None Call It Treason

In the late nineties when the heroic investigative reporter, Gary Webb documented how both the Reagan and Bush I administrations used a Bay Area drug ring to sell tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs in order to funnel millions to Nicaraguan Contras he was pilloried in the mainstream press. This despite the fact that ten years earlier Mass. Sen., John Kerry, had direct proof that the CIA was using illicit drug profits for covert operations in Central America in order to evade Congressional scrutiny.

Even after Webb was vindicated by the CIA's own report, The New York Times, like the Washington Post and L.A. Times, gave the story short shrift. The justly outraged black community was greeted with the newspapers' eminent 'liberal' scorn: the collective response amounted to, "what else would you expect from those people... they believe stuff like Kentucky Fried Chicken will make you sterile."

If you didn't know better you'd be tempted to think our mainstream press was complicit .

In her new book "Rogue Economics" Loretta Napoleoni describes how ties between intelligence agencies and organized crime are now woven into the new world economy: "The transition from Cold War economics ... left large regions unguarded ... the vacuum created by the absence of state authority guaranteed the survival of [what] became a rogue force."

At the same time Webb was exposing the CIA's drug running writers in India were decrying the increase in sanctioned government crime and corruption.

"The image of organised crime etched deep in the public mind in the media is of graphic and gratitude violence... these images, no doubt, have a sound basis in fact. To the extent, however, that they exhaust or dominate our entire vision of organised crime today, they are both false and misleading. The emergence of global financial and trading systems, and the progressive dismantling of trade barriers and, internal restrictions on businesses within the country over the past decade, has fundamentally changed the context in which criminal organisations operate... criminal organisations have expanded their territorial reach and augmented their wealth and power relative to national governments."

It is hard to gauge whether the neo-cons were crafty and venal or simply the elite's useful idiots. Now that the US is broke, our military mired in Afghanistan, a largely secular Iraq converted to an Islamic Republic more closely tied to Iran one wonders what-- if anything-- was their beef with bin Laden. From the billions that have disappeared from the Pentagon it is clear that for the fortunate few the WOT is a handy honey pot. To round out this macabre spectacle of the absurd members of Congress solicit funds for their election campaigns by inciting revolution, claiming the Obama leads a gangster government. Yet none call it treason.

If there is a single blunder that will haunt us long after the disastrous Bush years it is the reactionary and unconstitutional Patriot Act. By demonizing Muslims while compelling US banks to disclose their large transactions, trillions in Middle Eastern oil revenues and criminal black market funds that used to be laundered in Miami and New York have migrated to Naples and London where our simpatico partners in the "War on Terror" can now join hedge funds that make their money by ripping up public companies and auctioning them off as private equity.

Typically, “prominent investors” will buy the company’s debt, package it into “collateralized debt obligations” (financial weapons of mass destruction that were pioneered by Michael Milken’s team at Drexel Burnham Lambert), and then trade it in such a way as to make it seem as if the company is in trouble.'

In the middle of this indecipherable criminal mess are our beleaguered journalists. For them the choice is stark: tell the truth like Gary Webb, lose your job and perhaps end up dead ... or play along and make the most of it.

Murder for Profit pt 3: The Stench of Avarice

Greed without end, spasmodic lust; Murderers' hands, usurers' hands, hands of prayer; Exhales in foetid breath the human swarm
Whipped on by fear and lust, blood raw, blood war,
Breathing blessedness and savage heats,
Eating itself and spewing what it eats,
Hatching war...
-"The Immortals", Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf

It began long before the Iraq invasion.

As George Monbiot reported back in 2005- The government of the US, though it had been informed about a smuggling operation which brought Saddam Hussein's regime some $4.6bn, decided to let it continue. It did so because it deemed the smuggling to be in its national interest, as it helped friendly countries (Turkey and Jordan) evade the sanctions on Iraq... But this isn't the half of it.

Four days before Volcker reported his findings about Saddam Hussein, the US inspector general for Iraq reconstruction published a report about the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - the US agency which governed Iraq between April 2003 and June 2004. The inspector general's job is to make sure that the money the authority spent was properly accounted for. It wasn't. In just 14 months, $8.8bn went absent without leave. This is more than Mobutu Sese Seko managed to steal in 32 years of looting Zaire."

It appears that the moment U.S. boots hit Iraqi ground the army brass was preparing to arrange its kickbacks. Though the CPA's inspector general claimed that the agency was "burdened by severe inefficiencies and poor management", more serious investigations now reveal that it was actually "burdened" by endemic fraud, corruption and false accounting-- the "Enron model".

From as early as 2004 officials in the CPA were demanding bribes of up to $300,000 in return for awarding contracts. Iraqi money seized by US forces simply disappeared. Some $800m was handed out to US commanders without being counted or even weighed. $1.4billion was secreted out of Baghdad and somehow ended up with the Kurdish regional government in the town of Irbil. The Iraq invasion had given the military and its co-dependents a license to steal.

