Aletho News

Endemic pro-Israel bias in UK TV coverage, new book finds

Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 25 June 2011

Glasgow University Media Group’s ambitious new study of British TV’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians, More Bad News from Israel, is the second edition of 2004’s Bad News From Israel. Led by academics Greg Philo and Mike Berry, this work is precise, fair-minded and detailed. It constitutes irrefutable evidence of endemic pro-Israel bias.

Those of us regularly subjected to BBC and ITV news won’t exactly find this conclusion surprising but the importance of detailed documentary evidence like this book provides cannot be overstated.

The team had originally analyzed approximately 200 bulletins and questioned more than 800 persons. This new edition examines coverage from the past few years (369). Samples of coverage were taken from the main news bulletins on BBC and ITV (the most popular TV news programs in the UK). The authors identify key themes, such as coverage of casualties on “either side,” justifications for violence and “peace conferences” and international diplomacy. Audiences from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds were asked to complete a series of questionnaires and take part in focus groups. The vast majority reported that TV news was their primary source of information on Israel and the Palestinians.

The samples, taken from key moments in recent history, are well chosen. The focus of the initial study was coverage of the second Palestinian intifada’s outbreak in 2000 (in the first two weeks of which, Israel, by its own soldiers’ accounts, fired a million bullets at unarmed protesters). The next samples are taken from one year later (by which time Palestinian groups had started retaliatory bombings within Israel), and from coverage of the March and April 2002 Israeli re-invasions of the occupied West Bank.

The new chapters look at coverage of Israel’s 2008-09 winter assault on Gaza and the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla a year ago (which was breaking news at the time the book was due to go to print).

Systematic preference for Israeli points of view

By fastidiously counting lines of transcript text, the authors identify a systematic preference for Israeli points of view. Israeli speakers were given twice as much space as Palestinians during the first few weeks of the intifada (215). Israeli casualties were disproportionately reported, accounting for approximately a third of the coverage, despite the actual ratio of 13 Palestinian deaths to one Israeli at that stage (223). After the Palestinian retaliatory bombing campaign began, this phenomenon worsened: “from October to December 2001 we found that there was significantly more coverage of Israeli casualties than Palestinian” even though the reality was actually still the opposite (259-60).

The study’s most telling findings concern the dominant explanatory framework and the lack of background or historical context in coverage. Even when individual journalists manage to make implicit criticisms of Israeli actions, such as on the killing of civilians, Israeli rationales were always reported — or even adopted by journalists themselves. “The journalists do not always sound happy about the Israeli rationales” but they were still included and “there is no comparable inclusion or discussion of the reasons for Palestinian action” (254).

The authors give many examples of this, including an ITV report from March 2002 that described Israeli collective punishment destroying civilian infrastructure around Bethlehem as “the ongoing fight against terror.” But there are “no commentaries such as ‘the Israeli attacks have reinforced the determination of Palestinian fighters to defend their land against Israeli terror’ [and] … we do not hear of Palestinian attacks as sending ‘a tough message to Israelis to end military rule’” (265). Such statements are unimaginable on British TV.

“All bang bang stuff”

One BBC journalist was told by his editor he wasn’t interested in “explainers” since “it’s all bang bang stuff” (180-1). But the audience studies here reveal “a strong feeling in the [focus] groups that the news should explain origins and causes” (315). This is unsurprising, considering that audiences questioned here often did not even know what nationality “settlers” were, or that there was a military occupation of the West Bank (400-1).

The two key historical events missing from the narrative of TV news are the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), what Palestinians call the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of their homeland in 1947-48, and the military occupation that started in 1967 (333). One student in a focus group said: “I didn’t realize they [Palestinians] had actually been driven out” (292). As the authors put it: “these absences in public knowledge very closely parallel the absence of such information on the TV news” (294).

The new audience studies for this second edition looked at whether anything has changed since 2004. The answer for the most part seems to be no. Coverage of Palestinian casualties seems to have increased, but Israeli casualties are still over-represented proportionate to the level of Palestinian deaths (363). Overall, the “most striking feature” of the new samples was “the dominance of the Israeli perspective” (340).

Has the tide turned on perceptions of Palestine?

