CNN - The CIA's News Network? By Dave McGowan
May 2000
In February of this year, a story that had appeared in the European press was reported by Alexander Cockburn - co-editor of Counterpunch - concerning the employment by CNN of military psychological warfare specialists. Other than Cockburn's piece, and the issuance of an 'Action Alert' by the media-watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), the report was ignored by the American press.
        As originally reported by Abe de Vries in the Dutch periodical Trouw, the story went something like this: "For a short time last year, CNN employed military specialists in 'psychological operations' (psyops). This was confirmed to Trouw by a spokesman of the U.S. Army. The military could have influenced CNN's news reports about the crisis in Kosovo." (1)
        Could have? The word 'duh' would seem to apply here. In fact, here's a news flash: the military influenced the news reports of all the media outlets that covered the Kosovo bombardment. The only news coming from the area was coming from NATO and the Pentagon. When you are the sole source of information, you tend to have a lot of influence.
        But that's not the issue here. The concern here is with CNN hiring military personnel to package for viewers the information provided as 'news' by other military personnel. This is said to be a most disturbing development, and I suppose it would be were it not for the fact that the U.S. media - as a whole - is infested with so many intelligence assets that it is hard to see how a few more in the mix could make much of a difference.
        Of course, most of them are posing as reporters, editors, news anchors, analysts, producers, publishers, etc. The difference here is that these particular spooks were employed openly at CNN, without journalistic cover. As Major Thomas Collins, of the U.S. Army Information Service acknowledged:
        "Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta through our programme 'Training With Industry'. They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war. They helped in the production of news." (1)
        The phrase "production of news" is notably ambiguous when used in this context. It could easily be defined as the manufacture of news. Manufacturing news is, in fact, exactly what psychological warfare specialists do. As de Vries notes:
        "The military CNN personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread 'selected information'. [We should pause here, briefly, to note that in this context, the phrase 'selected information' generally means vicious distortions and outright lies.]
        "American psyops troops try with a variety of techniques to influence media and public opinion in armed conflicts in which American state interests are said to be at stake. [We need to pause again to note that 'American state interests' generally means the financial interests of U.S. monopoly capitalists.] The propaganda group was involved in the Gulf war, the Bosnian war and the crisis in Kosovo." (1)
        In other words, they did during the war in Kosovo what they have always done. This time, however, they did it more openly. This could have proven to be a major blunder for CNN, with scores of competitors airing this story to embarrass and discredit a rival. But that would require that we have some actual semblance of a free press.
        Instead, what happened was that the story got a couple of brief mentions in the alternative press that were easily overlooked and ignored. And this was only after the translated article began appearing on internet sites, most notably on the Emperor's Clothes. Had this not been the case, the story likely would not have surfaced at all on these shores.
        Nor would a follow-up article by de Vries in the same publication a few days later. De Vries refers to the Commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, Colonel Cristopher St. John, who described the cooperation with CNN as "a textbook example of the kind of ties the American army wants to have with the media." (2)
        The kind of ties that will allow it "to spread handpicked 'information' and keep other news quiet, ... to control the internet, to wage electronic warfare against disobedient media, and to control commercial satellites." (2) Most of which, it should be noted, the intelligence community already does to varying degrees. Still, the control is not yet complete enough.
        De Vries reports that the psyops personnel were not completely satisfied with the Kosovo operation: "In their opinion, too much information about the unplanned results of the bombings has come to the surface. [We must pause yet again to note that 'unplanned results of the bombings' refers to the entirely foreseeable civilian carnage.] Rear Admiral Thomas Steffens of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) reportedly would like to have the capacity to bring down an 'informational cone of silence' over areas where special operations are in place. What that can mean in reality was shown by the bombing of the Serbian state television RTS in Belgrade." (2)
        Indeed. And speaking of the bombing of the Serbian television station, there was another story that ran in the European press concerning that particular incident which also happened to cast CNN in a particularly bad light. Considerably more so than the story told in the Dutch publication, in fact.
        Significantly, this story was not aired at all in the United States. It did appear, however, in the U.K., in an article by corespondent Robert Fisk in The Independent. The report reveals that:
        "Two days before NATO bombed the Serb Television headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a tip from its Atlanta headquarters that the building was to be destroyed. They were told to remove their facilities from the premises at once, which they did." (3)
        Apparently it helps to have those psyops specialists on board. Fisk goes on to recount that the next day, Aleksander Vucic, the Serbian Information Minister, received an invitation to appear on the Larry King Live show, ostensibly to give Larry's audience the Serbian view of the conflict via satellite.
        There were two rather serious problems with this invitation, however. First, the notion that CNN would invite a Serbian official on the air to give the Serb point of view is rather far-fetched, to say the least. More importantly, the studio to which Vucic had been invited was now deserted. Nevertheless, he was asked to arrive for makeup at 2:00AM for a 2:30AM appearance.
        "Vucic was late - which was just as well for him since NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes past two. The first one exploded in the make-up room where the young Serb assistant was burned to death. CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the Larry King show, put out by the entertainment division, did not know of the news department's instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade building." (3)
        CNN's explanation is, of course, preposterous. In fact, the notion that there is some kind of distinction between CNN's 'entertainment division' and its 'news department' is rather preposterous as well. The truth appears to be that CNN was directly complicit in the attempted commission of a war crime.
        And this action was, to be sure, a war crime. The deliberate targeting of a foreign dignitary for assassination - even in time of war - is definitely an international war crime. So it appears that our media have crossed the line from complicity in the covering-up of U.S. war crimes - which has been a mainstay of the press for decades - to complicity in the actual commission of war crimes.
        A rather serious transgression, one would think, yet one which has been politely overlooked by the rest of the American media outlets. This is quite likely due to the fact that the intelligence community and corporate America pretty much controls all the media.
        That is why even when stories such as the CNN/Psyops reports emerge in the 'progressive' media, albeit in a very limited way, they are accompanied by amusing commentary and analysis intended to downplay the significance of the incident.
        For example, Cockburn wonders if: "It could be that CNN was the target of a psyops penetration and is still too naïve to figure out what was going on." (4) To the contrary, it appears that CNN was well aware of - and actively participating in - "what was going on."
        Similarly, for FAIR what is "especially troubling is the fact that the network allowed the Army's covert propagandists to work in its headquarters, where they learned the ins and outs of CNN's operations. Even if the psyops officers working in the newsroom did not influence news reporting, did the network allow the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against CNN itself?" (5)
        Or, more likely, is CNN itself an "intelligence gathering mission," and has it been from its inception? It was CNN, it will be recalled, that pioneered the concept of military conflict as mini-series - complete with theme music and title graphics - during the Gulf War. That is, of course, the blueprint that has been followed by the media at large for all coverage of U.S. military actions since then.
        One of the specific purposes for which CNN seems to have been born is the packaging of imperialist military conquests as humanitarian missions. In other words, "to spread 'selected information'" in order to "influence media and public opinion in armed conflicts in which American state interests are said to be at stake."
        Glorification of U.S. high-tech weaponry, vilification of America's enemy of the moment, canonization of genocidal military leaders and advisers, rote reporting of the NATO/Pentagon/State Department line, deliberate avoidance of reporting clear-cut cases of American brutality and war crimes - all of these are indicative of a psyops program, not an allegedly independent news agency.
        As the group FAIR noted: "CNN has always maintained a close relationship with the Pentagon. Getting access to top military officials is a necessity for a network that stakes its reputation on being first on the ground during wars and other military operations." (5)
        Being first on the ground during military operations is, to be sure, a good place to be if one is a reporter. It is also a good place to be, it should be noted, if one is a member of the spook community.
        Whether CNN was born as an intelligence front is probably now largely an irrelevant issue, as the cable titan has since the Kosovo war announced that it is to become a part of the AOL family. And AOL is, as was noted in a recent Spin Cycle article (Sony's Magic Cameras), doing a pretty damn good job of masquerading as an intelligence front itself.
        So if CNN was not originally conceived as a psychological warfare entity (which appears to be the case, despite its purported status as the brainchild of Ted Turner, husband of Jane Fonda), it has certainly evolved into one. And by the way, does anyone remember when Jane was supposed to be one of the good guys? Just checking.
Notes:
1. Abe de Vries "U.S. Army 'Psyops' Specialists Worked for CNN," Trouw, February 21, 2000
2. Abe de Vries "The American Army Loves CNN," Trouw, February 25, 2000
3. Robert Fisk "Taken In By the NATO Line," The Independent, July 2, 1999
4. Alexander Cockburn "CNN And Psyops," Counterpunch, March 26, 2000
5. "Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN?," FAIR Action Alert, March 27, 2000
 
