terrorism

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated US law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher notes that New York Times military reporter Michael Gordon, "who contributed several false stories about Iraqi WMD in the run-up to the U.S. attack in Iraq," has been writing about Iran's alleged involvement in attacks against U.S. service members in Iraq. Gordon's latest article, "Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say," is "based solely on unnamed sources," notes Mitchell.

An article from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau also contradicts Gordon's New York Times piece. McClatchy reports that the Iraqi government "seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran." Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said the government had formed a committee to find "tangible information" about Iranian activities in Iraq, instead of relying on "information based on speculation." Al-Dabbagh also told Agence France-Press that there is no "hard evidence" of Iranian support of insurgents in Iraq.

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has seen this sort of poorly-sourced reporting before in the New York Times as part of the propaganda campaign that led America directly into the disastrous quagmire in Iraq.

A British county has been using an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2000 to spy on minors for petty crimes like using cigarettes and alcohol. The Staffordshire County Council in Britain's Midlands region has been using Britain's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) for a host of non-terrorism-related applications, like monitoring underage liquor and tobacco sales, recording the movements of farm animals and tracking counterfeit DVD sales. Brandon Cooke, Staffordshire County Council's Fraud and Community Safety Manager, defended the Council's use of surveillance under RIPA by saying the operations were crucial for "combatting antisocial behavior."

If they thought this was safe to breathe, what would it take for them to think something is dangerous?
A federal appeals court in Manhattan has ruled that Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cannot be held personally liable for false reassurances that she gave about the air quality in New York City following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. As we reported previously, reassurances from Whitman's EPA encouraged rescue workers to dig through the rubble, often without face masks or other respiratory protection, in their frantic search for survivors. Hundreds of firefighters and other rescue workers subsequently became disabled from "World Trade Center cough" linked to asbestos and other deadly dust caused by the collapse of New York's Twin Towers. In defense of her handling of the crisis, Whitman says that "Every statement I made was based on what experts, who had a great deal of experience in these things, conveyed to me." (Whitman now works as a spokesperson for the nuclear power industry, which is also safe according to their experts.)

The National Security Agency, once known for its skill in eavesdropping on the world's telephone calls, is adapting to the times by "focusing on widespread monitoring of e-mail messages and text messages, recording of Web browsing, and other forms of electronic data-mining, all done without court supervision," reports Declan McCullagh. "Taken together, those activities raise unique privacy and oversight concerns greater than those posed by large-scale monitoring of voice communications. ... If the reports are correct, what this transactional-data-dragnet amounts to is a rebuilding of the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program, which promised to do extensive warrantless data-mining to identify 'information signatures' that could identify criminals."

Want to earn up to $2.4 million to produce and distribute across Iraq 12 issues of a comic book designed to "highlight the professionalism of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) and to enhance the public perception of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) as a capable, well-trained, and professional fighting force"? Well, you'll have to compete with the Lincoln Group, the PR firm that previously placed U.S. propaganda in Iraqi newspapers. Last year, the "sole source contract for the 6th Brigade Comic Book went to the Lincoln Group," reports Sharon Weinberger. The comics seem to be a continuation of a project that the Center for Media and Democracy noted back in 2005, when U.S. PsyOps troops were working on "initial character and plot development" for the series. Everyone from the United Nations to the Business Software Alliance has used comics to target young audiences. Wired points out that the U.S. Army also distributes comics in the Philippines, to get an anti-terror, pro-miltiary message to the youth of the country's Sulu islands.

Refugee children from Darfur (International Rescue Committee photo)Corporate sponsors of this summer's Beijing Olympics Games are increasingly nervous. Steven Spielberg recently "withdrew as an artistic adviser for the Beijing Games' opening and closing ceremonies, citing China's ties to the Sudan government." Even athletes are getting in the act, with more than 50 joining "Team Darfur, an organization of past and present Olympians who have pledged to use the Games to highlight what they see as genocide in Darfur." An unnamed "major public relations firm was busy yesterday providing advice to Olympic sponsors and advertisers," reports the Wall Street Journal. "While the firm was telling marketers to 'keep quiet' on the issue if at all possible, it was also advising them to develop a position on Darfur. One executive at the firm says he is likely to tell marketers to also pay attention to internal dynamics at their companies, including employee opinions." Major Olympics sponsors include Coca-Cola, McDonald's, General Motors and Eastman Kodak.

Mitt RomneyMitt Romney has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, saying that if he continued it would "be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win" and that he cannot let his campaign "be a part of aiding a surrender to terror." Romney argued in a speech before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington that the war in Iraq is an important part of America's war on terrorism.

The Democratic think tank / advocacy group Third Way has been working with Senate Democrats to help sell a controversial measure granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies, reports Matt Renner. The measure "is the major sticking point over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that is currently stalled in the Senate." During a meeting with Senator Jay Rockefeller's legislative aide for military and national security issues, Third Way's Matt Bennett suggested "talking points to help make the case for telecom immunity." Bennett said, "We thought it would be a bad idea to allow these companies to be held legally liable for cooperating with the government ... you want to encourage the cooperation of not just the telecom industry, but all other industries in the future." Third Way would not disclose whether the group receives telecom funding, but some of its board members do have telecom ties. Reynold Levy, for example, formerly served as AT&T's senior officer in charge of government relations.

GlassmanJames Glassman, the nominee for Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, probably won't have much of an impact on how the United States presents itself to the rest of the world.

For one thing, he'll only have 11 months in the post. For another -- as his predecessor Karen Hughes proved -- putting shinier lipstick on the pig of U.S. foreign policy doesn't do much to assuage widespread anti-American sentiment. Still, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's January 30 hearing on Glassman's nomination provided some insight into Washington's evolving view of public diplomacy.