Many of us who follow Western perceptions of Palestine have gained optimism by detecting a slow but positive shift in public opinion in support of Palestinians over the last couple of years. Perhaps that is still true, but the new findings here give pause for thought. The framework of assumptions is still overwhelmingly influenced by the Israeli version of events. In other words, Palestinian actions are always assumed to lead to Israeli “responses.”

The original study revealed that the “Israeli response to Palestinian violence” formula was so all-pervasive that the infamous Israeli killing of Gaza schoolboy Muhammad al-Dura in the first days of the intifada was understood by many as as “response” to a killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah — even though the latter event actually took place afterwards (305). The updated audience studies here suggest that this malign phenomenon has not changed.

Palestinian rockets from Gaza were still seen by many as the main reason for Palestinian civilian deaths: “Palestinians are seen as initiating the violence … [so] it follows that Israel is ‘retaliating’” (378). On the BBC during the sample period 27 December 2008 to 17 January 2009, Israel’s November 2008 violation of the ceasefire with Hamas was mentioned in only 4.25 lines of transcript, compared with 249 lines of text that emphasized the firing of Palestinian rockets into southern Israel (419).

June 25, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Obama follows ‘Wag the Dog’ script, even down to the rape scene

By Wayne Madsen | Intrepid Report | June 24, 2011

In the 1999 flick “Wag the Dog,” White House aides try to build up anger against Albania by showing a phony Albanian young woman, played by Kirsten Dunst, trying to escaping rape at the hands of Albanian troops. The “rape” was faked and filmed in a studio, complete with a blue screen. The intent of the phony rape was to divert the public’s attention away from a presidential sex scandal and build up support for military action against Albania.

Fast forward to today and we see such “made in Hollywood” tactics being played out in Libya. On March 26th Eman al-Obeidy, said to be a Libyan law student and an aspirant journalist originally from Tobruk in rebel-held eastern Libya, entered the Rixos Hotel, the headquarters for the international media and claimed she was gang raped and kidnapped by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s military forces at a security checkpoint in Tripoli.

Al-Obeidy was bruised and scratched and said she entered the hotel by passing herself off as a member of the hotel staff. She claimed that the Libyan security forces recognized her accent from eastern Libya and then proceeded to rape her. Al-Obeidy, like the Kirsten Dunst character in “Wag the Dog,” became an instant media celebrity. For the anti-Qaddafi journalists nested at the Rixos, including those from The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press, Al-Obeidy immediately became a cause celebre with her tale of rape and being held in subhuman conditions by her assailants, who had the help of black African “mercenaries.” The black “mercenary tale would soon be debunked and Al-Obeidy’s rape story also began to lose credibility.

Libyan government officials opened a criminal case against Al-Obeidy’s accused attackers and Saadi Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, met with her after she was released from detention in Tripoli. Al-Obeidy was permitted to conduct interviews with the CNN’s celebrity in-breed Anderson Cooper and National Public Radio, among others. Al-Obeidy was permitted to air her grievances against the Libyan government and parrot Libyan rebel propaganda talking points from Tripoli. Eventually, Al-Obeidy ended up in Tunisia, after she said she was spirited out of Tripoli disguised as a Berber with the help of a defecting Libyan army officer. Somehow, Al-Obeidy managed to evade detection by over 50 security checkpoints on the coastal highway from Tripoli to the Tunisian border and enter Tunisia without any difficulties. This reporter, even with a Libyan visa and a Libyan diplomatic escort, was held up for at least one hour while crossing back into Tunisia from Libya. The delays were prompted by the border bureaucracies of both Libyan and Tunisian immigration and customs officials.

On May 5th Al-Obeidy was whisked into Tunis, courtesy of French diplomats who met her at the border, and by May 11th she was in Doha, Qatar, courtesy of the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council. It was apparent that Al-Obeidy’s propaganda value for the rebels and the West still had some currency because she was in the same city where Al-Jazeera has its broadcast headquarters. However, something went wrong in Qatar, an ally of the Libyan rebel movement and the NATO military offensive against Libya. Al-Obeidy was suddenly deported by Qatar. Al-Obeidy resorted to the same histrionics she employed against Qaddafi’s government: she claimed she was beaten by Qatari authorities, although she withheld rape charges in Qatar’s case. The Qatar press denied Al-Obeidy’s charges that she was beaten in Doha. The Libyan authorities claimed that Al-Obeidy had a history of mental illness and the events in Qatar lend credence to Tripoli’s contention about Al-Obeidy’s truthfulness.

