The secret campaign to undercount the ‘war on terror’ death toll in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Latin America
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How the Pentagon is hiding the dead
How the Pentagon is hiding the dead
In the name of ‘counting every casualty,’ the Pentagon is systematically undercounting deaths from the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘war on drugs,’ in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Latin America. Complicit in this great deception are some of the world’s most respected anti-war activists.
In this exclusive investigation, Insurge Intelligence reveals that a leading anti-war monitoring group, Iraq Body Count (IBC), is deeply embedded in the Western foreign policy establishment. IBC’s key advisers and researchers have received direct and indirect funding from US government propaganda agencies and Pentagon contractors. It is no surprise, then, that IBC-affiliated scholars promote narratives of conflict that serve violent US client-regimes and promote NATO counter-insurgency doctrines.
IBC has not only systematically underrepresented the Iraqi death toll, it has done so on the basis of demonstrably fraudulent attacks on standard scientific procedures. IBC affiliated scholars are actively applying sophisticated techniques of statistical manipulation to whitewash US complicity in violence in Afghanistan and Colombia.
Through dubious ideological alliances with US and British defense agencies, they are making misleading pseudoscience academically acceptable. Even leading medical journals are now proudly publishing their dubious statistical analyses that lend legitimacy to US militarism abroad.
This subordination of academic conflict research to the interests of the Pentagon sets a dangerous precedent: it permits the US government to control who counts the dead across conflicts involving US interests — all in the name of science and peace.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working
Effort by Japan to Stifle News Media Is Working
It was an unexpected act of protest that shook Japan’s carefully managed media world: Shigeaki Koga, a regular television commentator and fierce critic of the political establishment, abruptly departed from the scripted conversation during a live TV news program to announce that this would be his last day on the show because, as he put it, network executives had succumbed to political pressure for his removal.
“I have suffered intense bashing by the prime minister’s office,” Mr. Koga told his visibly flabbergasted host late last month, saying he had been removed as commentator because of critical statements he had made about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Later in the program, Mr. Koga held up a sign that read “I am not Abe,” a play on the slogan of solidarity for journalists slain in January at a French satirical newspaper.
The outburst created a public firestorm, and not only because of the spectacle of Mr. Koga, a dour-faced former top government official, seemingly throwing away his career as a television commentator in front of millions of viewers. His angry show of defiance also focused national attention on the right-leaning government’s increased strong-arming of the news media to reduce critical coverage.
Many journalists and political experts say the Abe government is trying to engineer a fundamental shift in the balance of power between his administration and the news media, using tactics to silence criticism that go beyond anything his predecessors tried and that have frustrated many journalists. These have included more aggressive complaints to the bosses of critical journalists and commentators like Mr. Koga, and more blatant retaliation against outlets that persist in faulting the administration. At the same time, Mr. Abe has tried to win over top media executives and noted journalists with private sushi lunches.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Limits of Propaganda
The Limits of Propaganda
As Paul Craig Roberts has recently reported, the US government is in the process of launching an all-out war on truth. Those who express views contrary to the party line out of Washington will be labeled a threat. Eventually they may find themselves carted to one of the concentration camps which Halliberton (Dick Cheney’s old company) has constructed for $385 million. But that may take a while. In the meantime, we can expect lots of other, less dramatic developments. Indeed, some of these are already happening. Here they are, listed in order of severity.
1. Self-censorship. Those who have previously tried to get the truth out no matter what become more reticent and prone to equivocation when reporting on “hot” issues.
2. Topic-avoidance. They start avoiding certain “hot” issues that they feel are most likely to get them into trouble.
3. Response to harassment. A few incidents of mild official harassment cause certain blogs to start watering down their content, or pulling down content in response to harassment.
4. Blacklisting. The officials start censoring content on a case-by-case basis, blocking or shutting down certain internet sites that they consider seditious.
5. Blocking communications. The officials start dealing with the “hard cases” of uncooperative individuals who remain, shutting down their communications by disabling their cell phones, shutting down internet access, and by imposing travel restrictions so that the “hard cases” are forced to remain in places where they can be watched.
