Is Twitter (a) a leading vehicle for freedom movements, or (b) primed to control and shut down open discourse throughout the world?

This question emerged recently when we learned that the global messaging service was planning to abide by the rules of each country in terms of content it carries. Here’s New York Times:

This week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal. The move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users.

Twitter said it would also “give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.””

Now, you may be one of those people who very proudly have not incorporated Twitter into your life, but this development is still of enormous relevance to you and your world. Why? Simply because Twitter, with its declared 175 million registered users (many of whom, it must be said, are inactive) has become one of the most powerful forces in communication today, arguably more relevant to more people than even traditional heavyweights like The New York Times, CNN, and the BBC.

That’s why we at WhoWhatWhy use Twitter as one of our basket of social media tools. It allows individuals and groups to communicate directly with other individuals, in groups, on an instantaneous basis. As such, it was a vital tool for activists in Egypt and elsewhere (including the Occupy Movement in the United States) to quickly mobilize and have an impact.

Thus, Twitter is viewed as a tremendous opportunity by those who seek to regain the upper hand from the small elites that dominate the political and economic systems throughout most if not all of the world. To those elites, however, Twitter spells doom.

Unless they can neutralize it.

***

Enter the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi royal family has been very, very lucky. So far, none of the ferment in the rest of the world has yet manifested itself on their home turf to the extent to which this dictatorial, brutal, Western-backed extended clan has an immediate crisis. A modest but significant uprising in their own country was dutifully ignored by the Western media, including the vaunted “alternative press.” Demonstrated connections to the 9/11 hijackers, arguably the biggest story in the world on the 10^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, were again studiously ignored by the Western media, again including the “alternative press.”

So the Saudi One Percent have it pretty good. Except for Twitter. If Twitter were to become a powerful tool in the hands of ordinary Saudis, one can pretty quickly figure out the consequences. The royal family would have to scramble to their villas in the South of France or their Park Avenue aeries.

***

With this background, it was interesting to note the news item that Saudi prince Walid bin Talal had invested $300 million in Twitter. Twitter, which is privately held, willingly chose to sell him this substantial stake.

Twitter’s market valuation is something like $10 billion (choose what huge number you prefer.) Given that, why would this company, which is all about empowering ordinary people to communicate unfiltered and thereby get control of their lives and their governments, sell a big chunk to a representative of one of the quintessential repressive forces—an element that has a stake in preventing exactly the sort of communication that defines Twitter?

The very, very little media interest in this development is yet another sign of the degradation of journalistic inquiry—which in turn surely has to do with exactly these kinds of problematical investments.

When the New York Times covered the Saudi Twitter investment back in December, it wrote:

While Prince Walid is known as an outspoken investor, few expect the Saudi royal to use his minority stake to influence the company’s politics. His wife seemed to back that sentiment on Monday, rebroadcasting messages from other Twitter users that described the deal as a financial — and not political — transaction.

“This seems to be more about good business,” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner analyst. “Clearly, he believes that Twitter is not a passing fad but a cornerstone of the consumer social network experience.”

Ayayay. This is a royal family dangling by threads, and they have no reason to want to control the very instrument that could see them overthrown? Well, it didn’t take very long for the other shoe to drop, did it?

In its recent article about the new Twitter restrictions, the Times did briefly visit both the Twitter restriction announcement and the Saudi investment, but chose to bury near the end of the article what matters most, and to water it down to “nothing here, folks”:

Critics on Twitter surmised that the company had been pressed to adopt country-specific censorship after a major investment by a Saudi prince, a theory that Mr. Macgillivray quickly dismissed.

You have to go back to near the top of the article to find out that Mr. Macgillivray is not some knowledgeable and independent expert, but “the general counsel at Twitter.” Exactly the guy who would rough the Times up if it published something Twitter did not like. ( I mean, at least re-identify the guy together with the denial!)

An opportunity to ask why Twitter chose a Saudi royal out of all the prospective investors was squandered. Good reporting—remember that?—would start with finding out if Twitter had no choice but to hold its nose and take this tainted money. (It’s true that Twitter is not the company with the informal motto “Don’t be evil,” but it does like to make itself out to be a good citizen.)

The Times’s weak-kneed approach to this potentially earth-rattling development can be explained. The paper made its own peace with another foreign source of funding—the Mexican billionaire (and possibly world’s richest person) Carlos Slim Helu, who made a good part of his fortune by swooping in on cheap pickings during Mexico’s economic crash in the early 80s. Slim now controls about seven percent of the Times. Just as there’s precious little hard-hitting reporting in the Times on Slim, we assume that Prince Walid’s investment in Twitter has not come without a price.

And the fact that Twitter made its announcement on a Friday, traditionally when folks are paying the least attention, is telling. Clearly, Twitter knew it was a problematical stance. But it has been extraordinarily lucky in how the world’s corporate media have played along.