WMR learned in Tripoli that Qatari officials were not satisfied with Al-Obeidy’s story or that proffered by her rebel movement handlers. The Qataris deported Al-Obeidy back to Benghazi, however, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened and sent a U.S. government aircraft to Europe to fly her to political asylum in the United States. The United States arranged for Al-Obeidy to travel to Malta and on to Vienna where she was picked up by State Department officials. CNN, which through its MI-6 intelligence-linked reporter Nic Robertson, followed Al-Obeidy’s case with a priority zeal, reporting that after being deported from Qatar she ended up, via Italy, in a refugee camp in Timisoara, Romania.

Just a few weeks after the Al-Obeidy debacle, the puff piece-entranced Western media found a new heroine in the Middle East. Amina Abdullah Araf al-Omari said she was a Syrian-American lesbian woman blogging from Syria. It was later reported that Amina had been kidnapped by Syrian security forces and was being held incommunicado. It was later revealed that “Amina” was, in reality, Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old PhD student at Edinburgh University in Scotland. “Amina” had posted “her” anti-Syrian government diatribes on the lesbian website LezGetReal run by executive Paula Brooks. “Amina’s” photograph was lifted from the Facebook page of a young Croatian woman living in London. Less than 24-hours after “Amina” was exposed as MacMaster, Brooks, who billed herself as a lesbian woman with three children living in the Washington DC area, was, in fact, Bill Graber, a 58-year old man from Ohio.

Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “information czar,” is on the record favoring the use of Wikileaks and websites to spread disinformation and propaganda. In the case of Libya and Syria, Sunstein’s policies appear to be fully underway. It is also noteworthy to point out that General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, who is also the commander of the U.S. Cyber-Command, which is tasked with carrying out offensive information warfare operations on the Internet, was an attendee at the recent Bilderberg meeting in St. Moritz, Switzerland. High on the agenda of the secretive and elite group was how to salvage what is becoming a quagmire in Libya. It is certain that Alexander offered up some enticing high-tech tricks to the gathering of the cabal that actually runs the world.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

June 24, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Viagra, Gay Bloggers and Phony News

By Margaret Kimberley | BAR | June 23, 2011

The corporate media continue to follow the dictates of people in power, ignoring their obligation to report factual information in as unbiased a way as possible. Instead they behave like scribes in a royal court, dutifully repeating the words of the king in hopes of currying favor and gaining access. Their shameless behavior is on view yet again as another president with imperial aspirations tells obvious lies in order to gain support for wars of aggression.

At the urging of the United States government and NATO, the International Criminal Court has piled on its anti-Muammar Qaddafi rhetoric. One prosecutor even claims that Qaddafi is giving his troops Viagra and using rape as a weapon of war. He has done so without presenting any evidence and even worse, the American media are repeating the assertions without investigation of any kind.

When George W. Bush made the case for invading Iraq, he too used rape as a rhetorical weapon of war, claiming that Saddam Hussein had “rape rooms” in his palaces that were used to assault dissidents. In 2003 as in 2011, the claim was reported without evidence.

The service to their masters takes on many forms. If a president lies about his reasons for killing people, the lie is never exposed. Sometimes the media are so eager for the story which won’t upset the powerful, that they will extend the parameters of their falsehoods.

Such was the case with “Amina,” a Syrian blogger and lesbian who wrote critically about the regime of President Assad. The blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus” was followed by incredulous people all over the world, but it turned out that Amina never existed. The blog and Amina were the creations of a heterosexual American man living in Scotland who wanted to hasten the end of Assad’s days in power. When the non-existent Amina was reported missing, an alleged kidnap victim of the Syrian police, even the state department grew alarmed and made inquiries as to her safety.

“The blog and Amina were the creations of a heterosexual American man living in Scotland who wanted to hasten the end of Assad’s days in power.”

The hypocrisy manifested on the part of the United States government is quite stunning. While denying or minimizing the loss of lives caused by its actions in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti and on the part of any of its allies, the government was willing to use its power to ensure the safety of one person in Syria.

