Pentagon, DHS Turn Up Media Hype

Napolitano On Issues of Domestic Terrorism and Cyber Security we have seen a rash of blatant over the top Pentagon fed news pieces and headlines into the main stream media with in this last week. For example on Monday Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano said that  “She is afraid of Americans” announcing that Domestic Terrorism is the Homelands Chief threat to the security of the United States. Every major news outlet and the local networks in the nation ran unthinkingly with the Headline: Homeland Chief: Domestic extremism is top concern See headline search results: “The government is just starting to confront this reality and does not have a good handle on how to prevent someone from becoming a violent extremist, she said. In the last year, Napolitano said, she’s witnessed a movement from international extremism to domestic extremism – cases in which Americans radicalized and decided to plot attacks against the country. “What really is it that draws a young person being raised in the United States to want to go and be at a camp in Yemen and then come back to the United States with the idea of committing harm within the United States?” Napolitano asked without citing specific cases. “Where in that person’s formulation is there an opportunity to break that cycle?” The DHS head embarrassingly cites the accused “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who according to witnesses was lead onto the plan by a sharply dressed accomplice who turned out to be an intelligence operative part of a larger operation according to a Detroit Newspaper. “Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into Al-Qaeda threats against the United States. “Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.” Underwear Bomber Yet despite this statement on record from Mr. Kennedy before the House Committee on Homeland Security, DHS upgrades their threat assessment on the American public over that of the international threat of Al-Qaeda. It shows that DHS is intent on demonizing Americans in a fear campaign rather than a fact campaign, and the headlines reflect it. Most Americans are to busy working 2-3 jobs and have their hands around the remote control of their T.V. rather than a finger on an AR-15 or a detonator. The obvious incident to cite would be the airplane Joe Stack piloted  into the IRS building in Austin, Texas this last week. This is strangely absent from Napolitano’s list of examples during this meeting even after Mr. Stack’s own daughter called him a Hero, for this desperate act that  caused his death and one other. Maybe they foresee Joe 6-pack angrily getting off the couch due to economic fall out in the near future is the real cause for DHS alarm. CNN Fakes Media Cyber-War Another example of the Pentagon take over of the media, would be the fake cyber-terror broadcast done by CNN recently in which they acted out the scenario of hackers taking down the entire electrical grid of the nation on live television. It has been reported that bloggers and media pieces have been purchased by the U.S. government to help shape our perspectives in regards to domestic terrorism. This time taking it one step further they simply bought out an entire network news broadcast from CNN to fear-monger the Nation with. Amusingly enough it turns out it is ‘fear and hype’ that even the Pope seemingly has had a hard time buying into by criticizing the use of body scanners recently.

Media Ignores Cheney Assassinations

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is best known for breaking the shocking My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam war, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians in a Vietnamese village were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers in March 1968. His courageous reporting on this sad chapter in history won him a Pulitzer Prize. In recent years, his incisive coverage of the Abu Ghraib abuses and torture has also been widely followed and respected.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.” [Hersh said] “after 9/11 … the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state, without any legal authority for it. Today, there was a story in the New York Times that … mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC. They reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to [Cheney]. Congress has no oversight of it.”

“It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on. They’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them. That’s been going on in the name of all of us.”

He added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11. “The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team.” Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to ‘pick holes’ in what Bush was doing.

MSNBC was one of the few to give good coverage to the revelations of Seymour Hersh. You can watch that coverage right here.

While we can be thankful for the exceptions like MSNBC in this case, all too often the major media are failing at their responsibility to educate the public and expose gross and illegal manipulations on the part of government and industry.
So it is increasingly up to us to spread the news. Using the powerful capabilities of the Internet, we can insist that corruption be rooted out and illegal assassinations and associated assassination squads be stopped.

Can we Trust a Chinese CNN

China is about to embark on a multibillion dollar media expansion overseas, including the establishment of a 24-hour English language all-news channel modeled after CNN. These are only the most recent steps in a methodical strategy for Chinese state media to “go global” and make “the voice of China better heard in international affairs” — a plan set in motion by President Hu Jintao immediately after his accession to power in 2002. Since then, Chinese state broadcasters have considerably strengthened their foreign news operations, enhanced foreign language services and established the supporting bureaucracy to get the government’s message out swiftly when news breaks.
… Continue Reading

U.K. Intelligence Wants to Censor Media

Britain’s security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.

The ISC holds huge clout within Whitehall. It receives secret briefings from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is highly influential in forming government policy. Kim Howells, a respected former Foreign Office minister, was recently appointed its chairman. Under the existing voluntary code of conduct, known as the DA-Notice system, the Government can request that the media does not report a story. However, the committee’s members are particularly worried about leaks, which, they believe, could derail investigations and the reporting of which needs to be banned by legislation.

Civil liberties groups say these restrictions would be “very dangerous” and “damaging for public accountability”. They also point out that censoring journalists when the leaks come from officials is unjustified.

But the committee, in its last annual report, has already signalled its intention to press for changes. It states: “The current system for handling national security information through DA-Notices and the [intelligence and security] Agencies’ relationship with the media more generally, is not working as effectively as it might and this is putting lives at risk.” According to senior Whitehall sources the ISC is likely to advocate tighter controls on the DA-Notice system – formerly known as D-Notice – which operates in co-operation and consultation between the Government and the media.

The committee has focused on one particular case to highlight its concern: an Islamist plot to kidnap and murder a British serviceman in 2007, during which reporters were tipped off about the imminent arrest of suspects in Birmingham, a security operation known as “Gamble”. The staff in the office of the then home secretary, John Reid, and the local police were among those accused of being responsible – charges they denied. An investigation by Scotland Yard failed to find the source of the leak.

The then director general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, was among those who complained to the ISC. “We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op Gamble were in the media very, very fast … So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed … that this has happened.”

The ISC report said the DA-Notice system “provides advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorism information, whilst the system is voluntary, has no legal authority, and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned. The system has been effective in the past. However, the Cabinet Secretary told us … this is no longer the case: ‘I think we have problems now.’”

The human rights lawyer Louise Christian said: “This would be a very dangerous development. We need media scrutiny for public accountability. We can see this from the example, for instance, of the PhD student in Nottingham who was banged up for six days without charge because he downloaded something from the internet for his thesis. The only reason this came to light was because of the media attention to the case.”

A spokesman for the human rights group Liberty said: “There is a difficult balance between protecting integrity and keeping the public properly informed. Any extension of the DA-Notice scheme requires a more open parliamentary debate.”

DA-Notice: a gagging by consent

The D-Notice system was set up in 1912 when the War Office (the Ministry of Defence in its previous incarnation) began issuing censorship orders to newspapers on stories involving national security.

In 1993 it became known as a DA-Notice with four senior civil servants, with an eminent military figure as secretary, and 13 members nominated by the media to form the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

Contrary to popular conception DA-Notices are a request and not legally enforceable. Civil servants fear making the agreement legally binding would lead to hostility from the media. There would be apprehension among journalists about new restrictions, as the committee has in recent times been robust in resisting pressure from the Government to send DA-Notices if it thinks the motives are political. At present most DA-Notices are issued regarding military missions, anti-terrorist operations at home and espionage.

Obama Shown Favor in the Press

Apparently, but not surprisingly it is being reported by a media insider that Barack Obama is being heavily favored by the news media in general, including newspaper and television outlets.
Many of course call this political control through unfair means, considering that the media is supposed to be unbiased in its reporting and fact gathering, but guess what folks it’s not, and it is working for the democrat controlled media.