TYT - Fox News Busted For War On Christmas Hypocrisy

TYT - Battle over Snowden on CNN between Greenwald and Toobin

TYT - Middle Class Benefits Targeted By Washington Post

Worried About a Tad Bit of Overexposure

Trey Smith

A revealing page-one article in [Thursday's] New York Times (“Tap on Merkel Provides Peek a Vast Spy Net”) reports on how the NSA’s global spying program, dating back at least to early in the Bush/Cheney administration, was vacuuming up the phone conversations (and no doubt later the internet communications) of not just leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but opposition leader Merkel before her party took power in Germany.

As the Times puts it, the phone monitoring, which actually dates back to the Cold War Era before 1990, “is hardly limited to the 35 leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties.”

That’s pretty far-reaching, and the paper says that it has learned, primarily courtesy of revelations from the documents released by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the spying went even beyond that, to target up-and-coming potential leaders of so-called “friendly states.”

But the Times buys without question the explanation offered by professional liar James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence and ultimate head of the embattled National Security Agency, that the NSA’s spying on leaders and potential was and is and has been, first of all, well known to presidents, and secondly that its purpose was simply to see “if what they’re saying gels with what’s actually going on, as well as how other countries’ policies “impact us across a whole range of issues.”

That’s pretty broad. The first explanation is really a euphemistic way of saying the NSA wants to see if American’s purported friends and allies are lying. The second is a euphemistic way of saying that the US is spying to gain inside information about its allies’ political goals and strategies, and probably their negotiating positions on things like trade treaties, international regulations, etc.

What the Times does not ask in its entire report on this spying program on leaders and potential leaders is whether there could be another motive for this extraordinary spying campaign on leaders: blackmail.

How else to explain the remarkably tepid response from the leaders who are the victims of this spying by the NSA on their private communications? How else to explain Europe’s unwillingness to grant sanctuary to Snowden, who after all has allowed them to know about the perfidy of the US? How else to explain Europe’s supine acquiescence to the US in its criminal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and its unquestioning support of Israel?

Nor does the Times ask the next obvious question, which is: If the NSA is spying on foreign leaders so widely and thoroughly, actually recording the conversations, not just the numbers being called, and submitting the recordings to keyword searches, isn’t it likely doing the same thing to leaders in the US? And if it is possible to imagine that the NSA is enabling the blackmailing of foreign leaders, isn’t it equally possible that the same thing is going on domestically?

Following that line of thinking, we should next ponder who would be doing the blackmailing? There has been some suggestion from the White House that the president “didn’t know” about the spying on Merkel and other leaders. Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander have denied that the president was kept in the dark about its spying on leaders of friendly nations, but both men are known to be liars regarding the NSA’s actions. Clapper indeed was forced to admit that he lied to Congress -- and right there we have prima facie evidence that the NSA has been blackmailing members of Congress, or at least that the members of Congress think they are vulnerable to blackmail. This is because despite Clapper’s outrageous offense of lying to the Congress about his agency’s massive spying program, not one member of either Senate or House, or of the two Congressional Intelligence Committees, has called for a contempt resolution against him.


How can that be? Members of Congress routinely cite or threaten to cite sports figures for contempt of Congress for lying to senators or representatives about their steroid use, and yet when the head of the nation’s spying organization network lies about an unprecedentedly huge spying operation, they just let it pass?

There has to be a reason for such cowardice in the face of such an institutional insult.
~ from Is NSA Spying Really About Blackmail? by Dave Lindorff ~

Leave it to a journalist like Dave Lindorff to ask some of the obvious question unasked by the mainstream media. Come to think of it, I raised similar questions about members of Congress awhile back too!

It shouldn't take a brainiac to figure out that something is going on that either we aren't being told about or the mainstream media is not looking into. While it is readily apparent that certain elements within the US government want to have a leg up in every negotiation -- insider information -- it should also be readily apparent that this kind of information provides the perfect scenario for blackmail and, concurrently, intimidation.

