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RSN: Saudi-US Propaganda by PBS NewsHour in Houthi-held Yemen |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 24 July 2018 13:35 |
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Boardman writes: "This is what American tax-supported propaganda looks like when an organization like the PBS NewsHour wants to maintain a semblance of credibility while lying through its intimidated teeth."
A boy walks on rubble of a house after it was destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Yemen's capital Sanaa. (photo: Reuters)
Saudi-US Propaganda by PBS NewsHour in Houthi-held Yemen
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
24 July 18
One of the poorest countries in the Middle East, Yemen’s war has pushed it to the brink of famine. A Saudi blockade has slowed the flow of food and helped push prices up. Markets and businesses are ruined from airstrikes. Millions are destitute. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson smuggled herself across front lines to report on what’s happening inside the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
– PBS NewsHour summary, July 2, 2018
 his is what American tax-supported propaganda looks like when an organization like the PBS NewsHour wants to maintain a semblance of credibility while lying through its intimidated teeth. Yes, Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, long dependent on imported food and other life support. But to say “Yemen’s war” is major league deceit, and PBS surely knows the truth: that the war on Yemen is American-backed, initiated – illegally – in March 2015 by a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE (United Arab Emirates). The US/Saudi war is genocidal, creating famine and a cholera epidemic for military purposes. These are American and Arab war crimes that almost no one wants to acknowledge, much less confront.
The “Saudi blockade” is also a US Navy blockade. The blockade is a war crime. Starving civilians is a war crime.
The most amazing sentence is: “Markets and businesses are ruined from airstrikes.” Seems rather bland. But this is a tacit admission of more war crimes – Saudi bombing of civilian businesses, as well as civilian hospitals, weddings, and funerals. But PBS makes it sound like the airstrikes sort of come out of nowhere, like the rain. PBS omits the American culpability that makes the airstrikes possible: mid-air refueling, targeting support, intelligence sharing, and the rest. Think of Guernica, the fascist bombing of civilians that inspired Picasso’s painting. Now think of Guernica lasting three years. That’s what the US has supported in Yemen and that’s what PBS helps cover up.
Yes, “Millions are destitute,” and yes, this is “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” But an honest news organization might go on to note that the destitution and the disaster are deliberate results of the world’s most relentless war crime.
From a journalistic perspective, getting the perky blonde reporter Jane Ferguson into northern Yemen, where the Houthis have been in control since 2014, is an accomplishment of note. There has been little firsthand reporting from Houthi Yemen, where the worst war crimes have been committed and the worst suffering continues. Ferguson’s presence was certainly an opportunity for serious independent reporting. PBS didn’t allow that. Based on no persuasive evidence, PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff framed the report as coming from “territory held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.” There is no credible evidence of meaningful Iranian support for the Houthis. To believe there is, one has to believe the Iranians are consistently getting through the US-Saudi blockade. PBS ignores such realities, as do most Washington policy-makers. Woodruff does acknowledge in her weaselly way that it’s “a brutal war that the United States is supporting through a Saudi-led coalition,” which is still a long way from the truth that it’s a genocidal bombing campaign made possible by the US.
Reporter Ferguson adds to the distraction by focusing on the poverty and suffering as if they came from nowhere:
Life is slipping away from Maimona Shaghadar. She suffers the agony of starvation in silence. No longer able to walk or talk, at 11 years old, little Maimona’s emaciated body weighs just 24 pounds. Watching over her is older brother Najib, who brought her to this remote hospital in Yemen, desperate to get help. The nurses here fight for the lives of children who are starving….
You were never supposed to see these images of Maimona. A blockade of rebel-held Northern Yemen stops reporters from getting here. Journalists are not allowed on flights into the area. No cameras, no pictures.
That last bit of self-dramatization of the daring journalist glosses over a harsh reality: in addition to waging a genocidal war on a trapped population, the US-Saudi axis is also enforcing isolation and censorship on the victim population. It is a US-Saudi blockade that keeps reporters out, preventing firsthand reporting of endless war crimes. Who says? Jane Ferguson says: “The Houthis cautiously welcomed me in and, once I was there, watched me closely.”
Ferguson’s coverage of the hunger and starvation is heart-wrenching, journalism at its most moving but least informative. She frames her narrative falsely:
In the midst of political chaos in Yemen after the Arab Spring, Houthi rebels from the north captured the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, before sweeping south and causing the country’s then president to flee. Neighboring Sunni, Saudi Arabia, views the Houthis, from a Yemeni sect close to Shia Islam and backed by rival Iran, as an unacceptable threat along their border.
