tagged w/ Daniel Ellsberg
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When being a Plumber had a whole different connotation entirely.
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Keith Olbermann said:
"You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble .... You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our .... system."
Former Washington Post - and now Huffington Post - columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in 2006:
"Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .
There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.
If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.
I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter - whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way."
The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said:
"All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed. The courts . . . the jury's not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring....
Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation?
[Long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You'd actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn't think you could control. And they're not going to do that."
Veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because:
"the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked."
Of course, the corporate media is always pro-war. Since 9/11 provided a justification for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, the mainstream media doesn't want to question the government's version of events.
As Tom Brokaw notes: "All wars are based on propaganda."
What Does Ellsberg Say?
Ellsberg says that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:
Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today's American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"].
As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who "sat on the NSA spying story for over a year" when they "could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome."
"There will be phone calls going out to the media saying 'don't even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,'" he told us.
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"I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?'" contends Ellsberg. "The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told 'don't touch this . . . .'"
He supports a new 9/11 investigation.
He says that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers". (Here's some of what that whistleblower says.) He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11.
And he says that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that "very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been", that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of those in office, and that there's enough evidence to justify a new, "hard-hitting" investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).
Alternative Media Is Not Much Better
It is not just the corporate media.
I have had the owners of highly-regarded alternative media companies confide in me privately that they don't believe the government's version of 9/11, but that are scared of discussing it publicly because they don't want to be tarred-and-feathered for discussing "conspiracy theories".
Even writers like Glenn Greenwald - who are good on so many issues - won't touch it.
Of course - as Ellsberg points out - "Secrets ... can be kept reliably ... for decades … even though they are known to thousands of insiders”. Indeed, the whole label "conspiracy theory" is just an attempt to diffuse criticism of the powerful.
People used to understand this. As the quintessential American writer Mark Twain said in a more rational age:
A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.
Of course, as thousands of top American military officers, counter-terrorism officials, intelligence officers, congressmen, structural engineers, and others have publicly said, the government's story about 9/11 makes absolutely no sense. See this, this, this and this. And family members of people who died on 9/11 - and many New Yorkers - want a new investigation.
But you'll never hear that in the corporate media.
Continue Reading at:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25286Keith Olbermann said:
"You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the... more
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He is the subject of a documentary about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, which took its title from the words former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to describe Ellsberg in 1971.
In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.
Officially titled "United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,"–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.
Read more here: http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-committed-against-me-are-now-legal/He is the subject of a documentary about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in... more
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Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal
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WASHINGTON — The US government on Thursday announced the release of the famed "Pentagon Papers," 40 years after the once top-secret Vietnam War documents were leaked to the media.
The National Archives, the massive US repository for historic books and documents, announced that the files, now declassified, will be accessible starting next month at the Richard Nixon presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California.
Officially titled "United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense," the top-secret report detailed US political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.
It was commissioned in June 1967 by then defense secretary Robert McNamara, who wanted an exhaustive history of the Vietnam War. But it revealed a greater level of US military involvement in Vietnam than had been made publicly known.
The papers, first published on the front page of the New York Times in 1971, created a major scandal and were deemed instrumental in the decision by then-president Lyndon Johnson not to stand for re-election, as public opposition to the war grew.
The Times received the document from Daniel Ellsberg, at the time a military analyst employed by the Pentagon.WASHINGTON — The US government on Thursday announced the release of the famed... more
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It's supposed to be sunny on Saturday in Washington, which is good news for Daniel Ellsberg. The most famous whistle-blower in American history is hoping to get arrested in the name of Bradley Manning.
"Oh, it's easy. I've done it before," he explains. "You don't have to do much to get arrested at the White House."
A spry 79-year-old with neat, silver hair, Ellsberg doesn't look threatening. But he's pretty mad. Disgusted is the word he uses to describe how he feels that Manning, a 23-year-old Army private, has been locked up for nearly eight months at Quantico military prison.
Charged with 34 counts, including "aiding the enemy," Manning faces life in prison and maybe execution. He is accused of illegally downloading hundreds of thousands of secret military and State Department documents and giving it to WikiLeaks.
To many Americans, Manning is a traitor. To many Americans, Manning is a hero.
To Ellsberg, Manning is something else.
"I was that young man; I was Bradley Manning," he says.
In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official. He was a former Marine commander who believed the American government was the good guy. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg got access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.
The Pentagon Papers, as they became known, also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The New York Times, which published them in 1971.
Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy, and he went to trial facing 115 years.