 
http://web.archive.org/web/20011216085434/davesweb.cnchost.com/cnn.htm

Rudolph Hess: New Perspectives on an Old Mystery

By T Stokes – November 10, 2010
Some years ago on Christmas Eve I was invited to attend a 70th birthday celebration held for ex-intelligence personnel.
An amusing senior policeman who told filthy jokes introduced me to an inebriated old chap dozing in front of a fire who had been at guard at Spandau prison, where Hess was held.
Almost word for word I remember what he said to me and I repeat it here:
“The history books say that Hess, the third most powerful man in Germany, who had bodyguards 24 hours a day, could not even go to the toilet on his own, yet we are told he slipped away from them, went to an airfield which was guarded in time of war, got in without being recognised, bolted on extra large fuel tanks without being challenged, gave a signature for fuel, and warmed up the engine for the statutory 20 minutes without being stopped, Britain was at war with Germany and anyone stealing an aeroplane was shot down instantly, yet although there were no maps, he knew exactly where to fly to in Scotland, British interception fighters were told keep away,”
So I then asked him what exactly was he was telling me?
Luring Hess to Britain, he said, was an MI6 “sting operation” to embarrass Hitler.
Hess told us that the Katyn Forest massacre was the work of Stalin’s N.K.V.D, which we already knew although we blamed Germany.
Hess also said that Hitler wanted peace with us and that Germany, Britain and the U.S were all part of the Anglo Saxon brotherhood and he did not want war among them. Particularly he wanted Churchill to stop bombing civilians.
Remember that at Dunkirk Hitler allowed the British army to escape. He could have annihilated our forces as they were largely defenceless in the water, but he wanted our forces strong because all through the war, we were negotiating with Germany over the seriousness of the Soviet threat.
The former Spandau guard said Hess was “fitted up at the Nuremberg trials and given a life sentence, he was also given mind altering drugs, which made him appear mad before the trial, and all Germans were beaten and serially kicked in the groin, on Churchill’s orders.”
Hess desperately wanted to discuss the “Jewish question” but Britain, controlled by the international financiers themselves, refused.
A prominent Rothschild among them is on record as saying and I quote:
“There will be no room in the new land for schorrers” (beggars or poor Jews).
Some years later I discussed this with a senior wartime MI6 officer who said:
“No one in the prison (Spandau) is allowed to speak to Hess, he has not been allowed to speak for 25 years, the whisper is, that the man in prison is not Hess at all because the prison doctor claims he does not have Hess’s chest or leg wounds from WWI”.
Sir. Anthony Blunt added to this by saying Britain knew it was the Soviet forces who liquidated thousands of the Polish intelligentsia at Katyn forest. The concern in Oxford and Cambridge Universities was that if Russia conquered Britain, our intelligentsia would go the same way.
The father of ex BBC TV producer John Leigh, was in wartime intelligence and he was personally involved in Hess’s capture. According to Leigh: “I was given a map and told to go immediately on my motorbike and sidecar to pick up a very distinguished German who was landing in Scotland and pick him up and bring him here, before the others got him”.
His reference to getting to Hess “before the others got him” is telling because it indicates that British intelligence may have been at odds over him.
Neville Chamberlain had made extensive inquiries through security sources as Hitler rose to power, and Admiral Barry Domvile had AIPs (agents in place) right at the top of the Third Reich and he insisted Hitler was not a threat to Britain but to Russia.
I also managed to get a statement from one of Hess’s arresting officers who confirmed much of what I had already been told, but added, that Hess was expected in his aircraft.
He also said Hess was being drugged to make him appear “mad” and believed that Hess was switched with another prisoner. The arresting officer said it was rumoured that Hess was with the King’s brother and peacemaker, the Duke of Kent on a flight over Scotland when it came down killing all aboard.
Anthony Blunt claimed Britain did not want to shorten W.W.II with the treaty brought by Hess and rejected it without consultation.
Churchill said many times he wanted “total war” and “the complete elimination of Germany, as a nation”.
Those phrases, “ The complete elimination of Germany as a nation” and “total war” were used consistently by the Rothschild financial backers who put Churchill into power at the start of World War II.
During the Arab/Israeli 6 day war a highly placed Rabbbi and good friend who advised on the Nuremberg trials, gave me further back up information.
That Churchill was in the grip of these men there can be no doubt, it is documented that he was a 33rd degree mason, had been involved in unsavoury occult practises and made his personal fortunes during the Boer war by protecting Jewish investment in the South African diamond and gold mines.
Finally I’ll close by asking if you can answer the question: “name one person who was in Churchill’s war cabinet”? The answer may seem evasive because this was the age of dictators like Franco, Mussolini, Hirohito, Stalin, Hitler and yes, Churchill too.
This strange situation was created and manipulated by the moneymen for their benefit. These dictators were just like chess pieces on a board used to play each other for profit. With the ultimate winners in their wars being the moneylenders, the international financiers who funded the conflicts and profited from them too.

