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The Day Jake Tapper Sold His Soul to Pharma

Photo Credit: “Jake Tapper-Caricature” by DonkeyHotey — licensed under CC BY 2.0
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. | The Defender | January 6, 2022

Apparently, appalled by robust sales of my bestseller, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper — in lieu of critically reviewing the work — used his Twitter feed to unleash a barrage of ad hominem insults against me.

Breaking with the traditional restraints of journalistic neutrality, professional propriety and intellectual rigor, he branded me “dangerous,” a “menace,” a “liar,” a “grifter,” a fraud, “unhinged” and more.

But Tapper’s defamations hang in the atmosphere without substantiation or citation. If I’m a liar, then what was my lie? If I’m a grifter, then what is my personal profit or advantage? If I am a fraud, then where is my inaccurate statement?

I concede that I’m a dangerous menace, but only to the pharmaceutical industry, its captive technocrats and its media toadies.

When I responded to his slander with a respectful tweet inviting him to debate me, Tapper declined, explaining he would not debate a “conspiracy theorist.” Characteristically, he neglected to cite any conspiracy theory he believes I promoted.

And is it credible to dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist unworthy of debate? After all, I am founder and former president of the world’s largest water protection group, and founder and current chairman of one of the largest children’s health advocacy groups.

I’ve won hundreds of successful lawsuits, including milestone victories against Monsanto, DuPont, Exxon, Smithfield Foods and leading polluters from the chemical, carbon, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. (Many of these also initially dismissed me as a “conspiracy theorist.”)

My current book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” may be the most heavily footnoted volume to ever sit atop global best-seller lists for six consecutive weeks. With 500,000 copies sold, it has attracted a whopping 5,500+ five-star reviews (92%).

Despite extreme hostility toward this volume from mainstream media and the medical cartel, no one has yet identified a factual inaccuracy in its 250,000 words.

If my book is baseless conspiracy theories, then shouldn’t Mr. Tapper welcome an opportunity to correct me with facts or arguments that go beyond name-calling?

Allow me, then, to offer my own theory for Mr. Tapper’s apoplexy.

Many people make Faustian bargains during their lives, trading personal integrity for material advantage. Oftentimes the metamorphosis occurs as a gradual erosion of moral fiber. Occasionally it happens in an instant; a man stands at a moral crossroads and chooses the dark side.

I happened to have a front-row seat when Jake Tapper had his moment of moral crisis. I’m guessing his fierce vitriol toward me is a reaction to his embarrassment that I was witness to the instant when Mr. Tapper chose career over character.

In July 2005, Jake Tapper was ABC’s senior producer when the network ordered him to pull a lengthy exposé on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) secret 2000 Simpsonwood conference.

Here is the background:

In 1999, in response to exploding epidemics of autism and other neurological disorders, CDC decided to study its vast Vaccine Safety Datalink — the medical and vaccination record of millions of Americans, archived by the top HMOs — to learn whether the dramatic escalation of the vaccine schedule, beginning in 1989, was a culprit. CDC’s in-house epidemiologist, Thomas Verstraeten, led the effort.

Verstraeten’s initial data run suggested that mercury-containing hepatitis B vaccines — administered during the first month of life — were associated with a wide range of neurological injuries, including a dramatic 1,135% rise in autism risks among vaccinated children.

Verstraeten’s findings propelled CDC into DEFCON 1. The agency’s top vaccine officials summoned 52 pharmaceutical industry leaders, the foremost vaccinologists from academia and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and public health regulators from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDC, World Health Organization (WHO) and European Medicines Agency to a secret two-day meeting at the remote Simpsonwood retreat center in Norcross, Georgia, to strategize about how to hide these awful revelations from the public.

In 2005, I obtained the explosive transcripts of this meeting and was about to publish excerpts in Rolling Stone (Deadly Immunity, July 18, 2005). Those recordings, ironically, portrayed these leading kingpins of the vaccine cartel poised at their own moral brink, and chronicled their collapse into corruption over two sickening days of debate.