"I was willing to go to prison," Ellsberg says. "I never thought, for the rest of my life, I would ever hear anyone willing to do that, to risk their life, so that horrible, awful secrets could be known. Then I read those logs and learned Bradley was willing to go to prison. I can't tell you how much that affected me."It's supposed to be sunny on Saturday in Washington, which is good news for... more
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As Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually disappeared from mainstream media coverage, Democracy Now!'s Juan Gonzalez has a wide-ranging conversation with Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader about the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and how this connects to the attack on worker rights in Wisconsin and beyond. "More than a $120 billion a year [is] being wasted, hurting the welfare, really, of the people of Afghanistan and of Iraq," says Ellsberg. "It's outrageous that this is continuing and that these events are not linked, that people don’t realize that it’s simply outrageous to be talking about removing fuel from elderly during the winter here, fuel aid and health aid and education aid, while we’re spending this money on the wars, these totally wrongful and unnecessary wars. "
Protests against the occupations and the treatment of Manning are planned for this weekend.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH THE INTERVIEWAs Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually disappeared from mainstream media coverage,... more
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Daniel Ellsberg: There was no law against leaking the Pentagon Papers nor is there now against WikiLeaks.
Bio
Daniel Ellsberg is a former US military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of US government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.Daniel Ellsberg: There was no law against leaking the Pentagon Papers nor is there now... more
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MEDIA ALERT: = THE NEWS YOU DON'T SEE IN THE USA !!!!
Today our television media news in the USA is a joke - The News coverage to the American people is nonexistent causing it's population to argue nonsense topics amongst themselves... Blinded with nonsense, and fueled with distractions it is easy to divide a population and control a population.
It should be a wake-up call: When the people outside of our US borders know more about what happening inside our country than it's own citizens do.... Then we should all realize that we have a big problem! The Main stream Media ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC & FOX...all design what news you watch and listen to.
The insert a large amount of "Fluff Stories" and edit out many topics = NOT reported and NOT broadcast.
The citizens have lost their independent media... The Media has been taken over and is controlled by Corporations .... The Corporations decide what you hear in the news...
QUESTION: Why do you think Julian Assange & Wilkleaks was targeted and Attacked and insulted by the media? Because if the media were doing their jobs... Wikileaks wouldn't have any secrets to leak! The media is not doing their jobs.
( I work in the news media = I know!)
AMERICA TODAY.... Time to Follow the Money!
As we all now all look around us... Look at all the hard working American families all being foreclosed on and forced out into the streets as the Corporate Royalty award Billions to themselves as; A Job Well done! 1.3 million more foreclosures scheduled in 2011 to come! Look at all of us today....We all sit fighting between ourselves for only the basic fundamental things in life like affording to buy (safe food to eat), healthcare, a warm place to live to sleep at night....or an affordable good education for our Children....
If we are fighting amongst ourselves.....We all don't see that all we are only fighting for the crumbs left after the 98% of our countries wealth has been stolen and hoarded by the ultra Wealthiest 2-3%.... I guess that is the plan....if we are so busy arguing with ourselves we are not looking up and seeing what is really going on.... Maybe it time we all look up and ~ Follow the Money!
Okay now what?
So now we all go back to sleep? Back to business as usual & doing nothing?
Doing nothing is stupid!
Doing something is courageous...
WIKILEAKS IS A WAKE-UP CALL !!!
Wikileaks is a global "Virus Protection Software" that has shown all of us that our systems are infected.... That there is a trojan virus running in the background - doing things against the interests of the People of the Country that the government is mandated to represent.
This is a real wake-up call for people everywhere.... that Corporations have taken over all our government systems... Stealing all our freedoms and making us slaves of their corporate system.
LEARN FROM HISTORY.....
Mussolini quote: " Fascism should be appropriately called Corporatism because of a merger of State & Corporate Power."
That is what is going on here...
This is a wake-up call for everyone.. and
Wikileaks is the Alarm Bell !!!
Truth is courageous...MEDIA ALERT: = THE NEWS YOU DON'T SEE IN THE USA !!!!
Today our television... more
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The WikiLeaks controversy is unfolding in exactly the way almost everything else in this country unfolds - in a yawning divide lined with yapping dachshunds. The right sees a dangerous outlaw, the left a hero. Who's right and what should we do about it?The WikiLeaks controversy is unfolding in exactly the way almost everything else in... more
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In the information age that we live in, I find it only fitting to know that there is a whistle-blower organization out there in cyberspace releasing classified documents. WikiLeaks released 391,832 reports last Friday documenting the war and occupation of Iraq, from January 1st, 2004 to December 31st, 2009. The reports come straight from a top source: soldiers in the United States Army.
