Month: December 2013

USA Today reports on a study published by the Army’s War College that found “U.S. propaganda efforts in Afghanistan have failed” because the military took bad (and expensive) advice from private contractors.

Examples of failed efforts, according to the paper, include a proposal to pay $6,000 dowries to Afghan men to keep them off the battlefield — a scheme that could have cost $4 billion. That project, ultimately rejected, fits into what the U.S. military calls Information Operations programs.

The dowry program and ineffective television ad campaigns “represent merely the tip of the iceberg: over the years, huge amounts of money have been spent on IO programs that are largely anchored in advertising and marketing style communication with little concurrent investment, it would appear, in detailed understanding of audiences and environments,” the report concludes.

USA TODAY, in a series of reports since 2012, has found the Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked propaganda programs. A government report obtained by the newspaper this spring showed the impact of the programs is unclear, and the military doesn’t know whether it is targeting the right foreign audiences. These propaganda efforts include websites, leaflets and broadcasts intended to change foreigners’ “attitudes and behaviors in support of U.S. Government” objectives, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office.

USA Today has provided important articles in the past about propaganda firms working with the Pentagon, hired to employ “the modern equivalent of psychological warfare.” The paper has previously exposed the dubious nature and exorbitant costs of the Pentagon’s “Information Operations,” (IO) or war propaganda, used on foreign populations.

The frank discussion of the failure of U.S. propaganda efforts is fascinating. The dictionary provides a hint as to why:

prop·a·gan·da
noun

1. derogatory information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

So, to reiterate: The U.S. government wastes billions of dollars on failed efforts to “mislead” the Afghan people in a “derogatory” fashion with regard to their thoughts about America.

That might be the best news lede I’ve read in a long time. Who knew it would be so hard to get people you’ve been bombing for ten years to like you?

One of America’s best friends and allies is torturing children, even as they continue to receive U.S. aid, weapons, training, and defense guarantees.

Amnesty International:

Children are being routinely detained, ill-treated and tortured in Bahrain, said Amnesty International in a new briefing published today.

Scores of children arrested on suspicion of participating in anti-government protests – including some as young as 13 – were blindfolded, beaten and tortured in detention over the past two years the organization said. Others were threatened with rape in order to extract forced confessions.

“By rounding up suspected under-age offenders and locking them up, Bahrain’s authorities are displaying an appalling disregard for its international human rights obligations,” said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

These are not the first revelations of Bahraini children being abused by the U.S. backed regime. “Bahrain security forces routinely detain children without cause and subject them to ill-treatment that may rise to the level of torture,” Human Rights Watch said in a report last September.

“Rounding up kids, throwing them in jail and beating and threatening them is no way for a country to treat its children,” said Joe Stork, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Bahraini authorities need to look into these allegations and immediately call a halt to any arbitrary arrests and mistreatment of children.”

And it’s not just the children. The regime continues to imprison political dissidents. Protests have been outlawed, specifically “sit-ins, rallies and gatherings in the capital Manama.” It is also illegal to “incite hatred” against the security forces (whatever that means), and people can be thrown in prison for calling the king a “dictator” on Twitter (something that has happened to at least eleven people).

Virtually anyone who dissents from the brutal authority of the Bahraini crown is labeled a “terrorist,” a buzzword fashionable among U.S. allies.

None of this prompts the Obama administration to bat an eye, because Bahrain is a strategic asset. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is stationed in the tiny Persian Gulf island, giving Washington control over the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, through which over 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil transits.

If anything, the Obama administration is worried about keeping the Bahraini regime happy and satisfied with the alliance – not the other way around. Last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited Bahrain, stood atop a Navy warship among U.S. soldiers stationed in Bahrain, and promised Bahrain and its other Sunni Arab counterparts that the U.S. would continue to defend them militarily, continue to pressure Iran, and continue to shower them with American money and weapons.

Over the weekend, CBS 60 Minutes ran a story about the high profile NSA spying programs revealed by Edward Snowden. It was, to put it plainly, embarrassing.

Twitter was ablaze with politicos, wonks, and experts criticizing the CBS report as crude propaganda, a stenographic public relations infomercial for the NSA that asked softball questions and failed to showcase opposing views. The CBS correspondent, John Miller, has previously worked at high level positions in the NYPD and the LAPD. At the beginning of the 60 Minutes program, Miller offered his “full disclosure: I once worked in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.”

Now, the NY Post is reporting that Miller has been looking to get out of the “journalism” business (as if he was ever in it) and go back to law enforcement. Indeed, he has been negotiating a new counterterrorism job while pretending to “report” on the NSA.