MPAA says Chinese box office receipts reached new record: $2.75B in 2012

Despite massive piracy, China builds theaters like crazy: 10 new screens daily.

by Cyrus Farivar - Feb 15 2013, 4:00pm EST

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/mpaa-says-chinese-box-office-receipts-reached-new-record-2-75b-in-2012/

We often hear from the MPAA and other intellectual property rights holders about how much they’re suffering as a result of piracy.
But on Friday, Christopher Dodd, the current head of the movie industry group and a former senator from Connecticut, argued (PDF) before a luncheon at the National Press Club that “movies matter,” and that the TV and film industries have created millions of jobs around America as a result.
The real coup de grâce, though, was when he said that 2012 “was a great year for the film industry,” as combined international box office receipts outside the United States and Canada reached $23.1 billion in 2012, “up nearly a billion dollars compared to the previous year.”
Most surprising was a comment from Dodd affirming that American films in cinemas are huge in China, which for years has been an international pariah for widespread intellectual property violations. The country, after all, is continually named by American authorities and entertainment industry representatives as being guilty of staggering levels of international piracy. Anyone who has traveled to China can attest to the vast number of pirated DVDs that are readily available, to say nothing of pirated material available online.
Still, it’s notable that despite high levels of piracy, Chinese consumers appear to be willing to pay for movie tickets. The MPAA’s head told the assembled crowd that there are now over 11,000 cinema screens in China, which is expected to double by 2015.
“Chinese box office receipts grew a staggering 31 percent—to about $2.75 billion—making China the second largest international market behind Japan,” Dodd added.
He went on to point out that the American film and TV industries made $14.2 billion in exports, adding that “no other major American industry has a balance of trade as positive in every nation on the globe in which it does business as the American film industry.”
The former senator closed by saying that Silicon Valley and Hollywood should “innovate our way through these challenges,” because “consumers deserve to enjoy first-generation versions of their favorite films—not secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theater on a mobile phone.”
“We must strike a balance between the desire for a free and open Internet and the protection of intellectual property,” Dodd concluded. “The future cannot be about choosing one over the other—between protecting free speech or protecting intellectual property—it must be about protecting both. We can and must have an Internet that works for everyone, and we can and must have protection for the creative industry’s genius that intellectual property represents.”

N. Korea conducts 3rd nuclear test, warns more ‘measures’ may come

http://rt.com/news/north-korea-artificial-earthquake-981/

Published: 12 February, 2013, 07:26
Edited: 12 February, 2013, 13:20

This GeoEye Satellite Image captured January 23, 2013 shows the Punggye-ri nuclear test facility in North Korea. South Korea has detected an "artificial earthquake" in North Korea, Yonhap news agency reported on February 12, 2013, suggesting Pyongyang may have gone ahead with an expected nuclear test. (AFP Photo)

A defiant North Korea has conducted its third nuclear test, prompting a wave of international criticism from governments and other organization. It also said that more “measures” may follow, raising concerns that more nuclear devices may be exploded.
­Track LIVE UPDATES on the fallout of the North Korean nuclear test.
Pyongyang said the Tuesday morning explosion was part of an effort to protect its national security and sovereignty, citing US opposition to the recent North Korean space launch.
"It was confirmed that the nuclear test – that was carried out at a high level in a safe and perfect manner using a miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously – did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment," North Korea's KCNA state news agency said.
The UNSC has condemned the test by North Korea, calling it a “great violation of Security Council resolutions,” which poses “continuously a clear threat to international peace and security.”
The UN Security Council has unanimously approved the non-binding statement. The 15-member council "will begin work immediately on appropriate measures".
The move came in defiance of the UN and individual nations, which have pressured North Korea not to proceed with its plan. After the test sparked condemnation, Pyongyang threatened that if the US responds to the test “with hostility,” then unspecified “second and third measures” may follow. This corresponds with earlier speculation that Pyongyang seeks to detonate more than one nuclear device.
North Korean diplomat Jon Yong Ryong also told the UN disarmament forum in Geneva that his country "will never bow down to any resolution," in respondr to criticisms that the nuclear test violated several UN Security Council resolutions banning such actions.
South Korean President-elect Park Geun-hye strongly condemned the new test. She said her incoming administration would not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea “under any circumstances,” and pledged to enact strong deterrence measures against Pyongyang's nuclear program.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has urged all parties involved to reduce tensions and solve the issue through dialogue in the framework of six-party talks. It also expressed “firm opposition” to the test, called on North Korea not to take any actions that would aggravate the situation, and to “honor its commitment to denuclearization”.

