May 28, 2009

1.  “NYT’s Pentagon Propaganda Misleading report on Guantánamo and terrorism

While former Vice President Dick Cheney has been front and center in the media debate over the current White House’s national security policies, he’s not the only one trying to challenge the White House’s message. The New York Times published a front-page article (5/21/09) that bolstered the notion that former Guantánamo prisoners “return” to terrorist activity.

The remarkably credulous Times story, under the headline “1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Finds,” was based on a Pentagon report leaked to the paper before its release yesterday evening. The article emphasized the notion that former prisoners “returned to terrorism or militant activity”–without adequately explaining the definition of either term, or examining whether those former detainees were ever “terrorists” in the first place.
And as Talking Points Memo has noted (5/26/09), the Times’ front-page headline claiming that “1 in 7” detainees had returned to the fight glossed over the DOD’s own distinction between “confirmed” and “suspected” cases.

And missing from Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller’s account was a full explanation of the Pentagon’s long history of releasing similar studies, which have been widely challenged and debunked. Attorney H. Candace Gorman, who represents some Guantánamo detainees, has challenged the Pentagon’s findings (Huffington Post, 3/13/07), as has journalist and terrorism analyst Peter Bergen (CNN, 1/24/09). As one prominent critic, Mark Denbeaux of Seton Hall, explained (Washington Independent, 1/23/09):

Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo–much less were they released from there. They have counted people as “returning to the fight” for their having written an op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning–except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.

…

More fundamentally, can the Times be sure that the Pentagon knows that the detainees were ever “terrorists” to begin with? As Denbeaux explained in one report (12/10/07 [PDF]), “Implicit in the Government’s claim that detainees have ‘returned to the battlefield’ is the notion that those detainees had been on a battlefield prior to their detention in Guantánamo.” He concluded, based on reviewing the Pentagon’s own Combatant Status Review Tribunal records, that just 4 percent of the available summaries “alleged that a detainee had ever been on any battlefield.” Only one detainee was actually captured by U.S. forces on a battlefield. And, of course, fighting U.S. forces on a battlefield is not in itself an act of “terrorism.”
…
This is disingenuous, at the very least. The story was about people “returning” to the “fight,” based on the latest in a series of misleading and contradictory Pentagon reports on the topic–which should have led the Times to treat the leak with more skepticism in the first place. The paper noted in the article that the report’s “conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama’s plan to shut down the prison by January.” That is precisely the effect it had (conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough gave the paper a “tip of the hat”–5/21/09), thanks entirely to the way the Times mishandled the story.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/20219

2.  From Sibel Edmonds new blog:

“Announcement: Project Expose MSM

We all have been tirelessly screaming about issues related to Congressional leaders abdicating their main responsibility of ‘oversight.’ We have been outraged for way too long at seeing ‘no’ accountability whatsoever in many known cases of extreme wrongdoing. I, and many of you, believe that the biggest reason for this was, and still is, the lack of true journalism and media coverage — which acts as the necessary pressure and catalyst for those spineless politicians on the Hill and in the Executive branch. Or, at least it’s supposed to. So, in our book, the MSM has been the main culprit.

Well, here is a chance to turn the tables.

At my new blog, 123 Real Change, I’m happy to present an experimental project, Project Expose MSM, to provide readers with specific mainstream media blackout and/or misinformation cases based on documented and credible first-hand experiences of legitimate and credible sources and whistleblowers.123 Real Change is inviting all members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, other active (covert or overt) government whistleblowers, and reporters, to publish their experiences in regard to their own first-hand dealings with the media, where their legit disclosures were either intentionally censored/blacked out or tainted.

Yes, we will be naming names. Myself included.

In the absence of the real investigative journalism and unbiased independent media we need, this is one way to set the record straight. Not only that, we also know there are many potential whistleblowers out there who are seeking ‘trust-worthy’ reporters/publications in order to inform the public. At the same time, many of us in the whistleblower community have learned the hard way that there are many reporters and publications who should be avoided. It is our responsibility to offer those whistleblowers guidance based on our own knowledge and experience, and maybe save them from some of the traps we ourselves fell into.

Project Expose MSM will select and publicize legitimate, credible, and documented/witnessed stories. It will provide a forum for those with first-hand experience to share their stories with the public. It will raise awareness and allow people to discuss these cases openly. And hopefully it will help to foster improvements to the current, sorry state of our MSM by bringing the wrongs to light.”

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/2009/05/announcement.html

3.  ” Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel?

“Obama Calls on World to ‘Stand Up to’ North Korea” read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect “the peace and security of the world.”

Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984.

North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet the president of the U.S. thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea.

We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Hamdi, José Padilla, Sami al-Arian, Hamas, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by former secretary of defense Rumsfeld as “the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth,” who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry.

The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers’ money flowing into its coffers.

The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forgo civil liberty in order to be safe and secure.

The real question: who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments?

…

On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel’s responsibility to “eliminate” the “nuclear threat” from Iran.

What nuclear threat? The U.S. intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

Whom is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives?

Whom is North Korea bombing?

The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the U.S. and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one.

No countries on earth rival the U.S. and Israel for barbaric, murderous violence.

But Obama gives assurances that the U.S. will protect “the peace and security of the world.” And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the “Iranian threat.”

Where is the media?

Why aren’t people laughing their heads off?”

http://original.antiwar.com/roberts/2009/05/27/who-will-stand-up-to-america-and-israel/

4.  ” Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html

5.  ” Exploding Debt Threatens America

Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade its outlook for British sovereign debt from “stable” to “negative” should be a wake-up call for the US Congress and administration. Let us hope they wake up.Under President Barack Obama’s budget plan, the federal debt is exploding. To be precise, it is rising – and will continue to rise – much faster than gross domestic product, a measure of America’s ability to service it. The federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 2008; the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years. With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years.

“A government debt burden of that [100 per cent] level, if sustained, would in Standard & Poor’s view be incompatible with a triple A rating,” as the risk rating agency stated last week.

I believe the risk posed by this debt is systemic and could do more damage to the economy than the recent financial crisis. To understand the size of the risk, take a look at the numbers that Standard and Poor’s considers. The deficit in 2019 is expected by the CBO to be $1,200bn (€859bn, £754bn). Income tax revenues are expected to be about $2,000bn that year, so a permanent 60 per cent across-the-board tax increase would be required to balance the budget. Clearly this will not and should not happen. So how else can debt service payments be brought down as a share of GDP?”

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22721.htm