In the past two years, Miller has been a prominent presence discussing national security and crime on “CBS This Morning” and on the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley.”

“John has been doing great on television,” commented a close friend, “but at heart, he’s a ‘buff.’

“He wants the badge, the gun and the adrenaline — to be in the center of the action.”

Miller is expected to land a top intelligence or counterterrorism role with Bratton.

This is journalistic malpractice of the highest order. And not a good time for CBS. But I’d note that the damage has already been done. Millions of Americans without the ability to consume news critically have already had their minds poisoned by Miller’s propaganda report.

As anyone exposed to a whiff of news media knows, Republicans and Democrats are more divided than ever. They just can’t come together like they used to, goes the cliché.

But this week, they did come together. Republican Paul Ryan and Democrat Patty Murray hashed out a budget deal to avoid automatic sequestration cuts. It was a genuine “compromise,” as the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart quipped.

As has been widely reported, the real motivator in this “compromise” was the supposedly “dire” cuts in defense spending. There have been vociferous warnings from Congress and the Pentagon that sequestration will weaken America by taking an ax to national defense and leaving us vulnerable to attack.

Obviously that’s nonsense. The U.S. could cut its defense budget in half, unthinkably more drastic than sequestration, and still outspend China, which is the U.S.’s next highest spending competitor.

As a 2011 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found, while the source of growth in annual defense budgets since 2001 has been mostly (54%) due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much of the rest has been spent on wasteful superfluous weapons technology, bloated salaries and benefits plans, and expensive peacetime operating costs for the 900-plus military bases in 130-plus countries around the world.

Continue reading “The Parties Come Together to Save the Military-Industrial Complex”

On Obama’s first day in office, he signed an executive order restricting current and former lobbyists from working in his administration. From the very beginning, the President has wiggled around this measure, as people like Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner have meticulously documented.

But at this point it seems like the President is getting lazy. An absolutely must-read piece at the New York Times reports that John Podesta, founder of the liberal think-tank Center for American Progress (CAP) – an organization the Times calls “a virtual external policy arm of the Obama administration” – has deep ties to corporate rent-seekers who benefit from favorable government policies and has now been hired as an adviser to the President.

The defense contractor Northrop Grumman gave money to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, founded by John D. Podesta, as the nonprofit group at times bemoaned what it called the harmful impact of major reductions in Pentagon spending.

Pacific Gas and Electric sent in a donation as Mr. Podesta championed government incentives to promote solar energy and other renewable sources that the California company buys more of than nearly any other utility.

The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was also a donor because of what it said was the Center for American Progress’s advocacy for patients’ rights — and just as the debate heated up in Washington over potential cuts to the Medicare program that covers Lilly’s most profitable drugs.

Mr. Podesta, named a senior adviser to President Obama, is not currently a lobbyist and therefore does not have to worry about the Obama administration’s self-imposed ban on hiring lobbyists to administration jobs. But he will nonetheless arrive at the White House after having run an organization that has taken millions of dollars in corporate donations in recent years and has its own team of lobbyists who have pushed an agenda that sometimes echoes the interests of these corporate supporters.

Podesta has served on the corporate boards of clean energy companies and defense contractors whose “future…depends in part on…policies set by the government and heavily promoted by the White House.”

So “Obama adviser” John Podesta’s corporate ties to the defense, energy, and pharmaceutical industries is a vital asset for those companies hoping to get government handouts. Obama ain’t even shy about it anymore.

This kind of revolving door machine is a big part of the reason corporate welfare sectors like the defense industry have an outsize influence in Washington and continue to get paid exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money for weapons systems that even the Pentagon says it doesn’t want or need and for a military budget that exceeds most of the rest of the world’s defense budgets combined.

Read the full report here.

Last March – before Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s sweeping collection of phone and other data – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said no such operation existed. Now, a group of ex-national security officials urge President Obama to fire Clapper.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Fire James Clapper

We wish to endorse the call by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Committee on the Judiciary, that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be removed and prosecuted for lying to Congress. “Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill. “The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced.”

Sensenbrenner added, “If it’s a criminal offense – and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense – then the Justice Department ought to do its job.

This brief Memorandum is to inform you that we agree that no intelligence director should be able to deceive Congress and suffer no consequences. No democracy that condones such deceit at the hands of powerful, secretive intelligence directors can long endure.

It seems clear that you can expect no help from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to which Clapper has apologized for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony, and who, at the height of the controversy over his credibility, defended him as a “direct and honest” person.

You must be well aware that few amendments to the U.S. Constitution are as clear as the fourth:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Continue reading “Obama Urged to Fire DNI Clapper”