This is a point I have raised on more than one occasion. If the NSA is hoovering up information willy nilly, it stands to reason that some of that information pertains to members of the elite. Not only do US spy agencies have the capability to figure out who you and I text or skype with, but they must also know what members of Congress are discussing with staff and amongst themselves PLUS they must know what Wall Street is up to at any given moment.

For all we know, the NSA may be spying on the US Supreme Court! What's next? Might they also be tapping into the thoughts of God?

BP - How the 'Know Nothing' Press Extended the Shutdown

Three Cheers For Alcohol!

Trey Smith

Investigative reporting ain't what it use to be. Today's mainstream media tends to go for the sensational story that often ends up being more misleading than helpful. Here's an example of what I'm referring to: Is Hand Sanitizer Toxic?.

You squirt it on your hands as you catch the office elevator for lunch, and then again on your way home. You have bottles in your bathroom and kitchen, too -- and you use them often.

You think (hope?) that your hand-sanitizer habit is protecting you from colds and flu and gross bugaboos like E. coli. But even if it isn't, it's harmless. Right?

The rumor: Hand sanitizer is not only ineffective, it's toxic

Word on the street has it that despite how clean your hands feel after using a hand sanitizer, they're actually still dirty -- and using sanitizers might actually lower your resistance to disease. Is it true?!

The verdict: Soap and water beats sanitizers hands-down

When it comes to safety and effectiveness, the main concern with hand sanitizers is triclosan, which is the main antibacterial ingredient in nonalcoholic hand sanitizers.

"There's no good evidence that triclosan-containing products have a benefit," says Allison Aiello, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan. In Europe and the United States, hospitals won't even use them, she notes; it's thought that they don't reduce infections or illness.

So, what's the problem here? The two leading brands of hand sanitizer in the US -- Purell and Germ-X -- are alcohol-based and do not contain triclosan. The issue, it would seem, concerns generic and knockoff products (ones you might find in a discount store). This point is not emphasized in the story at all.

As it turns out, alcohol-based hand sanitizers ARE effective at killing germs. This is what is used in hospitals across the country. But the average consumer who reads or hears this dire-sounding report most likely will come away with the idea that all hand sanitizers are potentially dangerous. In a world bombarded with bacteria and viruses, that incorrect message could lead to more illness, not less.

The Whole Point Is to Be Adversarial

Trey Smith

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.
~ from Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the "Pathetic" American Media by Lisa O'Carroll ~

Hersh has it soo right. The mainstream media has become so lazy and pathetic that we should scrap the whole enterprise and start over. The whole point of journalism is to be adversarial to government dictates. Governments lie and so you never take what a government official says at face value. You assume that the statement is false until you can prove that its true...or not.

The mainstream media has committed the same sin as too much of organized labor. The higher ups have gotten so use to schmoozing with government leaders that they don't want to piss them off and lose their access to the DC in crowd. And what is the best way to avoid pissing them off? Serving as their lapdogs!

Come On! Just Tell It Like It Is

Trey Smith

A judge on the secret surveillance court was so disturbed by the National Security Agency's repeated violations of privacy restrictions that he questioned the viability of its bulk phone records collection, according to newly declassified surveillance documents reveal.

Judge Reggie Walton, now the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court, imposed a significant and previously undisclosed restriction on the NSA's ability to access its bulk databases of phone records after finding that the agency repeatedly violated privacy protections.

The documents, mostly from 2009 and declassified Tuesday, describe what Walton said were "thousands" of American phone numbers improperly accessed by government counterterrorism analysts.

They also indicate that US government officials, including NSA director Keith Alexander, gave misleading statements to the court about how they carried out that surveillance. (emphasis mine)
~ from NSA Violations Led Judge to Consider Viability of Surveillance Program by Spencer Ackerman ~

Come on, folks! Must we go through this same worn out charade every time we learn about one of these episodes. To mislead means to be deceitful. Put into common language, this indicates that government officials, including Gen. Alexander, were less than truthful or...drum roll please...THEY LIED. They told falsehoods.