South Korean passengers watch TV news reporting North Korea's apparent nuclear test, at the Seoul train station on February 12, 2013. (AFP Photo/Kim Jae-Hwan)

US President Barack Obama warned that both Tuesday’s test and the earlier satellite launch are provocations, and that “far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a strong and prosperous nation, North Korea has instead increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.” He threatened"further swift and credible action" against Pyongyang.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has condemned the nuclear test, calling it “deplorable” and a “grave violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions.” The statement released by Ban’s spokesperson voiced concern over the “negative impact of this deeply destabilizing act on regional stability as well as the global efforts for nuclear non-proliferation.”
The test was also criticized by Britain, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, the EU, the IAEA and NATO.

Protesters shout slogans and raise their fists towards the headquarters of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) as police officers stand guard in Tokyo February 12, 2013, after North Korea conducted its third nuclear test. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

The likely response to the nuclear test will be a new round of sanctions from the UN. But no matter how many sanctions other nations impose on Pyongyang, it is unlikely to yield to demands voiced by Washington, Asia specialist Tim Beal explained.
“No country really changes policy under sanctions if the alternative, what is being required, is worse than the sanctions,” he told RT. “And that is the case with North Korea. North Korea in a sense could surrender to American demands, but that in fact in their eyes would be worse that what the Americans can do to them with sanctions. So they will persevere until the Americans come to the negotiation table.”
­The United States Geological Survey confirmes an earthquake in North Korea's northeast of between 4.9- and 5.1-magnitude, at a depth of about one kilometer.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency reports that the tremor's epicenter was located in Kilju county, at exactly the same place and depth as the quake caused by North Korea's last known underground nuclear test in 2009. North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006 was also carried out at the Punggye-ri test site.

Japan Meteorological Agency's earthquake and tsunami observations division director Akira Nagai points at a graph of ground motion waveform data observed in the morning in Japan during a news conference in Tokyo February 12, 2013. (Reuters/Toru Hanai)

Pyongyang informed the US and China of its plans for a nuclear test on Monday, Yonhap reported. North Korea said it would continue with the test despite pressure from the UN Security Council and its non-UNSC neighbors.
The South Korean military estimate that the yield of the nuclear explosion was between six and seven kilotons. Russia’s defense ministry says the size of the blast was over seven kilotons. The Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said the yield was roughly twice as big as the previous nuclear test in 2009.
Further investigation into the nature of the explosion is underway. The evidence gathered – including seismic data, satellite images and data from spy planes detecting radioactive fallout – could allow researchers to deduct the status of North Korea’s secretive nuclear program. So far, the isolated country was believed to be unable to build a nuclear device small enough to fit onto one of its long-range ballistic missiles, making its nuclear capabilities virtually useless for offensive warfare.
Concerns over the claimed miniaturization effort were fueled by North Korea's rocket launch last December. Pyongyang said it put a satellite into orbit for civilian purposes, and for national prestige, but many countries claimed it was a clandestine rocket weapons test. The UN Security Council condemned the launch, which it said was carried out in violation of a UNSC resolution banning the development of ballistic technology by North Korea.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (C) speaks to media after attending a meeting of Security Council of Japan at his official residence in Tokyo February 12, 2013 after reports of North Korea's possible nuclear test. (Reuters/Issei Kato)

An hour after the test, Japan said that it is considering leveling further sanctions against North Korea.
"I have ordered that we consider every possible way to address this issue, including our own sanctions, while cooperating with other countries," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters after a meeting of Japan's security council.
The news of the suspicious seismic activity in North Korea came days after South Korea and the US threatened that they may carry out a pre-emptive strike at North Korean facilities to halt its nuclear program.
China, North Korea’s main economic partner and only ally, said Pyongyang would pay a “heavy price” and threatened to scale down aid should it carry out a nuclear test.
But war correspondent Eric Margolis has told RT that now is the time for “diplomacy on the issue not empty threats,” because Pyongyang does not feel threatened having a powerful military.
“Nobody is going to take any military measures against them.” Meanwhile Magolis argues “North Korea is important to China strategically,” saying that if the communist regime in Pyonyang would collapse, South Korea would take over the state and place US troops on China’s border. Therefore, China’s response will concentrate on doing everything to keep the communists in power in N. Korea.

A screenshot from facebook.com

­The timing of the test makes it difficult to ease tensions, and a lot of uncertainty surrounds the situation, independent news editor James Corbett said.
“I certainly couldn’t have happened at a worse time internationally speaking,” Corbett told RT. “It’s the Lunar New Year in China, so basically the entire country is holiday. And in the US there is no confirmed defense secretary or central intelligence director.”
“Throw into that the wildcard of Xi Jinping – we don’t know much about him or how he is going to lead China – and the fact that Kim Jong-un is a relatively new leader as well," he said. "You also have the new Abe government in Japan. There is a lot of wildcard in this mix.”

US tested new weapon, no meteor in Chelyabinsk – Russian LibDem leader

Get short URL

email story to a friend print version

Published: 15 February, 2013, 18:23
Edited: 16 February, 2013, 12:30

http://rt.com/politics/zhirinovsky-meteorite-american-weapon-316/

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party.(RIA Novosti / Alexander Utkin)

The firebrand Russian Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky claims that no meteor fell in the Urals on Friday, but rather the US was testing a new weapon.
“You’re like some primitive tribe. What meteorite?” he said, arguing that space is a “universe that has its own laws.”
Zhirinovsky, more known for clownish political outrage rather than his actual political platform, added: “When something falls – it’s man-made. People are warmongers and provocateurs.”
Earlier in the week, US Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly tried and failed to reach Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov by telephone for two consecutive days. The State Department said that Kerry wanted to discuss the recent North Korean nuclear test, as well as the conflict in Syria.
However, Zhirinovsky claimed that the top US diplomat “wanted to warn Lavrov about the plot and that it may affect Russia,” RIA Novosti reported.
Zhirinovsky, the perennial provocateur who is no stranger to controversy, set the Russian blogosphere alight following his latest off the wall accusation.
Keen to challenge Zhirinovsky’s grip on reality, sandro737 commented on Echo Moskvy: “It’s not a joke anymore, it’s a [psychiatric] diagnosis.”
User metalag soon responded: “Let me clarify your diagnosis – [Zhirinovsky] is not a fool, he’s a jester.”
He also drew in his fair share of supporters.
“Those who criticize Zhirinovsky don’t understand simple matters. Everything he says is possible. We know little about the nature of modern military weaponry, and who can guarantee that NATO is not conducting a new trial,” another user on Lenta.ru commented.
On Thursday, Moscow confirmed that on February 12 it had received Washington’s request to organize an urgent phone conversation between Kerry and Lavrov. The Foreign Ministry said, however, that State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland was “inaccurate with her statements” regarding their inability to get in touch with Lavrov for two days.
“Unfortunately, the conversation could not be held because of the intensive schedule of the Russian foreign minister and his working tour to African countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashenko said.
“We informed the US about this at once. But no new requests were made either February 13 or another day," the diplomat added.

The trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, in this still image taken from video shot on February 15, 2013. A powerful blast rocked the Russian region of the Urals early on Friday with bright objects, identified as possible meteorites, falling from the sky, emergency officials said.(Reuters / OOO Spetszakaz)

Keep Megaupload out of our server seizure case, US lawyers say

They don't want Megaupload to "pre-litigate" its criminal case via Kyle Goodwin.

by Joe Mullin - Feb 15 2013, 7:35pm EST

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/keep-megaupload-out-of-our-server-seizure-case-us-lawyers-say/

When the US government shut down file-sharing site Megaupload, it also grabbed the service's US-based servers, located at Carpathia Hosting and other companies. That inspired legal demands from Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio man who makes his living videotaping high school sports events, and wants his files back. But the government shot back with a brief suggesting that Goodwin wasn't exactly "innocent," since he'd also uploaded allegedly pirated music files to his account.
Now Mega wants to intervene in the dispute between the government and Kyle Goodwin—and government lawyers want to keep Megaupload well out of it. In a brief filed yesterday, prosecutors say that while it's fine for someone from Megaupload to be a witness in Goodwin's case, the service absolutely should not be allowed in as a party to the case.
In this new brief, the government accuses Megaupload of trying to use Goodwin's case as a way to battle over its own criminal case—while it actually delays that case from moving forward.
"Megaupload seeks to intervene in this civil dispute, where it lacks standing, to pre-litigate the pending criminal case, where it has not appeared," write government lawyers in their brief. "Here, Megaupload seeks to circumvent numerous procedural rules, as well as basic legal principles, by selectively appearing as a party in one civil proceeding that parallels the criminal prosecution, while seeking to stay all others."
Megaupload chief Kim Dotcom and his lawyers got very interested in Goodwin's case, after it led to documents being unsealed, which they believe aid their case greatly. Getting involved as a party in Goodwin's case would allow Megaupload's lawyers to better attack the warrants that resulted in criminal action.
The US is still trying to get Dotcom extradited from New Zealand—so far without success. Meanwhile, Dotcom has launched a new service called Mega; it was unveiled at a splashy party last month at the Dotcom Mansion.  

here piggy ,piggy !!! lol        

Does she ever keep her clothes on? Kathy Griffin strips down to her underwear AGAIN as she prepares to go on Jay Leno

By Jade Watkins
PUBLISHED: 11:09 EST, 16 February 2013 | UPDATED: 11:09 EST, 16 February 2013

She appeared on David Letterman last year and stripped down to her underwear during the live television appearance.
And it seems that Kathy Griffin was back to her old tricks again on Friday night.
The 52-year-old funnywoman tweeted a picture of herself backstage at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, once again in her black bra and panties.

Stripping down: Kathy Griffin stripped down to her underwear as she chatted to Jay Leno ahead of appearing on his show The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday night

The My Life on the D-List star wrote in an accompanying caption: 'About to go on @jayleno I hope Jay has a spare dress for me #kathy'.
In the snap, the two-time Emmy Award-winning comedienne is seen sitting in her make-up chair casually chatting to Leno, who appears to not know where to look.
Kathy, who is known for her dedication to the gym and hiking up Runyon Canyon on a regular basis, looks slim and toned in her underwear, so it's not surprising at 52, she is eager to flaunt her figure.

Oops I did it again: Kathy bared all when she appeared on The David Letterman show last year

The actress was appearing on the show to promote her own TV talk show Kathy, in which she addresses the week's most talked about moments with a panel of celebrities.
The flame-haired star has always been known for her racy antics and shocked tactics.
As well as stripping down on the Letterman show last year, Kathy really surpassed herself during CNN's live New Year's Eve broadcast earlier this year, when she simulated oral sex on co-host Anderson Cooper as well as making jokes about his 'sack'.

Cover up: Letterman was forced to step in and zip up her dress

Even when Cooper had to take a minute from the upbeat, lighthearted show for some serious news on the fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington, Griffin told him it should be called 'the fisting cliff'.
Viewers continued to be shocked and appalled at the comic's continuous racy jokes and outlandish behavior - which CNN have come to expect from Griffin.
Before the show had even begun, Anderson - predicting Kathy would get up to her usual behavior - tweeted: 'As always, I await New Year's Eve with Kathy Griffin with grave reservations and tremendous fear, and I want to apologize in advance to anyone she may offend/assault/attempt to kiss.'
To which Kathy responded: 'I don't know what Anderson has been doing this past year. I assume he has been sitting, eating Bon Bons in his mother's apartment [while] watching reality TV, while I was helping spread democracy in Egypt or Syria or whichever.'

Shock tactics: Kathy really surpassed herself during CNN's live New Year's Eve broadcast earlier this year, when she simulated oral sex on co-host Anderson Cooper as well as making jokes about his 'sack'

Naughty: During her appearance on CNN, Griffin dropped to her knees in New York's Time Square and kissed Cooper's crotch over and over again

About ten minutes into the program, Kathy told the CNN host she was going to 'tickle his sack'. As he giggled nervously back, Kathy quipped, 'You can say sack, that's not bad.'