***

Some commentators have dismissed any criticism of Twitter’s move, saying it was simply a sign of the young tech company’s maturation.

Well, sure, Twitter is a business, and needs to do whatever it can to have good business relationships in every country. But since so many countries are dominated by—and laws written to favor—small elites, the very fact of “country by country compliance” by default compromises the essential value of Twitter’s service.

In a world more wary than ever of the uses of money to thwart democracy and threaten freedom, outfits like Twitter need to be subject of the same scrutiny as, say, the Koch Brothers or the Burmese government.

The bottom line—and one that we trumpet regularly at WhoWhatWhy (which is itself a nonprofit)—is that the most essential elements of democracy, including education and information dispersal, should not be left only or even primarily in the hands of institutions out for a profit.

Tennis shoes, frozen yogurt, even air travel, ok. But when our ability to safeguard or increase our freedoms is dependent on people taking money from tyrants who wish to suppress speech, we’ve got a problem. If any elements with a philanthropic bent, nonprofit orientation and the requisite technical skills and resources would like to discuss an alternative to Twitter, we would certainly be interested.

In the meantime, please, Twitter, don’t cancel our account. Thank you.

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

GRAPHIC: http://siliconangle.com/files/2012/01/twitter-censored.jpg

That welcome bit of uplifting news came as our president shared with us the ongoing struggle that is the State of the Union.

Despite the continued difficulties many of us face in terms of daily survival, it was heartening to know that the country was still strong enough to venture and achieve such a mission in the most dangerous parts of the world.

It was stirring. It was downright inspirational.

***

Remember “Wag the Dog”? The 1997 hit comedy featured a spin doctor and Hollywood producer who, in order to distract the public from a presidential sex scandal, convince the public of a non-existent war. The tail wagging the dog. The art of power through distraction.

In light of the continuation of this sort of spectacle into the Obama era, I’d like to propose a new term for our time: “Wag the seal.”

For this is the second time—and presumably not the last—that Obama has gotten a lift from those daring fellows. And in both cases, close scrutiny raises the question of just who is being had.

Each produced a magnificently advantageous moment for a president sweating a tough and uncertain re-election. But Obama was hardly the only winner. Another beneficiary is surely the Pentagon, which is under severe pressure to restrain itself and cut its size and costs, and could use a favorable performance. Though the US military seems incapable of “winning” the complex and mind-bendingly expensive foreign adventures it launches almost like clockwork, it does seem able to execute small, limited operations that please the public.

And of course there is the retinue that profits from all this, the “one percent” who derive substantial profits from the permanent war economy. Not to mention the oil and mineral companies and all other foreign exploitation, er, exploration industries, whose continued high profits are largely dependent on the continued projection of American strength throughout the world.

Finally, as always, there is the media. For it is at root about good story-telling. And was there ever a better story than a pretty maiden rescued by dashing and clean-cut lads from drooling savages?

***

They tell us that the Somali mission was executed by the same Navy SEALs unit that carried out the biggest coup of the Obama administration if not the past decade: taking down the man who was America’s  most reviled, and perhaps feared, symbol of danger: Osama bin Laden.

Most people, reliant on the coverage of major news organizations, rest content that America justly and efficiently dispatched bin Laden. Only those with keen antennae—or those who read accounts questioning the contradictory, irrational and unnecessarily opaque explanations of exactly what happened, realize that something was wrong with that operation. Something more was going on. What exactly it was—whether that helicopter that crashed did not really manage to disgorge its SEAL occupants unscathed, whether the man who we are told was hurriedly dumped into the ocean before proper public verification of his identity was definitely the man who terrorized the world, whether the people living in that house in Abbottabad were unavoidable casualties or executed by design—these things we still do not know.

But one thing is clear: that raid did wonders for Obama and the military. No one dare call Obama a wimp.

***

When you look carefully at the Somali rescue, you see similarly troubling patterns of manipulation, and the pursuit of propaganda victories cloaked as legitimate policy.

Consider the circumstances: an American citizen, albeit one with seemingly the most admirable intentions, was kidnapped along with a foreign colleague while leaving a charity mission in a region with heavy pirate activity. The US began monitoring her situation, and when, we are told, signs indicated that her health was dangerously deteriorating, the authorities launched their operation.

What are the criteria for such operations? At any given time, some Americans may be being held by kidnapers in various parts of the world. As far as we know, most do not benefit from the attention of the US military. In fact, we don’t even know how many are being held because the numbers are kept under wraps—try asking the FBI. In any case, another American was kidnapped in Somalia recently, and his kidnappers have adopted dramatic measures to make sure that another raid is not attempted.