WikiLeaks' brave founder Julian Assange
The founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange claims the publishing of the Iraq War logs was an attempt to show “intimate details” of the conflict in an effort to reveal the truth, much like Daniel Ellsberg did when he leaked the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971. It revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war in Vietnam by bombing Cambodia. The most damaging revelation was that four Presidents
To keep reading visit: http://www.forgetthebox.net/mag/wikileaks-iraq-war-diaries-too-much-too-late.phpIn the information age that we live in, I find it only fitting to know that there is a... more
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Leaker of Pentagon Papers Stresses Importance of Telling the Truth to Student Audience | Common Dreams
For Daniel Ellsberg, the similarities between today’s wars and the Vietnam War are frightening.Leaker of Pentagon Papers Stresses Importance of Telling the Truth to Student Audience... more
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’t_Be_Neutral.html
It is often startling to hear someone speaking earnestly and compassionately about doing the right thing. A combination of humility and inspiration seems an appropriate response when faced with such a clearly and eloquently spoken call to duty. “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” offers more than a few of these moments, profiling professor, activist and historian Howard Zinn.’t_Be_Neutral.html
It is often startling to hear someone speaking earnestly... more
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writa
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added this
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1 year ago
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As Bradley Manning, accused of spilling the Afghan war logs to WikiLeaks, hires a lawyer and prepares to fight government charges, Philip Shenon shares new details about his predicament—including an expected $100,000 legal bill.
Bradley Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks leaker, is about to come out fighting.
A spokesman for Manning’s legal defense fund tells The Daily Beast that the 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist has finally chosen a civilian lawyer to represent him against charges he illegally provided a huge library of classified military documents and videos to WikiLeaks earlier this year.
After weeks of public silence, the spokesman said, Manning is determined to fight criminal charges that could send him to prison for decades.
“My understanding is that Manning’s appointed military defense attorneys were trying to pressure him into taking a deal, but he wasn’t interested,” said Jeff Paterson, project director of Courage to Resist, a California-based war-resisters group that has been working with WikiLeaks to raise money for Manning’s defense.
“Our expectation is that he’s going to fight the charges,” Paterson said.
A Defense Department spokesman had no immediate comment Monday on Manning’s defense plans. Manning’s military lawyers in Iraq have declined repeated requests for interviews.
Courage to Resist, which is being actively supported by the filmmaker Michael Moore in organizing the legal defense fund, says that it has raised about $50,000 for Manning, an amount that it expects WikiLeaks roughly to match.
Paterson confirmed a report in the Associated Press((http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gnn4wgF9VWmECeiuNLaW7spvS32wD9HU0E8G1) that the civilian defense lawyer is David Coombs of Providence, Rhode Island. Coombs is best known for defending Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, charged in a deadly 2003 attack on fellow U.S. military members in Kuwait. Akbar is awaiting execution for murdering two officers.
Paterson said Coombs had already talked with Manning by telephone, and that the lawyer will oversee a defense team that will also include uniformed military counsel.
Paterson said that Manning has also begun to receive visitors, including a close friend from Boston who met with the young soldier last weekend at the brig at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, where Manning has been held for the last several weeks. According to Paterson, the friend found Manning in reasonably good spirits.
“We got a sense that he was actually in pretty good physical and mental condition, considering the fact that he’s facing decades in prison,” Paterson said.
Manning’s state of mind and his plans for defending himself against the criminal charges have been a mystery since his arrest in June in Iraq on suspicion of leaking the material to WikiLeaks. He was held for several weeks in Kuwait before his transfer late last month to Quantico.
Paterson said that his group expected Manning’s total legal bill to come to about $100,000 and that his group was continuing to raise money through its website on his behalf (since Manning will be brought to trial in a military court, the Pentagon will cover many of the costs of his case). The initial $50,000 was raised from more than 800 donors, most of them first-time contributors to Courage to Resist. The site is also selling a range of “Free Bradley Manning” paraphernalia(http://www.bradleymanning.org/), from T-shirts to buttons to posters.
The move by Courage to Resist to find a lawyer for Manning followed initial fruitless efforts by WikiLeaks to provide the suspect with civilian counsel.
Still, Paterson said, Manning should be able to mount a strong defense.
“It’s one thing to say that a 22-year-old Army private first class could do all this, and it’s another thing to prove it—and to prove that it really did any damage,” Paterson said. “I think there are going to be details about this case that are going to surprise people. It’s not going to be the open-and-shut case that the government has portrayed it to be.”As Bradley Manning, accused of spilling the Afghan war logs to WikiLeaks, hires a... more
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*************THIS IS A GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT MEDIA SLANDER AND BIAS*************
In Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case, the New York Times published a portrait of Private Bradley Manning reminiscent of the type of character assassination J.Edgar Hoover planted in newspapers in the hey day of the communist witch hunts. The government agencies routinely planted such misinformation to discredit civil rights activists and others they considered a threat to our national security. Whistleblowers like Private Manning and Daniel Ellsberg before him are considered extremely dangerous and in the words of the then sitting (during the Pentagon Papers incident) president Richard M. Nixon ''need to be taken out'. President Nixon famously said that he did not need to wait and see if the courts would convict Ellsberg because he would destroy him in the court of public opinion. He then ordered the break in to the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Here we are again, four decades later convicting in the court of public opinion Private Bradley Manning.