Toyboy: Kathy is currently dating her marketing manager boyfriend, Randy Bick, who at 33, is 20 years her junior

Trying to cover her tracks, Cooper said: 'I don't know what you're talking about. I have no sack of gifts here,' to which Kathy responded, 'You're calling your privates your Christmas presents?'
But it was after the ball dropped at midnight the real fun began.
National correspondent Gary Tuchman reported live from Eastport, Maine, where the custom on new year's is to kiss a statue of an eight-foot sardine that they drop from the town's museum.
As the people of Eastport kissed the sardine, Griffin dropped to her knees in New York's Time Square and kissed Cooper's crotch over and over again.
Once again, trying to cover up the lewd act, Anderson asked her if she dropped something. 'No I was kissing your sardine,' she replied.
As he tried to lift her to her feet, Kathy continued to try to kiss his crotch saying: 'I can do this all night long' and 'I'm going down. You know you want to.'
The racy tomfoolery was only stopped when they cut to Brooke Baldwin in New Orleans.
This behavior is just another in a long line of inappropriate gaffes.
In 2008 Kathy directed a graphic oral sex insult to a heckler. In 2009 she dropped the F bomb and last year she stripped down to her underwear on Letterman.
Kathy is currently dating her marketing manager boyfriend, Randy Bick, who at 33, is 20 years her junior.
Kathy, whose net worth is estimated at $15 million, certainly has a lot to smile about these days.
 She has been very open about her obsession with appearance and usually pokes fun at herself for getting plastic surgery and Botox.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2279649/Kathy-Griffin-strips-underwear-AGAIN-prepares-Jay-Leno.html#ixzz2L6E7nqzC
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Rare media articles expose how the mass media manipulate public opinion

• http://www.examiner.com/article/rare-media-articles-expose-how-the-mass-media-manipulate-public-opinion?cid=rss
• February 12, 2013
• By: Fred Burks

Media articles expose how mass media manipulate public opinion

Credits: 

Creative Commons

"Media manipulation currently shapes everything you read, hear and watch online. Everything."
-- Forbes magazine article on mass media influence, 7/16/2012
The influence of the mass media on public perception is widely acknowledged, yet few know the incredible degree to which this occurs. Key excerpts from the rare, revealing mass media news articles below show how blatantly the media sometimes distort critical facts, omit vital stories, and work hand in hand with the military-industrial complex to keep their secrets safe and promote greedy and manipulative corporate agendas.
Once acclaimed as the watchdog of democracy and the political process, these riveting articles clearly show that the major media can no longer be trusted to side with the people over business and military interests. For ideas on how you can further educate yourself and what you can do to change all this, see the "What you can do" section below the article summaries. Together, we can make a difference.

U.S. Suppressed Footage of Hiroshima for Decades
2005-08-03, New York Times/Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-media-anniversary.html
In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. authorities seized and suppressed film shot in the bombed cities by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams to prevent Americans from seeing the full extent of devastation wrought by the new weapons. It remained hidden until the early 1980s and has never been fully aired. "Although there are clearly huge differences with Iraq, there are also some similarities," said Mitchell, co-author of "Hiroshima in America" and editor of Editor & Publisher. "The chief similarity is that Americans are still being kept at a distance from images of death, whether of their own soldiers or Iraqi civilians." The Los Angeles Times released a survey of six months of media coverage of the Iraq war in six prominent U.S. newspapers and two news magazines -- a period during which 559 coalition forces, the vast majority American, were killed. It found they had run almost no photographs of Americans killed in action. "So much of the media is owned by big corporations and they would much rather focus on making money than setting themselves up for criticism from the White House and Congress," said Ralph Begleiter, a former CNN correspondent. In 1945, U.S. policymakers wanted to be able to continue to develop and test atomic and eventually nuclear weapons without an outcry of public opinion. "They succeeded but the subject is still a raw nerve."
Note: As this highly revealing Reuters article was removed from both the New York Times and the Reuters websites, click here to view it in its entirely on one of the few alternative news websites to report it. And to go much deeper into how the devastating effects of the bomb were covered up by various entities within government, click here.

Misinformation campaign targets USA TODAY reporter, editor
2012-04-19, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-04-19/vanden-brook-locker-...
A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names. The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY's reporting on the military's "information operations" program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan — campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored. For example, Internet domain registries show the website TomVandenBrook.com was created Jan. 7 — just days after Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook first contacted Pentagon contractors involved in the program. Two weeks after his editor Ray Locker's byline appeared on a story, someone created a similar site, RayLocker.com, through the same company. If the websites were created using federal funds, it could violate federal law prohibiting the production of propaganda for domestic consumption. Some postings ... accused them of being sponsored by the Taliban. "They disputed nothing factual in the story about information operations," Vanden Brook said.
Note: For more on a proposed amendment to a U.S. bill which would make it legal to use propaganda and lie to the American public, click here.

Media as lapdog
2007-04-27, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-palast27apr27,0,5178561.story
In an e-mail uncovered and released by the House Judiciary Committee last month, Tim Griffin, once Karl Rove's right-hand man, gloated that "no [U.S.] national press picked up" a BBC Television story reporting that the Rove team had developed an elaborate scheme to challenge the votes of thousands of African Americans in the 2004 election. Griffin wasn't exactly right. The Los Angeles Times did run a follow-up article. But ... most of the major U.S. newspapers and the vast majority of television news programs ignored the story even though it came at a critical moment just weeks before the election. In fact, not one U.S. newsperson even bothered to ask me or the BBC for the data and research we had painstakingly done. The truth is, I knew that a story like this one would never be reported in my own country [the U.S.], because investigative reporting ... is dying. Again and again, I see this pattern repeated. Back in December 2000, I received two computer disks from the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Analysis of the data ... indicated that Harris' office had purged thousands of African Americans from Florida's voter rolls as "felons." Florida now admits that many of these voters were not in fact felons. Nevertheless, the blacklisting helped cost Al Gore the White House. I reported on the phony felon purge in Britain's Guardian and Observer and on the BBC while Gore was still in the race, while the count was still on. Yet the story of the Florida purge never appeared in the U.S. daily papers or on television ... until months later, that is, after the Supreme Court had decided the election.
Note: The American-born author of this article, BBC reporter Greg Palast, has repeatedly exposed major corruption in the British media, yet the U.S. press often ignores his well-researched stories. For possibly the most amazing story he wrote which got virtually no U.S. media coverage, click here.