Political chaos is Yemen is decades if not centuries old, often fomented by the Saudis and other outside powers. The Houthis have been there for thousands of years (as Ferguson later acknowledges) and their dispute with the Saudis is ancient and territorial. The Houthis’ religion is independent. The influence of Iran is largely a Saudi night-fright made increasingly real by the war the Saudis say is supposed to stop Iran. This is contrary to the official story. Ferguson does not acknowledge it.
Ferguson pitches the second part of her three-part series, deceitfully understating American responsibility for the carnage. She doesn’t mention that the war would not have started without a US green light, saying only:
But there is a role played by the U.S. military, one that is sort of more passively behind, not quite as visible. And so we’re going to be looking at that role.
This is the official position of the Pentagon, which has claimed the US is not involved in combat in Yemen. The US role that is “more passively behind, not quite so visible” is still crucial to killing Yemenis on a daily basis. The war on Yemen began with US blessing and continues only because of US political, logistical, and materiel support. Jane Ferguson begins this segment with a reasonably accurate albeit morally numb description:
Inside rebel territory in Yemen, the war rains down from the sky. On the ground, front lines have not moved much in the past three years of conflict. Instead, an aerial bombing campaign by the Saudi-led and American-backed coalition hammers much of the country’s north….
Treating war crimes against defenseless people as a kind of natural disaster is barren of journalistic integrity and gives the war criminals a pass when they need calling out. Ferguson goes on in her antiseptic, no-one’s-responsible manner to illustrate the killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian facilities, including a Doctors Without Borders cholera clinic. She also documents US-made weaponry, including an array of unexploded bombs and a collection of cluster bombs. She doesn’t mention that cluster bombs are banned by most of the world and constitute a war crime in themselves. She does note that cluster bombs often wound civilians, that follows this fact with the gratuitously propagandistic comment: “The Houthis have also targeted civilians, throwing anyone suspected of opposing them in jail.” She has no follow-up, leaving the audience with a false moral equivalence between blowing off a child’s arm and throwing someone in jail. But it gets worse. Ferguson later gets off this political judo move:
Most people here, whether they support the Houthis or not, know that many of the bombs being dropped are American. It provides a strong propaganda tool for the Houthi rebels, who go by the slogan “Death to America.”
What does that even mean, “go by the slogan ‘Death to America’?” Again Ferguson has no follow-up. Later she shows a crowd chanting “Death to America” as if that has relevance. Why wouldn’t the defenseless victims wish death on the country that murders them without surcease? The main purpose of introducing “Death to America” (with all its Iran-hostage resonance) seems propagandistic, to inflame American audiences that remain in denial about their own very real war guilt. American-supported bombing of Yemen is a fact. It is, quite literally, “Death to Yemen.” For Ferguson to call it a “strong propaganda tool” is a Big Lie in classic propaganda tradition. For PBS to broadcast this lie is to engage in propaganda. PBS and Ferguson not only blame the victim, they characterize their very real victimization as if it weren’t true but mere propaganda. At the end of the segment, Ferguson once again engages in false moral equivalence:
Both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition have disregarded innocent civilian life in this war. Every bomb that falls on a hospital, office building or home causes more unease about where they come from.
While it may well be true that “both sides” have killed or wounded civilians, there is absolutely no comparison in scale. The US-Saudi coalition comprises mass murderers; the Houthis don’t come close. “Every bomb that falls,” Ferguson should have said, is dropped by the US-Saudi side on the Houthi side. There is no doubt where the bombs come from.
In her third and last PBS segment, Ferguson foregoes any effort to explore the reality of hundreds of years of Houthi-Saudi territorial conflict. Instead, she goes to bed with US propaganda, opening with a crowd of Yemenis chanting “Death to America” and then stating:
These rebels, known as Houthis, seized control of Sanaa City and much of the north of the country in 2014. They are of Yemen’s Zaydi sect and closest to Shia Islam. Their growing power caused alarm across the border in Sunni Saudi Arabia, so the Saudis formed a coalition of Arab countries to defeat them, a coalition backed by the United States.
This is so twisted it amounts to intellectual fraud. Yemen has a long, tortured history of foreign interference. In the years before 2014, Yemen served (without much choice) as a base for US drone bases. At the same time, the international community imposed a Saudi puppet as Yemen’s president (presently in exile in Saudi Arabia). In 2014, the Houthi uprising, widely popular among Yemen’s 28 million people, drove out both the US drone bases and the Saudi puppet president. The Houthis represented something like Yemeni independence, which the US, Saudis, and others opposed with lethal force.
US support for the war in Yemen constitutes an impeachable offense for two American presidents. So do continuing drone strikes, also known as presidential assassinations. The war began because President Obama approved it and the Saudis were willing to bomb a defenseless population. But according to Ferguson:
The Saudis and the United States say the Houthis are puppets for Tehran, a proxy form of Iranian military power right on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep.
This is real propaganda. There is no evidence that the Houthis are anyone’s puppets (which is one reason they need to be oppressed). Historically, the Houthis are an oppressed people who keep rising up again and again to re-establish their own freedom and independence. There is no credible evidence of significant Iranian presence in Yemen. PBS and Ferguson certainly present none, and neither have the US or Saudi governments. American demonization of Iran has been a fixed idea since 1979, rooted in two psychopathologies: American unwillingness to accept responsibility for imposing a police state on Iran and American inability to see the hostage-taking of 1979 as a rational response to past American predation. American exceptionalism is a sickness that punishes others, currently millions of innocent Yemenis.
Ferguson concludes her series with a dishonest use of journalistic balance, first with a quote from Senator Bernie Sanders arguing that the US role in the Yemen war is unconstitutional. Rather than assess that straightforward argument, Ferguson turns to an Idaho Republican, Senator James Reich, who offers fairy dust and lies:
The Iranians are in there and they are causing the difficulty that’s there. If the Iranians would back off, I have no doubt that the Saudis will back off. But the Saudis have the absolute right to defend themselves.
Imaginary Iranians aren’t there now and they weren’t there when the Saudis attacked in 2015. No one attacked Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are not defending themselves, they are waging aggressive war.
By balancing these quotes, Ferguson creates yet another false moral equivalence. There is no meaningful equivalence between Bernie Sanders challenging the president’s right to take the country to war on his own and James Reich using a lie to defend war-making that disregards Congress. PBS should be ashamed. Jane Ferguson offers a fig leaf with another quote from Bernie Sanders:
I don’t know that I have ever participated in a vote which says that the United States must be an ally to Saudi’s militaristic ambitions. This is a despotic regime which treats women as third-class citizens. There are no elections there. They have their own goals and their own ambitions.
All this is true, but Ferguson has no follow up. Instead she again offers spurious analysis: “American support for Saudi Arabia is a major propaganda tool for the Houthis.” No it’s not. American support for the Saudis is not propaganda, it’s a lethal reality for the Houthis and a crime against humanity for the world. Ferguson completes her piece with a soppy lament for civilian victims, as if no one is responsible for their suffering. That’s one last lie. There are many people responsible for the horror in Yemen today and leading the list is the US-Saudi coalition. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that, but apparently it takes more courage than PBS has to report the obvious.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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RSN: A Tale of Two Very Different Meetings |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Tuesday, 24 July 2018 10:37 |
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Sanders writes: "Let me tell you about two different kinds of meetings that took place this past weekend."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Antonella Crescimbeni)
A Tale of Two Very Different Meetings
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
24 July 18
 et me tell you about two different kinds of meetings that took place
this past weekend.
On Friday, along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I went to Kansas and
held rallies with two great progressive candidates who are running for
Congress. In Wichita, according to local media reports, more than 4,000
people joined us at a rally with James Thompson.
Then in Kansas City, at our rally for Brent Welder, the convention
center was so crowded the staff had to remove a wall in the middle while
the event was going on to let more people in. These were incredible
crowds coming out in more than 100-degree weather to participate in our
political revolution. And, yes, this was Kansas where Republicans
control almost everything.
There was quite a different event in Columbus, Ohio. Two hundred and
fifty wealthy invited Democratic donors and Wall Street insiders came
together at a gathering hosted by a real estate billionaire. Why were
they there? The headline on an NBC News story tells it all:
What are they concerned about? That our ideas, such as Medicare for all,
tuition-free public colleges and universities, a $15/hr minimum wage and
progressive taxation are now mainstream positions.
Make no mistake about it. The gathering in Columbus was not simply a
social event. The corporate Democrats are plotting how to defeat
progressives the only way they know how — with big money. But you’ve
shown that, together, we can overcome their brand of pay-to-play politics.
Brent Welder is one of those candidates the political and financial
establishment wants to beat. But if we’re with him, he’s going to win.