The NYT article(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all) is subtle in its venom but no less deadly. In Manufacturing Consent, Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky propose a mass media propaganda model for a modern western liberal democracy such as our own, in which mechanisms for the maintenance of the status quo are less obvious, but no less effective, than in systems such as totalitarian dictatorships. Private Manning and WikiLeaks threw a hand grenade at the status quo and now these mechanisms are working overtime to repair the damage. The fact that the NYT collaborated with WikiLeaks is in keeping with the model of the cultural mechanisms at play.
I have no doubt that Private Manning, a sensitive youth, was struggling to fit into a world that did not accept his sexual orientation, nor that he fell in love with a young man who in the words of the NYT is a "self described drag queen." And to that, I say so what.
The spin of the article is that because he was an outsider, his motivation for divulging the classified information and releasing the documents was to fit in with his new friends, a "politically motivated group of hackers to whom he increasingly turned to for moral support."
The article continues:
And now, some of those friends say they wonder whether his desperation for acceptance -- or delusions of grandeur -- may have led him to disclose the largest trove of government secrets since the Pentagon Papers.
There is no evidence that Private Manning was either desperate or had delusions of grandeur. The only named sources in the article was a former neighbor Mrs. Radford, a former classmate and a former employer, all who say nothing to lead us to that conclusion.
The only named source that paints the portrait of the desperate and delusional Private Manning is the cyber informant Adrian Lamo. I find it extremely disturbing that the NYT chose not to elucidate us in this article about the well known and well documented character and controversy surrounding Adrian Lamo. Adrian Lamo was prosecuted and convicted of hacking into the very NYT and so they more than anyone know about his history of heavy drug abuse(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/hacker_pr.html) and psychological problems.
One glance at his Facebook page(http://www.facebook.com/felon?ref=ts) (which has no privacy settings so you do not need to friend him to navigate) will confirm that Lamo, if not exhibiting delusions of grandeur, at minimum is prone to self-aggrandizement and self promotion. When asked why hack, by a San Francisco Weekly reporter, he answers: "This is what I do, this is the role I was born to play." He goes on to quote a long passage about how greatness can destroy a man from the Frank Herbert science-fiction epic Dune later made into a David Lynch film, which tells the story of a young man who becomes a messiah.
He is also an avowed drug abuser. Do not take my word for it, but please watch this video from the BBC at about 3 minutes 25 seconds and you will witness the most bizarre behavior you have ever seen on prime time.
The NYT does not find it worthy of mention that the man who turned in Private Manning and the only named source in the article that eludes to Manning's motivation for the release of the documents is a total mess.
He tells a San Francisco weekly reporter that his convulsions are a result of an amphetamine overdose he suffered the year before. He goes on to say about his drug use(http://www.sfweekly.com/2003-04-16/news/a-duty-to-hack/):
I've resisted including this in news reports because I think it would make me intolerable to the government if I was advocating both intrusion and drug use, but substances that disassociate you from your senses have played a big part in my life.
Lamo goes on to explain to Wired Magazine's Khan that after his amphetamine overdoes he now takes only depressives and dissociatives.
The dissociatives are amazing... You can look at your face in the mirror and completely not recognize it.
The court issued a restraining order against Lamo, due to a complaint in which his then-girlfriend described an ongoing pattern of harassment and abuse. She explains: "He carried a stun gun, which he used on me. He was very controlling. He wanted to know where I was costansantly." There are many articles that reference the taser he carries with him, sometimes used to "hack" vending machines.
We are to believe that Adrian Lamo just happened to be chatting with the total stranger Private Manning and divulged not only what he would be doing and had done but also his motivation. Adrian Lamo is the oldest trick in the book and has the footprint of the government all over it. A homeless, drug addicted convicted felon with a suspended sentence who still owes the government over $65,000 in fines is not exactly my idea of a credible witness, but rather your typical informant who says and does as he is told.
The named source in the Wired Magazine article quoted in the NYT, Private Manning's boyfriend, Mr. Watkins, states that after WikiLeaks released the video allegedly provided by Manning of the shootings of the AP journalists that "one of his {Private Manning's} major concerns once he'd done this was, was it really going to make a difference?" This concern would lead one to conclude that Private Manning's motivation, as much as one can impute motivation, was to have an impact on public opinion and perhaps on the course of the war, in the tradition of Ellsberg. If Manning wanted to influence the course of the war and deliberately broke the law and knowingly risked prosecution, he follows in the footsteps of the greats: Rosa Parks, Dolores Huerta (arrested 22 times and counting), Dr King and Daniel Ellsberg. There is no credible evidence, only government spin repackaged by the NYT, that this is not the case.*************THIS IS A GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT MEDIA SLANDER AND BIAS*************
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