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March 2011Colombia Planned Leaks to Link Chavez, Correa to FARC: WikiLeaksPosted: Friday, March 25, 2011 By Adriaan Alsema March 25, 2011 - Colombia Reports The Uribe administration in 2008 carefully planned the leaking of information from computers of killed FARC commander Raul Reyes to link Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa to the rebel group, diplomatic cables released Wednesday by WikiLeaks. In a cable from March 27, 2008 -- little over three weeks after the computers were found -- then-U.S. ambassador to Bogota William Brownsfield informed Washington that the Colombian government would "selectively leak information from FARC computers connecting Presidents Chavez and Correa and their Governments to the FARC over the next 4-6 weeks." According to Brownfield, Bogota put Deputy Defense Minister Sergio Jaramillo in charge of the publicizing of information. In the 4-6 week interim, the GOC plans to selectively Then-Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos promised to give the U.S. the full set of information coming from the computers "on the condition that the USG not release any information publicly or for attribution without prior consultation with the GOC." Santos told the ambassador that Bogota planned to release all contents of the computers to an international organization after Interpol verified the content of the computers was not tampered. Interpol eventually reported that the computers had not been tampered after March 4 when the evidence entered a chain of custody. The International police organization did not guarantee the content could not have been tampered in the period between the March 1 bombing and the time the computers entered the chain of custody. Colombia used the information on the computers to accuse Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of financially supporting the FARC and Ecuadorean President of having received FARC funds for his presidential campaign in 2006 as leverage to the aggressive attitude of the two neighboring countries following the cross-border attack that killed Reyes. The erroneous handling of the computers made Colombian courts reject the laptops as evidence in cases against politicians and human rights workers who were accused of having ties to the FARC. The Colombian government never released the full content of the laptops to the public. Source: Colombia Reports America 'Trapped' by False Narratives Posted: Friday, March 25, 2011 By Robert Parry March 22, 2011 On a state visit to Chile on Monday, President Barack Obama deflected questions about U.S. support for the late Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship by warning against the risks of becoming “trapped by our history.” But a clear and present danger to the United States is that it is being trapped instead by false and misleading narratives. Full Article : consortiumnews.com Sanitizing the Bahraini Crackdown Posted: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 By Stephen Gowans March 23, 2011 - gowans.wordpress.com One of the many ways in which establishment media bias is evidenced is in the selection of the perspectives journalists adopt to relate the events they're reporting on. This shouldn't be surprising. As Canadian journalist and author Linda McQuaig points out, we would expect a newspaper owned by environmentalists to have an environmentalist point of view. We would expect a labor newspaper to report on the world from the perspective of labor. For the same reason, we should expect newspapers owned by US corporations with connections to the US foreign policy elite to present the world from perspectives congenial to corporate and US foreign policy interests. In major US media, US foreign affairs are always presented from Washington's perspective. This happens because the least expensive and most "patriotic" way to cover US foreign affairs is to assign reporters to the White House, State Department and Pentagon to record what US state officials say. In this way, what happens outside the United States is presented through the prism of official US state interests. Corporate-funded think-tanks make their "impartial experts" readily available to major media to hold forth on a variety of foreign policy topics. In this way, corporate perspectives—which almost always align with official US state perspectives-help define media coverage of foreign events. In establishment media, the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is overwhelmingly presented from the perspective of Israel (a US client and key apparatus of US foreign policy in Western Asia and North Africa.) Many people in the West sympathize with Israel's point of view, because it's the one they're exposed to most often. Coverage of the conflict in Libya between loyalist Tripoli (not a US client) and rebel Benghazi (on whose behalf the United States, France, Britain, Canada and Qatar have signed on as their air force) is presented from the rebel's vantage point. Rarely are the motivations, thinking, and perceptions of the Libyan government explored in any kind of non-judgmental way, although government pronouncements, especially those of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, are presented if they serve the purpose of backing up Washington's claim that he is insane, brutal and "a creature". And depiction of Gaddafi in unfavorable terms, offers a popular justification for military intervention in the country. On the other hand, Libyan rebels are presented in a favorable light. This is true too of Islamists who have fought against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are now taking part in the rebellion against Tripoli. That Islamic fighters can be demonized in one instance, and lionized in another, shows that what counts in major media coverage is whether Islamists fight for, or against, the United States. When they're fighting against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan they're insurgents, illegal combatants and terrorists. When they're fighting on the US side in Afghanistan against the Soviets, in Bosnia against the Serbs, and now in Libya against Gaddafi, they're freedom fighters, rebels, and pro-democracy activists. With questions being raised about Bahrain's brutal crackdown on its own pro-democracy movement, and Washington's silence, the New York Times' Ethan Bronner has weighed in on Washington's side with an article from the Kalifah regime's perspective: "Crackdown Was Only Option, Bahrain Sunnis Say" (March 20, 2011). As far as I know neither the New York Times, nor any other Western newspaper, has run an article with a headline like "Crackdown Was Only Option, Libyan Government Says". Lest anyone get it into their head that Bahrain's deadly Saudi and UAE-assisted