6. Detention. Those found to be truly uncooperative, who try to circumvent the restrictions, are rounded up and shipped off to the above-mentioned camps.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Joe Oliver’s Budget Numbers Are Thoroughly Cooked
Joe Oliver’s Budget Numbers Are Thoroughly Cooked
That, or he’s been drinking his own Kool-Aid.
No wonder they’re spending $7.5 million in public money to advertise Joe Oliver’s budget. Bernie Madoff couldn’t have come up with a sneakier sell than this.
Still, no one should be surprised. This misbegotten government’s modus operandi is about much more than information control. It’s about soaring, jet-propelled skullduggery in a never-ending political campaign. It’s a power fantasy. It’s Steve’s way.
Armed with his narrative of convenience, Harper programs the electorate with fictions of prosperity, compassion and prudence. In the real world, he acts quite differently. There, he underfunds Coast Guard stations, veterans’ offices, First Nations tribal councils, railway inspections, scientific research and Employment Insurance processing.
And don’t forget health care — $36 billion in cuts over ten years and still no Health Accord. Next step? Transfer tax credits for health to the provinces (after all, they administer health don’t they?) and get the gum of medicare off Ottawa’s shoe for good — just like the founder of the National Citizens Coalition (once led by Steven Harper) advocated.
Numbers have a wonderfully elastic quality to them; like Harper cabinet ministers, they say what they’re told to say. Numbers are the favourite tool of fraudsters and politicians alike. One swindles money, the other swindles votes.
Here are some examples of rubber numbers from Harper’s past. When he wanted to buy F-35 fighter jets without a competitive bid process, he told Parliament the sticker price was $70 to $75 million per plane — in the crazed world of death machines, a bargain. The real price was 40 per cent higher and the Harper cabinet knew that back in 2010 long before it started lying — during an election, no less — about the actual costs to the tune of $10 billion.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Anti-Environmental Archives Launched on Earth Day
Anti-Environmental Archives Launched on Earth Day
If you haven’t already given your treehugger friends a big Earth Day hug today, please don’t forget! And I am of course more than happy to take all the Earth Day hugs I can get!
Why the hugs? Well Earth Day is reason enough I think, but an even better reason is because those working on the front lines to protect the environment deserve it. After all, environmentalists have been the target of ongoing attacks by corporations and special interest groups for much longer than Earth Day has been around.
If you want to see hard evidence of this history of attacks check out Polluter Watch’sfreshly launched Anti-Environmental Archives. Here you will find more than 27,000 documents, scanned and indexed into a searchable database, chronicling many of the efforts by corporations, think tanks, politicians and others, to quash environmental efforts to improve our planet and protect the species that inhabit it.
Take a scroll through the documents that constitute the Heartland Institute archive where, for instance you will find this Heartland Earth Day publication from 1996, making some pretty outrageous claims, like:
“The threat of ozone depletion is exaggerated” by well known climate denier and tobacco-expert-for-hire Fred Singer:
“Greenpeace claims chlorine poses a major threat to human health. Scientists disagree.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
READING I.F. STONE ON EARTH DAY: WHY WE STILL WON’T GET ANYWHERE UNLESS WE CONNECT THE DOTS
READING I.F. STONE ON EARTH DAY: WHY WE STILL WON’T GET ANYWHERE UNLESS WE CONNECT THE DOTS
One week ago, I was honoured to receive an “Izzy Award” for “outstanding achievement in independent media and journalism.” The annual award, which this year also went to David Sirota for his groundbreaking investigations into political corruption in the U.S. pension system, is named after the great muckraker I.F. Stone (“Izzy” to his friends).
In past years, the award has gone to people who do a far better job of embodying the legacy of Stone’s investigative reporting than I (Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill among them). But as I said at the ceremony at Ithaca College, I doubt the judges have given the honour to anyone whose grandparents would have been more thrilled. Without fail, my late grandfather Philip Klein would read I.F. 
Stone’s Weekly to my late grandmother Annie while she knitted some new creation.
In preparation for the ceremony, I read some of Stone’s environmental writing, and came across a piece that seems very worth sharing today. It’s the speech he gave on April 22, 1970—the very first Earth Day. Never one to mince words, Stone’s speech was titled “Con Games.”