Whistle-blower Had to Fight NSA, LA Times to Tell Story
2007-03-06, ABC News
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/03/whistleblower_h.html
Whistle-blower AT&T technician Mark Klein says his effort to reveal alleged government surveillance of domestic Internet traffic was blocked not only by U.S. intelligence officials but also by the top editors of the Los Angeles Times. Klein describes how he stumbled across "secret NSA rooms" being installed at an AT&T switching center in San Francisco and later heard of similar rooms in at least six other cities. Eventually, Klein says he decided to take his documents to the Los Angeles Times, to blow the whistle on what he calls "an illegal and Orwellian project." But after working for two months with LA Times reporter Joe Menn, Klein says he was told the story had been killed at the request of then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and then-director of the NSA Gen. Michael Hayden. Klein says he then took his AT&T documents to The New York Times, which published its exclusive account last April. In the court case against AT&T, Negroponte formally invoked the "state secrets privilege," claiming the lawsuit and the information from Klein and others could "cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States." The Los Angeles Times' decision was made by the paper's editor at the time, Dean Baquet, now the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times. As the new Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, Baquet now oversees the reporters who have broken most of the major stories involving the government surveillance program, often over objections from the government.
Note: So after the NY Times has the guts to report this important story, the man who was responsible for the censorship at the LA Times is transferred to the very position in the NY Times where he can now block future stories there. For why this case of blatant media censorship isn't making headlines, click here.

Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence
2006-01-01, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/opinion/01publiceditor.html?ex=1293771600&e...
The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency. For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States. I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor [of the New York Times], on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future. The top Times people involved in the final decisions [are] refusing to talk and urging everyone else to remain silent.

CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news
2012-09-04, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/04/cnn-business-state-sponso...
[CNN] is seriously compromising its journalism in the Gulf states by blurring the line between advertising and editorial. CNN International (CNNi) [has refused] to broadcast an award-winning documentary, "iRevolution", that was produced in early 2011 as the Arab Spring engulfed the region and which was highly critical of the regime in Bahrain. The documentary ... documented the brutality and violence the regime was using against its own citizens who were peacefully protesting for democracy. CNNi has aggressively pursued a business strategy of extensive, multifaceted financial arrangements between the network and several of the most repressive regimes around the world which the network purports to cover. Its financial dealings with Bahrain are deep and longstanding. CNNi's pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi [which produces] programs in an arrangement it describes as "in association with" the government of a country, and offers regimes the ability to pay for specific programs about their country. These programs are then featured as part of CNNi's so-called "Eye on" series [or] "Marketplace Middle East", [which are] designed to tout the positive economic, social and political features of that country.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on corruption in the major media, click here.

Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA
2012-08-29, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-...
The rightwing transparency group, Judicial Watch, released [on August 28] a new batch of documents showing how eagerly the Obama administration shoveled information to Hollywood film-makers about the Bin Laden raid. Obama officials did so to enable the production of a politically beneficial pre-election film about that "heroic" killing, even as administration lawyers insisted to federal courts and media outlets that no disclosure was permissible because the raid was classified. The newly released emails [were] between Mark Mazzetti, the New York Times's national security and intelligence reporter, and CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf. The CIA had evidently heard that [NY Times columnist] Maureen Dowd was planning to write a column on the CIA's role in pumping the film-makers with information about the Bin Laden raid in order to boost Obama's re-election chances, and was apparently worried about how Dowd's column would reflect on them. This exchange ... is remarkably revealing of the standard role played by establishment journalists and the corruption that pervades it. Here we have a New York Times reporter who covers the CIA colluding with its spokesperson to plan for the fallout from the reporting by his own newspaper ("nothing to worry about"). Beyond this, that a New York Times journalist – ostensibly devoted to bringing transparency to government institutions – is pleading with the CIA spokesperson, of all people, to conceal his actions and to delete the evidence of collusion is so richly symbolic.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on corruption in the major media, click here.

US plans to fight the net revealed
2006-01-27, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4655196.stm
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations". The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act. Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it. The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks. The military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public. Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
Note: For other revealing news articles on military corruption, click here. For other revealing news articles on government corruption, click here.

Pentagon sets sights on public opinion
2009-02-05, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040299/
The Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls "the human terrain" of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law. An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That's almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006. This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department. The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations. Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military's average cost per service member. That's double the staffing costs for 2003. Recruitment and advertising are the only two areas where Congress has authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on propaganda to the American public.
Note: For more revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, click here.

Buying the War
2007-04-25, PBS
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html
Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit ... in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner. He was hailed by media stars as a "breathtaking" example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House's claim that the war was won. How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. The [PBS "Buying the War"] program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. "Buying the War" examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what's changed? "More and more the media become ... common carriers of administration statements," says the Washington Post's Walter Pincus. "We've sort of given up being independent on our own."
Note: You can view the highly revealing documentary "Buying the War" or read the transcript at the link above.

Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush
1989-06-29, WantToKnow.info/Washington Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/890629washingtontimesfranklin
A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and US and foreign businessmen with close social ties to Washington's political elite. Reporters for this newspaper examined hundreds of credit-card vouchers, drawn on both corporate and personal cards and made payable to the escort service operated by the homosexual ring. Among clients who charged homosexual prostitutes services on major credit cards over the past 18 months are Charles K. Dutcher, former associate director of presidential personnel in the Reagan administration, and Paul R. Balach, Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole’s political personnel liaison to the White House. Members of major news organizations also procured escort services from the ring, credit card documents show. These include Stanley Mark Tapscott, who was an assistant managing editor of The Washington Times. Before joining The Times, Mr. Tapscott worked for the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan administration. A major concern, said the former official with longtime ties to top-ranking military intelligence officers, was that hostile foreign intelligence services were using young male prostitutes to compromise top administration homosexuals, thus making them subject to blackmail.
Note: How is it possible that this major story was not covered by any major media other than the Washington Times? For answers to this question, click here. For more on this astonishing case, don't miss the excellent, reliable resources and the powerful, suppressed Discovery Channel documentary available here. For an insider's story of how prostitution was regularly used to compromise politicians, click here.

Experts Urging Broader Inquiry In Towers' Fall
2001-12-25, New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40A11FB3E550C768EDDAB0994D94...
Saying that the current investigation into how and why the twin towers fell on Sept. 11 is inadequate, some of the nation's leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts are calling for a new, independent and better-financed inquiry that could produce the kinds of conclusions vital for skyscrapers and future buildings nationwide. Experts critical of the current effort ... point out that the current team of 20 or so investigators has no subpoena power and little staff support and has even been unable to obtain basic information like detailed blueprints of the buildings that collapsed. Some structural engineers have said that one serious mistake has already been made ... the decision to rapidly recycle the steel columns, beams and trusses that held up the buildings. Interviews with a handful of members of the team, which includes some of the nation's most respected engineers, also uncovered complaints that they had at various times been shackled with bureaucratic restrictions that prevented them from interviewing witnesses, examining the disaster site and requesting crucial information like recorded distress calls to the police and fire departments. Members have been threatened with dismissal for speaking to the press.
Note: Our website has over 30 full articles posted from the New York Times. This is the only article for which the Times threatened to sue us if we didn't remove it. We were allowed to replace it with this short summary. For more on this, click here. For more reliable news articles suggesting a major cover-up of 9/11, click here.

Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds
2004-08-05, AsiaTimes ('Asia's most trusted news source')
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FH05Aa01.html
Your commission ... has now issued its "9/11 Commission Report". After [9/11] we, the translators at the FBI's largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities. This issue has been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committe. Melek Can Dickerson, with the assistance of her direct supervisor, forged signatures on top-secret documents related to certain 9/11 detainees. Not only does the supervisor facilitating these criminal conducts remain in a supervisory position, he has been promoted. In April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset ... received information that: 1) Osama Bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting 4-5 major cities, 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes [and] the attack was going to be carried out soon. No action was taken. After 9/11, the agents and the translators were told to 'keep quiet' regarding this issue. The translator who was present ... reported this incident to Director Mueller in writing. Why did your report choose to exclude the information ... despite the public confirmation by the FBI, witnesses provided to your investigators, and briefings you received directly? As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. Even FBI officials 'confirmed all my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff. However, neither your commission's hearings, nor your commission's five hundred sixty seven-page report ... include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems.
Note: If the above link fails, click here. Sibel Edmonds is one of the great heroes of our day. She has been gagged directly by the U.S. Attorney General from telling what she knows. The above letter was not published in any major U.S. media, though widely reported in alternative new sources. To understand how such vital information is hidden from the public, click here. For lots more on Ms. Edmonds, click here.

The CIA and the Media
1977-10-20, Website of Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Carl Bernstein
http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA. Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.
Note: To understand how the CIA and others manipulate the major media is in its news coverage, see the brilliant summary of the work of 20 award-winning journalists on this key topic at this link.

Washington's press is the cabin boy of the political class
2012-08-03, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/03/washington-press-corp-cab...
The Washington press corps ... is too caught up in its own self-importance and petty competition to understand it has become the cabin boy of the political class. Washington reporters are co-conspirators in an ongoing fraud. The epidemic of blind quotes is a standard way of giving a platform to officials speaking in an official capacity, yet with zero accountability. The practice is also supremely manipulative, giving the most banal information the allure of forbidden fruit. At its worst, the game can allow the vice president of the United States to leak phony intelligence to the New York Times and later refer back to the leak as independent journalistic confirmation, leading to invasion and hundreds of thousands of deaths and a trillion dollars in squandered treasure. The Iraq disgrace aside, obscuring official sources might be understandable if this journalistic worst practice were in the service of earth-shaking news. It almost never is. The blind quotes, though, are not even the worst of it. The New York Times recently revealed that reporters are not merely working on background, they negotiate after interviews what comments may be used and send them to sources for prepublication approval. The sources routinely edit those quotes before turning them back over to news organisations. As media ethicist Edward Wasserman so aptly put it, "At this point you're no longer talking about an interview; you're talking about a press release … And what happens is Washington becomes no different from Beijing, in terms of reporting what authorities want reported".
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on mass media corruption, click here.

What is Media Manipulation? A Definition and Explanation
2012-07-16, Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholiday/2012/07/16/what-is-media-manipulation...
Media manipulation currently shapes everything you read, hear and watch online. Everything. In the old days, we only had a few threats to fear when it came to media manipulation: the government propagandist and the hustling publicist. They exploited the fact that the media was trusted and reliable. Today, with our blog and web driven media cycle, nothing can escape exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and simplification. Media manipulation is the status quo. It becomes, as Daniel Boorstin, author [of] The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, once put it, a "thicket ... which stands between us and the facts of life." Today the media -— driven by blogs -— is assailed on all sides, by the crushing economics of their business, dishonest sources, inhuman deadlines, pageview quotas, inaccurate information, greedy publishers, poor training, the demands of the audience, and so much more. These incentives are real, whether you’re the Huffington Post or CNN or some tiny blog. They warp everything you read online. Everyone is in on the game, from bloggers to non-profits to marketers to the New York Times itself. And when everyone is running the same racket, the line between the real and the fake becomes indistinguishable. Media manipulation exploits the difference between perception and reality. This all happens because of the poor incentives. When readers don’t PAY for news, the creators of the news don’t have any loyalty to the readers. To combat these manipulations, we must change the incentives. If we want loyalty to the truth, we must be loyal to the people who provide us with it. This probably means paying for information in one form or another.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable sources on mass media cover-ups and distortions, click here. Thanks to the generous support of our readers and our lack of advertising, WantToKnow.info is one of the few news sources not subject to pressure from financial incentives which drive news manipulation for others. To support our work so that we can continue to be free of these market pressures, click here.
What you can do:

• Inform your media and political representatives of this important information on mass media influence and corruption. To contact those close to you, click here.
• Explore the abundant resources of our highly informative Mass Media Information Center at this link.
• To read the riveting personal stories of award-winning journalists describing how major stories which should have made front page news were shut down and buried, click here.
• For a powerful online lesson on media influence, public perception, and what we can do to transform our world using the power of the Internet, see this free Insight Course lesson.
• Spread this news on mass media influence to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key social networking websites using the "Share This" icon on this page, so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.