29 August 2013 — Asia Times
This deafeningly hysterical show of Syria as Iraq 2.0 is only happening because a president of the United States (POTUS) created a ”credibility” problem when, recklessly, he pronounced the use of chemical weapons in Syria a ”red line”.
28 August 2013 — Washingtonsblog
One of John Kerry’s main arguments for bombing Syria is that the Assad government stalled and delayed UN weapons inspectors: Continue reading
28 August 2013 — American Everyman
The New York Times is attempting to bolster John Kerry’s baseless claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on their own people and in doing so, they seem to have provided some hard evidence to the contrary. Continue reading
27 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
Horrific scenes of dead and injured civilians in Syria have been a part of the conflict there over the past several years, but the reports of a chemical attack of some sort last week in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta have led U.S. policymakers and the Obama White House to threaten to attack in a matter of days.
25 August 2013 — Land Destroyer
The “evidence” upon which the West is propping up its narrative of the Syrian government using chemical weapons against large numbers of civilians hinges so far entirely on claims made by “Doctors Without Borders.” In the New York Times article, “Signs of Chemical Attack Detailed by Aid Group,” it is reported: Continue reading
24 August 2013 — Dissident Voice
Sen. Dianne Feinstein and a horde of members of Congress of both parties want to decide who is and who isn’t a reporter. Sen. Feinstein says a “real” reporter is a “salaried agent of a media company.”
23 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
As Peter Hart has pointed out (FAIR Blog, 2/25/13, 8/20/13), there’s a lot of misinformation coming from the media on the unconstitutional police strategy known as stop-and-frisk. There’s a powerful urge to believe, it seems, that abusing the Fourth Amendment rights of young men of color somehow makes the rest of us safer.
23 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
On FAIR TV this week: CBS tries to call Edward Snowden a “spy,” and Bill Kristol makes his ABC comeback with a bogus defense of New York’s stop-and-frisk police searches. Plus: Student loan rates are slashed, say the TV reports. But are they actually…going up?
Watch it all this on this week’s episode: Continue reading
24 August 2013 — WSWS
US officials have outlined a series of options that are being considered for a direct assault by American and allied military forces against Syria, using Wednesday’s alleged chemical weapons attack as the pretext. The stepped-up military preparations make clear that the events on Wednesday are part of a provocation to justify yet another neo-colonial war in the Middle East.
22 August 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
No sooner than the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors arrived in Damascus – within 72 hours, in fact – the Syrian opposition figures based in Istanbul, Turkey, have claimed that up to 1400 people have been killed in chemical weapons attacks by the government forces on the outskirts of the Syrian capital on Wednesday morning.
21 August 2013 — RT
Without healthy, thriving newspapers and investigative journalists prepared to ask difficult questions of security services, the UK will move closer to a bona fide police state, British journalist Tony Gosling told RT.
16 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
On CBS Evening News (8/13/13), anchor Scott Pelley gave viewers a brief–and very misleading–update on Edward Snowden:
In an interview today, Edward Snowden appears to describe himself as a spy. Snowden is the National Security Agency computer specialist who spilled some of America’s top surveillance secrets. The New York Times asked Snowden about his collaboration with a reporter and Snowden replied, “As one might imagine, normally spies allergically avoid contact with reporters or media.” Snowden, wanted by the United States, is being harbored by Russia.
The following timeline of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured many more provides a platform to better understand how the event was publicly presented by corporate and alternative news media. The chronological assemblage of coverage is not comprehensive of all reports published on the incident but is an ongoing project that also seeks to explain how the storyline was largely constructed by federal and state law enforcement, medical authorities and major media around the eventual theory that Dzokhar and Tamarlan Tsarnaev were the sole instigators of the bombing.
13 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
Media present dubious official claims as fact
The United States has reportedly carried out nine drone attacks in the last few weeks in Yemen, generating headlines about the targeting and killing of suspected Al-Qaeda militants in the impoverished country.
But how can media know for sure who is being killed?
12 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
A headline is sometimes worth a thousand words, and this was definitely the case after a deadly drone strike occurred in Yemen last week.
“Drone Strike Kills Six Suspected Militants in Yemen,” a Reutersheadline (8/7/13) declared. “More Suspected Al-Qaeda Militants Killed as Drone Strikes Intensify in Yemen,” aCNN.com headline (8/8/13) offered. Whatever the language, one message was clear: “Suspected terrorists” or “militants” had been killed.
9 August 2013 — WSWS
Thursday saw yet another revelation in the ongoing exposure of a cluster of unconstitutional surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies of the US government. In a front page article, the New York Times revealed that vast quantities of emails sent and received by Americans communicating with people abroad are swept up, “cloned,” and combed through by NSA analysts, on the basis that the messages contain certain words or phrases deemed suspicious by the government.
10 August 2013 — FAIR Blog
A well-respected research group posted a short article on its website about the location of a second launchpad for Iran’s space program. That’s not big news–but it can be made to sound like scary news in the New York Times.
“Launching Site in Iran Raises Missile Worries” was the headline over a piece by Rick Gladstone (8/9/13), which had this curious lead:
8 August 2013 — John Pilger
The critical moment in the political trial of the century was on 28 February when Bradley Manning stood and explained why he had risked his life to leak tens of thousands of official files. It was a statement of morality, conscience and truth: the very qualities that distinguish human beings. This was not deemed mainstream news in America; and were it not for Alexa O’Brien, an independent freelance journalist, Manning’s voice would have been silenced. Working through the night, she transcribed and released his every word. It is a rare, revealing document.
9 Agust 2013 — War is a Crime
If the U.S. public began to raise a fuss about U.S. missile strikes that blow up large numbers of civilians at wedding parties abroad, it’s not beyond the realm of the imaginable that the U.S. government would begin blaming the explosions on faulty candles in the wedding cakes. A similarly implausible excuse was used to explain the 1996 explosion of TWA flight 800 off Long Island, New York, and the U.S. public has thus far either swallowed the story whole or ignored the matter.
December 2001 — Monthly Review
is author of Socialism or Barbarism: From the “American Century” to the Crossroads (Monthly Review Press, 2001), and Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition (Monthly Review Press, 1995).
The New Dark Age 