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AP Condemns Israeli Raid, Seizure of Broadcast Equipment

May 22, 2024

AP Condemns Israeli Raid, Seizure of Broadcast Equipment

Israeli authorities conducted a raid on the premises of The Associated Press, based in the southern town of Sderot, where they confiscated broadcasting equipment and a camera on Tuesday. Israeli officials justify their enforcement action, claiming infringements of the country’s recent ban on Al Jazeera, of which the AP is one among thousands of clients.

The Associated Press condemned the Israeli government’s decision emphatically, viewing it as a serious violation of their commitment to visual journalism. Lauren Easton, the Vice President of Corporate Communications at the AP lambasted the Israeli authorities stating, “The Associated Press decries in the strongest terms the actions of the Israeli government to shut down our longstanding live feed showing a view into Gaza and seize AP equipment.” She further explained that the shutdown did not relate to the content of the feed but amounted to an ill-advised use of the country’s novel foreign broadcaster law by Israeli officials. Easton called for the returned equipment and the immediate reinstatement of their live feed.

Before the Israeli Communications Ministry officials made their way into the AP premises and confiscated the broadcasting paraphernalia, which was authorized by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, the feed exhibited a generic view of northern Gaza.

The seized live shot regularly portrayed smoke billowing over the territory.

Unheeding a verbal directive given last week to terminate the live transmission, the AP chose to continue its broadcasts. The seizure of the equipment came as a subsequent enforcement action.

Utilizing the novel law, Israeli officials had already forced the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network to shutter its offices, seized their equipment, and placed a ban on their broadcasts on the 5th of May.

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, at nearly twice the average rate, report says

April 24, 2024

Europe is the fastest-warming continent, at nearly twice the average rate, report says

The latest 5-year averages show that temperatures in Europe are running 2.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, compared to 1.3 degrees higher globally.
Heat wave in Spain's Galicia Region

Residents walk along a footbridge as the sun sets during a heat wave in Ourense, Spain, on Aug. 8. Brais Lorenzo Couto / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

Europe is the fastest-warming continent and its temperatures are rising at roughly twice the global average, two top climate monitoring organizations reported Monday, warning of the consequences for human health, glacier melt and economic activity.

The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus, said in a joint report that the continent has the opportunity to develop targeted strategies to speed up the transition to renewable resources like wind, solar and hydroelectric power in response to the effects of climate change.

The continent generated 43% of its electricity from renewable resources last year, up from 36% the year before, the agencies say in their European State of the Climate report for last year. More energy in Europe was generated from renewables than from fossil fuels for the second year running.

The latest five-year averages show that temperatures in Europe are now running 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, compared to 1.3 degrees Celsius higher globally, the report says — just shy of the targets under the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Firefighters and volunteers work to extinguish a burning field during a wildfire in Saronida, Greece.
Firefighters and volunteers work to extinguish a burning field during a wildfire in Saronida, Greece, on July 17. Nick Paleologos / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

“Europe saw yet another year of increasing temperatures and intensifying climate extremes — including heat stress with record temperatures, wildfires, heat waves, glacier ice loss and lack of snowfall,” said Elisabeth Hamdouch, the deputy head of unit for Copernicus at the EU’s executive commission.

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection Searching Travelers’ Devices At An Alarming Rate According To Gov’t Watchdog

December 13, 2018

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Searching Travelers’ Devices At An Alarming Rate According To Gov’t Watchdog

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are searching the electronic devices of travelers at an alarmingly increasing rate a new watchdog report has found, Associated Press reported.

The government watchdog — the Office of the Inspector General for Homeland Security — found there were 29,000 devices searched at a port of entry out of 397 million travelers to the U.S. in the year 2017, up from 18,400 the year before from 390 million travelers.

The agency further found that several searches conducted by Customs and Border Protection officers were not properly documented, and the data was not properly secured as per protocol. Some of the devices that were searched included officers looking into cloud-related content, in violation of procedures. Apparently, while officers can search a device, they are not permitted to search what’s on a traveler’s cloud network. Homeland Security is the department that oversees the U.S.’s borders.

In addition, the report noted that in some cases, under a pilot program, officers are permitted to do what’s known as an “advanced” search which means a specially trained officer can download information. However, that system wasn’t maintained properly — software licensing wasn’t renewed — and some information copied to thumb drives was not deleted when it should have been, according to the government watchdog.

The watchdog recommended that the DHS maintain better documentation of searches, disable data connections before searches, keep equipment renewable and up-to-date, immediately delete data from thumb drives and develop a system to evaluate whether the pilot program works.

Earlier this year in October, Activist Post reported how this trend of “digital data papers please” was accelerating noting that New Zealand has now openly declared it as a policy.