Most of these individuals were physicians and regulatory officials who had committed their lives to public health out of idealism and deep concern for children. Verstraeten’s data confronted them with the fact that the cumulative mercury levels in all those new vaccines they had recommended had overdosed a generation of American children with mercury concentrations over a hundred times the exposures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considered safe.

In recommending a vast battery of new vaccines for children, public health regulators had somehow neglected to calculate the cumulative mercury and aluminum loads in all the new jabs.

Dr. Peter Patriarca, the then-director of the FDA Office on Vaccine Research and Review, expressed the general feeling of horror when he asked why no one had calculated the cumulative mercury exposure to children as policymakers added this cascade of new vaccines to the childhood schedule: “Conversion of the percentage thimerosal to actual micrograms of mercury involves ninth-grade algebra. What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?”

In the tense days leading up to the Simpsonwood conclave, children’s health champion Dr. Ruth Etzel of the EPA pleaded with her fellow public health leaders to publicly admit they made a terrible mistake by inadvertently poisoning American children, and to repair the damage.

Dr. Etzel urged AAP and the government regulators to handle the crisis with the same honesty and public remorse that Johnson & Johnson had demonstrated on discovering toxic chemicals in its Tylenol formulations:

“We must follow three basic rules: (1) act quickly to inform pediatricians that the products have more mercury than we realized; (2) be open with consumers about why we didn’t catch this earlier; (3) show contrition. If the public loses faith in the Public Health Services recommendations, then the immunization battle will falter. To keep faith, we must be open and honest and move forward quickly to replace these products.”

Confronted with scientific proof of their role in the chronic disease calamity, the cabal did exactly the opposite. The shocking Simpsonwood transcripts show Dr. Patriarca and the other public health panjandrums warning each other of their reputational liabilities, their vulnerability to litigation by plaintiffs’ lawyers and potential damage to the vaccine program.

Dr. Patriarca cautioned that public disclosure of CDC’s explosive findings would make Americans feel that the FDA, CDC and vaccine policymakers had been “asleep at the switch” for decades in allowing Thimerosal to remain in childhood vaccines.

Over two days of intense discussion, these Big Pharma operatives and government technocrats persuaded each other to transform their disastrous error into villainy — by doubling down and hiding their mistake from the public.

Tapper saw an early draft of my Rolling Stone story and proposed that, in exchange for exclusivity, he would do a companion piece for ABC timed to air on the magazine’s publication day.

Tapper spent several weeks working on the story with me and a team of enthusiastic ABC reporters and technicians. During his frequent conversations with me over that period, he was on fire with indignation over the Simpsonwood revelations. He acted like a journalist hoping to win an Emmy.

The day before the piece was to air, an exasperated Tapper called me to say that ABC’s corporate officials ordered him to pull the story. The network’s pharmaceutical advertisers were threatening to cancel their advertising.

“Corporate told us to shut it down,” Tapper fumed. Tapper told me that it was the first time in his career that ABC officials had ordered him to kill a story.

ABC had advertised the Simpsonwood exposé, and its sudden cancellation disappointed an army of vaccine safety advocates and parents of injured children who deluged the network with a maelstrom of angry emails.

In response, ABC changed tack and publicly promised to air the piece. Instead, following a one-week delay, the network duplicitously aired a hastily assembled puff piece promoting vaccines and assuring listeners that mercury-laden vaccines were safe.

The new “bait and switch” segment precisely followed Pharma’s talking points. “I’m putting my faith in the Institute of Medicine,” ABC’s obsequious medical editor, Dr. Tim Johnson, declared in closing. Two pharmaceutical advertisements bracketed the story.

After that piece aired, I called Jake to complain. He neither answered nor returned my calls.