The stated reason for the timing of the rescue of 32-year-old American Jessica Buchanan and Poul Hagen Thisted, her 60-year-old Danish colleague, was that Buchanan’s health had declined precipitously. Yet concern for the health of Americans is not a settled notion at all. In fact, the majority of Republican candidates for the presidency, the same ones who cheered the rescue, oppose guaranteeing the most basic health needs of all American children.

That Buchanan was in captivity for some time, and that her release came at a propitious moment when Obama was under the maximum media spotlight, cannot be dismissed. Neither can the central role of Obama’s discredited counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, whose shifting narratives of the bin Laden raid remain unresolved and have lowered faith in Obama’s veracity among some Americans. It is important to note Brennan’s close relationship with the Saudi royal family, whose survival depends on keeping sea lanes open near the Horn of Africa where the Somali pirates ply the waters.

So, though as humans we cheer the good result of this particular adventure, we must concede that this is not really about health or even saving lives. It is about “sending a message.” But does the message really get sent to those who would harm Americans? There is little evidence that armed intervention is a deterrent. Indeed, the kidnappers of the other American being held in Somalia seem to have upped their threats of violence since the raid.

No, the message is being sent to us. It is no coincidence that these kinds of affairs always involve the most, pardon the expression, black and white of elements. How often do you hear about a person of color who is being held hostage, has gone missing, or was killed. Or of someone obese, or physically unattractive? Think back over the tabloid stories that have sustained the media for months at a time and riveted the American people. Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman. Natalee Holloway and Robyn Gardner. When are the villains more nuanced, run-of-the-mill criminals without distinguishing stories? Pirates indeed. It’s almost as if the same fictional producer in Wag the Dog now shuttles permanently between Hollywood and the White House.

GRAPHIC: : http://vir4l.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/obama_i_got_this.jpg

Can we expect to find anything crooked in Romney’s filings?

You kidding? Smart rich people hire smart accountants to keep them out of trouble. It’s not the illegal things they do, it’s how they manage to rig things so that they get away, metaphorically, with murder.

Should Romney’s tax returns be the way to judge him?

To be sure, they do reveal how capital gains tax rates are highly advantageous to the rich and penalize those who work for their living. And that’s an important point. But what we should be interested in with regard to Romney in particular is his values, as shown by the strategies and tactics of his companies.

Are Romney’s recent tax filings the most important ones?

Because Romney left Bain Capital way back in 1999 to embark on a political career, it is the earlier tax filings that would likely reveal the most.

His seasoned political advisers would have been all over him to exhibit exemplary behavior–since ’99, and probably even earlier, when he may already have been considering politics. Also, as he was not actually working at Bain but just receiving passive income from it in recent years, we shouldn’t expect to see much that is worth assessing.

Thus, his 2010-11 release is definitely not very forthcoming.

Was Romney’s delay tactic part of a “limited hangout”?

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to resist disclosure, let anticipation build a bit, then release something that appears to answer questions, while not revealing anything very interesting. This pretty much ends debate.

Consider how long George W. Bush took to release National Guard service records, and how long Barack Obama took to release his birth records. In the end, these controversies fizzled, and people moved on.

Should Romney’s income from Bain even be treated as a capital gain?

No. He actually worked for that money, as a fund manager, plenty of hours every week. Thus, it should be taxed as normal earned income. But because of a loophole in the law (what a surprise!) engineered by the faithful lawyers, accountants and lobbyists of the one percent, it gets treated as capital gains, and therefore the lowest tax rate applies.

What’s with Romney’s having had money in the Swiss Bank UBS?

This looks pretty bad. (For more on UBS, its pernicious activities and how it gets its claws into politicians of both parties, see this, this and this.) There are very few legitimate, or public-spirited business reasons for having a Swiss bank account.

So why did Romney have that account? Someone should ask him. His trustee said he closed it in early 2010. That’s just a short time after UBS was forced to pay huge fines to the US government to settle a criminal investigation that established the bank had encouraged wealthy Americans to illegally hide their income abroad.

Could Romney have been one of those Americans? Possible, but doubtful, mostly because it would have been really dumb. Most of those caught doing that were largely in the “rich but dumb” category.

Could any of the tax shelter stuff turn out to be odious even if not illegal?

Sure, but you probably wouldn’t know unless you looked at, and compared, a whole bunch of different years’ tax filings. And so far, Romney has not agreed to provide that.

Can we trust Fred Goldberg’s clean bill of health?

When Romney released his tax filings, they came with a letter from former IRS commissioner Fred Goldberg saying he’d checked them out, and they looked…supah!

But who is Fred Goldberg? The same guy who, following an unscheduled visit from Scientology’s top leader, abruptly reversed policy to grant tax exempt status to the hyper-controversial, pyramid-style, service-selling enterprise. Worth taking a second look at this guy and why and how he is helping Mitt out.

Does the way Mitt released his taxes demonstrate good faith?