Picture the scene: it’s the Sylvan Theater on the grounds of the National Monument in Washington, D.C. Millions have participated in Earth Day events across the country and thousands are now gathered on the National Mall to listen to music (including Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs) and hear rally speeches from political heavyweights.
It is in this joyous and self-congratulatory atmosphere that a curmudgeonly I.F. Stone, by now a full-fledged icon on the left, takes the stage. And he unapologetically rains on the parade, accusing Earth Day of providing cover for escalating war and calling for a movement willing to demand “enormous changes—psychological, military, and bureaucratic—to end the existing world system, a system of hatred, of anarchy, of murder, of war and pollution.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?
Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?
If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better? There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible. And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us. However, no amount of positive thinking is ever going to turn the sun into a block of wood or turn the moon into a block of cheese. Any good counselor will tell you that one of the first steps toward recovery is to stop being delusional and to come to grips with how bad things really are. When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called “hopium”. This is a difficult term to define, but the favorite definition of hopium that I have come across so far goes like this: “The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will turn out for the best.” In hundreds of articles, I have documented how the U.S. economy is mired in a long-term decline which is about to get a lot worse. But most Americans see things very differently. In fact, according to a brand new CNN/ORC poll, 52 percent of Americans describe the U.S. economy as “very” or “somewhat good”, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy will be in “good shape” a year from right now. But if you asked most of those people why they are so optimistic, they would probably mumble something about “Obama” or about how “we’re Americans and we always bounce back” or some other such gibberish. Well, it’s wonderful that so many people are feeling good and looking forward to the future, but are those beliefs rational?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Trustworthy Are U.S. & Western ‘News’ Media?
How Trustworthy Are U.S. & Western ‘News’ Media?
During the days of the Soviet Union, and in all dictatorial countries, the ‘news’ media were and are actually propaganda-media, which filter out information that the aristocracy (the people holding the real power, which in the Soviet Union were the Communist Party bosses) don’t want the public to know. Is the United States like that now?
I first came to the conclusion that the U.S. is a dictatorship in 2002, when I found proof that George W. Bush was lying to claim that he possessed proof that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) stockpiles, and when the U.S. and UK ’news’ media hid this crucial fact that their heads-of-state were lying. Bush and British Prime Minster Tony Blair were arguing in 2002 against sending IAEA inspectors back into Iraq in order to verify whether or not Saddam was rebuilding his WMD stockpiles; they alleged that they (Bush-Blair) already possessed proof that he was accumulating WMD.
Here is how I found out that they were lying about that: On Saturday 7 September 2002, the White House issued “Remarks by the President and Prime Minister Tony Blair in Photo Opportunity Camp David” (still googlable at here), with the following exchange between a journalist and Bush-Blair:
THE PRESIDENT: AP lady.
Q Mr. President, can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear — new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Latest Media Attempts To Suppress Oil Prices
The Latest Media Attempts To Suppress Oil Prices
It started with the Iranian supply overhang and has grown louder by the day in the media. While we were all supposed to be cowering in fear at the 1MB/D that would be coming from Iran any day, it emerged instead that not only is the deal in doubt, as the only real agreement was to agree to say there was an agreement, but any such additional supply won’t occur imminently. Far from it.
That sanctions will only be lifted through intensive verification is now the reality and this process will take time. And even that isn’t fully agreed upon as we now learn. Be that as it may, we wake up yet again with more evidence that the Cushing cries have all but died and now shifted to the forward curve which has flattened. This is the normal course after a price collapse as the market begins to gain confidence that it will rebalance soon.
Hedging by producers is now also playing a role as the financially strapped ones are pressuring prices to lock in whatever little profit they have, ahead of the October credit redetermination, in order to preserve liquidity. A further source of pressure is articles now seeping out at an increasing rate in the media regarding OPEC increasing production (which only appears as a response to much higher than anticipated demand, disproving what the same media asserted months ago). OPEC’s strategy will most likely be short-lived but now, if one can believe it, we’re supposed to buy the latest “worrying news” of rig counts increasing?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Bloggers’ Compared to ISIS During Congressional Hearing
‘Bloggers’ Compared to ISIS During Congressional Hearing
People who challenge establishment narratives online likened with terrorist organization
Bloggers, conspiracy theorists and people who challenge establishment narratives on the Internet were all likened to ISIS terrorists during a chilling Congressional hearing which took place yesterday.