Nicholas West writes:

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How the media encourages – and sustains – political warfare

October 28, 2018

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has been waging war against the American press by dismissing unfavorable reports as “fake news” and calling the media “the enemy of the American people.”

As a countermeasure, The Washington Post has publicly fact-checked every claim that Trump has labeled as fake. In August, The Boston Globe coordinated editorials from newspapers across the nation to push back against Trump’s attacks on the press. The Associated Press characterized this effort as the declaration of a “war of words” against Trump.

News organizations might frame themselves as the besieged party in this “war.” But what if they’re as much to blame as the president in this back-and-forth? And what if readers are to blame as well?

In an unpublished manuscript titled “The War of Words,” the late rhetorical theorist and cultural critic Kenneth Burke cast the media as agents of political warfare. In 2012, we found this manuscript in Burke’s papers and, after working closely with Burke’s family and the University of California Press, it will be published in October 2018.

In “The War of Words,” Burke urges readers to recognize the role they also play in sustaining polarization. He points to how seemingly innocuous features in a news story can actually compromise values readers might hold, whether it’s debating the issues further, finding points of consensus, and, ideally, avoiding war.

A book born out of the Cold War

In 1939 – just before Adolf Hitler invaded Poland – Burke wrote an influential essay, “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle,’” in which he outlined how Hitler had weaponized language to foment antipathy, scapegoat Jews and unite Germans against a common enemy.

After World War II ended and America’s leaders turned their attention to the Soviet Union, Burke saw some parallels to Hitler in the way language was being weaponized in the U.S.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Deadly Chinese Drones Now Lurk Above Mideast Battlefields

October 6, 2018

Deadly Chinese Drones Now Lurk Above Mideast Battlefields

Across the Middle East, countries banned from purchasing armed drones from the US due to a weapons embargo are increasingly gravitating towards Chinese defense manufacturers, according to a new report from the Associated Press, sales that “are helping expand Chinese influence across a region vital to American security interests.”

“The Chinese product now doesn’t lack technology, it only lacks market share,” said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military strategist and former lecturer at the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force University of Engineering. “And the United States restricting its arms exports is precisely what gives China a great opportunity.”

The sales are supporting China’s expansion across a region home to many strategic US military bases, as well as, future routes for Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“It’s a hedging strategy and the Chinese will look to benefit from that,” said Douglas Barrie, an aviation specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The AP notes that Chinese drones are more frequently conducting aerial operations in the skies above Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, and the UAE thanks to booming sales, with more than 30 China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics’s Cai Hong 4 (Rainbow 4, or CH-4) medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles worth $700 million being sold to countries since 2014.

Chinese arms exports have expanded 38% from 2008 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2017, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data.

Earlier this year, a spy satellite passing above southern Saudi Arabia snapped a pictured of US surveillance drones and Chinese-manufactured armed drones, parked side by side at an airfield.

According to the Center for the Study of the Drone at New York’s Bard College, both drones were being used in the war in Yemen, has emerged as a “sort of a testing ground for drones,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone.

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Has Trump Made It Easier to Spy on Journalists? Lawsuit Demands Answers.

November 30, 2017

National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina (2ndR), US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R) and bodyguards stand at the Department of Justice during an announcement about leaking of classified information on August 4, 2017 in Washington, DC.US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday condemned the 'staggering number' of leaks emanating from President Donald Trump's administration, as he vowed a crackdown on people revealing classified or sensitive national security information. / AFP PHOTO / Brendan Smialowski (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

PRESS FREEDOM GROUPS filed suit today to force the government to disclose more about how and when it obtains journalists’ communications, amid reports that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pursuing a record number of leak investigations.

The question the groups hope to answer is whether the Trump administration — openly hostile toward news media — has jettisoned or modified rules that limit the government’s ability to spy on journalists while they do their jobs.

Those rules were made more stringent by former President Barack Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder in 2014, after outcry when it was revealed that the administration had secretly obtained call records from the Associated Press and surveilled a Fox News reporter, naming him a co-conspirator in a national security leak case. Holder pledged that his department would go after journalists’ records in criminal cases only as a “last resort.”

Carrie DeCell, a staff attorney with Knight First Amendment Institute, which is bringing the suit along with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that “we have seen the DOJ media guidelines that Obama released, but we understand that Sessions is reconsidering those guidelines, and the way the government uses subpoenas against journalists.”

In August, Sessions announced that his department was reviewing the guidelines as part of a crackdown on leaks but did not specify what changes might be made. Sessions also told Congress this month that he has 27 investigations open into leaks of classified information to reporters – compared to just three last year. (Not all leaks are illegal, and many of the disclosures that Trump has publicly complained about would likely not be considered criminal.)