Definitely not. Though this was by far the biggest news out of his campaign on Tuesday, it was released the same day as the State of the Union address, guaranteeing that it would get second billing. Also, the campaign managed to bury it on their website, so much so that after a few minutes, I had still not found it there, and had to rely on the website of the Washington Post.

What about those domestic workers Mrs. Romney paid?

The filing, by Mrs. Romney (not Mr.). show that she paid around $20,000 in total during 2010 to four domestic workers. Sure would like to know more about that—and what it tells us about the rich vs. poor. The Romneys have at least three houses, some pretty substantial places. Assuming they only employ regular help at their main Massachusetts house, $20k is still a paltry total. That’s an average of $5,000 a year to four people. Wonder how much work they did. After all, Mrs. Romney is known to struggle with MS, and it’s doubtful Mitt does much sweeping, dusting, cooking, etc.

The Romneys should be queried about why Mrs. Romney takes legal responsibility for reporting payments to the help (beyond unfortunate stereotypes about stay-at-home wives), and why no payments show up for 2011.

In any case, it’s not a very good ratio of income to job creation, for a guy who talks about creating jobs: the year the Romneys paid their staff $20,000, they earned $27 million.

The worst thing of all is that, depending on their total income, those domestic workers may have paid a much higher tax rate for their hard physical labor at Romney’s house than Romney did on the millions in investment income that piled in while he pursued his political dream.

And that just seems really wrong.

GRAPHIC: http://media.thestate.com/smedia/2012/01/24/19/41/550-18kWE9.St.55.jpg

Which is the real president? And which is the real story?

As the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy approaches, there is a growing flurry of material about—or even from—the Kennedy clan. This includes “insider” accounts and what are described as exciting, must-read and must-watch revelations.

Yet, for some reason, little of it is truly revelatory, or if it is, it seems, almost by design, very, very small potatoes indeed.

Take for example a new documentary by Bobby Kennedy’s daughter, for HBO. What’s the big revelation? That Bobby feared…are you ready… that someone would throw acid in the face of his children. Who? The mafia. And when was this a threat? In the 1950s. When RFK was a Senate investigator, years before he and his brother ever got near the White House. And years before his brother and then he himself were killed under still-unresolved circumstances.

Got that? Nothing about elements other than “professional criminals.” Threat to his children, not him. And this was before RFK became Attorney General and started really going after the mob, and everyone else.

Oh—and nothing about who…killed him.

That’s Hollywood!

***

I subscribe to a newsfeed with articles related to JFK. It’s an endless stream of banality: the death of democracy packaged as consumer goods for collectors. For example, you could have bid in a recent auction for the hearse that carried JFK’s body, and of course, there are the requisite collector plates and supposedly valuable limited-edition coins.

Lots of people who “covered” the assassination are featured in interviews and panel discussions, but for some reason none of them seem to have real insight or have done original investigative reporting on what actually took place that day. It’s all surface recollections of emotions and empirical material gleaned from the official story.

Then there are the odd little accidents. Like this that came through Google Alerts:

Filmmaker denies JFK conspiracy theories
Indiana Daily Student
Wednesday, Union Board presented Barbour’s 1992 documentary “The JFK Assassination: The Garrison Tapes,” followed by a question-and-answer session with Barbour. The film features Barbour’s exclusive interviews with late New Orleans District Attorney …
See all stories on this topic »

Ok, so this tells us the filmmaker John Barbour “denies” JFK conspiracy theories. But the few who actually might click on this not-so-interesting sounding link come to this headline:

Filmmaker affirms JFK conspiracy theories with ‘The Garrison Tapes’

So let’s go to the dictionary. Does “denies” equal “affirms”? No, it is the opposite. Hmm….

***

Several major Hollywood productions are supposedly on their way to screens. Jonathan Demme has optioned Stephen King’s not-very-good and certainly irrelevant fantasy about Lee Harvey Oswald. Bold, sir!

Tom Hanks, always looking to take huge risks (er—not!), has optioned Vincent Bugliosi’s endless (1,612-page) and loyal re-confirmation of the widely-discredited Warren Report, again with HBO said to be in the picture.

A third, a book by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio, at least explores some of the enormous amount of evidence of an organized hit beyond the lone kook. But it settles in nicely with “the mafia did it” despite the other enormous mass of evidence—of a far-ranging cover-up involving high military, intelligence and other officials—none of whom were mafia, last time I checked. Even this slightly bolder approach from DiCaprio comes under attack from a conventional media hack/gossip columnist, who lazily bandies about the term “crackpot conspiracy theories” (honestly, does this woman ever do any background research—or read books?)

In any case, none of the films that Hollywood seems willing to tackle touch on what the great, great mass of careful investigation, research and scholarship has shown over the years—the extremely high likelihood that JFK’s death was a covert operation engineered by exactly the kinds of people whose profession was to displace leaders and carry out military-precision operations under cover. (My own book, Family of Secrets, has four chapters of new, abundantly documented and heavily footnoted material on the Kennedy assassination, including the answer to why George H.W. Bush cannot remember where he was on Nov. 22, 1963—and there are many other fine books, both recent vintage and released over the years, which carefully lay out enough evidence to settle the matter to all but the most closed-minded. Examples here, here, and here.)

Nearly half a century after the death of a president who took bold steps against abuses by the one percent of the one percent, we are still in denial about how and why he died. Our leading institutions and individuals are not only scared to talk about the truth, but glad to cynically profit from tired lies and evasions.

So where are we when it comes to our own boldness and advanced self-awareness? This year, we may be headed toward a presidential general election contest between a wealthy predator and a putative reformer who has made his peace with the most powerful, wealthiest circles in America. If not that wealthy predator, then perhaps a demagogic blowhard of the extreme mercenary variety.

Wonder what Jack and Bobby would have to say?

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

GRAPHIC: http://cdn.buzznet.com/media-cdn/jj1/headlines/2010/11/leonardo-dicaprio-jfk-assassination-movie.jpg

It’s exciting to see how a coordinated Web blackout this Wednesday got members of Congress to reverse themselves so quickly—and do the right thing. By the end of the day, the number of Senators publicly opposing PIPA (the anti-piracy legislation that threatens free speech) jumped to 35 from five the week before. By the time you read this, those numbers may have jumped again. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if, with the tidal wave of public anger, we see 100 senators scrambling to get on the bandwagon. (Well, probably not 100, but a lot.)

However, it’s important to remember that, no matter how many citizens expressed themselves on PIPA (or the House version, SOPA), it was corporations partially driving this—in competition with other corporations. Basically, it is a battle between companies that create original content (especially movie and music makers) and those who derive their living from providing communications platforms where pretty much anything goes, including “borrowing” imagery, film clips, songs and more from their owners and creators for the purposes of a vibrant dialogue.

Putting aside the complicated pros and cons of the issue, in which both sides have legitimate concerns, and the overriding conclusion that the legislation could cast a severe pall over free discourse and Internet innovation, there is another matter to consider.

Namely this: What would it take for a public movement to get a similar response from elected officials,  when billion-dollar interests were not lined up on the same side? Twitter, Reddit, Google, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, etc. may be cool, but they’re giant, or at least popular, for-profit enterprises with agendas of their own. Wikipedia and Mozilla are huge, albeit nonprofit, commercial-type enterprises with major brands to promote and protect. All of these and more were on the “free speech” side of this battle. And their role, up front and center, was indispensable in driving home the point, and making congress- members squeal.

As soon as the blackout went into effect, and these outfits got their users to begin a massive and immediate campaign of petitions, emails, and calls, elected officials reversed themselves faster than you can say “one term.”

But suppose the free-speech forces had to make their case without a turbocharging from interested parties? How would we get some other onerous piece of legislation blocked when there was no strong financial incentive for deep-pocketed corporations with slick marketing/publicity arms to mobilize?

For example, what about the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), with its onerous and vague provisions that could, under certain circumstances, potentially allow for the indefinite detention without charge of American citizens accused of connections with terrorist groups? Despite a public uproar, Congress went ahead and passed that bill. (Obama signed it, but in a “signing statement” said that his administration would not sanction indefinite detention of citizens – a proviso that offers no restraint on future administrations.)

The point is this: indefinite detention of citizens, even the remote threat of it, is surely as important a threat to our liberties as legislation that curtails our freedom to use copyrighted material on the Internet. Yet what corporations were troubled enough to join the ACLU and other liberties groups in opposing NDAA?

Before we get too self-satisfied over the SOPA/PIPA victory, we need to take a long, hard look at our increasing alliance with all manner of corporate entities to advance our own interests. We should ask ourselves: If we don’t believe that corporations should be treated as persons, why do we need to work with them as if they are? And how can we the people join together to attain political goals without an 800-pound corporate gorilla in our corner?

GRAPHIC: http://artwales.biz/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/stop-sopa-bill-300×300.jpg

ARTICLE SUMMARY:

 The New York Times’ “Public Editor” wonders if the paper ought to explicitly call officials on their lies. But a look at a typical day in the life of the paper shows that the truth problem runs a lot deeper.

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FULL ARTICLE:

Continuing on our theme about the limitations of the corporate owned media, and how it shapes our worldview and our world….

On Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times’s Public Editor (reader advocate of sorts) posed a question in his column that caused a firestorm, with strong feelings on both sides. He asked whether journalists should “call out” public figures when they seem to be lying (as opposed to passively reporting their dubious claims). The piece was headlined “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?”

That being a “truth vigilante” is not the default practice at the Times and other news organizations is revealing about the limitations of the prevalent style, which tends to show considerable deference to authority figures.

I hadn’t even seen Brisbane’s essay when I opened up my “Times Reader” (simulated NY Times front page) and reviewed the top stories in the world’s most respected paper that day. I wish I had. Because what I saw was much worse than just not challenging lies. It was essentially enabling them. And it was not the reporters, but the institution itself.

What stood out were the themes that emanated from the headlines and summaries, and the larger message that emerged from the selection of stories being highlighted. Perhaps not entirely consciously, the editors were themselves having a powerful subliminal effect on the rest of us.

***

STORY #1

Adversaries of Iran Said to Be Stepping Up Covert Actions

A campaign of bombings, assassinations, defections and cyberattacks, which experts believe is mainly Israel’s work, seems meant to halt Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon

Let’s focus just on the headline and summary, which is all most people will read—and which are not written by the person doing the reporting, but by desk editors and higher-ups who understand certain realities and exigencies. The headline is fine—neutral, and probably correct. But what about the summary’s assertion that “experts” believe it is “mainly Israel’s work”?

We know that the former heads of Israel’s two main spy agencies have criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu’s proactive stance against Iran, because of serious doubts that Iran is any kind of great or immediate threat to Israel. So, if those “experts” want us to think it is Israel’s work, why? And, if indeed it is Israel’s work, why again? Could Netanyahu be pursuing such activities—or at least have accepted a role as the public face of these actions—as a surrogate for Western interests who have a keen interest in retaking the oil-rich and strategically important country? That’s at least a distinct possibility—a kind of quid pro quo for political support for Netanyahu—and deserves journalistic exploration.

The second problem with the New York Times summary is the assertion that the campaign against Iran “seems meant to halt Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.” In fact, it seems meant to destabilize the regime, and create an atmosphere in which an internal uprising or purported Western “humanitarian” or peace-keeping intervention become possible.

(Read more about the signs of coming war with Iran here.)

Where have we heard such credulous assertions before? Iraq? Libya? Syria?  Consider the widespread doubts about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, intentions, and imminent threat to the US or its allies. Then recall the role of the Times and other media outfits in putting out exactly this kind of official line in other situations where it was proved wrong but played a seminal part in the propaganda effort that led to war. You’d think journalistic conscience, initiative and 20/20 hindsight would suggest some other course of reporting.

***

STORY #2

Against Odds, Path Opens Up for U.S.-Taliban Talks

The Taliban’s willingness to open a political office in Qatar represents a critical point in the United States’s attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan.

Headline: Against what odds? What other option exists in this, the latest in a string of failed military interventions?

Summary: The Taliban is willing to create the environment for dialogue with its hated enemy. Wonder why? And why would the US negotiate with such a brutal force? For answers, we have to turn to another Times article, from 2010. That earlier piece seems to have made no long-term impression. But it is oh-so-relevant in explaining why the US is willing to give up its moral stand in defense of the victims of the Taliban—and find some kind of accommodation with these extremists. And why the very keen leadership of the Taliban is quite willing to find common ground.

It’s worth reading an extensive excerpt from the 2010 article in light of this new, seemingly illogical dalliance between ideological foes:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion….

..American officials…recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country….

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said….

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency…..

“Common ground” indeed! It seems reasonable to conclude that the 2010 Times piece was another piece of government propaganda, allowing the US military to announce that, gee whiz, we just discovered that Afghanistan is chock full of valuable minerals — thereby providing another reason for American troops to remain, after the older excuses—Al Qaeda’s presence, concern for democracy, had grown stale.

Now, how surprising is it that a journalistic enterprise which so willingly does the government’s bidding in such important matters has trouble deciding whether or not to call out the lies of politicians and government officials in its news columns?

***

STORY #3

Economic Woes Loom Larger as GOP Heads South

This one had no summary on my screen. But here’s the lead paragraph of the story, aptly datelined from the town of NORTH, S.C.:

The grim just gets grimmer here at the Edisto Grocery, where all day long people with not enough work come to eat $2.25 fried bologna sandwiches, pick up some horse feed and complain about the price of diesel.

(This from a newspaper whose own employees are reduced to petitioning their owner not to cut their pensions and other long-promised benefits.)

How do you keep the American people from getting too angry at the few who always manage to make out like bandits? Start a war far away, focus on external enemies, and pick up a bit of fuel in the bargain.

***

And if people are still angry, paying attention to how lousy the vaunted American democratic experiment is turning out for them, there’s always…distraction and fantasy.

This brings us to the “soft” offering from the “front page”:

Aristocracy

STORY #4

If You’re Mad for ‘Downton,’ Publishers Have Reading List

The popularity of all things “Downton Abbey” has American book marketers trying to ride a British aristocracy wave.

***

The combined message from these selected offerings is this: pay attention, but to the same old official line—not to your own instincts on what is going on, and not to what history tells us. Don’t think about what and who keeps messing up our world, or why.