It is interesting that, in almost all other areas of reporting, if somebody is thought to be saying dishonest things, the media is quick to point out that the person is lying. But when it comes to the realm of politics and government officials, reporters and commentators bend over backwards to avoid labeling a statement or testimony as dishonest. They will write "less than completely truthful" or "mislead." Sometimes, while labeling a statement as less than honest, the mainstream media is quick to point out that the offender merely was "mistaken," "confused" or "out of the loop."

Take off the kid gloves already!  That politicians and government officials don't always tell the truth isn't that shocking.

Gone From the Headlines and All But Forgotten

Trey Smith

There is nothing like the prospects of war to scrub the nation's headlines of uncomfortable subject matter. For the better part of this summer, the NSA and the ubiquitous mass surveillance programs were the lead story more days than not. A crescendo was building for a major confrontation between the White House and Congress. And then, in a seemingly blink of an eye, the NSA story basically disappeared.

Today, I perused several major news sites. Almost none of them -- save for The Guardian and even their coverage was far down the page -- featured even one news report or commentary on spygate. It's as if this once mucho important story is no longer important at all.

This is not to suggest the Syrian "situation" solely was conjured up to direct the public's attention elsewhere. But it should go without saying that the timing of this "situation" couldn't have been more fortuitous for the Obama administration and other backers of the mass surveillance programs. While polls repeatedly have shown that the American public does not agree with the Obama administration's assessment and strategy re Syria, this subject has replaced the NSA both in the mainstream media and in general conversation.

Americans tend to exhibit a short attention span -- the mainstream media's attention span is even shorter -- and so I think Team Obama is hoping to milk the Syrian "situation" for as long as possible in the hopes that the NSA story can be buried once and for all. This notion is buttressed by the fact that a) Obama decided to "consult" with Congress before pushing the button and b) he didn't call Congress back to Washington sooner to deal with this "grave" issue. By waiting for Congress to reconvene September 9 as previously scheduled, the Syrian "situation" will be predominate the headlines for the next week or more.

The only bug in this strategy is Glenn Greenwald. If he breaks another major NSA-related story this week, then Syria and the NSA will duke it out for top billing, though I am confident the subservient US mainstream media will follow Obama's lead to bury the latter.

The Sky Is (Kinda, Sort Of) Falling

Trey Smith

At a bit past 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday evening, the top stories on CNN.com happened to include the following:

• A-Rod Suspended, Can Keep Playing During Appeal
• Sources: Al Qaeda Attack Plan Nearly Set
• 11 Jailbreaks Linked to Al Qaeda Plot?
• 50 Cent Enters Not Guilty Plea
• Johnny Football's Offseason Craziness
• Beauty Queen Arrested in Bomb Case
• Spelling Error Costs Boy on "Jeopardy"
• Neil Patrick Harris: "I Was Goosed"
• You Should Swim With Sharks Here

CNN, always calm and even-handed in matters of national security and terrorism, was kind enough to pad their reports of imminent national annihilation between enough syrupy goo to send the Fluffernutter people running for their therapists...but there it is all the same: The End Of The World, Again.

It has been like this for days, on all the networks and above the fold of every newspaper: ZOMG SKY FALLING TAKE APPROPRIATE PRECAUTIONS NO FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE ZOMG.

And it is all very familiar, actually. Take this short, vapid bit from the Associated Press, also delivered on Monday evening:

Two officials say a secret message that was intercepted between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen led to the shutdown of U.S. embassies.

A U.S. intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat said al-Zawahri's message was picked up several weeks ago and appeared to initially target Yemeni interests.

The intelligence official said the message was sent to Nasir al Wuhayshi, the head of the terror network's organization, based in Yemen, that is known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.