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Associated Press Associates Itself With War

October 26, 2017

Associated Press Associates Itself With War

Robert Burns and Matthew Pennington of the Associated Press tell us:

“U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is visiting the Korean Peninsula at a momentous juncture in the faltering effort to persuade Pyongyang to halt and dismantle its nuclear weapons program. Ominous questions hang in the air.”

Why momentous? North Korea has in the past been successfully so persuaded. And it’s subsequently been antagonized and threatened until it recommenced. This has gone on for decades, while it’s been 64 years since a peace treaty should have been signed that never has been. It’s been 14 years since North Korea resumed building nukes. It’s been ten grueling months of Trump’s regime during which nasty comments and threats have been passed back and forth across the Pacific schoolyard. What makes this moment momentous? Stay tuned. AP will explain.

“Is diplomacy failing? Is war approaching?”

Is the wind blowing? Are you kidding? Are diplomacy and war external forces that impose themselves on humanity? North Korea has been very clear and reasonable in its demands, even while screaming its threats and defiance. If the United States will stop moving missiles and planes and ships close to a country it once destroyed, and stop threatening to destroy it again, North Korea will discuss doing what Iraq and Libya did before they were attacked: disarming. The question is not “Is war approaching?” “Ominously!” The question is: will Trump and his subordinates continue to refuse to negotiate? Will they insist on war?

“Mattis’ second trip as Pentagon boss to Seoul will take place Friday, following his consultations with Asian partners on a unified approach to resolve the North Korea crisis. In the Philippines, his Japanese counterpart spoke darkly of an ‘unprecedented, critical and imminent’ threat posed by the North’s repeated demonstrations of its ability to launch an intercontinental-range missile, potentially armed with a nuclear warhead.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Stunning Reversal, DHS Says Russians Were Not Behind Attempted Wisconsin Vote Hacking

September 26, 2017

In Stunning Reversal, DHS Says Russians Were Not Behind Attempted Wisconsin Vote Hacking

Just in time for the weekend, the Associated Press reported on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security had notified 21 states earlier that day that their election systems had been targeted by malicious cyber actors. The states and DHS quickly jumped to the conclusion that Russia had ordered the cyberattacks, even though it was reported that the identity or identities of the perpetrators were inconclusive Yet, the news spread like wildfire after readers had been primed as reports of possible infiltartion of state election systems had circulated for nearly a year. Even so, for many states, the call Friday from the Department of Homeland Security was the first official confirmation that their election systems had, in fact, been targeted by hackers.

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states, the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems.

But in a stunning reversal – one which we doubt will put endless rumors of Russian cyberinterference to bed – the AP now reports that DHS has told Wisconsin that the Russian government was not involved in the cyber-targeting.

In an email to the state’s deputy elections administrator that was provided to reporters at the Wisconsin Elections Commission meeting on Tuesday, Homeland Security said that initial notice of Russian involvement was made in error. Also, as we noted at the time, the government did not originally assign blame to the Russians when news of the alleged “scanning” initially broke on Friday although most medias jumped at the opportunity to blame Putin.

Infuriated by the error, some state officials said that DHS should provide an expalanation for the errror, or at least issue an apology to state elections officials, who were understandbly unnerved by the news of Russian involvement.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Media Unmoored from Facts

April 8, 2016

A Media Unmoored from Facts

Exclusive: Mainstream U.S. journalism has completely lost its way, especially in dealing with foreign policy issues where bias now overwhelms any commitment to facts, a dangerous development, writes Robert Parry.

Several weeks ago, I received a phone call from legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who had seen one of my recent stories about Syria and wanted to commiserate over the state of modern journalism. Hersh’s primary question regarding reporters and editors at major news outlets these days was: “Do they care what the facts are?”

Hersh noted that in the past – in the 1970s when he worked at The New York Times – even executive editor Abe Rosenthal, who was a hard-line cold warrior with strong ideological biases, still wanted to know what was really going on.

Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.

Washington Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt.

My experience was similar at The Associated Press. Among the older editors, there was still a pride in getting the facts right – and not getting misled by some politician or spun by some government flack.

That journalistic code, however, no longer exists – at least not on foreign policy and national security issues. The major newspapers and TV networks are staffed largely by careerists who uncritically accept what they are fed by U.S. government officials or what they get from think-tank experts who are essentially in the pay of special interests.

For a variety of reasons – from the draconian staff cuts among foreign correspondents to the career fear of challenging some widely held “group think” – many journalists have simply become stenographers, taking down what the Important People say is true, not necessarily what is true.

It’s especially easy to go with the flow when writing about some demonized foreign leader. Then, no editor apparently expects anything approaching balance or objectivity, supposedly key principles of journalism.

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