The big money interests should be scared. During the past two weekends,
I have been traveling across the country and what I’ve seen has been
remarkable. This weekend we were in Kansas. The previous weekend I was
in Minnesota where we held two rallies for Congressman Keith Ellison who
is running for Attorney General there. We packed “First Avenue” in
Minneapolis where the crowd heard not only from myself and Keith but an
inspiring speech by Ady Barkan. Diagnosed with ALS, Ady has dedicated
the remainder of his life to fighting for Medicare for all and other
progressive goals. It would be impossible to hear Ady and not be inspired.
Later in Duluth, an area many in the national media would like to write
off as “Trump Country,” we spoke to a packed auditorium of progressives
hungry for changes.
We then drove to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the next morning we held a
rally with Senator Tammy Baldwin. Once again, in a conservative part of
the state, the turnout was great. Tammy is one of the strong progressive
members of the Senate. That is why the Koch Brothers are spending
millions to try and defeat her.
Later that day, we held a rally in the UAW hall in Janesville, Wisconsin
with Randy Bryce, a union ironworker who is running a great grassroots
campaign for Congress in the seat currently held by Speaker Paul Ryan.
Wouldn't that be a great victory for Randy to win the seat currently
held by the Republican Speaker? And, from what I saw in Janesville, he
can do it.
From Wisconsin, we flew to Pittsburgh where I addressed the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT) national convention. While in Pittsburgh, I
also held a rally with progressive John Fetterman, who won an upset
victory in the Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Democratic Primary. At
the rally Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato, two young Democratic
Socialists in Pittsburgh, talked about the recent landslide victories
they won as they unseated two long-term, veteran incumbents. Their
campaigns brought together hundreds of volunteers who knocked on doors
to fuel the progressive victory.
These are the type of campaigns we need to run if we are going to win.
And right now one progressive, grassroots Democratic candidate needs
your support.
As Alexandria, Summer, and Sara have demonstrated, we can win seemingly
impossible campaigns if we run on issues that speak to the needs of
working people while harnessing the grassroots energy to drive our
campaigns forward.
There is a reason why the corporate Democrats are getting nervous. And
that's because we are making real progress in transforming the party and
the nation.
Let's keep going forward.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
*Can you split a $50 donation between Brent Welder’s campaign and my
work campaigning for progressive candidates like Brent who will work
with me to transform America? I would not ask if it was not so
important. *
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Mueller's 2018 Election Warning |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=46833"><span class="small">Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Tuesday, 24 July 2018 08:21 |
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McQuade writes: "The new indictment alleges for the first time that Russian intelligence officers conspired to attack our election infrastructure."
Robert Mueller. (photo: NBC)
Mueller's 2018 Election Warning
By Barbara McQuade, The Daily Beast
24 July 18
It wasn’t just Democrats who were targeted: The very hardware that administers U.S. elections was, too.
 pecial counsel Robert Mueller‘s latest indictment buries the lede. It is not until Count 11 that we learn that Russian intelligence officers hacked into computers used in administering our elections.
We have long known that Democratic National Committee computers were hacked, and emails were stolen and disseminated. In the first 10 counts, the new indictment charges 12 Russian intelligence with a variety of crimes relating to hacking the computers of the DNC and related entities. And we knew from the prior indictment filed in February that Russians used social media to conduct an influence campaign designed help the candidacy of Donald Trump.
But the new indictment alleges for the first time that Russian intelligence officers conspired to attack our election infrastructure. The indictment charges two Russian GRU officers along with “other persons known and unknown to the grand jury,” with conspiring to hack into the computers of “state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.” According to the indictment, the goal of the defendants was to steal voter data and other information.
These new charges mean that Russia has engaged not just in a propaganda war, but in a physical attack on American assets. While the indictment stops short of alleging that their efforts were successful in changing the outcome of the election, it makes clear that our democracy is at grave risk of future attacks that could undermine our free elections. For a country that elects its leaders by vote of the people, this news is incredibly alarming.
The new indictment, returned by an independent grand jury, should put to rest accusations that the Mueller investigation is some sort of witch hunt, and serve as an alarm bell that our government must redouble its efforts to protect our upcoming midterm elections from interference.
To date, Trump has declined to be a strong leader in defending our election integrity. Is it because he is concerned that any suggestion that Russians interfered with our election undermines the legitimacy of his election? If so, then he needs to remember that Mueller’s investigation isn’t about him; it is about prosecuting an attack by an adversary.
Or is Trump silent on this issue because he knows that he or his associates were complicit with the Russian effort?