The government does not have a monopoly on these hypocritical expressions of outrage. Private citizens too, are moved to speak and act by a strange set of values. The phony blogger who created Amina knew what he was doing when he created a gay, female persona. Americans and Europeans are convinced of their own moral superiority vis a vis the Muslim world. They rarely say a word about when their governments kill Muslim women with their acts of war. They gasp in horror over the treatment of gay people in some societies, but they know or care little about how their governments’ actions create suffering for all people all over the globe.

We have a media that follows the dictates of government and sensational news items, that is to say sensationalism which proves racist notions of superiority and which don’t create any difficulties for the powerful. The bombing of a university in Tripoli, Libya ought to create a sensation, but that information never makes it onto the front pages.

The media scribes not only pick and choose what they do and don’t think worthy of their attention, but they are also unable to keep very simple facts straight. They are now repeating the Obama administration claim of a significant troop draw down in Afghanistan. The president will reportedly announce a withdrawal of somewhere between 5,000 and 30,000. However, even if he were to withdraw the higher number he would still leave 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, twice the number stationed there when he first took office. Simple arithmetic is yet another criteria that is too much to ask the members of the fourth estate.

Citizens who want to know what is happening in this country and around the world are at a great disadvantage. The old saw that it is unwise to believe everything we read should be modified. When it comes to the corporate media, perhaps we should believe nothing we read. We certainly would be no less knowledgeable of the truth.

~

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.

June 23, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

How To Report On Syria – WaPo Edition

Moon of Alabama | June 18, 2011

Do not visit the country. Report from Washington or Beirut.

Start with a thesis you have no way to verify. Use it as headline. For example:

Pressure on Syria’s Assad intensifies as protests persist

1a. Report of big demonstrations everywhere and of the government shooting demonstrators sourced solely to a shadowy anonymous group which claims to have organized them.

1b. Claim that the Syrian government “is not abandoning its strategy of relying on force to quell the dissent”.

2a. Report of a big and peaceful demonstration in Hama where no one was shot.

2b. Ignore your claim in 1b and claim that this is a sign that the government has “given up trying to assert control”.

3a. Report of various unsourced and likely false rumors.

3b. Claim that the various unsourced and likely false rumors “give the government jitters”.

3c. Quote someone from the Israel Lobby(!) in Washington(!) saying that the various unsourced and likely false rumors have the Syrian government “definitely panicking”.

4a. Report of a government concession which was obviously not a government concession.

4b. Have an opposition activist in Beirut(!) dismiss the government concession which was obviously not a government concession as being obviously not a government concession.

5a. Report that the Syrian leader is to make a televised address to the nation.

5b. Claim that this is a sign of his “absence”.

6. Quote the meaningless blustering of two anonymous U.S. officials in Washington(!).

7a. Report on reports about Turkish government intervention intentions which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as utter nonsense.

7b. Claim that the opposition would like the reported Turkish government intervention which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as utter nonsense.

7c. Quote an opposition activist in London(!) saying that the reported Turkish government intervention intentions which the Turkish government has thoroughly dismissed as nonsense is a “nightmare for the Syrian regime”.

7d. Claim that the “nightmare” is the explanation for an unrelated Syrian government operation against a small armed local rebellion.

8a. Repeat your reporting using various unsourced and likely false rumors.

8b. Quote an opposition activist in Ohio(!) with some theory about the meaning of the various unsourced and likely false rumors.

(Do NOT report of armed government opposition. Do NOT report that the demonstrations this Friday were smaller than last Friday. Do NOT report that the shadowy anonymous group’s website is registered and run in Germany by a German with a phone number in Berlin as contact information. Do NOT report that the group seems inactive as the last daily update on that site was eight days ago. )

Rinse and repeat next Friday.

June 18, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Libya ‘rape’ propaganda plunges to new depths of desperation

By Martin Iqbal – empirestrikesblack – 17 June 2011

The Libya war propaganda drive has plunged to new depths of cynicism, depravity, and a downright embarrassing lack of credibility.

Over a week after the ICC’s completely baseless claims of ‘rape being used as a weapon’ by Gaddafi’s forces, today CNN is running a propaganda set-piece that is so blatantly invented it makes one cringe with embarrassment for this rabble of liars and propagandists.

CNN claims that rebel forces have found mobile phone footage on ‘Gaddafi loyalists’, which allegedly shows them ‘raping women and torturing people’. Lo and behold, the story completely falls apart upon the most cursory inspection.

CNN plainly admits that they “cannot confirm when or where the video was shot“. To make matters worse for the propagandists behind this nonsense, there is no date to the video, and the men in the video are not even wearing Libyan Army clothing – they are dressed in civilian attire. But it gets better.

Their story revolves completely around this unverifiable mobile phone footage, and the testimony of NATO’s proxy ‘rebels’. On top of this CNN doesn’t reveal who their source is, and instead they parrot baseless claims from rebel spokespeople:

“We were able to confirm that rape was used as a weapon of war because it was systematic.”
~ Rebel spokesman Abdullah al-Kabeir

Without performing even the most basic journalistic duty of providing evidence, CNN simply forwards this completely unfounded claim from a rebel spokesperson.

According to CNN, Al-Kabeir also tells us:

The rebels have many videos showing other types of torture, and a few depict rape, he said. He did not know exactly how many videos there were showing abuse.

But his next admission really exposes this utter fabrication for what it is (emphasis added):

“There was a commander here at the eastern front in Misrata named Mohamed al-Halboos; he ordered all the (rebel) fighters to give him all the rape videos they find on Gadhafi soldiers’ cell phones. I heard that he used to destroy every rape video he got“

We are supposed to believe that Gaddafi’s forces are ‘systematically’ raping women in Libya, but all of the evidence has been destroyed.

It’s not just CNN that’s partaking in this onslaught of propaganda. Today, Time is running some similar ‘just trust us’ journalism. See the following report regarding doctors working in Benghazi (emphasis added):

They talk for hours about the rape of women. But it’s only stories. They have never met a victim.The medics don’t deny that others in the hospital may have treated rape victims. But they say the stigma of sexual assault runs so deep in Libyan culture that the raped are virtually forced into social exile, unable to wed, a humiliation to their entire family, choosing to remain silent rather than to give voice to the crime they have suffered.

That the likes of CNN and Time even expect anybody to believe this farcical nonsense demonstrates the contempt in which they hold their audience. The sheer laziness of this propaganda reflects how desperate NATO now is, spectacularly failing to achieve its objective of regime change using the ‘humanitarian intervention’ myth.

June 17, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Gay Ops of American Intel?

By Anthony Wile | The Daily Bell | June 15, 2011

A strange thing happened the other day. The blogosphere was swept by the confession of one Tom MacMasters that he was behind a well-known blog supposedly written by a lesbian and called Gay Girl in Damascus. It was convincing for the most part, and he even stole a picture online to identify his blog – which was apparently how he was discovered. His confession was wrenching and the blogosphere (which trends liberal these days) has been virtually convulsed ever since.

On the heels of the MacMasters’ incident, another blogger “Paula Brooks,” was revealed to be a man, Bill Graber. He had posted some of MacMasters’ lesbian musings on HIS lesbian news site. According to the Washington Post, Graber was a 58-year-old retired US air force officer. Graber identified himself as such when called by the Associated Press.

“LezGetReal was not meant to be deceitful or con anyone,” he is reported to have said. Apparently he didn’t comment on the coincidence of two men secretly operating two separate lesbian blogs, making coincidental contact with each other via email and then, quite by chance, supporting each others’ compositional efforts. Graber admittedly helped MacMasters develop his Internet presence.

Here is a possible truth: The Gay Girl in Damascus blog and LezGetReal are part of a sub dominant theme being purveyed by American intelligence agencies that are trying to undermine regimes in both Syria and Libya. The MO would also seem plausible as such Intel teams work in tandem (MacMasters and Graber), with one presenting the meme and the other one endorsing it. This can be seen on many libertarian (freedom-oriented) websites as well, where one will attack and the other endorse.

Already the usual suspects (Reuters, Washington Post and Slate) are producing articles comparing the MacMasters hoax with other hoaxers who “thought faking reports about a perceived truth was a valid form of advocacy.” The Reuters article carefully points out that the fraud had gone on for five years though the blog site was only five months old.

How Reuters can establish the five-year mark is a mystery – and is more in line with corroborating MacMasters’ potential cover story than debunking him. It is also surprising that such savvy news enterprises don’t even mention the possibility that these two men had links to American Intel.

The five month timeline for MacMasters’ blog is probably a good deal more accurate than five years and conforms to how intelligence promotions unfold, with a thin back-story measured in months not years. It also conforms almost exactly to the current agitation for regime change in Syria. Graber’s website seems to be down now, but a look at the cached version reveals that it has been in existence for three years. He says he was motivated by anger at “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Of course, it is always possible that all of the above is entirely coincidental. Two straight, white men, one with links to the US military, decide separately to set up their own lesbian blogs. They then met each other via email, though neither knows the other is a man and one, Graber, decides to promote the blog-stories of the other (MacMasters). Stranger things have happened, yes? As Slate informs us. “Sexual disguise is as old as humanity, and posing as a lesbian is merely a natural variant on the practice. It energizes writers as often as it does readers.”

MacMasters is admitting nothing as regards US Intel involvement (though many have begun to question how he makes a living and affords extended trips to the Middle East). He published a wrenching apology on the blog site explaining how he always wanted to be a fiction writer and that Amina Arraf, who didn’t exist, was a character that he could not discard. He had developed her, he writes, in the following way:

“I noticed that when I, a person with a distinctly Anglo name, made comments on the Middle East, the facts I might present were ignored and I found myself accused of hating America, Jews, etc. I wondered idly whether the same ideas presented by someone with a distinctly Arab and female identity would have the same reaction.” (Why he decided that his alter ego would be a LESBIAN is never explained.)

In Libya, reports that Muammar Gaddafi gave his soldiers Viagra to encourage them to perform mass rapes have swept the Internet despite the insanity of the concept. This seems to be deliberate disinformation. Now, we have the spectacle of a young man (40-ish) writing a blog about a young woman who is maltreated in Damascus because of her sexuality. In fact, before he was exposed, MacMasters had her abducted. Here is a post by a purported (fictional) cousin of Arraf called Rania:

I have been on the telephone with both her parents and all that we can say right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her. Unfortunately, there are at least 18 different police formations in Syria as well as multiple different party militias and gangs. We do not know who took her so we do not know who to ask to get her back. It is possible that they are forcibly deporting her.

People’s sexuality is a private affair. But in the West, a 50-year battle (sponsored by the elites in our view) has been waged to inject private sexual practices into the public discussion. A decades-long campaign has been waged to reconfigure the state itself to recognize and provide benefits to “others.” The meme purveyed is that one is not fully human until one’s “rights” are legally enshrined in the pantheon of Western regulatory democracies.

The result has likely been destructive to the family itself, as the very public emphasis on other kinds of lifestyles (let alone legislation and public education) has surely had a corrosive effect on the historical family unit. Additionally, the Anglosphere elites have been able to cultivate an intelligentsia that is entirely constructed around minority – and sexual – issues.

Thus, sexual issues have become an issue of importance not only to the mainstream Western intelligentsia (such as it is) but also to many verbal and committed young men and women overseas. These young men and women look at the West and see that sexual issues are seemingly the most important to the modern Anglo-American intelligentsia, and thus these issues loom large overseas as well. This is also true of “women’s issues” in general, which are being used by the Pentagon and American Intel to justify America’s serial warring, bombing of women and children, etc.

Enter the CIA, FBI, military intelligence, etc. (We shall refer to the 16 separate American spy agencies as “American intel.”) Much American Intel in the lower ranks is made up of young men and women, but mostly young men who go to the same schools and have the same fairly insular views. In fact, they are chosen for these traits.

These young men, mostly, are not only adept at the use of sexual memes for propaganda purposes; they are perhaps, to some degree, fixated on them. Many opponents of the West’s (and America’s) current activities are targeted by sexual allegations, warranted or not. It is not surprising then, that these young men would design lesbian promotions.

Such promotions were designed to play on the sympathies of the modern, sexualized intelligentsia but also cater to the fixations of the young (or older) man involved in these intelligence agencies. To put it bluntly, to build propaganda around lesbians was at least partially a big joke.

One has to understand what is going on to fully appreciate it. These young men, unfortunately, are involved every day in undermining Western freedoms and in facilitating what can only be described as oppression at home and genocide abroad. They did not join the government in most cases to participate in such things, but this is what they have ended up doing.