During the 16 intervening years, Pharma has returned Mr. Tapper’s favor by aggressively promoting his career. Pfizer shamelessly sponsors Tapper’s CNN news show, announcing its ownership of the space — and Mr. Tapper’s indentured servitude — before each episode with the loaded phrase: “Brought to you by Pfizer.”

Under the apparent terms of that sponsorship, CNN and Tapper provide Pfizer a platform to market its products and allow the drug company — a serial felon — to dictate content on CNN.

This arrangement has transformed CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper into a propaganda vehicle for Pharma and effectively reduced Mr. Tapper to the role of a drug rep — shamelessly promoting fear porn, confusion, and germophobia, and ushering his audience toward high-yield patent pharmaceuticals.

Tapper’s main thrust during the pandemic has been to promote levels of public terror sufficient to indemnify all the official lies against critical thinking.

All that Pharma money naturally requires that Mr. Tapper kowtow to Dr. Fauci, and the CNN host’s slavishness has helped make Tapper’s show the go-to pulpit for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director.

It’s a safe place for Dr. Fauci to hit all Jake’s reliable softballs out of the park.

“The bootlicking competition at CNN is pretty nauseating,” observed investigative journalist Celia Farber who has chronicled Dr. Fauci’s mismanagement at NIAID for more than 25 years. “It’s ruinous for both democracy and for public health.”

Another journalist has compared Tapper’s mortifying on-air servility toward Dr. Fauci to the adulation of a loyal and obedient canine. “It’s like a dog watching a chess match,” says former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. “So much intensity and so little understanding.”

Tapper has gone two years without asking Dr. Fauci a single tough question. He has covered up Fauci’s involvement with Wuhan, suppressed news of vaccine injuries, gaslighted the injured, and defended every official orthodoxy on masks, lockdowns, social distancing, vaccines, remdesivir, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

He has never asked about the public health, mental health, and economic costs of lockdown, about the disproportionate burdens of Dr. Fauci’s policies on minorities, the working class and the global poor.

He has never asked Dr. Fauci to explain why countries and states that refused Dr. Fauci’s prescription have consistently experienced dramatically better health outcomes. For example, why are U.S. death rates 1,000x the death rates of African countries like Nigeria and Indian states that widely use hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin? Mr. Tapper simply never allows contrary views on his show.

He continues to extol COVID vaccines as a miracle technology that individuals can take four times and still both get and spread the illness.

“He never calls Dr. Fauci on his vacillating science-free pronouncements,” said Farber. “Dr. Fauci seems to be able to paralyze the curiosity features of Tapper’s brain.”

Tapper has to ask Dr. Fauci why, under his direction, America suffered the world’s highest body count. With 4.2% of the global population, our nation suffered 15% of COVID deaths.

Instead, he functions as high priest of every official orthodoxy, working to deify Dr. Fauci and anoint all his absurd, vacillating and contradictory pronouncements with papal infallibility. The sure way to earn Tapper’s indignation is to criticize Dr. Fauci.

Here are just a few examples of Mr. Tapper’s brazen deceptions:

On Feb. 2, 2021, Tapper “debunked” claims that baseball great Hank Aaron may have died from a COVID shot. The home run king submitted to a CDC-staged press conference 17 days earlier. Tapper assured his audience that the Fulton County coroner had determined Aaron to have died from “natural causes.”

When the Fulton County coroner subsequently denied ever having seen Aaron’s body, much less performed an autopsy, Tapper refused to correct his story.

In August 2021, Tapper gave Dr. Fauci a platform to spread the rumor that deluded Americans were poisoning themselves with a “horse medicine” called ivermectin.

In an Aug. 29, 2021 interview, Dr. Fauci told Tapper, “There’s no evidence whatsoever that that works, and it could potentially have toxicity… with people who have gone to poison control centers because they’ve taken the drug at a ridiculous dose and wind up getting sick. There’s no clinical evidence that indicates that this works.”