Right.

Two officials, names not provided, and a message from al-Zawahri, details not provided. Never mind the fact that I've lost count of the number of times we were told al-Zawahri was dead; it was certain in 2006 until it wasn't, and again in 2008, and in the years before and since, I'm pretty sure he died more times than The Cat That Came Back.

So we're back to this crap again.

Forgive my crashing cynicism, but I still have a huge hangover from the days when Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or even George Dubya himself would sling impending-doom terror alerts whenever a friend of the administration got indicted, the stock market dropped more than a few points, or anything else happened that required a big, juicy CNN banner (accompanied by appropriately dramatic music) to make everyone look away...and here we are, right in the middle of a national conversation about whether we're all comfortable about the degree to which the government can track us like tagged whales.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but seriously folks: talk about timing, right?
~ from You Are, In Fact, Being Watched by William Rivers Pitt ~

In case you missed it, there is an imminent threat of doom from al-Qaida. They could strike at ay given moment and we're not exactly sure where. The situation is so dire that President Obama decided to keep his appointment with Jay Leno by appearing on The Tonight Show Tuesday night!

Say what?

Put a microphone in their faces or have a pen ready to scribble down notes and many of our esteemed leaders will tell you we have every reason to be afraid. Yet, once the camera lights go off and reporters put down their pens, no one in Washington is acting like there's a reason to be afraid. No, it seems to be business as usual.

A skeptic like me looks more towards how people act, not simply what they say. In this case, neither the president nor the other pro-NSA folks in the capitol are acting like there is much of anything to worry about. As Rivers Pitt points out, the mainstream media isn't providing wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage on the supposed danger either. Taken together, these actions don't match their words in any way, shape or form. No, this seems like another example of wag the dog!

Brave and Selfless?

Trey Smith

The newspaper world was stunned this week when it was announced that the Graham family has sold the Washington Post to Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. A former editor of the Post, Marcus Brauchli, had this to say: "A brave, selfless act, as hard as any, done with dignity and from loyalty."

As owners, it is their right to sell it. I don't have any qualms about that. But to describe this sale as "brave" and "selfless" is a bit much. The Graham family made $250 million in the process. Unless they plan to give all the proceeds to the poor, there are 250 million reasons why this was not a selfless act!

When Ben and Jerry sold their ice cream business to Unilever in 2000 for $345 million, that wasn't selfless. When Arianna Huffington and her associates sold The Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million, that wasn't selfless either. And the same is true when Al Gore and Joel Hyatt sold Current TV this year to Al Jazeera for a cool $500 million.

Like I wrote above, I don't begrudge these owners for deciding to sell an asset. I just have a major issue with calling them selfless. You can't be considered selfless if the act itself results in you swimming in egregious amounts of moolah.

TYT - Flawless CNBC Anchors Shocked By 'Sum Ting Wong' Prank

2013/1984, Part 7

Trey Smith

The last ministry featured in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is the Ministry of Truth. As with the other three ministries, its purpose is the exact opposite of its title. Instead of dispensing truth, its whole purpose is to spread propaganda through the distortion of facts, disinformation and outright dishonesty.

In the US government, you can find these same principle at work in a number of ways, including the misleading names given to federal legislation. For example, the No Child Left Behind Act purposely leaves a lot of children behind! The US Patriot Act has very little to do with the subject of patriotism and almost everything to do with providing the federal government with the legal framework to spy on innocent Americans.

Remember the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009? As it turned out, it helped very few families save their homes. Almost every act in the last few years that includes the word "jobs" in it has done very little to create or protect jobs. If the word "reform" appears in the title of an act, you can be very confident that it doesn't include much substantive reform and basically maintains the status quo.

~

The protagonist in Orwell's story is Winston Smith. He works for the Ministry of Truth. His job is to rewrite history so that whatever current political perspective dominates at any given moment is reflected as being true, right and just in historical documents. This premise is explained in this Wikipedia entry as follows.