Then, when this wholly inadequate “news coverage” has you feeling totally frustrated, confused and hopeless—well, here, dope up on some pleasurable fantasy about the glamour of your betters.

Now….Don’t you feel a lot better already? And, really, who needs “truth vigilantes?”

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

GRAPHIC: http://www.dollarvigilante.com/storage/2011/2011-07-july/propaganda-II.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1308793667775

New York Times boss Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

Recently, New York Times staffers boldly confronted their institution. In a near outright insurrection, published December 23 as an open letter to their boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., 561 staffers and a few retirees signed a declaration of frustration.

We’ve got our own declaration to those Times folks—a way out of this mess.

But first, here’s the text of that open letter, in its entirety:

Dear Arthur:

We, the Guild leadership and many reporters, editors, account managers and other Times employees, Guild members and otherwise, are writing to express profound dismay at several recent developments.

Our foreign citizen employees in overseas bureaus have just had their pensions frozen with only a week’s warning. Some of these people have risked their lives so that we can do our jobs. A couple have even lost them. Many have spent their entire careers at the Times — indeed, some have letters from your father explaining the pension system — and deserve better treatment.

At the same time, your negotiators have demanded a freeze of our pension plan and an end to our independent health insurance.

We ask you to withdraw these demands so that negotiations on a new contract can proceed fruitfully and expeditiously. We also urge you to reconsider the decision to eliminate the pensions of the foreign employees.

We have worked long and hard for this company and have given up pay to keep it solvent. Some of us have risked our lives for it. You have eloquently recognized and paid moving tribute to our work and devotion. The deep disconnect between those words and the demands of your negotiators have given rise to a sense of betrayal.

One of our colleagues in senior management recently announced her retirement from the paper, which is reported to include a very generous severance and retirement package, including full pension benefits.

All of us who work at the Times deserve to have a secured retirement; this should not be a privilege cynically reserved to senior management. We strongly urge you to keep faith with your words and our shared mission of putting out the best newspaper in the world.

WHY A LETTER WON’T DO IT—AND WHAT WILL

New York Timesians, welcome to the real world. In the end, the problem is the ownership of the media. In the end, you work on a plantation. Granted, it is a plush plantation, and there are many benefits, not the least of which is the status it accords.

But you’re very much working for the establishment. And the establishment is looking out for their interests, chiefly, not yours, or ours, no matter how much they try and tell us otherwise.

Why not, in this new world, take a risk to create a better journalism, one not owned by rich people or corporations? Why not get involved with journalism whose only agenda is to figure out what is really going on, and then say so? That gets right to the point of what you discovered in your reporting, without pretending to be above the fray and reporting what powerful, self-interested “sources” tell you as if it is the gospel?

You can see what corporate ownership (even the kind dominated by single families—think Walmart and the Waltons, not just the Sulzbergers and the New York Times) does to journalists: it causes them to hold their fire. News outlets are really too important to democracy and the public interest to let them nestle in the bosom of the rich.

Think of all the times The Times has been wrong, pressing you toward the establishment consensus on stories where you knew that was not the right place to be, journalistically.

The Times has exaggerated the importance of things like the Iowa caucuses and primaries in terms of giving the public false confidence they actually have a say in what is an increasingly tenuous democracy. It played a central role in the rush to war with Iraq, and a lack of investigative rigor on the real reasons for intervening in Libya. It has been so terrified of being labeled as “conspiracy theorists” that it has ignored important legitimate reporting on 9/11 and the inconsistent government explanations of the raid that “got” Bin Laden.

It has shown cluelessness on Occupy Wall Street. Its columnists defended a friend instead of investigating him for fraud. It has been excessively soft toward “acceptable” candidates like Mitt Romney and rough on those who would ruffle feathers.

The Times investigates the establishment, up to a point. But in the end, it upholds the establishment. It is a wholly owned subsidiary.

Think of the hoary old discredited memes, like the Warren Report, that the spirit of the place keeps flame for some reason. Think of its preference for bland middle of the road candidates who can do nothing to stop this country’s slide to the bottom. And for “order,” when what we may need, in a country increasingly experiencing corporate-driven chaos, is a little more healthy disorder.

Corporate-owned media has been “in charge” of providing the dominant national narrative, helping us understand where we are and why, and what we can do about it. And how good a job, would you say, it has done, overall? Are things much better after this long reign?

Most of you are fine people—some are my friends—and many of you do great work, or at least the best you are able under certain constraints. But in the end you are on the plantation. You may petition your owner, as you have, but he’s got the upper hand. He certainly isn’t going to give up a lot so that you may keep your pension.

I understand you want to keep your job and your benefits. But does it really feel that good being on the corporate plantation?

Come join us. Ask the deep questions, write whatever you learn. No holds barred. Work in an outfit that takes itself a little less seriously—but takes the truth very seriously indeed.

Help us collect the people and the resources, and build a more perfect journalism.

WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.

Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.

GRAPHIC: http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4bf1437c7f8b9a660d0e0600/new-york-times.jpg

Winner of Fodor’s New Mexico photo collection

New Mexico is one of WhoWhatWhy’s special places. We like the place and the people, and from what we can tell, it’s mutual.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-100-years-of-new-mexico-20120104,0,3111202.htmlstory

GRAPHIC: http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-trb-100-years-of-new-mexico-20120104,0,3111202.htmlstory

The essence of Obama is to make gestures that will please everyone, but to do it without genuine enthusiasm or pleasure—and therefore please no one. Ordinary people feel he cares not a whit about them, and the moneyed class resents his occasional populist-firebrand rhetoric. It is a mark of cynicism to operate like this. It is also not necessarily a winning formula for a politician. And for a country, it is a disaster.

***

If Obama wants to inspire, he has to pick sides. And that’s not so hard to justify when one side constitutes almost everybody, and the other maybe one percent of one percent.

Now, to be sure, taking on the big boys is full of risks. We write about those at WhoWhatWhy all the time—including here and here.  Presidents who buck the established order face great peril.

But when you do choose to take that position, you can’t just do it kinda sorta, when poll numbers demand action. You’ve got to hunker down, figure out who your real friends are, get protection (literal and figurative) and go for it. That is, if you have it in you to do so. Ron Paul’s growing popularity, and bursts of interest in figures like Gingrich and Bachmann and Cain (before gaffes, deficiencies and attack ads cut them down to size) shows that perceived gumption goes a long way with the public.

Obama, on the other hand, most decidedly does not tend to “go for it.” (His lack of a cooperative Congress is no excuse, since leadership by example can on its own make things happen.)

To be sure, he has installed administrators throughout the government whose inclinations are to actually carry out the mandate of their agencies (gasp!)—on the environment, education, consumer protection, workers, and more. In that sense, at least, he is the polar opposite of George W. Bush.

But on the things that really matter to the elite of the elite within the One Percent, he is nowhere. Nobody has gone to jail for the picking of the American pocket by the banksters; no one has even been indicted.

Now, if none of the actions that led to the Great Recession constitutes a crime, then the president should be pointing that out and talking about tough new laws. (The wealthy have always understood that as long as you control the law, nothing you do can get you in too much trouble.)

As we have noted, Obama failed to take action to directly help homeowners, even as some regional Federal Reserve (!) economists were urging him to do exactly that. Meanwhile, he gave the bankers, the hospitals, the insurance industry, the military contractors, pretty much whatever they wanted.

The illegal wars, torture and other crimes and shames perpetrated by the Bush administration have gone unprosecuted and generally unacknowledged by the administration.

His all-important Justice Department tends to go after small fish, and largely victimless crimes (86 percent of the prison population, more than half of those drug related—excluding those Wall Street types who use illegal drugs in their penthouses, risk-free). Last year Attorney General Eric Holder said the department’s  top priority was protecting Americans from terrorism (apparently not of the economic sort—nor of the Saudi sort), followed by crime prevention (apparently not of the economic sort), and then protecting Americans from financial fraud (apparently not of the large-scale sort), and finally, protecting the country’s “vulnerable populations” (but apparently not from the biggest thieves.)

Obama occasionally alludes to the rot in the hearts of so many people at the highest levels of the financial system, but does nothing about it. And as I pointed out in the UBS banker piece, turning one of the worst exemplars of that system’s corrupt tendencies into one of his closest friends represents either a reckless blindness to the messages he is sending, or a deliberate thumbing of his nose.

But why should people be surprised by Obama? The system only lets “system types” thrive and get to the top. The only system types who shake things up are those who derive the confidence to do so from their own privileged background, like FDR and JFK. Obama himself was merely the representative of the fact that certain “acceptable” people of mixed race with proper demeanor and “credentials” would now be welcomed to the feast if they behaved properly. He never really established a track record of leadership or boldness prior to running for president. People just fell in love with their projection of what “Yes we can” meant.

But what matters now is what comes next. What matters is whether he will be re-elected, and if so, whether as a lame duck with “nothing to lose” he will do what 99% of the country longs for him to do: take aim at the core corruption and greedy self-dealing that is destroying America.

Obviously, to stay in the game, he must to some degree play the game the way it is being played. But he can howl hard about how unhappy he is with it. And he can speak directly about ways in which as a second-termer he is going to lead the charge in fundamentally challenging the corruption.

More and more, it seems Obama’s message is, “Yes, I’m In a Can”.  That’s not very inspiring. And it’s not going to get him—or us—where we need to go.

GRAPHIC: http://addictinginfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/obama.jpg