As the Guardian reports: "Contracts to US companies were awarded by the CPA without any financial safeguards. They were issued without competition, in the form of "cost-plus" deals. This means that the companies were paid for the expenses they incurred, plus a percentage of those expenses in the form of profit. They had a powerful incentive, in other words, to spend as much money as possible."

They shoot reporters, don't they?

Imagine you are a young journalist, say with the NYTimes and you've been shipped to Baghdad to cover a war that half the world and the U.S. military already know is an all out lie. There you discover that your new army buddies, the very men you may need to rely on should you be forced to leave the Green Zone and report from a "free fire zone" are getting a cut of the loot. Just how deeply would you dig to get that story? In hindsight, not that far...

"Until now, the investigations have never reached the people at the top," The London Independent's Patrick Cockburn told Radio National's Fran Kelly.

"One scandal in 2004-05 saw the entire military procurement budget for Iraq's Ministry of Defence, $US1.3 billion, disappear.

"Disappear in the sense that contracts were signed with small companies in Poland and Pakistan and a few bits of some ancient Soviet helicopters were purchased and never delivered. At that time the ministry was being run by American officers. Either they were incredibly negligent or they were in on it, and most of the Iraqis believe they were in on it."

For the NYTimes the scandal apparently comes as a grand surprise. Despite having reported on the conviction of a former Coalition Provisional Authority official for money laundering, bribery and conspiracy. In fact although little of the U.S. military's role in the widespread corruption was reported on in the paper itself both the Sydney Herald and the Christian Scientist Monitor quote the NYTimes International edition as saying that the probe was certain to expand to include US Army Reserve officers.

Of course, now that there is a new Obama administration it is safe for the mind-boggling breadth of the scandal to be exposed, but for all the good intentions of Justice officials as Cockburn notes: "[The corruption] was pervasive. There were very large sums of money to be made and the guys in charge realized that [having been given what amounts to blanket immunity by the Bush regime] there wasn't going to be any comeback."

Covering (for) John McCain

At least up until yesterday, John McCain has had no greater friend than the NYTimes. Despite its hilarious claim that the Times is cheering for Obama, McCain's own campaign has sent out scores of emails quoting the NYTimes to support their political attacks. Note that this is the same Barack Obama who can't get the Times to whisper the words "Keating Five" even as the S&L scandal redux 'squared' is playing out before our eyes.

Look, I don't blame the NYTimes for secretly backing McCain, knowing his zeal for deregulation... the paper is trying to swim as close as it can down the middle in an age of global-anti-state corporatism. But if you're assuming the mantle as the "Paper of Record" it's hard to keep shying from printing the whole truth while resorting to token jabs and innuendo.

Take this latest brouhaha over the influence of lobbyists. The NYTimes ran the story that mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid @ $345,000 to the lobbying and consulting firm of John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis. In response the McCain camp howled that the NYTimes is in the "tank" for Obama. But the Times had not disclosed the whole story. As Newsweek reports: Davis's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, based in Washington, D.C., continued to receive $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac until last month—long after the Homeownership Alliance had been terminated. One can only hope that, now that they've been slammed for trying to limit the damage, the NYTimes will deign to revisit their own reporting on the "Keating 5":

"to excuse Senators McCain and Glenn now would ignore actions in which all five Senators took part... [ N] otably, all five participated in two extraordinary meetings in April 1987, when four and later all five summoned the Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman and key officials of the board's San Francisco office to Capitol Hill. The Senators cross-examined the regulators about their proposed tough actions against Mr. Keating, who made large campaign contributions to each Senator.

Insiders know how hard it is to get five senators together for any business, sometimes even for hearings. Charles Keating mustered five. This show of force was not lost on the regulators. They backed off, even as Mr. Keating's institution headed toward a collapse that will cost taxpayers $2 billion."

Now we learn that McCain's campaign manager and later that campaign manager's firm were being kept on retainer while Freddie Mac was under an ethics cloud, and being tied to the current financial meltdown. Step back and think about what the "paper of record" would have to say had that campaign manager been representing Barack Obama. But it shouldn't be surprising. Consider how the NYtimes reported on the campaign during the crisis in Georgia.

As "BeyondTimes" points out: "Many of [the Times'] stories seem lifted from the Republican playbook. [ ] on August 15, the Times ran a major story that was so inaccurate, and so counter to the prevailing media frame, that its reporter appeared to have become seriously detached from reality. In “McCain Displays Credentials as Obama Relaxes,” reporter Michael Falcone argued that while “Obama’s voice seems muted,” McCain handled the Russia-Georgia crisis with “fluency,” lending the Republican “an aura of commander in chief.”

[In fact] the story makes no mention of the Georgia lobbyist on the McCain payroll. Instead, the paper withheld this critical fact from readers while touting McCain’s alleged “fluency” with which he discussed Georgia.

So tell us, John McCain, what exactly do you have to whine about with the NYTimes?

Or is this the Bush Political Doctrine of a preventive first strike? Hello, FBI?

Hatred's Silent Abettors

When police searched Jim Adkisson's home after he entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church bent on killing they discovered the following books: "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio host, Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by Bill O'Reilly.

Beside them was a four-page letter in which the killer explained that he was targeting the church on account of its liberal teachings. That he believed all liberals should be killed for ruining the country, and that "every institution in America" was being destroyed by the liberal media. And since he "could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

That is how the story was first reported in the Knoxville News yet to add a second layer of irony when the news appeared in the NYTimes not a single reference was made to the shooter's reading list.

Lets take a look at the sort of invective that the NYTimes chose to ignore even though it was directly responsible for Mr. Adkisson's disturbed world view.

Sean Hannity:"there are things in life worth fighting and dying for, and one of 'em is making sure" that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) "doesn't become the speaker."

Mr. Savage: "I'd hang every lawyer that went down to Guantanamo"

"Bring in 10 million more from Africa. ... They can't reason, but bring them in with a machete in their head"

Mr. O'Reilly: You want to blow up San Francisco ... go ahead!"

Mr. Limbaugh:"the Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats"

"They’re [liberals]hiding in the shadows, and they are lurking there, and they’re around and the odds are that many of them are in the school system."

"I say we round up all the drug addicts and gas them."

Prosecuting the Abettors

After the Rwandan tragedy in 1994 a tribunal determined that the media was largely culpable for inciting the genocide. Print journalists and radio hosts were tried and convicted yet here we have an act of political terrorism and our major newspapers along with the T.V. networks choose to ignore the obvious.

Here are some of the latest fruits owed to our right-wing polemicists:

Town struggles with fallout from immigrant's fatal beating

Boy's killing labeled hate crime

Extremists declare "Open Season" on undocumented workers

FBI Arrests Domestic Terrorist, Christian Nationalist

White Supremacist Group Infiltrated

Bomb-maker talked of Obama, Clinton assassination

WMD Plot Uncovered In East Texas:

Taken separately such cases might be viewed as predictable in a country this size. But since in every case the victims coincided with the very people the haters consistently target one would think that the supposedly "liberal" media, having been slandered as Anti-American, would want to shed a little sunshine on exactly how these home-grown thugs and terrorists acquire their distorted opinions.

I realize the press has come to meekly accept the Bushes' Big Lies. But seeing that the Times itself has a bullseye on its back one would think they would want to expose these overpaid vermin who strangle all attempts at intelligent political discourse by demonizing their critics.

Of course, when you're no longer all that interested in reporting the inconvenient truths the more smoke being blown into the public's eyes makes it that much easier to please your equivalent corporate masters.

Greetings!

Welcome to the debut of my own blog! I've listed several links for your browsing convenience but please feel free to offer suggestions.

I wish to thank you all for helping those in the reality-based world assault the media catapults that persist in bombarding us with their cock-and-bull burlesques. There was a time when the onslaught of that cyclopean monster known as the boob-tube was kept in check by an order of journalists. Alas, even our old vain lords we once relied on to defend the truth (or at least offer its enemies a token joust) are being turned out of their sacred fiefdoms and savaged by the Duke of Murdoch. On the heels of this treacherous Trojan horse, Sir Rupert's merging armies have stormed the barricades and surrounded the castle. There the Gray Lady sits besieged in her tower wailing for her Wall Street knights to come to her rescue.

Call me heartless. I shall shed no tears upon her burial. Instead I will splash through Brooks and dance on Kristol.

"Propaganda is a method or medium used by organized peoples to convert others against their will"- Marcus Garvey

And sadly it works. It is hard to fault our fellow citizens for being clueless given the narrow, biased spectrum our corporate barons provide us in terms of vital news and information. As a nation, we were far more savvy before the advent of broadcast networks. Back then the radio airwaves, much like the internet (knock on wood), belonged to the public. In fact, even as late as 1937, the American people fervently rejected "the very notion of for-profit commercial broadcasting."

Which means that while we watch more U.S. papers either merge or go belly-up we cannot grow complacent, thinking that, at worst, we always have the internet. Not so long as the likes of Comcast are seeking to charge us more while restricting access. What I find no less disturbing is that despite the fact that both the Washington Post and the NYTimes have been widely denounced for their scandalous reporting and blatant cheer-leading for this disastrous Iraq invasion, some of our brightest voices seem unwillingly to stake out the web's virgin ground and conceive an alternative. Rather than bemoan the demise of our newsprint nobles and then deride the Huffington Post, they should be recruiting our out-of-work talent and taking up the gauntlet. It may take hard work, sacrifice and tears but this is a chance to start again, armed with a new set of principles. With a bit of luck, this time we might just nudge the public into getting it right.

That's all for now. Let me know what you all think.