Western Intel inevitably enforces the agenda of Western elites that are trying to build a New World Order – the public be damned. “Operation Damascus Lesbian” would seem to be only one tiny example of the gung-ho authoritarianism that now pervades these entities. In this case, the intention was seemingly to illustrate the intolerant and brutal methodologies of the Syrian secret services in the hopes of further undermining the regime. Western leaders apparently intend to make Syria a political appendage, and MacMasters’s Arraf spends a good deal of time writing about how horrible the Syrian government is.

Things went wrong. MacMaster’s apology, in his own voice, sounds sincere in places, but it mostly sounds shocked. He had no idea his story involving Arraf’s abduction would “go viral.” In fact, this is what undid him. The State Dept among others started an investigation and lesbian and gay bloggers started to look into the tale and became suspicious.

If he was American Intel, MacMasters was undone by his own success. But what Western Intel is discovering generally is that all the billions (trillions?) they have invested in spying infrastructure is increasingly at risk. There are reports now of hacker incidents focused on the US Senate and the IMF. Even if these are false-flag events, there are plenty of others like them. Likely, it will be increasingly difficult for spy agencies to operate with 20th century impunity, spying on citizens and manipulating them without having the favor returned.

Another interesting point is that the MacMasters incident may have given us a further glimpse into the vast promotional network that the Anglosphere elite has at its disposal. Any important story the elite and its enablers wish to devise and propagate is probably going to be picked up and reported by the wires. Whether it is the endless saga of lies surrounding global warming or Lesbians in Damascus, (or the brilliance of seeming elite puppets Lady Gaga or Julian Assange) anything that furthers the cause of the New World Order is to be reported uncritically to millions and even billions. It is king-making on a massive scale.

Will MacMasters and Graber get into any trouble for this seeming elaborate Intel hoax, over which normal people might go to jail, given the hyper-punitive nature of American justice? What kind of investigation will ensue, if any? Let us watch and wait. I won’t hold my breath.

June 17, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Factchecking Takeyh and Maloney

Moon of Alabama | June 16, 2011

There is another boring anti-Iran OpEd in the New York Times by Ray Takeyh and Suzanne Maloney. As usual it mangles the facts, gives a false diagnosis of the situation and comes up with the wrong policy prescription. “Iran wants nukes, the government there is divided, there is no one to talk to, thus more sanctions (and btw let’s bomb Iran).”

I will not bother to discuss it in detail but want to mark two issues if only to set the record straight.

The authors write:

[Ahmedinejad’s] fall from grace has been fierce and fast. […] The most devastating blow came in May from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who publicly repudiated his hand-picked protégé in a clash over presidential powers.

While there was one of the regular tussles in the Iranian power structures during April and early May since the end of that month the situation has decidedly changed and it is not what the op-ed authors say:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a public endorsement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday as he looked to resolve a months-long rift among the country’s conservative power elites.”While there are weaknesses and problems … the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is working. The government and parliament must help each other,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in an address to parliament members, later shown on state television.

But a united Iran does not fit the narrative the op-ed authors want to tell, they therefore just ignore the real situation.

Then there is this outright lie:

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s interest in dialogue was not motivated by any appreciation of American civilization or an impulse to reconcile. Rather, the provocative president saw talks as a means of boosting his stature at home and abroad while touting his vision of a strong nuclear-armed Iran.

Sure – like he touted in an interview in October 2005:

“Our religion prohibits us from having nuclear arms and our religious leader has prohibited it from the point of view of religious law. It’s a closed road,” the Khaleej Times quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

or when he touted at the UN summit on April 29 2009:

Allow me, as the elected President of the Iranian people, to outline the other main elements of my country’s initiative regarding the nuclear issue:1. The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates its previously and repeatedly declared position that in accordance with our religious principles, pursuit of nuclear weapons is prohibited. …

or in May 4 2010 at a UN NPT conference:

… the great Iranian nation, does not need the atomic bomb for its advancement and does not regard it as a means for its grandeur and pride.

or in that Larry King interview on September 22 2010

“We are not seeking the bomb. We have no interest in it. And we do not think that it is useful.”

Yes, Ahmedinejad is certainly touting a lot and consistently – AGAINST an Iran with nuclear weapons.

And while we are at it – congrats to Iran for launching its second satellite.

June 16, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment