Category Archives: propaganda

New Cover-up in Boston Bombing Saga—Blaming Moscow

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By Russ Baker

Source: WhoWhatWhy.com

Maybe you heard: the Russians are responsible for the Boston Marathon Bombing. At least indirectly.

That’s what the New York Times says. Had the Russians told the Americans everything they knew about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombing might have been averted by the FBI. The Times knows this because it was told so by an anonymous “senior American official” who got an advance look at a report from the “intelligence community.”

***

Anyone who still entertains the fantasy that America is a vigorous, healthy democracy with an honest and reliable security apparatus and an honest, competent, vigilant media need only consider this major news leak just published as a New York Times exclusive. It pretty much sums up the fundamental corruption of our institutions, the lack of accountability, and the deep-dyed complicity of the “finest” brand in American journalism.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

Just days before the first anniversary of the Boston bombing on April 15, some unnamed “senior American official” puts the blame for the bombing squarely on…Vladimir Putin.

It takes a keen understanding of certain members of the American media to know they will promote, without question, the latest “intelligence community” version of events. Which is that responsibility for the second largest “terror attack” after 9/11 should be pinned on the Russians, currently America’s bête noir over Ukraine.

Consider the cynical manipulation of public opinion involved here. The government permits, presumably authorizes, a high official—the Attorney General or someone of that status, perhaps even the Vice President—to leak confidential information for no apparent purpose beyond seeking to put a damper on legitimate inquiries into the behavior of the American government at the most fundamental level.

And the world’s vaunted “newspaper of record”—its brand largely based on insider access and the willingness of powerful figures to give it “hot stuff” in return for controlling public perceptions— shamelessly runs this leak with no attempt to question its timing or provenance.

Let’s look at what this article actually says. Here’s the opening paragraph:

The Russian government declined to provide the FBI with information about one of the Boston marathon bombing suspects two years before the attack that likely would have prompted more extensive scrutiny of the suspect, according to an inspector general’s review of how U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have thwarted the bombing.

And here’s the “takeaway”:

While the review largely exonerates the FBI, it does say that agents in the Boston area who investigated the Russian intelligence in 2011 could have conducted a few more interviews when they first examined the information.

The FBI agents also could have ordered turkey sandwiches instead of pastrami, which surely would have been a little healthier.

***

So, New York Times, should we trust the anonymous individual, or more importantly, the report that none of us have seen?

The report was produced by the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, which has responsibility for 17 separate agencies, and the inspectors general from the Department of Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now, the Times doesn’t offer any useful context on why these reviews took place, beyond a pro forma effort to respond to complaints from a handful of congressional members (see this and this). The article does not address the quality or credibility of this “self-investigation” and the overall track record of these investigators. Nor does it express undue interest in why the report appears to have been finished just in time for the anniversary of the bombing.

In our view, the article is one hundred percent “stovepiping.” That’s when claimed raw intelligence is transmitted directly to an end user without any attempt at scrutiny or skepticism. This is irresponsible journalism, and it is the kind of behavior (from The New York Times again) that smoothed the way for the U.S. to launch the Iraq war in 2003.

The Times doesn’t even point out how self-serving the report is, coming from an “intelligence community” that has been publicly criticized for its actions leading up to the Boston Marathon bombing and its behavior since. (For more on the dozens of major reasons not to trust anything the authorities say about the Boston Bombing, see this, this, and this. For perspective on the media’s cooperation with the FBI in essentially falsifying the Bureau’s record throughout its history, see this).

Now let’s consider the core substance of the new revelations:

[A]fter an initial investigation by the F.B.I., the Russians declined several requests for additional information about Mr. Tsarnaev….

Did the Times ask the Russians about this? Did they find out if the Russians actually “declined” several requests, or whether they ever got back to the FBI?

The anonymous official notes one specific piece of evidence that the Russians did not share until after the bombing: that intercepted telephone conversations between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother included discussions of Islamic jihad. The official speculates that this information might have given the FBI greater authority to conduct surveillance of the suspects.

