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Is The NYT a Failed Newspaper Sustained By CIA Subsidies?
Is The NYT a Failed Newspaper Sustained By CIA Subsidies?
The Times represents pro-Hillary dark forces militantly against Trump – denigrating him relentlessly, featuring advocacy, not real journalism.
Daily feature stories vilify him, going way beyond justifiable criticism. The self-styled newspaper of record mocks fair and balanced reporting, absent on its pages.
It supports US imperial madness, neoliberal harshness harming the nation’s most vulnerable, and police state targeting of nonbelievers.
It’s gone all-out to delegitimize Trump, failed to prevent his electoral triumph, now on a rampage to weaken him irreparably, ideally wanting him removed from office – a coup d’etat by any standard if happens.
Urging improved relations with Russia, both nations cooperating in combating terrorism, became his achilles heel.
The Times exploits his vulnerability on this issue relentlessly. On Wednesday, it published fake news, citing four unnamed, clearly anti-Trump, current and former US officials, claiming his campaign aides had “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” – allegations without evidence proving them.
In a Thursday editorial, it called on “Congress to investigate Mr. Trump’s (alleged) ties to Russia.”
No indication of anything out of the ordinary cited. Nothing about wrongdoing. Big business operates in many countries, dealing with governments at times required. It’s standard practice.
Yet Times editors allege Trump “crossed the line,” posturing about a situation presented as being akin to Watergate and Iran-Contra. Nothing suggests it.
The issue is solely about Trump defeating Times favorite Hillary and wanting better relations with Russia, hoping he and Vladimir Putin can get along well.
That’s the so-called “line” he’s accused of crossing. The Times wants US adversarial relations kept unchanged – risking eventual confrontation if responsible action doesn’t change things.
The Times: “(M)embers of Mr. Trump’s campaign and inner circle were in repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials.”
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New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose
OLIVER STONE’S LATEST film, “Snowden,” bills itself as a dramatized version of the life of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who revealed the global extent of U.S. surveillance capabilities.
Stone’s rendering of Snowden’s life combines facts with Hollywood invention, covering Snowden being discharged from the military after an injury in basic training, meeting his girlfriend, and training in the CIA with fictitious mentors (including Nicolas Cage’s character, most likely a composite of whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney). Snowden then goes undercover, only to see an op turn ugly; becomes a contractor for the CIA and NSA; and finally chooses to leave the intelligence community and disclose its vast surveillance apparatus, some of which he helped develop.
The movie hits key points in Snowden’s story, including his growing interest in constitutional law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, some of the U.S. surveillance programs he eventually unmasked, and parts of his furtive meetings in Hong Kong with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras (co-founders of The Intercept), as well as The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill.
There are doses of artistic license — for example, a Rubik’s Cube hiding the drive where he stored the documents, and Snowden’s CIA mentor spying on his girlfriend through her webcam. In hazier focus are the global questions his revelations raised, including the legal and moral implications of the U.S. government collecting data on foreigners and Americans with relative impunity, and the very real stories born of Snowden’s massive disclosures.
So here’s a retrospective of sorts for moviegoers and others interested in the journalism Edward Snowden made possible through his decision to become a whistleblower: In all, over 150 articles from 23 news organizations worldwide have incorporated documents provided by Snowden, and The Intercept and other outlets continue to mine the archive for stories of social and political significance.
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Six Facts From ‘Sudden Justice’, a New History of the Drone War
Six Facts From ‘Sudden Justice’, a New History of the Drone War
Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars, a new book by London-based investigative journalist Chris Woods, traces the intertwined technological, legal and political history of drones as they evolved on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the covert U.S. targeted killing campaign.
Woods is especially thorough on the issue of civilian casualties, arguing that in pursuit of the short-term goal of eliminating suspected terrorists or militants on the battlefield, both the military and CIA were slow to grasp the strategic damage done by civilian deaths. Woods also argues that the controversy over the number of civilians killed by drones stemmed from the United States’ elastic definition of who could be targeted, an issue not just in the CIA’s secret strikes, but also across the military.
U.S. drones have now fired on Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Syria, and are a feature of war that is here to stay. Their global use by the United States has set precedents “pushing hard at the boundaries of international law,” and the challenge, Woods writes, will be in “convincing others not to follow Washington’s own recent rulebook.”
The book is densely informative and includes interviews with drone operators and intelligence officials, a notable number of them on the record. Here are six new details that Woods unearthed in his reporting:
- No one is exactly sure who ordered the very first drone strike in Afghanistan, in October 2001. The failed attempt to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar was a collision of orders between the CIA, Air Force, Central Command and the White House. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dave Deptula says that when he saw the drone’s missile hit, he exclaimed, “Who the fuck did that?” (The book’s description of the first drone strike was recently excerpted in The Atlantic.)
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How The CIA Gave Al-Qaeda $1 Million, And What That Money Was Used For
How The CIA Gave Al-Qaeda $1 Million, And What That Money Was Used For
As the US and key stakeholders in the Middle East debate the best way to leverage the fight against ISIS in the service of a larger geopolitical agenda, a NY Times piece out today serves as a reminder (in case recent events haven’t made it clear enough) of just how pervasive examples of Western foreign policy blowback have become. As The Times reports, some $1 million in cash funneled to the Afghan government by the CIA ended up in the hands of al Qaeda who, after consulting with Bin Laden, promptly used the money to purchase weapons.
Via NY Times:
In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.
Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
