War / Peace

CMD Opposes Anti-Muslim Intelligence Tools

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.

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

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

Sohaib Athar's Twitter photoA 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. 

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Build Settlements, Be Intransigent, Get Weaponry

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.

Iraq Troop "Withdrawal" Propaganda

Iraq American flagThe reported drawdown in American troops from Iraq has been portrayed as a "withdrawal of the U.S." from Iraq, but it is really just a pretend end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The removal of combat forces still leaves 50,000 so-called "military trainers" in the country, a huge number of American troops compared to eight years ago, when there weren't any in Iraq at all.

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