The hearing, hosted by the House Foreign Relations Committee, was titled “Confronting Russia’s Weaponization of Information,” and accused Russian state broadcaster RT of weaponizing “conspiracy theories” to spread propaganda.
One of the speakers giving testimony was former RT host Liz Wahl, who made a public spectacle of quitting Russian state media last year in an incident stage-managed by neo-con James Kirchick, himself a former employee of Radio Free Europe – a state media outlet.
Remarking that the Internet provided a platform for “fringe voices and extremists,” Wahl characterized people who challenge establishment narratives as a “cult”.
“They mobilize and they feel they’re part of some enlightened fight against the establishment….they find a platform to voice their deranged views,” said Wahl.
Referring to comments made in January by US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) chief Andrew Lack, who characterized RT as a threat on the same level as ISIS and Boko Haram, Wahl said the comparison was justified.
“By using the Internet to mobilize people that feel displaced, that feel like they’ve been on the outskirts of society, and give them a place where they can find a sense of belonging, and maybe make a difference in their own way, and it’s a problem,” she said.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NBC’S CONDUCT IN ENGEL KIDNAPPING STORY IS MORE TROUBLING THAN THE BRIAN WILLIAMS SCANDAL
NBC’S CONDUCT IN ENGEL KIDNAPPING STORY IS MORE TROUBLING THAN THE BRIAN WILLIAMS SCANDAL
Throughout 2012, numerous American factions were pushing for U.S. intervention in Syria to bring down the regime of Bashar Assad, who throughout the War on Terror had helped the U.S. in all sorts of ways, including torturing people for them. But by then, Assad was viewed mostly as an ally of Iran, and deposing him would weaken Tehran, the overarching regional strategy of the U.S. and its allies. The prevailing narrative was thus created that those fighting against Assad were “moderate” and even pro-Western groups, with the leading one dubbed “the Free Syrian Army.”
Whether to intervene in Syria in alliance with or on behalf of the “Free Syrian Army” was a major debate in the West through the end of that year. Then-Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry was openly discussing ways for the U.S. to aid the rebels to bring about regime change. Sen. Joe Lieberman was saying: “I hope the international community and the U.S. will provide assistance to the Syrian Free Army in the various ways we can.” Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while ruling out direct military intervention, said: “[W]e have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future.”
A U.N. resolution calling for Assad to step down was supported by NATO states but vetoed by China and Russia, who were concerned that it would be depicted as a “regime change” endorsement to justify Western military intervention. By the following year, John Kerry, by then Obama’s secretary of state, was arguing that direct U.S. military action in Syria against Assad — a full-scale bombing campaign — was a moral and strategic imperative.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Reliable Is Reuters?
How Reliable Is Reuters?
People see their own nation, and foreign nations, through the filter of the press that’s available to them; so, if that filter is systematically distorting (distorting in ways that most of the others similarly do), then democracy cannot function, public opinion can be manipulated and warped; and wars might even start that shouldn’t — something Americans have tragically been experiencing lots of, during recent decades, such as when we invaded Iraq in 2003 (just to cite the most famous of many examples).
A typical Reuters ‘news’ report will be examined here, in order to determine how high the journalistic standards of the Reuters ‘news’ organization actually are. Reuters is an internationally respected ‘news’ organization, as reliable as any major ‘news’ organization in the U.S. and Europe — thus, it’s a good source to provide a case-example.
The particular report, dated Thursday, April 16th, is titled “Russia blames U.S. for security crises and turmoil in Ukraine.”
Its first sentence is a simple and true statement of fact:
“Top Russian officials accused the United States on Thursday of seeking political and military dominance and sought to put blame on the West for international security crises, including the conflict in east Ukraine.”