However, the reality is that the Russians had already warned that Tamerlan was an Islamic radical, and it is not clear how this additional information would necessarily have provided anything truly substantive to add to a request for spying authority.

It’s also highly questionable, based in part on Edward Snowden’s revelations, whether the FBI or the NSA were actually adhering to such restrictions on spying anyway. Finally, it’s worth noting how truly remarkable it is that the Russians shared such intelligence at all. That they didn’t want to volunteer that they were capturing telephone calls is not that surprising, on the other hand.

Hiding the Real Story?

The Times does mention, almost in passing, what should have been the key point of an article: the timing of the “news” regarding the report:

It has not been made public, but members of Congress are scheduled to be briefed on it Thursday, and some of its findings are expected to be released before Tuesday, the first anniversary of the bombings.

This leak, which clears the FBI of all charges of incompetence or worse, comes just when the “American conversation” will again intensely focus on the nature of the “war on terror” and the trustworthiness of our vast secret state.

It also comes, most conveniently for the Bureau, at the precise moment when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense counsel has been seeking to learn the exact chronology and nature of the FBI’s interaction with the Tsarnaev family.

Months ago, we ran Peter Dale Scott’s rumination on whether the FBI could have recruited Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an informant, as it has done thousands of times before with other immigrants of a similar profile. Recently, the defense for Tamerlan’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, essentially claimed this was correct—that the Bureau at least attempted to recruit the older Tsarnaev. That has been cursorily reported by the major media, but no one seems to have connected the dots linking this claim to the new report that conveniently exonerates the FBI for failing to take action against the Tsarnaevs in time to stop the bombing.

A Curious Little Slip

As we have previously reported, it was the same duo of New York Times national security reporters, Schmidt and Schmitt, who had first, inadvertently it seems, raised a tremendously important question: when did the Tsarnaev family first come to the attention of the FBI?

The Russian warning to the US about Tamerlan Tsarnaev purportedly came in March 2011.

But according to an earlier article by Schmitt and Schmidt (along with a third reporter), the Bureau’s first contact with the Tsarnaevs came in January 2011. Though the Times did not make anything of this fact, it would be enormously consequential—because it would mean that the FBI was interacting with the Tsarnaevs two months before the Russians suggested the US take a close look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

If that was in error, the Times should have issued a correction. But it hasn’t. (Neither Schmidt nor Schmitt responded to WhoWhatWhy’s emails requesting comment.)

Interestingly, Schmidt and Schmitt, in subsequent articles, including the recent one, make no more mention of this early FBI contact. As it stands, the New York Times is on record of having asserted, again based on what sources told it, that the FBI was interacting with the Tsarnaevs before the Russians ever contacted it. If that early report was true, then by definition, the Inspector General’s report (and the leaked article about it) would be calculated parts of a cover-up about an FBI foul-up.

Conversely, if the early report was in error, then we need to know who provided it, or how they got that information wrong. Serious investigators know not to reject anomalies and “wrong” early reports as simply the result of haste or rumor without at least checking out the possibility that the early reports were right—but were later suppressed because they might cause problems to someone in power.

***

It is worth noting that the revelations in the new report—sure to be picked up by other media outlets that tend to repeat unquestioningly whatever the Times publishes—will be all the average American remembers about the FBI’s failure to prevent the Marathon bombing, and what may lie behind that failure.

Most members of the public will never know of the substantial indications that something is seriously wrong with what the government has put out about this affair. They will only recall that the FBI was somehow “cleared.” And they will probably remember that Putin’s Russia was somehow at fault.

In the final analysis, what we have just witnessed is the kind of arrant manipulation that shows the contempt of the “system” for the “people.” The “best” news organization gets another exclusive story. The US government gets to point its finger again at the Russian bogeyman. The FBI and the security apparatus get another free pass.

And the American people, once again, are fed pig slop and told to imagine sirloin.

Podcast Roundup

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4/2: Guillermo Jimenez has a conversation with Danny Benavides at Traces of Reality to discuss the drug war, the surveillance state, and the increasing use of violence by the Border Patrol among other topics:

http://tracesofreality.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Traces-of-Reality-Radio-2014.03.28-Danny-Benavides.mp3

4/2: At Red Ice Radio, host Henrik Palmgren interviews Mark Gray to discuss occult symbolism, synchronicity and geomancy in  connection to a number of current events. Mystical phenomenon or pattern recognition gone awry? You decide:

http://rediceradio.net/radio/2014/RIR-140402-markgray-hr1.mp3

4/3: Dave Lindorff of This Can’t Be Happening interviews Elena Teyer mother-in-law of Ibragim Todashev, the man executed by the FBI during their “investigation” of the Boston Bombing. They reveal many details about the case which were ignored by corporate news coverage:

http://media62.podbean.com/pb/ca9ac429bc5bf18a823cf98eb9a28f7a/533db613/data1/blogs18/661545/uploads/ThisCantBeHappening_040214.mp3

4/4: On the Meria Heller show, Meria and guest Catherine Austin Fitts deliver useful information on the banking system, investing on priorities and improving one’s lifestyle:

http://meria.net/ipod/040114.mp3

4/5: Computer security expert Conrad Jaeger joins host Greg Carlwood at The Higher Side Chats to talk about the deep web, cyber security and the surveillance state:

http://thehighersidechats.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/101-Deep-Web.mp3

The War Activists

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By David Swanson

Originally posted at ConsortiumNews.com

War activists, like peace activists, push for an agenda.  We don’t think of war activists as “activists” because they rotate in and out of government positions, receive huge amounts of funding, have access to big media, and get meetings with top officials just by asking — without having to generate a protest first.

They also display great contempt for the public and openly discuss ways to manipulate people through fear and nationalism — further shifting their image away from that of popular organizers. But war activists are not journalists, not researchers, not academics. They don’t inform or educate. They advocate. They just advocate for something that most of the time, and increasingly, nobody wants.

William Kristol and Robert Kagan and their organization, the Foreign Policy Initiative, stand out as exemplary war activists. They’ve modified their tone slightly since the days of the Project for the New American Century, an earlier war activist organization. They talk less about oil and more about human rights. But they insist on U.S. domination of the world. They find any success by anyone else in the world a threat to the United States.

And they demand an ever larger and more frequently used military, even if world domination can be achieved without it. War, for these war activists, is an end in itself. As was much more common in the 19th century, these agitators believe war brings strength and glory, builds character, and makes a nation a Super Power.

Kristol recently lamented U.S. public opposition to war. He does have cause for concern. The U.S. public is sick of wars, outraged by those in Iraq and Afghanistan, and insistent that new ones not be begun. In September, missile strikes into Syria were successfully opposed by public resistance. In February, a new bill to impose sanctions on Iran and commit the United States to joining in any Israeli-Iranian war was blocked by public pressure. The country and the world are turning against the drone wars.

The next logical step after ending wars and preventing wars would be to begin dismantling the infrastructure that generates pressure for wars. This hasn’t happened yet. During every NCAA basketball game the announcers thank U.S. troops for watching from 175 nations. Weapons sales are soaring. New nukes are being developed. NATO has expanded to the edge of Russia. But the possibility of change is in the air. A new peace activist group at WorldBeyondWar.org has begun pushing for war’s abolition.

Here’s Kristol panicking:

“A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed, events are right now doing the awakening. All that’s needed is the rallying. And the turnaround can be fast. Only 5 years after the end of the Vietnam war, and 15 years after our involvement there began in a big way, Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and Republican détente. He proposed confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding our military. It was said that the country was too war-weary, that it was too soon after Vietnam, for Reagan’s stern and challenging message. Yet Reagan won the election in 1980. And by 1990 an awakened America had won the Cold War.”

Here’s Kagan, who has worked for Hillary Clinton and whose wife Victoria Nuland has just been stirring up trouble in Ukraine as Assistant Secretary of State. This is from an article by Kagan much admired by President Barack Obama:

“As Yan Xuetong recently noted, ‘military strength underpins hegemony.’ Here the United States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there has been no decline in America’s relative military capacity — at least not yet.”

This pair is something of a good-cop/bad-cop team. Kristol bashes Obama for being a wimp and not fighting enough wars. Kagan reassures Obama that he can be master of the universe if he’ll only build up the military a bit more and maybe fight a couple more wars here and there.

The response from some Obama supporters has been to point out that their hero has been fighting lots of wars and killing lots of people, thank you very much. The response from some peace activists is to play to people’s selfishness with cries to bring the war dollars home. But humanitarian warriors are right to care about the world, even if they’re only pretending or badly misguided about how to help.

It’s OK to oppose wars both because they kill huge numbers of poor people far from our shores and because we could have used the money for schools and trains. But it’s important to add that for a small fraction of U.S. military spending we could ensure that the whole world had food and clean water and medicine. We could be the most beloved nation. I know that’s not the status the war activists are after. In fact, when people begin to grasp that possibility, war activism will be finished for good.

David Swanson is a peace pundit, antiwar author and talk radio host. He is syndicated by PeaceVoice. His books include War No More. He hosts Talk Nation Radio.

More about the Foreign Policy Initiative from Abby Martin, who was recently a target of their attacks:

Handy chart for conspiracy theorists (with new Boston Bombing updates)

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By Russ Baker

Originally posted at WhoWhatWhy

Lazy and imitative journalists and academics like to bandy around the term “conspiracy theory.” It is a one-size-fits-all putdown. But those who are unafraid of the real world know that conspiracies happen, and not only on House of Cards.

Conspiracies are prosecuted every day in courthouses throughout the land. As for outfits like the FBI and the CIA, journalism’s job is to continuously forget all the abuses and outright illegalities perpetrated over the years by these institutions, and to treat their claims with respect and trust.

The use of “conspiracy theory” is highly selective. When powerless people say that the CIA is doing something like illegally entering others’ computers, they are conspiracy theorists. But when Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says it, she’s…well, a senator condemning an illegal act by the Central Intelligence Agency.

***

Sometime back, we ran a piece here in response to an op-ed in the New York Times that poked fun at those of us who don’t trust everything the authorities say about the Boston Marathon bombing. (We’ve had a few more things to say on that subject, such as this and this.)

Now, we’re pleased to present a little graphic that our friends at SwayWhat put together to illustrate a point: 63 percent of Americans believe at least one thing that someone else has labeled a “conspiracy theory.” The question always is, who’s doing the labeling? Anything involving more than one person committing a crime and conspiring in secret to do it is a conspiracy. Therefore, anyone who posits that 19 hijackers were behind the 9/11 attack is in fact a “conspiracy theorist.”

Of course, what exercises The New York Times most is when ordinary citizens smell a conspiracy in some kind of governmental cover-up which the mainstream media has failed to explore. Despite evidence of previous U.S. government involvement in conspiracies and cover-ups galore (from Watergate to Iran-Contra), the mainstream media is predictably shocked when someone suggests it might be happening again.

Enjoy.

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Editor’s note: Check out Russ Baker’s site for an excellent two part expose on newly uncovered anomalies surrounding the Boston Bombing cover up:

Boston Bomber Carjacking Unravels. Part 1 of 2

Something Dead Wrong Here: Investigating the Mysterious and Central Character, “Danny.” Part 2 of 2

News Video Roundup

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1/27  Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change interviews Gerald Celente on a variety of topics including economic turmoil, bitcoin and revolution:

1/28 An informative primer from James Corbett on the use of propaganda, false dichotomies and “divide and conquer” tactics by the ruling elite to keep the public powerless:

1/28 Ben Swann on the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s lobbying efforts to create a Federal Ban on GMO labeling:

1/28 Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s exceptional response to Obama’s State of the Union address:

1/28 An inspiring scene from the underrated “musical documentary” The American Ruling Class (2005) posted by the filmmakers in memory of Pete Seeger:

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

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Chris Hedges’ regular columns for Truthdig.com are consistently informative and provocative, but his latest piece offers a particularly critical analysis of the current political moment in the United States. In the following excerpt he ruminates on a number of recent actions of our modern corporate totalitarian state:

Via Truthdig:

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

The corporate state, in our case, has used the law to quietly abolish the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, which were established to protect us from unwarranted intrusion by the government into our private lives. The loss of judicial and political representation and protection, part of the corporate coup d’état, means that we have no voice and no legal protection from the abuses of power. The recent ruling supporting the National Security Agency’s spying, handed down by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, is part of a very long and shameful list of judicial decisions that have repeatedly sacrificed our most cherished constitutional rights on the altar of national security since the attacks of 9/11. The courts and legislative bodies of the corporate state now routinely invert our most basic rights to justify corporate pillage and repression. They declare that massive and secret campaign donations—a form of legalized bribery—are protected speech under the First Amendment. They define corporate lobbying—under which corporations lavish funds on elected officials and write our legislation—as the people’s right to petition the government. And we can, according to new laws and legislation, be tortured or assassinated or locked up indefinitely by the military, be denied due process and be spied upon without warrants. Obsequious courtiers posing as journalists dutifully sanctify state power and amplify its falsehoods—MSNBC does this as slavishly as Fox News—while also filling our heads with the inanity of celebrity gossip and trivia. Our culture wars, which allow politicians and pundits to hyperventilate over nonsubstantive issues, mask a political system that has ceased to function. History, art, philosophy, intellectual inquiry, our past social and individual struggles for justice, the very world of ideas and culture, along with an understanding of what it means to live and participate in a functioning democracy, are thrust into black holes of forgetfulness.

The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, in his essential book “Democracy Incorporated,” calls our system of corporate governance “inverted totalitarianism,” which represents “the political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry.” It differs from classical forms of totalitarianism, which revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader; it finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. The corporate forces behind inverted totalitarianism do not, as classical totalitarian movements do, replace decaying structures with new structures. They instead purport to honor electoral politics, freedom of expression and the press, the right to privacy and the guarantees of law. But they so corrupt and manipulate electoral politics, the courts, the press and the essential levers of power as to make genuine democratic participation by the masses impossible. The U.S. Constitution has not been rewritten, but steadily emasculated through radical judicial and legislative interpretation. We have been left with a fictitious shell of democracy and a totalitarian core. And the anchor of this corporate totalitarianism is the unchecked power of our systems of internal security.

Our corporate totalitarian rulers deceive themselves as often as they deceive the public. Politics, for them, is little more than public relations. Lies are told not to achieve any discernable goal of public policy, but to protect the image of the state and its rulers. These lies have become a grotesque form of patriotism. The state’s ability through comprehensive surveillance to prevent outside inquiry into the exercise of power engenders a terrifying intellectual and moral sclerosis within the ruling elite. Absurd notions such as implanting “democracy” in Baghdad by force in order to spread it across the region or the idea that we can terrorize radical Islam across the Middle East into submission are no longer checked by reality, experience or factually based debate. Data and facts that do not fit into the whimsical theories of our political elites, generals and intelligence chiefs are ignored and hidden from public view. The ability of the citizenry to take self-corrective measures is effectively stymied. And in the end, as in all totalitarian systems, the citizens become the victims of government folly, monstrous lies, rampant corruption and state terror.

Read the full article here: http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Christmas Grab Bag

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Alison Nastasi reports on some of the more interesting ways Christmas is observed in cultures around the world at Flavorwire.com: http://flavorwire.com/428646/strange-christmas-traditions-around-the-world/view-all/

At Truth Jihad, host Kevin Barrett interviews Ethan Indigo Smith about the Christmas Conspiracy:

A sampling of Smith’s provocative thoughts on Christmas can be found here: http://news-beacon-ireland.info/?p=15247

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Daily Kos recently did a post on the background of one of my favorite Christmas songs, “Christmas in the Trenches“, while a Fanpop.com article from last year delivered a devastating take-down of one of my least favorite Christmas songs, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?“.

Consolidation of media ownership + corporate propaganda = (rather unsettling) comedy gold:

The Onion looks back at It’s a Wonderful Life:

A hilarious but deeply cynical Rankin/Bass-style musical number (NSFW):

Hope you all have a happy Wednesday!

Police Teargas Family’s Vigil for Handcuffed Teen Shot in the Back of the Head

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Suspect Death

Besides being one of the saddest headlines I’ve seen in awhile, it says a lot about the current state of law enforcement in America. This is the full story behind it as reported by Jean Paul Zodeaux of Collapse.com:

A vigil for the deceased Jesus Huerta yesterday went from peace to pandemonium last night in Durham, North Carolina after police, who showed up in full riot gear tear gassed those at the vigil, including the family of the deceased, and arresting six people.

A month ago, in North Carolina, Jesus Huerta, a teen aged boy living in Durham, North Carolina allegedly committed suicide sitting in the back of a police cruiser, after being searched, with hands cuffed behind his back, shooting himself in the head. It is as implausible a story as one can think of. Of course, a good writer will take the implausible and make it look plausible. Too bad the Chief of Police, Jose Lopez in Durham doesn’t have any writers on hand. Instead, what Chief Lopez did was wait a few weeks, issue a statement that Jesus Huerta was found slumped over and dead in the back of a patrol car after the officer who was driving the vehicle heard what he thought to be a gunshot:

“Our department continues to investigate the origin of the weapon but can confirm that it was not a departmental weapon and no officer fired a weapon during this incident.”

Not only lacking good enough writers to make the implausible seem plausible, Chief Lopez also appears to lack any valid public relations department. At a press conference a week ago, presumably for the purposes of calming the public, Lopez only made matters worse by stating the investigation was seeking to find whether Huerta “shot himself’ on purpose or if it was accidental. Understandably, much of the public was interested in an investigation of the police involved. Instead they got Chief Lopez.

Crazy things can happen, this much is understood, and even if we’re are to accept the story that a teenage boy who was searched by a police officer before handcuffed and placed in the back seat of his patrol car wound up producing a gun missed in the search and shot himself, it would take a person disconnected with reality to think that the reaction to such a story would be one of quiet acceptance. Of course people are going to be suspicious of the story, particularly since Jesus Huerta is not the first person who has died while in the custody of Durham Police in the last five months.

On July 27th of this year, police responding to reports of a stabbing, and surrounding Jose Ocampo who was holding a knife and refused to drop it, shot him four times in the chest. Ocampo did not speak English and did not understand the commands being given him. Of course, no matter what language you speak, it should be common sense that when you are surrounded by police while holding a knife you drop it, but it was once common sense that shooting a man four times in the chest because he’s not relinquishing a knife sounds an awful lot like excessive force.

According to a friend of Ocampo’s who was on the scene, that Ocampo was attempting to give the knife to police:

“You know the part you use to cut? He put his hand on that part and gave the other end to police.”

Still, and in today’s environment, it should be expected that police will find such an thing as an excuse to open fire, but people are getting quite tired of what is to now be expected, and any police officer, and certainly a police chief should understand this, and instead of responding with defiance and more dubious tactics of force such as the full force in riot gear at a vigil for a teenager who was shot in the head while in handcuffs in the back seat of a Durham police patrol car.

Chief Lopez’ strategy of intimidation and his clear lack of compassion for the Huerta family only makes the Durham police come off as more suspicious. That is no way to sell the implausible story they’re attempting to sell the public. What Lopez should have done was accept responsibility for his part in the death of Jesus Huerta, which would be to admit that there is an obvious break down of procedure and put the whole police department on review. This is not what Lopez did, and increasingly, as more police departments expect a suspicious public to buy implausible stories, this is not what is getting done.