War / Peace

Drones Program Shakeup: Increased Transparency or Increased Killings?

by Maxwell Abbott — May 10, 2013 - 7:46am

Topics: Pakistan, U.S. Government, War / Peace

This spring, three senior Obama Administration officials informed Daniel Klaidman of The Daily Beast that the CIA would no longer operate targeted killings with unmanned drones. All targeted killings using the controversial technology would from now on be conducted by the Department of Defense, which has its own drones program in place.

News

"Operation Tripwire" -- the FBI, the Private Sector, and the Monitoring of Occupy Wall Street

by Beau Hodai — December 31, 2012 - 1:15am

Topics: Activism, Banking, Terrorism, Corporations, Democracy, Human Rights, U.S. Government

Part One. Records obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy (DBA/CMD) through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicate that the FBI employed tactics under a "counter terrorism" initiative called "Operation Tripwire" in the monitoring of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists.

[Note: records referenced in this article were obtained by DBA/CMD on November 8, 2012, as a partial response to a FOIA request submitted by DBA/CMD to the FBI on June 7, 2012. DBA/CMD have been analyzing these incomplete materials along with other public records to tell a more complete story of the pattern of domestic surveillance that has been underway.]

News

Stars Earn Stripes, NBC's New "War-Musement" TV Show, Panned by Nobel Peace Laureates, Veterans, and Others

by Lisa Graves — August 14, 2012 - 12:04am

Topics: Propaganda, War / Peace

Nine winners of the Nobel prize for peace are calling on NBC to cancel its new TV series, "Stars Earn Stripes" (S-E-S).

The network unabashedly used its monopoly on the U.S. broadcast of the summer Olympic games to promote this new "reality" series, which debuted this week.

News

CMD Opposes Anti-Muslim Intelligence Tools

by Patrick Moran — October 17, 2011 - 7:01am

Topics: Terrorism, Democracy, Religion

The Center for Media and Democracy has signed onto a letter with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and 26 other civil and human rights groups urging Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) director Robert Mueller to reform intelligence tools that express an anti-Muslim bias.

The letter addresses FBI intelligence guidelines for law enforcement that purport to identify when a religious convert becomes a "Homegrown Islamic Extremist," but the list of "indicators" are behaviors protected by the First Amendment. The FBI has publicly declared that "strong religious beliefs should never be confused with violent extremism," but these guidelines contradict that message.

Guest Contributor

Koch's "Response" Agrees with Parts of Greenpeace Toxic Koch Report

by PRW Staff — August 31, 2011 - 8:16am

Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Terrorism, Environment

By John Deans of Greenpeace, August 26, 2011.

On August 25, 2011, Koch Industries issued a response to the Greenpeace report that CMD cross-posted last week, via KochFacts.com. Below is Greenpeace's August 26, 2011, counter-response to Koch. The original can be found here.

Op-Ed

Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at Risk of a Poison Gas Disaster

by PRW Staff — August 25, 2011 - 10:38am

Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Terrorism, Corporations, Energy, Environment, War / Peace

By Will Vickery

Op-Ed

Since 9/11, Koch Industries Has Fought Against Tougher Government Rules on Chemical Plants

by PRW Staff — August 25, 2011 - 10:36am

Topics: Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporations, Energy, Environment, War / Peace

By John Aloysius Farrell, Ben Wieder and Evan Bush

The Center for Media and Democracy is re-posting this article from John Aloysius Farrell, Ben Wieder, and Evan Bush at iWatch News, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, as part of our effort to track Koch Industries and ALEC via our ALECexposed.org project and to expose corporate spin. The original can be found here. For more, see Farrell's April 2011 article "Koch's web of influence" and Cole Goins' August 2011 article "What's it like living near a chemical plant?," both also on iWatch. To find out about chemical plants near you, download the spreadsheet of data gathered from the risk management plans that Koch files with the EPA.

Faster Than a Speeding Mainstream Media

by Anne Landman — May 2, 2011 - 4:16pm

A 33 year old Pakistani computer programmer who lives near Osama bin Laden's hideout unknowingly first broke the news about the U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound after he tweeted about hearing a helicopter hovering over the area at 1:00 a.m., saying it was an unusual event for his town, Abbottabad. Sohaib Athar subsequently tweeted that he heard a "huge window shaking bang" which turned out to be a U.S. helicopter crashing nearby. The copter apparently had mechanical difficulties and was intentionally blown up by its crew. Athar reported on the location of the crash site and posted a photo and video of bin Laden's compound. Athar describes himself on his Twitter page as "An IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops." His tweets about the incident began a full seven hours before the mainstream media broke the story of the raid, demonstrating how ordinary people can now offer real-time, blow-by-blow coverage of important gobal events far ahead of the mainstream media simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time and being connected via social media.

Main Source:

Washington Post National blog, May 2, 2011

Build Settlements, Be Intransigent, Get Weaponry

by Steve Horn — December 9, 2010 - 4:11pm

Topics: Social Justice, War / Peace

Op-ed by Steve Horn--On Dec. 9, 2010, Haaretz, one of Israel's top newspapers and news sources, reported that the United States would allocate some $205 million for something called an "Iron Dome anti-rocket system." As a reward, then, for the non-stop building of settlements, Israel was showered with weapons by the U.S., thanks mostly to the Pro-Israel lobby, which has remained a huge obstacle in solving the Israel-Palestine conflict from time immemorial.

Fox News' Fear Mongering

by Anne Landman — October 18, 2010 - 4:07pm

Fox News Channel turned a brief investigation of a flashlight found on the Brooklyn Bridge into a potential terrorist attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and then later dismissed the whole affair as though it didn't happen.