The second sentence is anything but factual: it is instead contemptuous of the Russian speakers and of what they said, yet offering no evidence that what they said was false, nor is it offering evidence in support of the report’s own contemptuous attitude toward them:
“Evoking Cold War-style rhetoric, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said a drive by the United States and its allies to bring Kiev closer to the West was a threat to Moscow and had forced it to react.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Huge Trouble Is Percolating Just Under The Surface Of The Global Economy
Huge Trouble Is Percolating Just Under The Surface Of The Global Economy
Did you know that the number of publicly traded companies declaring bankruptcy has reached a five year high? And did you know that Chinese exports are absolutely collapsing and that Chinese economic growth in 2014 was the weakest in over 20 years? Even though things may seem to be okay on the surface for the global economy at the moment, that does not mean that big trouble is not percolating just under the surface. On Wednesday, investors cheered as stocks soared to new highs, but almost all of the economic news coming in from around the planet has been bad. The credit rating on Greek debt has been slashed again, global economic trade is really slowing down, and many of the exact same financial patterns that we saw just before the crash of 2008 are repeating once again. All of this reminds me of the months leading up to the implosion of Lehman Brothers. Most people were feeling really good about things, but huge trouble was brewing just underneath the surface. Finally, one day we learned that Lehman Brothers had “suddenly” collapsed, and then all hell broke loose.
If the economy is actually “getting better” like we are being told by the establishment media, then why are so many big companies declaring bankruptcy? According to CNBC, the number of publicly traded companies declaring bankruptcy has hit a five year high…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The politicians and the manipulated crowd
The politicians and the manipulated crowd
Life and happiness in this life under any political system directly depend upon how much our individuality (versus the crowd) is retained and to what extent we throw off manipulated illusions.
The more we are immersed into the mass mind (the crowd), the more we are manipulated and the more dependent on authority (government) we become. Every thrust of this nebulous thing called society is calculated to drive us into the dependent, mindless herd with automatic response to authority.
Often, we ponder why we get closer and closer to total authoritarianism, regardless of whom we vote for. The simple, but unrecognizable, answer is that we are unconsciously manipulated. We are born into a system that prescribes our thought processes, beginning with the first words we learn. As we grow into adults, we reach a state of existence and mental evolvement where we are shackled with a subtle and invisible system of myth and counter-myth.
We can be and are incarcerated with our minds. We imagine happiness as we exist within the confines of our prescribed mental parameters. In fact, we live out our physical lives and never come close to freedom of choice. It is impossible to make choices when all options are prescribed by the system — options that channel us into the service of the state.
Not one American in a million discovers that he lives under deception and illusion and that he is victimized by the power of repeated words and phrases. Our lives and property are plundered simply because we don’t know that we don’t know. Our thought system enslaves us far more than would a conquering army.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Power of Lies
The Power of Lies
It is one of history’s ironies that the Lincoln Memorial is a sacred space for the Civil Rights Movement and the site of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Lincoln did not think blacks were the equals of whites. Lincoln’s plan was to send the blacks in America back to Africa, and if he had not been assassinated, returning blacks to Africa would likely have been his post-war policy.
As Thomas DiLorenzo and a number of non-court historians have conclusively established, Lincoln did not invade the Confederacy in order to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation did not occur until 1863 when opposition in the North to the war was rising despite Lincoln’s police state measures to silence opponents and newspapers. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure issued under Lincoln’s war powers. The proclamation provided for the emancipated slaves to be enrolled in the Union army replenishing its losses. It was also hoped that the proclamation would spread slave revolts in the South while southern white men were away at war and draw soldiers away from the fronts in order to protect their women and children. The intent was to hasten the defeat of the South before political opposition to Lincoln in the North grew stronger.
The Lincoln Memorial was built not because Lincoln “freed the slaves,” but because Lincoln saved the empire. As the Savior of the Empire, had Lincoln not been assassinated, he could have become emperor for life.
As Professor Thomas DiLorenzo writes: “Lincoln spent his entire political career attempting to use the powers of the state for the benefit of the moneyed corporate elite (the ‘one-percenters’ of his day), first in Illinois, and then in the North in general, through protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare for road, canal, and railroad corporations, and a national bank controlled by politicians like himself to fund it all.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