In detailing the scheme to disseminate stolen email messages, the indictment refers to a “person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump,” who Roger Stone said is “probably” him. It would not be a stretch to imagine a superseding indictment that adds Stone as a defendant to this indictment if evidence can establish that he agreed to help Russia in its efforts to influence the election.
A conspiracy theorist might even look to Trump’s voter fraud task force as part of the Russian effort to gain power over our elections. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was established to investigate whether voters cast ballots illegally, which critics described as a solution in search of a problem. The Commission was disbanded after state officials refused to comply with its requests for detailed information about voters, for fear that this information could easily be compromised if it were all stored in one place. A sinister view of the task force might consider whether compromise of voter information was its goal in the first place.
The indictment contains a few other interesting new revelations. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was also a victim of Russian hacking. An unidentified candidate for Congress asked Russian intelligence for and received stolen documents about his opponent. And an entity identified as “Organization 1” allegedly helped to disseminate the stolen email messages, which appears from this context and earlier news reports to be Wikileaks.
By not naming an uncharged entity, and instead using a generic description, such as “Organization 1,” Mueller was complying with Department of Justice policy, but why not charge Wikileaks or its founder, Julian Assange in this indictment? It may be that Mueller did not have sufficient evidence against them, or, that as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, he thought it was inappropriate to criminally charge a member of the media, even a website like Wikileaks, relating to news gathering activity, in light of the important role that the press plays in our democracy and for concern of the precedent such charges might set.
If so, it would be a refreshing reminder that some public officials are considering the long-term consequences of their actions in our democracy. When read to the end, this indictment cries out for similar care and attention from those entrusted to protect our national security.
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The NRA Is Awfully Quiet About Maria Butina |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=48731"><span class="small">Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Monday, 23 July 2018 13:43 |
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Smith writes: "Why won't the NRA comment on the arrest of the gun rights activist and accused Russian agent?"
Maria Butina poses with NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre. (photo: Twitter)
The NRA Is Awfully Quiet About Maria Butina
By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone
23 July 18
Why won’t the NRA comment on the arrest of the gun rights activist and accused Russian agent?
 t typically takes a mass shooting to keep the National Rifle Association this quiet.
As of this writing, the NRA has issued no public comment about this week’s arrest and indictment of Maria Butina, a 29-year-old Russian gun rights activist who had spent years ingratiating herself with the NRA, as well as Republican politicians and conservative notables. Butina is suspected of conspiracy to act as an unauthorized agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without the authorization of the Attorney General.
And yet all we hear from the notoriously outspoken group is crickets.
The NRA contributed $30 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2016. The FBI has been investigating whether some or all of that cash may have been supplied by Russia. Rolling Stone reported in April that the Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, along with Butina, had deeper ties to the NRA than previously known. The NRA even flew a delegation to Moscow in 2015 to meet with Kremlin officials, including one freshly sanctioned by the Obama administration.
One member of that delegation, disgraced former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, filed an ethics report in February 2016 showing that $6,000 of his trip expenses were paid for by Butina’s group, The Right to Bear Arms. The recently departed NRA president, Pete Brownell, covered $14,000 of Clarke’s airfare and visa expenses. The details continue to trickle out.
And yet, the NRA hasn’t said one word either in Butina’s defense or to distance itself from her and Torshin, Butina’s alleged handler who has also been hit by U.S. sanctions. On Wednesday, a new court filing alleged that Butina was sexually involved with an American connected to the NRA, which media reports have identified as veteran Republican operative Paul Erickson. More importantly, the court memo alleged that Butina had been in contact with the Russian intelligence agency FSB, which replaced the more infamous KGB. As Rolling Stone reported in April, Torshin received a medal from the FSB in 2016.
Butina pleaded not guilty, and her attorneys even tried to argue that she wasn’t a flight risk because she remained in the United States following the publication of Rolling Stone’s investigation. The judge didn’t buy it, and Butina will be jailed until her trial.
In late June, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch attempted a deflection, repeating Trump’s false accusation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took $145 million from Russia and later herself colluded with the Kremlin. Two months ago, NRATV host Dan Bongino called reports of NRA-Russia ties a “fairy tale.”
Most fairy tales don’t end with orange jumpsuits and jail time.
Rolling Stone reached out to the NRA on Thursday, via phone and email, to request official comment on the Butina case — as well as the prior words of some of its employees.
As you may have guessed, the NRA has not responded to Rolling Stone’s request, nor has the organization commented to any other outlet as of this time. If and when we receive a comment, we will update this post.
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