For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the "how" of the Ministry of Truth's existence.

The current US government is not so brazen, but you can still see shadows of it. When Barack Obama came into office, he immediately stated that his administration would neither investigate nor prosecute any criminality of the previous administration. Not only did he handle these crooks with kid gloves, but he has adopted many of their most insidious characteristics. He has turned what was once considered renegade interpretations of law into somewhat legitimized ones. What he once opposed, he now embraces.

Though the mainstream media supposedly is independent and not a branch of government, it often is difficult to discern this fact. More often than not, they serve as a megaphone for government talking points without critically examining the veracity of those very points.

BP - Americans: Open Your Eyes to the Violence You Have Created

TYT - Media Completely Misses Point In Wendy Davis Filibuster

TYT - Michael Hastings and The War on Journalism

Real Life Tao - Every Writer Has a Point of View

Trey Smith

All journalism is advocacy journalism. No matter how it's presented, every report by every reporter advances someone's point of view. The advocacy can be hidden, as it is in the monotone narration of a news anchor for a big network like CBS or NBC (where the biases of advertisers and corporate backers like GE are disguised in a thousand subtle ways), or it can be out in the open, as it proudly is with Greenwald, or graspingly with Sorkin, or institutionally with a company like Fox.

But to pretend there's such a thing as journalism without advocacy is just silly; nobody in this business really takes that concept seriously. "Objectivity" is a fairy tale invented purely for the consumption of the credulous public, sort of like the Santa Claus myth. Obviously, journalists can strive to be balanced and objective, but that's all it is, striving.
~ from Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism by Matt Taibbi ~

It's not just journalism either. Every blog and website advocates a point of view. In fact, I will go a step further. Every writer -- whatever age or level of ability -- is advocating something. We are all subjective creatures and our subjectivity is almost impossible to mask.

What a writer chooses to include or exclude underlines their point of view. This is as true for journalists as it is for speechwriters, songwriters and poets!

It drives me crazy when people admonish others for not being "objective," like there is an untethered truth out there waiting to be grasped. Even if such a thing existed -- I personally don't think it does -- not a one of us could see it because we would approach it with our own set of prejudices and preferences. As soon as we tried to grasp hold of an objective truth with a subjective mind, that truth would evaporate before our eyes!

That's why Laozi wrote, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." He understood that whatever we may say about the Grand Mystery is filtered through our own subjectiveness. Of course, that was his subjective opinion! ;-)

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.

American Pravda

Trey Smith

The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets — especially TV news — that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower.

While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?

Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble — I mean, public — believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun “We.”
~ from Snowden Coverage: If US Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different? by Jeff Cohen ~

I grew up watching Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley.  I couldn't wait to read the morning and evening editions of the Kansas City Star newspaper.  News reporting was different back then.  Reporters actually challenged government pronouncements.  Imagine that!

I must admit that these days there are almost no mainstream sources that interest me anymore.  They just repeat government talking points.  If I do happen to read or watch them, I discount about 90 percent of what they have to say.

The newspaper I read most often now is The Guardian (which includes the magnificent Glenn Greenwald).  Other news sites I frequent include David Sorota's columns at Salon.com, CounterPunch, The Smirking Chimp, This Can't Be Happening, Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone and, of course, The Young Turks.  In addition, there are numerous other sites and writers I check in with less frequently.

I'm not interested in what almost amounts to state-run media.  What about you?

TYT Extra- Glenn Greenwald vs Meet the Press and Complacent Reporting

I'm dealing with some fairly severe vertigo issues (completely clogged right ear) and so I'm having a real difficult time concentrating. The upshot is that I may not be writing as much as usual until the medicine starts to work. So, I will be sharing more of The Young Turks videos -- ones that deal with some of the current issues in the headlines. ~ Trey

TYT - Record Breaking Hypocrisy on Fox News