Tapper never corrected Dr. Fauci. He never pointed out that there were by then 70 peer-reviewed studies demonstrating ivermectin’s miraculous efficacy against COVID.

He didn’t dispute Dr. Fauci’s characterization of ivermectin as a horse medicine by noting that the drug had won both a Nobel Prize and WHO’s listing as an “essential medicine” for its miraculous efficacy against human illnesses, and that people have consumed billions of doses with no significant safety signals.

Mr. Tapper never thought to ask Dr. Fauci if he was trying to discourage use of a cheap, effective drug that might compete with his experimental vaccines.

Instead, Tapper abjectly parroted Dr. Fauci’s talking points: “Poison control centers are reporting that their calls are spiking in places like Mississippi and Oklahoma, because some Americans are trying to use an anti-parasite horse drug called ivermectin to treat coronavirus, to prevent contracting coronavirus.”

It mattered not to Tapper that both Mississippi and Oklahoma officials quickly denied that anyone in their state had been hospitalized for ivermectin poisoning. Tapper never corrected his false story.

On Sept. 14, 2021, Tapper obligingly gave Dr. Fauci a platform to dispute rapper Nicki Minaj’s worry that COVID vaccines may affect fertility. Dr. Fauci simply declared, “The answer to that, Jake, is a resounding no.”

As usual, Tapper did not ask Dr. Fauci to cite a study to support this assertion. He never pointed out to Dr. Fauci that all of the COVID vaccine manufacturers acknowledge that their products are not tested for effects on fertility, or that recent data has shown dramatic upticks in miscarriages and pre-eclampsia in vaccinated women.

Nevertheless, based upon Dr. Fauci’s word alone, CNN rushed on to defame and discredit the rapper and to assure the public that Minaj was wrong. Dr. Fauci, after all, had spoken!

It’s easy to see how two years of such obsequious deference emboldened Dr. Fauci in November 2021 to declare that “I represent science.”

There are too many other examples of Tapper’s uncritical promotion of government and pharma falsehoods to even summarize. These are not harmless lies. Each of them has potentially disastrous consequences for public health.

The term “psychological projection” describes the uncanny precision with which a certain sort of person applies the very pejoratives to others that most accurately depict their own shortcomings.

When Mr. Tapper calls me “unhinged,” a “menace to public health,” a “fraud,” a “liar,” is he falling victim to projection?

The critical functions of journalism in a democracy are to speak truth to power, relentlessly expose official corruption, and to forever maintain a posture of skepticism toward government and corporate power centers.

What Jake Tapper does is the opposite of journalism. Tapper, instead, aligns himself with power, and makes himself a propagandist for official narratives and a servile publicist for powerful elites and government technocrats.

No wonder his fury at those who challenge their narratives.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

January 7, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

CNN’s hostile treatment of Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard after revealing US arming, funding Terrorists in Syria

21st Century Wire | December 14, 2016

Recently, Democrat Hawaii Congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard, went on CNN’s “The Lead” hosted by Jake Tapper, to talk about Donald Trump’s foreign policy, and more importantly, to discuss the disturbing reality of US taxpayer support of armed militants and terrorists in places like Syria. Instead of adulation for doing the honorable thing, she received a hostile reaction from one of CNN’s many highly paid onscreen propagandists.

jake-tapper-cnnWhen asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper (photo, right) about US Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s recent visit to Trump Tower, she replied, “My goal in going there, in receiving the invitation to speak to President-elect Trump was to speak specifically about the situation in Syria, the dangerous consequences of escalating the regime change war that the United States is fuelling there along with countries like Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and Turkey are escalating that through a so-called no-fly zone or safe zone. And urging him to end our regime change war there to stop funding both directly and indirectly groups that are working with Al Qaeda and ISIS. And to stop funneling those dollars and weapons and other assistance through these others countries like Saudi Arabia who are directly supporting these terrorist groups who are supposed to be our enemy, who we’re supposed to be fighting to defeat.”

Visibly agitated by her answer, Tapper then asks Gabbard, herself an Iraq War veteran and a current member of the Hawaii National Guard, about her recent Bill introduced on the House floor last week entitled, the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” which proposes severe legal repercussions to any US officials or persons involved in the arming or funding, either directly or possibly indirectly, of terrorists overseas – including the US-backed “rebel” terrorists currently operating in Syria. What’s key is that Gabbard points out that this activity is funded by the US taxpayer. Not surprisingly, CNN has never reported this side of the clandestine issue before. Here’s how their fascinating conversation transpired:

TAPPER: And tell me about legislation. You have a bill that you introduced today that would address loopholes.

GABBARD: Yes.

TAPPER: You say have allowed American taxpayer dollars to fund terror groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. Are you — are you suggesting that the U.S. government is funding these terrorist groups?

GABBARD: I’m not only suggesting it. This is — this is the reality that we’re living in.

TAPPER: Not directly, though.

GABBARD: Most Americans — you know, if you were — I were to go and provide money, weapons, or support or whatever to a group like Al Qaeda or ISIS, you would immediately be thrown in Jail. However, the U.S. government has been providing money, weapons, intel assistance and other types of support through the CIA, directly to these groups that are working with and are affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS.

TAPPER: So, you’re saying the CIA is giving money to groups in Syria, and those groups are working with Al-Nusra and ISIS.

GABBARD: There are — there have been numerous reports from The New York Times to the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets who have declared that these rebel groups have formed these battlefield alliances with Al Qaeda, that essentially is Al Qaeda groups are in charge of every single rebel group on the ground fighting in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government.

Tapper goes on to act stunned and befuddled, insinuating that Gabbard is “wrong” – as if Gabbard were somehow making up her accusations, as he becomes somewhat confused trying to manage CNN’s complicated contrived narrative. Tapper then insists that “Obviously, they (US-funded ‘rebel’ terrorists) are all fighting Assad.” Gabbard quickly calls out Tapper’s clear attempt at US State Dept propaganda talking points management Here’s the latter exchange:

TAPPER: And the U.S. government says they vet the groups that they give money to very, very closely. And that you’re wrong, there are not alliances between groups that the American taxpayers fund and these other groups. Obviously, they all are fighting Assad.

GABBARD: I beg to differ. Evidence has shown time and time again that that is not the case, that we are both directly and indirectly supporting these groups who are allied with or partnered with Al Qaeda and ISIS, in working to over throw the Syrian government of Assad. And we’ve also been providing that support through countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to do that.

Gabbard’s brave new legislation might be the most important and explosive development regarding Syrian Foreign Policy in Washington, but instead of pursuing this discussion, CNN’s Tapper predictably tried to change the subject to Michael Flynn instead.

Watch this incredible exchange here:

21WIRE has reported previously on the possibility that CNN is serving as a media adjunct to either the Pentagon, NSA or the CIA (or all three). Judging by Jake Tapper’s offhanded comments and attempt to discredit Gabbard live on air, it only strengthens that probability.

21WIRE also reported previously how CNN has clearly chosen to only air coverage favorable to what the network has claimed to be “rebels” in Syria, when in reality – these were mostly terrorist fighting groups. CNN’s “star reporter” Clarissa Ward even went so far as to characterize terrorist suicide bombers in a sympathetic manner in her reports – clearly designed to give positive PR to terrorists groups like Al Nusra Front who have been occupying East Aleppo since 2012. Other actors in field seemingly employed by CNN who are operating in clear support of terrorists in East Aleppo include one Bilal Abdul Karim an apparent US asset promoting jihadist extremism, together with Ward, producing what are clearly staged reports, alongside CNN’s endless airing of unvetted, staged White Helmets imagery. 21WIRE have also recently revealed additional terrorist-links with the White Helmets, who are a US State Dept, British Foreign Office and EU-funded pseudo NGO – and passing it off to the viewing public as authentic video and photos supplied by nameless “Syrian activists”.

Throughout the west’s proxy war against Syria, CNN has only reported the rebel/terrorist perspective, shamelessly portraying militant terrorists as “moderate rebels” and freedom fighters, while systematically demonizing any Syrian or Russian who is defending the nation-state of Syria. This might explain Tapper’s near contempt for Gabbard’s accurate statements regarding US arming and funding of known terrorist groups in Syria.

2016 was the year that CNN was exposed as perhaps the most corrupt mainstream media outlet in the United States. A number of other leaked emails revealed an unprecedented level of media corruption and systematic partisan collusion between operatives at CNN and the Hillary Clinton Campaign – a naked violation of every fundamental principle of nonobjective press practices. In the leaked email exchanges, one could see gleeful Clinton campaign officials boasting about getting favorable news coverage from compliant mainstream media ‘journalists’ – with CNN being perhaps the worst offender. Clinton staffers even went so far as to circulate names of journalists who were deemed “friendly” to their candidate.

Among the notorious Wikileaks email dump was a CNN request to DNC staffers asking for questions to ask during a Wolf Blitzer interview with then GOP candidate Donald Trump.

In another email on April 28, CNN operative Jason Seher, a writer for Jake Tapper’s show “The Lead” on CNN, emailed DNC media coordinator Pablo Manriquez thanking him for working behind the scenes with CNN.

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In a separate conversation CNN’s Seher, then thanked DNC insider Martinez for ‘facilitating Luis coming on today, and bearing with us through a meelee of GOP nonsense and cancellations and all that. Any particular points he’ll want to make? We’re gonna stay Dem focused…’

Perhaps the worst CNN violation of press independence was when the network’s supposed “chief political analyst,” Gloria Borger, tried to get an interview with Clinton chief of staff John Podesta by assuring him of essentially softball questions.

“I know John will have an exalted place in the campaign, and would love to chat with him about HRC, in a general way, not in a gotcha way re HRC,” said Borger. “It would be about 10 mins, very general, about her as a person and a candidate.”

What most amazing about all of this, is that CNN executives refused to consider firing any of their personalities who have been implicated in open collusion with the Democratic party during one of the most crucial political contests in US history.

In another leak provided to The Intercept by the source known as Gucifer 2.0 Other CNN reporters discovered on the DNC’s ‘VIP List’ of media operatives counted on by the Clinton campaign included Kate Bouldan, Brianna Kielar, Jeff Zeleny, Sam Feist, David Chalian, John Berman, and Mark Preston.

The only person who lost their paid position with CNN was the now disgrace political operative, Donna Brazile, currently still holding onto her gifted position as interim Chairwoman of the DNC – who was also moonlight for extra cash as “contributor” for CNN. Brazile was also a Super Delegate for Hillary Clinton. Podesta Email dumps exposed the fact that Brazile, a CNN contributor was caught giving Hillary’s campaign debate questions in advance of CNN’s Town Hall debate event.

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As a result, CNN’s reputation as a trustworthy media outlets has been held in question by most of the public.

When it comes to coverage of both the 2016 Election and the Syrian War, CNN has been on the wrong side of history – and should not be trusted to give accurate and fair reporting regarding serious and important issues.

December 14, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | 6 Comments

MSNBC: No Time for Obama’s Kill List?

By Peter Hart | FAIR | June 1, 2012

The New York Times‘ lengthy report (5/29/12) on Barack Obama’s drone “kill list” should provoke serious questions: Is such a program legal? How does it square with Obama’s criticism of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies? What does it tell us about how the administration identifies “militants” who are targeted for assassination?

But those questions have been raised only in fits and starts–and are basically absent from the liberal cable news channel MSNBC. In fact, a far more interesting discussion of these questions can be heard on Fox News Channel.

