active users. Mr. Savir shared the Facebook data with us so we could verify it, and the data does in fact substantiate our description of the monthly active users. Your own research is predicated on the “like” metric, so it does not obviate the statistic we use.
Chira did not share with The Electronic Intifada the data she says was shown to The New York Times by Uri Savir, the former Israeli diplomat and director of the Peres Center for Peace who founded the page.
Chira’s claim that Facebook users can “engage with a page” without first “liking” it (becoming a fan) was simply incorrect.
This is important because on 9 July, the YaLa – Younger Leaders page had only about 3,000 fans. It has more than doubled since then as a result of publicity from Bronner’s article.
In a follow-up, Chira acknowledged that in fact a Facebook user must “like” a page before she can post/comment on the Wall. However, Chira insisted:
it is incorrect to say Facebook users cannot see a Wall without LIKING a page or other parts of the page, including applications. It is also incorrect to say users cannot comment or share posts from a Facebook page that they do not LIKE. Users can comment and share a status update/post from a Facebook page – onto their own Facebook page – without LIKING the page.
Can’t see the forest for the trees
At this point The New York Times has completely lost sight of the forest for the trees. Let’s remind ourselves of the main thrust of Bronner’s narrative:
over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.
Called Facebook.com/yalaYL, the site, created by a former Israeli diplomat and unambiguous about its links to Israel, has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs – mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.
What any reasonable person would understand from this is that the “enthusiasm” for the page is comparable in scope and significance to “the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.”
But the only evidence cited for this is the “active user” number of 22,500 which any reasonable reader would understand to mean that thousands of people had flocked to the page to take part in the kind of discussions snippets of which Bronner quoted.
But that’s just not a true picture. An actual examination of the human interactions on the YaLa – Young Leaders Facebook page indicates that only a tiny handful of people have had anything more than a cursory interaction with the page.
Yet The New York Times insists that the fact that some Facebook users could have shared YouTube videos, photos or other innocuous posts of the kind that dominate the YaLa page to their own personal pages is sufficient to support the claim that there is a groundswell of Arab interest and participation in a project “unambiguous about its links to Israel” worthy of a full write-up on its august pages.
At the same time the newspaper ignores the actually observable human interactions that completely contradict this narrative.
Are Bronner’s lead paragraphs true?
In its original critique of Bronner’s article, this blog cast doubt on the story Bronner told in his lead:
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Moad Arqoub, a Palestinian graduate student, was bouncing around the Internet the other day and came across a site that surprised and attracted him. It was a Facebook page where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs were talking about everything at once: the prospects of peace, of course, but also soccer, photography and music.”
“I joined immediately because right now, without a peace process and with Israelis and Palestinians physically separated, it is really important for us to be interacting without barriers,” Mr. Arqoub said as he sat at an outdoor cafe in this Palestinian city.
The story is not credible because Arqoub was one of the earliest posters/commenters on the page soon after its official launch, and Arqoub already personally knew the other Palestinian closely involved in the site, Hamze Awawde. Both Arqoub and Awawde, as The Electronic Intifada reported, had met through their involvement an in Israeli organization called MEPEACE.
The Electronic Intifada asked The New York Times if Arqoub or Awawde were administrators or closely involved with the project, and this question:
Do you believe the story in Bronner’s lede that Arqoub was simply “bouncing around on the Internet the other day” and serendipitously happened upon this page?
Chira did not give a direct response to the latter question. However, she wrote:
On your … point about the origins and affiliations of the people Mr. Bronner quoted, I asked him to go back both to Mr. Savir and to each of the people he interviewed and check whether any of them were officially affiliated with the site or had any role in setting it up. The answer from all of them is no. The people interviewed are indeed active in interacting with the site, but they have no official role, according to Mr. Savir, Mr. Awade and Mr. Arqoub. Nor did the article state that Mr. Awade and Mr. Arqoub “were brought together by the page.” It said they are both Palestinians who have had an interest in coexistance efforts before.
Chira did not say if The New York Times examined the strong evidence that both Awawde and Arqoub were de facto administrators and representatives of the YaLa initiative in an “unofficial” capacity, nor what their relationship was with the page’s founders prior to its launch.
Nor do we know who actually administers the page if it is not Awawde or Arqoub. Savir, while the figurehead for the project, has no postings under his name.
Given the fact that the story about how Arqoub came across the site “the other day” is almost certainly false – and Chira would not stand by it – it seems extraordinary that The New York Times would rely on the word of the same sources and decline to carry out any fact-checking of its own.
Another important question Chira should ask Bronner – assuming she hasn’t: how did Bronner come upon this story? Who fed it to him?
Ignoring the grassroots, watering the astroturf
The Electronic Intifada asked in its initial posting on Bronner’s story and in the correspondence with Chira why Bronner would promote this marginal Facebook page with a small handful of active participants and ignore the real groundswell of Palestinians and Arabs who oppose “dialogue” initiatives aimed at normalizing Israel’s relations with the Arab world.
Just last week, for example, the Egyptian Independent Union Federation issued a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people that pledged to “reject any form of normal relations” with Israel, including gas supply agreements, and confirmed the trade union federation’s support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Chira wrote:
in response to your objection that we failed to note the context that there are Palestinians who object to this kind of contact, the article does state, “At a time when Arabs generally shun contact with Israelis, those on the site speak openly about their desire to learn more about one another.”
Does Chira really think that noting in passing that “there are Palestinians” who object, while hyping and exaggerating a trivial dialogue initiative, substitutes for real reporting on why Palestinians overwhelmingly oppose such initiatives, and allowing them to explain their critiques and analyses?
Why does this matter?
The highly misleading narrative and dubious factual claims in Bronner’s article on the YaLa-Young Leaders Facebook page constitute serious journalistic malpractice. But instead of acknowledging this, The New York Times has dug in to defend this bogus story come what may.
Perhaps this is because acknowledging any error on the part of Bronner – or his editors – would force the newspaper to reckon with Bronner’s blatant and even more significant biases.
In January 2010, The Electronic Intifada revealed that Bronner had a serious conflict of interest: his son had enlisted in the Israeli army.
Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of The New York Times at the time agreed with us and urged that Bronner be reassigned. The newspaper did not take their colleague’s advice.
Since then, Hoyt has sadly been proven right that the question of Palestine is simply “too close to home” for Bronner.
Last May, as Palestinians marked the 63rd anniversary of their expulsion from Palestine – the Nakba – Bronner presented a highly skewed version of history, a common Israeli propaganda refrain:
After Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948, armies from neighboring Arab states attacked the new nation; during the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes by Israeli forces.
As The Electronic Intifada reported, Bronner omitted the crucial fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist militias in the months before 15 May 1948 and the intervention of Arab armies – a fact that completely changes many people’s understanding of what occurred.
In an important analysis, Youssef Munayyer, executive director of The Palestine Center, showed that Bronner’s skewed reporting about the Nakba contradicted even the Times’ own contemporaneous reports from 1948.
When the Jerusalem bureau chief was confronted about this by the current public editor, Arthur Brisbane, “Mr. Bronner responded that space was limited in a short story and he wasn’t trying to recite the full history.”
So Bronner’s idea of reporting is to make sure to fill up his word allotment with information that supports Israel’s official narrative while omitting facts that are central to Palestinian history and present-day claims.
Bronner’s latest piece of shoddy journalism not only reminds us of his own inability to see the situation from outside the cozy corner of West Jerusalem, ethnically-cleansed of Palestinians, that he inhabits, but indicates that he is aided and abetted by editors who will apparently put up with any absurd claim or outright falsehood.
Public Editor Arthur Brisbane revealed a truth when he wrote:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in short, is the third rail of New York Times journalism. Touch it and burn.
Conclusion
We can conclude from this analysis that YaLa-Young Leaders was not a remarkably active or popular Facebook page.
The Electronic Intifada’s Facebook page (which has more than 13,000 fans), for example, has been as or much more active even without any celebrity endorsements of the kind this page received even prior to Bronner’s article. Moreover, interactions of the kind on the YaLa page show no remarkable level of dialogue or anything that deviates from the typical comments sections found on thousands of websites and Facebook pages (I would argue that the Wall of my personal Facebook account was probably a more active a forum for discussion including between Arabs and Israelis!).
Many of the posts on the page are messages of support/congratulations that appear to have been solicited from organizations and minor celebrities. All, except perhaps the one from Mahmoud Abbas, are Israeli. There’s no evidence of any Arab organizational buy-in.
There is nothing here that suggests thousands of “active users” nor anything that can be matched in reality to Bronner’s description which invokes the spirit of mass action of the Arab uprisings. Nor is there any evidence of participation or buy-in from beyond a small handful of Israelis and Palestinians.
Here’s what Bronner wrote:
“But over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.”
“Called Facebook.com/yalaYL, the site, created by a former Israeli diplomat and unambiguous about its links to Israel, has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 percent are Arabs — mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.”
This is a completely misleading description, which has generated an entirely false public perception of this page.
Who might be wrongfully accusing ISI of killing journalist?
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | July 13, 2011
Writing in The National Interest, John R. Schmidt expresses some much-needed scepticism regarding the allegations that Pakistan’s military intelligence service was responsible for the murder of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad:
If ISI was responsible for murdering Shahzad, it may well have been a first. … But why would ISI choose Shahzad as its first victim? He was not a big-name journalist, nor was he among those who raised embarrassing questions about ISI and the army over the Abbottabad raid on bin Laden. His Karachi-naval-base story did not accuse ISI of improper conduct, and it is not clear why it would have killed him over a story that, if it embarrassed anyone, would have embarrassed the Pakistani Navy, a relatively minor player in the nation’s military firmament. […]
But the fact remains that senior U.S. officials told the New York Times they had “reliable and conclusive” intelligence that ISI was responsible.
Schmidt might have asked who those “senior U.S. officials” are, and whether they might also have a motive for discrediting the ISI. As Justin Raimondo pointed out in a recent Antiwar.com piece,
While keeping the heat on for a direct attack on Iran, the powerful pro-Israel lobby — the driving force behind the anti-Iran crowd — is biding its time, confident they’ll win in the end. In the meantime, they are carefully building up momentum for the final push toward war, and a key part of that is agitating for a complete break in US-Pakistan relations.
The Lobby’s fingerprints are all over the latest anti-Pakistani agitprop. It was one Simon Henderson, described as the resident “expert” on Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), who recently released an alleged letter from a top official of the North Korean regime “proving” Pakistan supplied Pyongyang with nuclear technology. WINEP was founded by Martin Indyk, former research director of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as an “academic” adjunct to AIPAC, the primary conduit of pro-Israel propaganda in the US.
Considering such efforts by the Israel lobby to undermine US-Pakistan relations, isn’t it highly probable that the senior U.S. officials attempting to discredit the ISI also have close ties to Israel? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that the New York Times has served as a conduit for “reliable and conclusive” intelligence from American officials with questionable loyalties that turned out to be false. If Pakistan is to avoid the fate of Iraq, it had better identify clearly the source of its rapidly deteriorating relationship with a United States that has proven itself prone to self-destructive deception from that same source — and take action accordingly.
Many Still Question Megrahi Conviction in Bombing of Pan Am 103
By Andrew I. Killgore | Washington Report | July 2011
Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basil Ali al-Megrahi was convicted on Jan. 31, 2001 of destroying Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, killing the plane’s 259 passengers, including 179 Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Megrahi was tried under Scottish law by Scottish judges in a special court sitting at Camp Zeist, a former American military base in The Netherlands.
As readers of the Washington Report are aware, the American media coverage of the Lockerbie trial was very thin, despite the heavy loss of American lives. There seems to be a determined silence about even the existence of an organization called “Justice for Megrahi,” whose members include (full disclosure) this writer and several distinguished Britons, including Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the crash, and Dr. Robert Black, former professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University and creator of the idea of trying Megrahi and his co-defendant, Lamen Fhimah, in The Netherlands under Scottish law.
The revolution in Libya, and particularly the defection to Britain of former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, has stirred some peripheral interest in Lockerbie. Before he became foreign minister, Koussa was head of Libyan intelligence, and close to Muammar al-Qaddafi. He would know what was in Qaddafi’s mind when he agreed to turn over Megrahi and Fhimah for trial. Was it because the Libyan leader thought the two men were guilty, or because he knew he was obliged to do so to gain sufficient Western approval for the development of his country, including increased oil production?
The April 9 Washington Post ran an article saying that Scottish officials had “met” with Koussa, who they think may have crucial information about Lockerbie. According to the article, “Prosecutors said that they would offer no additional details of their conversations with Koussa.” Just what did Koussa tell them, and why is no more information about the meeting forthcoming?
So far as this writer has seen, no American newspaper has mentioned that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice—a finding that presumably remains valid despite Megrahi’s release from prison on compassionate grounds. Yet, the Washington Post article writes that “the case remains open despite Megreahi’s conviction.”
The heavy lethargy of the American media on Lockerbie includes no word that many outstanding Britons who lost relatives or friends in the Lockerbie crash do not believe that Megrahi is guilty. If members of “Justice for Megrahi,” who obviously think he is not guilty, could possibly arrange a discussion with Moussa, it could clear up a lot of questions. Depending on Koussa’s answers, it could reopen the question of who really bombed Pan Am 103.
Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Syrian Activists Say…
Perception of Syrian conflict defined by baseless “activist” statements
Tony Cartalucci | Activist Post | July 10, 2011
Bangkok, Thailand July 10, 2011 – According to Fortune 500/Soros-funded Human Rights Watch whose sponsors represent a corportocracy that has been attempting to breakdown and despoil Syria for decades, anonymous Syrian soldiers who defected and are now living abroad have “claimed” that they were ordered to “shoot to kill.” According to the Qatari propagandists at state-owned Al Jazeera, one of the “interviewees” told HRW that their “superiors had told them that they were fighting infiltrators, salafists, and terrorists, but were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead.”
Of course, not a shred of evidence exists to back any of these claims – just Human Rights Watch’s “good” corporate-funded word, and the slick graphics of Al Jazeera along with the $500 suits worn by their correspondents in their multi-million dollar studios. Al Jazeera, it should be remembered, is state-owned by the government of Qatar – the same government shipping weapons to Libya’s Benghazi rebels in support of NATO’s military campaign, in direct violation of their own contrived UNSC r.1973. It is quite clear that their insistence on reporting unverifiable, slanted news, in favor of yet another Western-backed destabilization constitutes their current modus operandi.
For months now, Syria has been destabilized by admittedly US funded “activists” and groups of militants responsible for the death of hundreds of Syrian security forces. An April AFP report titled, “US trains activists to evade security forces,” admits that indeed the US is funding, equipping, and training armies of activists to effectively rise up and topple their governments. Michael Posner, the assistant US secretary of state for human rights and labor, said that $50 million had been spent on training up to 5,000 activists, and one particular gathering that included activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon who would then go back and create a “ripple effect.” The “ripple effect” of course is the foreign-funded sedition unfolding across Syria today. … Full article
CHOMSKY ATTACKS CHAVEZ FOR NEOCON CARR CENTRE?
The Naked Facts | July 3, 2011
Chomsky reveals he has lobbied Venezuela’s government behind the scenes since late last year after being approached by the Carr centre for human rights policy at Harvard University. – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/03/noam-chomsky-hugo-chavez-democracy
WHO IS CARR CENTRE?
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carr_Center_for_Human_Rights_Policy
Sarah Sewall is the Director of the Carr Center – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah_Sewall
SHE IS ALSO ON ADVISORY BOARD OF?… Center for a New American Security – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_a_New_American_Security
WHO ELSE IS ON THAT BOARD WITH HER? … Susan Rice and James Steinberg, The Honorable Dr. William J. Perry, Hoover Institution/ Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC/Richard L. Armitage, President, Armitage International/ Norman R. Augustine, Lockheed Martin Corporation/Admiral Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command Dr. Richard J. Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies/William J. Lynn, Senior Vice President, Government Operations & Strategy, Raytheon Company/Lt Gen Gregory S. Newbold, USMC (Ret.), Managing Director, Torch Hill Capital/John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress (THATS THE CARR CENTRE DIRECTORS COHORTS)
NOW WHO ARE THE MAJOR SUPPORTERS OF CARR CENTRE FOR WICH CHOMSKY IS INTERVENING IN VENEZUELAS INTERNAL AFFAIRS?
BRACE YOURSELVES …
The Schooner Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, McCormick Tribune Foundation, Sydney and June Barrows Foundation, Alchemy Foundation, Kathy and Gary Anderson, Greg Carr, John L. Eastman, Gail Furman, Tsutomu Kanase, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Robert McKeon, Sheila and James Mossman, Cynthia Ryan, and Vincent Ryan are listed in their 2003 / 2004 annual report. 2003/04
According to their http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/aboutus/annualreports/20022003_AnnualReport.pdf 2002/03 Annual Report, supporters included Fabbio Cappon, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Gregory C. Carr, Center for Public Leadership, Ford Foundation, Gail Furman, Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, and Reebok Foundation.
NOW HOW AN ESTIMEED … (TO OTHERS NOT ME) SCHOLAR CAN INTERVENE ON THESE GROUPS BEHALF, SPEAKS VOLUMES …. AND CHOMSKY IS NOT JUST ACTIVE IN SUCH MATTERS AGAINST CHAVEZ, BUT ALSO WORKING TO ADVANCE WESTERN INTERESTS AND POLICIES IN NICARAGUA …
SEE …
At Work for John Negroponte? http://fanonite.org/2008/06/19/at-work-for-john-negroponte/
Noam Chomsky, Brian Wilson and Tom Hayden and their fellow signatories have helped the Bush regime recoup lost ground for unjust US and European militarist corporate domination in Latin America which they will bequeath to whichever US plutocrat dauphin is anointed in November.
CHOMSKY IS ALSO A CLOSE FRIEND OF HAMID DABASHI SPOKESPERSON AND A MOST VOCAL PROPONENT OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT OF IRAN
DABASHI IS A FRAUD, SEE … http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/06/bswatch-war-in-context-exposed-arab.html
ITS NO SECRET CHOMSKY BACKS THE GREEN PARTY WHAT HE LEAVES OUT IS THEIR PRO MONARCHY, PRO SHAH, PRO NEOLIBERALISM, PRO WESTERN IMPERIALISM POSITIONS, THEIR VIOLENT ACTS, THEIR DISHONESTY IN COOKING UP VIDEOS OF BEING BRUTALIZED BY USING BOTTLES OF FAKE BLOOD AND MANY MORE CASES, LIKE WESTERN FUNDING BY THE US STATE DEPARTMENT AND CIA … AND EVEN ITS LEADERS WHO ARE BILLIONAIRES UNDER THE GUISE OF ”REFORMERS”!!!
More on the green movement of Iran, scroll down after it opens… http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/06/more-lies-by-western-backed-green-party.html (see supplementation)
~
For more on the Venezuela – Chomsky issue see:
Chomsky is dishonest and deceptive in denying assault on Chavez
By Stephen Gowans on July 6, 2011
And:
Widely ignored facts on Chomsky’s criminal “victims of authoritarianism”
A Few Facts about the Case of Judge Afiuni
By Fernando Vegas Torrealba | Correo del Orinoco International | July 8th 2011
Regime-Change in a Box
Soft-Powering Cuba
By ROBERT SANDELS | CounterPunch | July 6, 2011
In March, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on a $20 million appropriation for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The money is for democracy promotion schemes in Cuba. Kerry’s purpose was to hold the funds hostage until the State Department responded to a series of questions he had about waste, mismanagement and the general ineffectiveness of the program to actually bring about democracy in Cuba.
USAID grantees in Cuba are soft-power agents engaged in covert subversion. Soft power, as described by its leading academic proponent Joseph E. Nye, Jr., is “getting others to want what you want.” His ideas, however, fell short of assisted regime change.
Here is an example of how USAID money can help Cuba:
Step 1. Give USAID money to grantees like Freedom House to help Cubans document human rights abuses.
Step 2. Send reports of abuses to international human rights organizations.
Step 3. The US Interests Section in Havana reports the discovery of abuses, cites human rights organization, sends information to the State Department.
Step 4. Alarmed, the State Department cites Interests Section, issues scathing report on human rights violations in Cuba.
Step 5. Congress and the Republic of Miami, in righteous indignation, demand more sanctions against Cuba.
Result: USAID money pays handsomely on its initial investment. Now, why would Sen. Kerry not think these programs are cost effective?
Regime-change in a box
In 2009, Alan Gross went to Cuba on USAID money with equipment to set up Broadband Global Area Networks (BGANs), briefcase-size satellite systems for Internet and cellphone communication networks outside of Cuban government control. The cover story was that he was delivering the equipment to the Cuban Jewish community. They never heard of him even though this was his sixth trip.
The New York Times reported that the United States has deployed this “shadow” communications system in Middle Eastern countries to help dissidents plan anti-government movements.
Kerry said that the Cuban programs in general and the BGAN program in particular only irk Cuban authorities and put taxpayers’ money into the hands of Cuban intelligence, which routinely penetrates the “civil society” organizations and dissident groups the money is supposed to support.
Recent covert attempts to flip Cuban officials, hand out communications gear and satellite antennas disguised as surfboards have been failures amply catalogued in a series of exposés broadcast on Cuban television.
Even as the US government and media gamely maintain that Gross, currently serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba, was running an innocent phones-for-Jews program, the State Department doesn’t want to identify USAID contractors for fear they might be arrested like Gross was.
However, there is little likelihood of being arrested for taking cell phones or other real gifts to Cuba. And Miami Cubans can easily purchase cell phone minutes for users in Cuba from the state telephone company Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA). This can be done via the Internet from anywhere in the world using various foreign commercial service.
If the Obama administration was so keen on having Cubans communicate by cell phone, USAID could have used these services openly, cheaply and legally.
Trouble with the cover story
Anti-Castro fanatics accuse Kerry of aiding Cuban communism, revealing a touching belief that these programs actually work. To Kerry’s assertion that internet-in-a-box exploits landed Gross in prison, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) responded that Kerry was giving his approval to the Cuban government’s “iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy.”
Wait a minute Sen. Menendez. You’re forgetting the cover story about phones for Jews. Are you saying the Jewish community is a dissident organization?
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) turned on Kerry with particular fury, but if she had listened more carefully she might have seen that the two are not far apart. Kerry is not opposed to overthrowing the Cuban government. He is not against subversion. He has always reassured Miami’s Cuban voters that he supports the blockade against Cuba.
Besides, Kerry threw away highfalutin principles by offering to release all but $5 million of the funds.
The argument over the funding is valid only if we accept at face value the stated USAID goals of bringing democracy, freedom and justice to the Cuban people. Evidently, Kerry and Ros-Lehtinen think or pretend that these are the actual goals.
If we go along with the pretense, we have to conclude that the hapless Gross failed to realize that he could have gone to the Internet and loaded up Jewish cell phones with massive quantities of USAID money from the comfort of his home, avoiding prison and the much greater pretend failure of actually depriving them of telephone contact with Jews around the world; so, no more USAID money for him.
Soft power succeeds by failing
Setting aside the pretense, with Gross in prison his pretend failure is transformed into success because Obama and the lesser fanatics can say he was imprisoned for helping Jews exercise their freedom of speech.
Even better, Miami and Washington can argue that Cuba used Gross as an excuse to reject Obama’s generous peace gestures. Far from failing, Gross forces Cuba to take the blame for US aggression. Liz Harper of the US Institute of Peace summed it up nicely writing that the Gross affair “…at best delayed advancements initially sought by the Obama administration.”
And of course, had Gross set up clandestine communication networks all over Havana and had the dissidents used them to plan demonstrations, pass around diatribes against the Cuban government and so on, there would likely be another victory for USAID when Cuban intelligence eventually shuts them down (“clamping down on free speech”) and arrests are made (“iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy”).
Even after it was widely reported that Gross delivered nothing to the Cuban Jewish community and that his luggage contained equipment to undermine the Cuban government, The Miami Herald stuck to the script. Gross was imprisoned, wrote the Herald, “for delivering communications equipment paid for by the U.S. government to Jewish groups on the island.”
If the Cubans were to sabotage every US gesture of friendship, that means they welcome US aggression and subversion. “The Cuban regime increasingly needs an external threat to blame for the country’s problems,” said an unnamed Pentagon official.
Moral: If a lemon gets arrested, make lemonade out of him.
No democracy promotion money for U.S.
For a few million in US taxpayer dollars, Cuba gets programs for “community improvement activities, identifying and addressing community needs,” expanded access “to uncensored information to help Cubans communicate amongst themselves and with the outside world.”
In the empathy-grant category, the State Department is currently seeking proposals to help the disabled, orphans and homosexuals achieve a better life in Cuba.
But while the United States delivers BGANs to Cubans, there is no government program to free its own people from government surveillance; there is no shadow network. Indeed, social media and internet systems in the United States are thoroughly penetrated by intelligence agencies. The FBI now has the capability to plant permanent spyware on personal computers. It can find out who you are with a Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier. It can access communications devices directly through internet service providers and cell towers, which is described as a “comprehensive wiretap system.”
If you worry that electoral democracy in the United States is slipping away, go to Cuba where USAID contractors are dedicated to “finding the legal impediments to democratic elections and suggesting the actions that would be necessary to remove these impediments.”
Concerned about the decline of education in the United States? The State Department has a program in Cuba to train “hundreds of students and young adults in critical thinking,” to help them become self-sufficient and to act “independent of government.”
Lockheed Martin: We fix roofs, audit your taxes
Lest it seem from all this spending for other peoples’ needs that US citizens are not getting a fair share of their own tax money, consider the benefits of soft power at home.
For several years, hard-power weapons makers have won Pentagon contracts to deliver soft-power abroad. The Wall Street Journal reported that Robert Stevens, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, wants the company “to become a central player in the U.S. campaign to use economic and political means to align countries with American strategic interests.”
Lockheed-Martin, the Pentagon’s largest weapons contractor, has diversified its portfolio buying companies involved in public relations, surveillance, auditing, and information systems. Many of these contracts have been in support of ongoing military actions in the Middle East and Africa. At the other end of the scale, one of its subsidiaries trained Liberian lawyers and repaired Monrovia’s court house roof.
Some of the same weapons manufacturers have lately been taking market positions in broad swaths of American life. Sandra I. Erwin, writing in the National Defense Magazine, explained that defense contractors were concerned about possible budget cuts and began looking to State Department and other non-defense budgets to diversify their portfolios.
Lockheed Martin has a $33 million contract with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for Webpage and e-services design, auditing and various taxpayer services. It also has a $1.2 billion contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for such services as “screener training and checkpoint reconfiguration.
William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation writes that Lockheed Martin has contracts to watch you, audit you, troll for information on you, scan your iris and pat you down at airports; all in a day’s work at the IRS, FBI, CIA, the Post Office, National Security Administration (NSA), the Census Bureau and the TSA.
“As a result, Lockheed Martin is now involved in nearly every interaction you have with the government,” said Hartung. “Paying your taxes? Lockheed Martin is all over it. The company is even creating a system that provides comprehensive data on every contact taxpayers have with the IRS from phone calls to face-to-face meetings.”
The State Department maintains that it underwrites social programs in Cuba to make Cubans independent of oppressive government.
Meanwhile, other government departments are farming out some of their duties to weapons producers who are dependent on government contracts but independent of voter oversight.
This is enough to make a reasonable person conclude that in Cuba, the people need to be made independent of their government while in the United States the government needs to be made independent of its people.
Robert Sandels writes on Cuba for Cuba-L Direct and CounterPunch.
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