suppression of the Gulf state's pro-democracy movement is deplorable, Bronner — acting as de facto PR representative of the Khalifa monarchy — explains: "To many around the world, the events of the past week — the arrival of 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and other neighbors, the declaration of martial law, the forceful clearing out of Pearl Square, the military takeover of the main hospital and then the spiteful tearing down of the Pearl monument itself — seem like the brutal work of a desperate autocracy. "But for Sunnis, who make up about a third of the country's citizenry but hold the main levers of power, it was the only choice of a country facing a rising tide of chaos that imperiled its livelihood and future." Bronner personalizes the story through Atif Abdulmalik, a US-educated investment banker who was initially supportive of the pro-democracy movement, but changed his mind when the "mainly Shiite demonstrators moved beyond Pearl Square, taking over areas leading to the financial and diplomatic districts of the capital." Abdulmalik said he sympathized "with many of the demands of the demonstrators. But no country would allow the takeover of its financial district. The economic future of the country was at stake." Bronner allows Abdulmalik to conclude with the article's apparent take-away message: "What happened this week, as sad as it is, is good." To be sure, Bronner's article isn't a blatant pro-Bahraini puff piece. There's a lot in it that is critical of the Bahraini government. But that it provides some evidence of balance is what makes it effective. A Bahraini supportive of his government's position is allowed to tell his story in a way that treats his views as legitimate and rational. In Bronner's hands, the views of Atif Abdulmalik—which are really the views of the Khalifa family–are easy to sympathize with. A former TV journalist once told me that the way to present your own views under the guise of impartially reporting the facts is to find someone who agrees with you, and then build a story around that person's point of view. That way you can craft a story to meet your own agenda, while maintaining the illusion that you don't have one. Bronner's defenders will say the reporter is only presenting the facts. But there is always an infinitude of facts a reporter can present, and only a very limited space in which to present them. Distortion, which self-respecting journalists rarely do, isn't half as important as selection, which self-respecting journalists always do. The facts that Bronner chooses to relate, and the ones he chooses to ignore, speak volumes about his political position and that of the newspaper he writes for. It is a bias the newspaper's ownership structure, and its connections to the US foreign policy elite, mandate. It is little wonder, then, that Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, and source of considerable wealth for the US corporate and financial elite, should get favorable PR treatment in the United States' newspaper of record. Little wonder too that Libya, which is neither a site for the US military nor particularly accommodating to US bankers and corporate interests, should have its story told from the perspective of its enemies. Source: gowans.wordpress.com Britain, France and US prepare for air strikes against Gaddafi Posted: Friday, March 18, 2011 ¤ 'They're leaving us to die': Mayor of town near nuclear plant ¤ Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume ¤ U.S. Officials Alarmed By Japanese Handling of Nuclear Crisis ¤ U.S. urges citizens within 80 km of Japan plant leave ¤ Shock Begins To Turn To Anger In Japan ¤ Radiation Found on NBC News Crew, Lester Holt ¤ Helicopters dump water to cool reactor in Japan ¤ UN OKs 'all necessary measures,' no-fly zone to protect Libyans ¤ Britain, France and US prepare for air strikes against Gaddafi ¤ Libya and the World Left ¤ Young Leaders of Egypt's Revolt Snub Clinton in Cairo ¤ Bahrain forces overrun protest camp, six dead ¤ Sarkozy election campaign was funded by Libya — Gaddafi son ¤ Pro-Gaddafi forces close in on Benghazi ¤ Two Benghazi tribes support Gaddafi-Libyan TV ¤ 'Middle East'/North Africa Protests — Egypt ¤ Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media ¤ Wikileaks Lifts The Lid on India's Use of Systematic Torture in Kashmir ¤ Our Time of Universal Deceit Needs An Orwell ¤ The beacon that is Israel: self-serving by delay and denial ¤ NATO and US should stop their operations in Afghanistan: Karzai ¤ Moody's rates Irish banks as 'junk' ¤ Japan says may seek direct U.S. military help to cool reactors ¤ "The Situation is Japan is Dire. It's Grave" ¤ Japan's nuclear crisis is 'uncharted territory' ¤ The Japanese Disasters ¤ Japan earthquake: Meltdown alert at Fukushima reactor ¤ Japan reactor fire releases radiation ¤ Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe ¤ Monster aftershock could strike within days ¤ Fukushima Reactor Remains Intact After Hydrogen Explosion, Official Says ¤ Japan earthquake: Footage of moment tsunami hit ¤ 275 new tremors hit quake-torn Japan - missing 10,000 ¤ Another reactor at Fukushima nuke plant loses cooling functions ¤ US experts fear 'Chernobyl-like' crisis for Japan ¤ Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water ¤ Nervous Japan Quake Evacuees Scanned for Radiation Exposure ¤ Twitter ordered to give WikiLeaks data to US ¤ PJ Crowley: Bradley Manning's treatment by US 'stupid' ¤ Snap Analysis - Japan may have hours to prevent nuclear meltdown ¤ The town that drowned: 10,000 people are missing ¤ Japan Quake: Fears For '10,000 Missing' ¤ Damage from mega quake increasing, death toll feared to top 1,800 ¤ Japan finds radioactive material leak at quake-hit Fukushima plant ¤ 'No health hazard' as evacuation call goes out ¤ Record quake unleashes tsunami on Japan ¤ Tsunami hits Japan after massive quake ¤ Quake brings modern Tokyo to a standstill ¤ Over 1,000 feared killed as megaquake triggers tsunami, fires ¤ Cruise ship and bullet train go missing... ¤ Japan to release of radioactive vapor at nuke plant ¤ Hundreds killed in tsunami after 8.9 Japan quake ¤ US widens tsunami warning to most of Pacific ¤ Advice From a War Criminal: The Grievous Return of Henry Kissinger ¤ Obama's New Gitmo Policy Is A Lot Like Bush's Old Policy ¤ An American Atrocity in Afghanistan ¤ Under Obama, Better to Commit a War Crime Than Expose One ¤ WikiLeaks cables recount how U.S. pressured allies ¤ WikiLeaks Analysis Suggests Hundreds of Thousands of Unrecorded Iraqi Deaths ¤ Haiti celebrates its first post-quake Carnival ¤ 21 airlines fined for fixing passenger, cargo fees ¤ Iran says its warships have left the Mediterranean ¤ Bradley Manning and the stench of US hypocrisy |
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