It’s not all good on Fox, naturally. Host Bill O’Reilly and guest Dennis Miller (5/29/12) joked about  whether they were on the kill lists . Geraldo Rivera defended the program on Fox & Friends (6/1/12). Fox “liberal” Bob Beckel did the same on Fox‘s The Five (5/29/12):

To even suggest that somehow there is something wrong with a kill list, for you to suggest that shows you how rabidly anti-Obama you are.

Part of that discussion focused on what the reaction would be if we were reading about George W. Bush’s drone kill list–a contrast that was raised on other Fox shows, and a legitimate one.

It wasn’t just that angle that Fox covered, though. On Special Report (5/30/12), James Rosen looked at the White House’s “fuzzy math” at counting civilian deaths from drone strikes. A Special Report panel (5/29/12) used a soundbite from the ACLU to illustrate criticism from the left.

But what about the channel that would seem the natural place for some of that left-leaning analysis? MSNBC has been mostly quiet. A search of the Nexis news database turns up nothing on Obama’s kill list. The program Morning Joe had one discussion (5/29/12) where the panelists mostly supported the program, though host Joe Scarborough expressed some reservations.

What was more newsworthy? MSNBC‘s prime time shows seemed to have plenty of coverage of “birther” Donald Trump.

And it is worth noting one left-leaning TV host who did present a critical take on the Obama drone program was Current host Cenk Uygur (5/29/12). Some might remember that he briefly hosted a show on MSNBC but left amidst disputes over whether management wanted him to tone it down. Draw your own conclusions.

*Also: Kevin Gosztola has a good piece about drones and media coverage at FireDogLake (6/1/12). And it should be noted that ABC correspondent Jake Tapper (5/29/12) asked some strong questions to White House press secretary Jay Carney, particularly about civilian deaths and how the administration was defining “militants.” As best I can tell, Tapper’s exchange with Carney was not included in any ABC broadcasts, but can be viewed at the link above (starting around the 13:00 mark)

June 3, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sergei’s Law — Revenge of the Oligarchs

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | June 3, 2012

In the Brave New World of digital activism, government legislation often comes with its own promotional video. In response to a seemingly ingenuous question by ABC’s Jake Tapper about whether a “remarkable viral video” had anything to do with the decision to send U.S. special forces to Central Africa, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney intimated that “Kony 2012” was most likely on President Obama’s mind as he signed the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act. And if the president one day signs the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, don’t be surprised if some “pushy” reporter like Tapper asks if anyone in the White House has seen “Sergei’s Law.”

According to film’s website, the seven-minute video is the work of “a group of Russian and American students pushing for justice” in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer “tortured to death in 2009 for exposing a $230 million heist … [whose] killers got away clean.” Visitors to the site are invited to watch the video and “make a difference” by signing its petition — Pass the Magnitsky Act! A click on the “About Us” section, however, reveals that this is no ordinary group of students:

The College-100 (C-100) is a network of student presidents from elite schools (including the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, top liberal arts schools, and flagship state schools); Rhodes, Truman, and Gates scholars; Olympians; and other distinguished young people.

Moreover, this elite student network has benefited from the counsel of some rather extraordinary mentors:

The C-100′s advisors include Ambassadors Ed Perkins, Stape Roy and Tom Pickering; US senators; Governor Bill Richardson; and other distinguished national figures.

Edward J. Perkins has served as Director of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Corps, a position that would have required a close working relationship with America’s intelligence services. J. Stapleton Roy was Assistant Secretary of State for intelligence and research from 1999 to 2000 and is currently Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc. Thomas R. Pickering served as U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, Nigeria, and El Salvador — a posting that led to the dubious distinction of being called “a Reagan point man in Central America’s dirty wars.” Pickering currently chairs the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, an NGO financed by George Soros, who could hardly be described as a disinterested party in the “push for justice” in Russia.

To be continued…

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June 2, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment