What do they fear? What are they hiding? Why?

Info control, cover up, secrecy, intimidation – further grounds for impeachment

Excerpts, editing by 

Carolyn Bennett

Secret government

At government hearings, journalists are blinded. They cannot follow what’s happening. They don’t know what prosecutors are asking for or what defense attorneys are arguing – because they are denied “most court filings in real time” – even of prep or background material that is not classified. Under the current U.S. administration “information about Guantanamo is now kept secret. The U.S. military refuses to release the number of prisoners on hunger strike or the number of assaults on guards. Photo and video coverage is virtually nonexistent,” according to an Associated Press journalist. 

Suppression and intimidation

“Government press officials say their orders are to squelch anything controversial or that makes the administration look bad.” The government routinely intimidates sources. The Associated Press’s “transportation reporter’s sources say that if they are caught talking to her, they will be fired – even if they just give out facts about safety.”

Blocking information

FOIA breached

“Requests for information under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) have become slow and expensive. Many federal agencies simply do not respond at all in a timely manner, forcing news organizations to sue each time to force action.”  One of the media and public’s most important legal tools, FOIA, “is under siege.”

Political appointees spying on press

FOIA abused

  

The administration uses FOIAs as a tip service to uncover what news organizations are pursuing. Requests are now routinely forwarded to political appointees. At the agency that oversees the new health care law, for example, political appointees now handle the FOIA requests.

Domestic stalking, cover-up

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a federal law enforcement agency, “has directed local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology the police departments use to sweep up cellular phone data. In some cases, federal officials have formally intervened in state open-records cases, arguing for secrecy.” The Obama administration “is trying to control the information that state and local officials can give out.”

Related News 

 

Chief Law breaker never fit for Justice

Even before his confirmation it was clear that he was unsuited for the purpose of leading U.S. law enforcement, National Review editors writing in a September 26, 2014, post following the announcement of another gradual departure from the Obama government.   “In an administration characterized by outsized misadventures,” the editors write. “… Eric Holder managed to make his Justice Department a source of special, nay, historic attention,” the editors write. “Holder was the first U.S. Attorney General the House of Representatives held in contempt of Congress (June 2012).

Partisanship

No previous USAG exhibited Holder’s “sheer contempt for the rule of law…: his preference for employing the law for political purposes or, when necessary, dispensing with [exempting from] the law completely.

“…The duty of the attorney general historically has been to advise against unconstitutional or illegal activity. Holder instead regularly aided and abetted it [illegal activity, breach of the Constitution of the United States].

“When the president unilaterally delayed deportations for a select group of illegal immigrants, Holder concocted specious legal rationales to justify it. …”

Identity Posturing

“…Holder’s rank partisanship” was displayed “on issues of race” as in “his refusal to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation — despite video evidence of truncheon-wielding men warding voters away from a Philadelphia polling station in November 2008. Those whose political expression was inhibited in Philadelphia were not, Holder later suggested to the [U.S.] House Oversight Committee, ‘my people’ — and thus apparently did not deserve the protection of the law, this from the lips of the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.” 

At the same time, Attorney General Eric Holder “dismissed his critics as racists, eager to destroy him and [U.S. President Obama] because ‘we’re both African American.’ This same ‘nation of cowards’ was, by Holder’s reckoning, responsible for the voter-identification laws that his Justice Department has worked stridently — and largely unsuccessfully — to suppress in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.…”

Breach of law

“…In May 2013, [the Holder-Obama] Justice Department seized the phone records of twenty Associated Press reporters.” James Rosen of Fox News revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice “had monitored his phone calls and e-mails.”

In their conclusion the National Review editors declare that “the end of Holder’s death grip on law enforcement at the federal level is long overdue.” Looking forward they hope for a U.S. Department of Justice that delivers “actual justice.”

Sources and notes

“8 ways the Obama administration is blocking information” posted on 09/19/2014 by Erin Madigan White, http://blog.ap.org/2014/09/19/8-ways-the-obama-administration-is-blocking-information/

“The fight for access to public information has never been harder, Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee said recently at a joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers.”

“Journalists criticize White House for ‘secrecy’” AP editors, NYT reporter criticize Obama administration on access, transparency issues, Associated Press by Michael Tarm, Associated Press, September 17, 2014 9:10 PM, http://news.yahoo.com/journalists-criticize-white-house-secrecy-002418926.html;_ylt=AwrBEiISAidU8W0AAA3QtDMD

Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee

Sally Buzbee has served as Middle East editor for the AP based in Cairo, Egypt, running a region of 11 bureaus in 16 countries. IN the position she supervised Iraq war coverage, Israeli conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas, the Darfur crisis and the growing activities of terrorist cells in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Before Cairo, she was assistant bureau chief supervising foreign affairs coverage in the AP’s Washington bureau; and covered education, politics and economics in Washington and supervised various coverage areas as a news editor. Before her current position, she was deputy managing editor of The Associated Press in charge of creating and building the news cooperative’s News Center, a new global headquarters operation based in New York. Buzbee ‘s AP tenure began in Topeka, Kansas (1988), then  correspondent in San Diego before moving to Washington, D.C. (1995). Her credentials were taken at the University of Kansas and Georgetown University.

“Eric Holder’s Rap Sheet” by The Editors, National Review Online, September 26, 2014 10:30 AM, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388913/eric-holders-rap-sheet-editors

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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“War propaganda, media lies powerful instruments of warfare” benefiting 1 percent

Wars ─ remember Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria ─ to protect and defend 1 percent’s hegemony

Editing, commentary and bracketed comment by Carolyn Bennett

“It is … essential to disarm not only the mainstream media but also a segment of the self proclaimed ‘progressive’ alternative media, which has provided legitimacy to NATO’s ‘Responsibility to protect’ (R2P)  mandate, largely with a view to dismantling the antiwar movement. The road to Tehran Iran goes through Damascus. A war on Iran would involve, as a first step, the destabilization of Syria as a nation state. Military planning pertaining to Syria is an integral part of the war-on-Iran agenda. The war on Syria could evolve towards a U.S.-NATO-Israel military campaign directed against Iran, in which Turkey and Israel would be directly involved.

“It is crucial to spread the word and break the channels of media disinformation. A critical and unbiased understanding of what is happening in Syria is of crucial importance in reversing the tide of military escalation toward a broader regional war. Our objective is ultimately to dismantle the US-NATO-Israeli military arsenal and restore World Peace. It is essential that people in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Turkey, and around the World prevent this war from occurring.” [Professor Michel Chossudovsky]

British diplomat bent on buttressing and preserving imperialism

“A world that started the [twentieth] century divided among European empires,” Robert Cooper wrote longingly, “finishes it with all or almost all of them gone: the Ottoman, German, Austrian, French, British and finally Soviet Empires are now no more than a memory.

 

“This leaves us with two new types of state,“ he says:

Often former colonies where in some sense the state has almost ceased to exist, a ‘pre-modern’ zone, where the state has failed and a war of all against all is underway (countries such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan).

Post-imperial, postmodern, states [that] no longer think of security primarily in terms of conquest.

Traditional ‘modern’ states [that] behave as states always have, following Machiavellian principles [a view that politics is amoral and any means however unscrupulous can justifiably be used in achieving political power] … (countries such as India, Pakistan, China). … 

[He conveniently leaves out his own country and the United States, Italy, France and other western states].

T

his author-diplomat also conveniently omits the fact that “post-modern” states have been historically the creators of disorder, disaster and failed development in basics like water, electricity, sanitation as they have stolen developing countries' vital resources. 

With and because of their empires and imperialism armed with brute “force” to maintain their own comfort, their empires, hegemony, imperialism, they have deliberately failed states, created chaos, promoted conflict, divisiveness and disorder where there had been none within countries, between and among tribes and factions, between and among regions near and far. But facts do not stop Cooper’s blinding, bigoted disparaging of nations.

Pre-moderns

“…All of the world’s major drug-producing areas [what of nations demanding illicit drugs?] are part of the pre-modern world,” he says. “Until recently there was no real sovereign authority in Afghanistan; nor is there in upcountry Burma or in some parts of South America, where drug barons threaten the state’s monopoly on force [what of big western banks that launder drug money and so traffic in illicit drugs]. All over Africa countries are at risk. No area of the world is without its dangerous cases.

“In such areas, chaos is the norm and war is a way of life. In so far as there is a government, it operates in a way similar to an organized crime syndicate.

“The pre-modern state may be too weak even to secure its home territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for non-state actors [such as western invaders and occupiers] who may represent a danger to the postmodern world. If non-state actors, notably drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates take to using pre-modern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organized states may eventually have to respond.“ 

The West commits the cause and chaos they later claim to“cure” by waging war.

Cooper’s solution: more of the brute of the past

“If they [his “inferior” states or non-states or “pre-modern” states] become too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. It is not going too far to view the West's response to Afghanistan in this light.…”

Endless wars on the world, Cooper seems to be advocating: the definition of madness.

“What form should intervention take?” he asks and answers: “The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the one most employed in the past is colonization but colonization is unacceptable to postmodern states (and, as it happens, to some modern states too)” [Really?].

“It is precisely because of the death of imperialism,” Cooper says, “that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world. …

“All the conditions for imperialism are there; but the supply and the demand for imperialism have dried up. And yet,” he says, “the weak still need the strong and the strong still need an orderly world. … [The old naturally “inferior” versus the naturally “superior” ─ where have we heard that before?]

“What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. …

  

“

The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards.  Among ourselves, we [who is this “we”?] operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era –

Force 

Pre-emptive attack 

Deception 

Whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself

“A

mong ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.…”.

This is an unconscionable piece of war propaganda, sheer drivel, given the carnage that Western states have perpetrated and the lies told to justify unspeakable cruelty since and before the incidents of September 11, 2001. As we are deeply concerned about Syria and another imperialist war against another country and its people, we recall this drivel from an imperialist Neanderthal let loose in major media.

Citing Cooper’s horrific statement advocating “double standards” in world relations as a mandatory “norm” to sustain, protect and defend the imperialists, William Bowles in the Global Research article “The Criminal Voices of Media Propaganda: The Insidious Role of the BBC” published today notes that “Robert Cooper’s ‘law of the jungle’ was written in part to rationalize the invasion of Iraq. … But the BBC operates according to Cooper’s view of the world:

…One that represents white people ─ and rich white people at that ─ numbering no more than a few tens of thousands of individuals: that 1 percent.

…In ‘Tomahawking’ [missile-attacking] Syria, we are saving ‘civilization’ for the 1 percent.

I

U.S. Warship

n “U.S. and Allied Warships off the Syrian Coastline: Naval Deployment Was Decided ‘Before’ the August 21 Chemical Weapons Attack,” Professor Michel Chossudovsky says, “Military planning involves intricate scenarios and war games by both sides including military options pertaining to advanced weapons systems [and] A Third World War scenario has been contemplated by US-NATO-Israeli military planners since early 2000.”

But, he says ─ and people all across the Middle East are painfully aware of this as should be Americans  ─ “Any form of US-NATO direct military intervention against Syria would destabilize the entire region, potentially leading to escalation over a vast geographical area, extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with Tajikistan and China.”

Beware of War propaganda

Waging war for justice and democracy

War for women

War is peace

“The role of war propaganda is paramount, not only in molding public opinion into accepting a war agenda,” Chossudovsky writes; but also in establishing a consensus within the upper echelons of the decision-making process. A selective form of war propaganda intended for ‘Top Officials’ (TOPOFF) in government agencies, intelligence, the Military, law enforcement, etc., is intended to create an unbending consensus in favor of War and the Police State.

“For the war project to go ahead, it is essential that both politicians and military planners are rightfully committed to leading the war ‘in the name of justice and democracy.’ For this to occur, they must firmly believe in their own propaganda, namely that war is ‘an instrument of peace and democracy.’”

Chossudovsky concludes, pointedly, mincing no words

“…Wars are invariably decided upon by civilian leaders and corporate interests rather than by the military. War serves dominant economic interests which operate from behind the scenes, behind closed doors in corporate boardrooms, in the Washington think tanks, etc.

Realities are turned upside down. War is peace. The Lie becomes the Truth.

War propaganda, namely media lies, constitutes the most powerful instrument of warfare.

Without media disinformation, the US-NATO-Israel led war agenda would collapse like a deck of cards. The legitimacy of the war criminals in high office would be broken.

Martin Luther King said of the years’ long Western-perpetrated carnage in Southeast Asia: “The great initiative in this war is ours [and] the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

 

Chossudovsky lays out more detail

 

“It is … essential to disarm not only the mainstream media but also a segment of the self proclaimed ‘progressive’ alternative media, which has provided legitimacy to NATO’s ‘Responsibility to protect’ (R2P)  mandate, largely with a view to dismantling the antiwar movement.

“The road to Tehran Iran goes through Damascus. A war on Iran would involve, as a first step, the destabilization of Syria as a nation state. Military planning pertaining to

Syrian head of State

Syria is an integral part of the war-on-Iran agenda.

Consequences of war
Refugees

The war on Syria could evolve towards a US-NATO-Israel military campaign directed against Iran, in which Turkey and Israel would be directly involved.

It is crucial to spread the word and break the channels of media disinformation.

Caught in crossfire
Syrian refugees

A critical and unbiased understanding of what is happening in Syria is of crucial importance in reversing the tide of military escalation toward a broader regional war.

Syrians protest
foreign interference

Our objective is ultimately to dismantle the US-NATO-Israeli military arsenal and restore World Peace.

It is essential that people in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Turkey, and around the World prevent this war from occurring.

Sources and notes

“The new liberal imperialism” (Observer Worldview Extra, Robert Cooper), Observer.co.uk, Sunday April 7, 2002 07.14 EDT, , http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/07/1      

Senior British diplomat Robert Cooper is credited with having helped shape British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s calls for a new internationalism and a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state sovereignty.  “[His] call for a new liberal imperialism and admission of the need for double standards in foreign policy have outraged the left but the essay offers a rare and candid unofficial insight into the thinking behind British strategy on Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/07/1

“The Criminal Voices of Media Propaganda: The Insidious Role of the BBC” (William Bowles, Global Research), September 3, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-criminal-voices-of-media-propaganda-the-insiduous-role-of-the-bbc/5347915

“U.S and Allied Warships off the Syrian Coastline: Naval Deployment Was Decided ‘Before’ the August 21 Chemical Weapons Attack” (Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research), September 2, 2013, http://www.globalresearch.ca/massive-naval-deployment-us-and-allied-warships-deployed-to-syrian-coastline-before-the-august-21-chemical-weapons-attack/5347766

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website.

Chossudovsky is the author of Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005), and The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and his writings have been published in more than twenty languages. http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/michel-chossudovsky

  

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Same ilk seeds madness, sustains conflict: U.S./Indyk in Middle East

Palestinians distrust
United States

Changing guard changes nothing in Middle East, particularly Palestine

Excerpt, editing, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

Martin Indyk was the first United States ambassador to be stripped of a security clearance. He was under investigation for improperly handling sensitive material. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000 restored Indyk’s security clearance.

John Kerry
Martin Indyk

Born into a Jewish family in London, England, and raised in Australia, Martin Indyk in later years moved to the United States and in 1993 took U.S. citizenship. In the United States he has held positions as vice president and director for foreign policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution; and, in the William Jefferson Clinton Administration, Ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. In the Obama government, he has been handed the position of Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, a post that Philip Giraldi and others find problematic.  

  

Giraldi  is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, now executive director of the Council for the National Interest. In a recent article he expresses possibly feigned “surprise” that the Obama administration placed Martin Indyk in the latest planned negotiations ─ except if they're not serious ─ to help Israelis and Palestinians resolve their conflict in the Middle East. This is some of what Giraldi had to say about the Martin Indyk ilk and the corrupt and discredited state U.S. foreign policy: his article “Throw the Bums Out.”

Incestuous nepotistic inbreeds

“Martin Indyk is a symptom of the cancer that rots the [U.S.] political system,” Philip Giraldi writes, “and makes many Americans despair of our ever emerging from the darkness of the past twelve years.”

K

ey players in United States policy “tend to move around a lot: alternating between government posts and think tanks or universities with brief forays into the private sector where they make money exploiting the relationships they developed while in office.”

The appearance of Indyk (alongside the “new” man at State though an entrenched figure) is “an unpleasant reminder that even if everything changes in Washington ─ nothing changes when it comes to the Middle East.”

Though Indyk has again “been given great power to do still more damage in a part of the world where the United States has legitimate strategic concerns” ─ this man’s “willingness to do what is right for the United States and its people has to be considered questionable” … as “Indyk is a passionate Zionist completely Israel-focused.” Serious talks to aid resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “would be unimaginable,” he said, “with an interlocutor who has spent his entire life working on behalf of Israel.”

Giraldi concludes that, “in Indyk’s world view,” now re-ensconced in White House policy making, “there is nothing about the U.S. interest except as it coincides with that of Israel.”

 

P

ress TV has also reported on attentive observers’ view of Indyk as a problematic U.S. “mediator” because of his “very strong connections with the Zionist lobby inside and outside of the United States.” His involvement throws U.S. credibility into question.  

Political analyst Jim W. Dean also questions U.S. participation in helping (or pretending to help) resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or aid a “peace” process. The United States, he said, “should not have anything to do with the talks” scheduled this week because of the U.S. culpability in “actually emboldening Israel.”

‘…We need to launch a really big campaign publicizing the duplicity of Israel in all of the past negotiations and how ineffective America has been … as a mediator.’”

The protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Dean says, is a “‘horrendous situation’” from which the United States should absent itself and instead support a clearly “‘independent mediator.’”

 Discredited: Palestinians distrust United States

Results of a May 21-June 4 Gallup Poll released on July 26, 2013, found

66 percent no confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama’s helping “the process of Israel-Palestine talks” 

A great majority of Palestinians have no confidence in the role played by the United States in the Israel-Palestine talks.

Findings from face-to-face interviews with 1000 Palestinian and Israeli adults revealed:

74 percent of participants disagreed with the acceptability of solutions proposed by President Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry.

R

enowned Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi is quoted this week saying Israel, against the international efforts, “‘is not stopping its consecutive strikes.’” And those “‘strikes’” [not unlike the continually expanding illegal settlements, which the U.S. has given only tepid comments, compared with its comments against governments of Syria, Iran, Libya, Korea and others] “‘are aiming at blocking the negotiations..’”

Disqualified as peace broker

A member of the executive committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Ashrawi was careful in her words when she said ─

Hon. Hanan Ashrawi 

‘Israel is trying to empty the process of the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations before it is really launched’

“‘I don’t believe,’” she said, “‘that the Palestinians are in need of meaningless negotiations with Israel.’”

Early this year veteran Arab journalist Nicola Nasser quoted Hanan Ashrawi lamenting Palestinians’ experience of Washington’s empty words and actual practice. “Our experience has been really tragic with this American administration,” she said, an administration that “started with such high hopes and tremendous promises [but] they backed down so quickly it was incredible.”

Ashrawi stated the obvious conclusion: “The U.S. has disqualified itself as a peace broker.”

Sources and notes

“Throw the Bums Out” written by Philip Giraldi, August 8, 2013, Martin Sean Indyk (born July 1, 1951), http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/opinion-a-analysis/item/3099-throw-the-bums-out

Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with several years work overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. His opinions on terrorism, intelligence, and security issues appear regularly in various U.S. news sources and at antiwar.com Giraldi is multi-lingual and holds academic credentials from degrees London and Chicago universities.

“Kerry names ex-ambassador as U.S. envoy to Israel-Palestinian talks─ US Secretary of State John Kerry has named Washington’s former ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, as the lead negotiator for Israeli-Palestinian talks,” July 29, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/29/316224/exenvoy-named-us-envoy-in-me-talks/

“The Palestinian delegation is led by chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat; Tzipi Livni will represent the Israeli side. Major topics on the agenda include the future of Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, the status of al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

The previous Palestinian-Israeli talks were halted in September 2010 after Tel Aviv refused to freeze its settlement activities in the West Bank. Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip; and are demanding that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967.  Tel Aviv, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds.

“U.S., Israel agenda behind talks with Palestinians must be exposed: Analyst,” August 13, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/13/318520/us-israel-agenda-must-be-exposed/

Jim W. Dean is managing editor and columnist for Veterans Today, a military and foreign affairs journal. Dean’s current writing focuses on national security, intelligence, black and ‘psy ops’, and military/Intel history including personal video archives and the current wars.

“Palestinians distrust U.S. in Palestine–Israel talks: Gallup poll,” August 7, 2013,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/07/317613/most-palestinians-distrust-us-poll/

“Palestinian officials slam Israel's decision to build 1,200 settlement units” (English.news.cn), August 12, 2013, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-08/12/c_125150594.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Indyk

“Palestinians Disqualify U.S. as Peace Broker  ─ The ‘unbreakable alliance,’ which will be confirmed by the upcoming visit of President Barack Obama to Israel, will disqualify the United States as an honest broker of peace in the Arab – Israeli conflict in Palestine, says a Palestinian veteran peace negotiator” by Nicola Nasser, Global Research, February 22, 2013, http://globalresearch.ca/palestinians-disqualify-u-s-as-peace-broker/5323873

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Obama lawlessness may succeed where Nixon’s failed ─ Goodale issues Clarion Call

Information control under bogus “national security” claims

Editing, re-reporting, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

  

Some journalists risk intimidation, detention, even their lives simply for exercising their right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers ─ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

On the “Democracy Now” program this week Pentagon Papers/New Times attorney James C. Goodale called attention to the Obama government’s insidious breaches, regressive actions toward the U.S. Constitution and the Fourth Estate. 

Wikipedia note: The “Pentagon Papers” were first brought to the attention of the public in 1971 on the front page of The New York Times.

A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers ‘demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public; but also to Congress about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance’. The report was declassified and publicly released in June 2011.

The “official” title of the U. S. Department of Defense’s history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 (generally referred to as the Pentagon Papers) was “United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense.”

In the immediate news stream of the Obama government’s spying on the Associated Press and the rising secrecy in foreign relations and corresponding restraint of a free press, Goodale brings past to present and raises the alarm on a dangerous regression ─ especially for the promise and potential of a democratic state.

The “Pentagon Papers” was a “case about censorship” and when it was concluded, the people and the press thought progress had been achieved.

U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell  ─ notorious for pushing the Nixon administration’s ‘law-and-order’ positions against anti-war demonstrators and whose participation in the Watergate scandal earned him some prison time ─ “got very excited about prosecuting The New York Times,” James Goodale said. “So he (Mitchell) convened a grand jury in Boston, because there was some evidence that the Pentagon Papers had been circulated in the antiwar community before they were published by The New York Times.

“…The theory was that the New York Times reporter [had] conspired with those antiwar protesters, and (Mitchell) was going to indict them for conspiracy.”

What was that line about “liberty” and perpetual 
“vigilance”?

Fast forward 40+ years: Obama charges “conspiracy”

The Obama government “has convened a grand jury we haven’t heard about,” Goodale said, “[but] it’s still there.” He said he thinks that grand jury may have in secrecy “indicted [Julian] Assange.” The charge, “Conspiracy …, [a claim] that is very easy to prove; [unlike] espionage, which is very hard to prove under the Espionage Act.” So this president, Goodale said, “is doing an end run: trying to get an easy case against Assange ─ after he has convicted Bradley Manning.”

Regression: Supercharged-Nixonesque Obama 

We have “gone full secret, the full circle,” Goodale said. When the Pentagon Papers were published, “all the journalists and publishers said it’s a new era. The government is not going to be able to keep the secrets anymore.” Goodale points out that “they are not secrets, anyway.” Publishing the Pentagon Papers means, he explained, that “they [government officials] are not going to be able to hold back the information. We’ve had this great victory.” Nixon was the thirty-seventh president; then comes the forty-fourth.

Press Freedom Day
May 3

“We’ve got Obama who has indicted six journalists [and] in the AP situation he is trying to find the seventh source to indict.

Secrecy has increased during the Obama administration.

We have gone nowhere in terms of that.

Whether the claim or pretext is “terror” or “terrorist” or “terrorism” or whether it is “national security”, whatever and whenever any president or head of state pronounces it as such ─ there's something seriously wrong here.

7 MILLION AND COUNTING

The Obama government in a single year, Goodale said, has “classified seven million documents.  Everything is classified.”

That gives “the government the ability to control all its information on the theory that it is classified; and if anybody asks for it and gets it ─ they are complicit and they are going to go to jail. This means:

The process of news gathering is criminalized. The dissemination of information, which is inevitable, out of the ‘classified’ sources of that information ─ is ended.

The controversy today concerning the government’s surveillance of the Associated Press “is about a ‘national security’ exception to press privilege,” Goodale says.

Great Danger prompts urgent call to action

Julian Assange is “quite right in talking about the threat to journalism with respect to the way [the Obama government] is going about prosecuting Assange.” If this prosecution goes forward, Goodale says, it will, in fact, “criminalize news gathering.…”  It goes like this, he says:

I talk to you and ask you to give me a secret or anything, but in fact that ‘anything’ may be ‘classified’; and

Givers, receivers, and disseminators of that information are going to go to the hoosegow.

Seven million and counting — everything is classified. Government is enabled to control all government information on the theory that it is “classified.”

With the Pentagon Papers he says, “We have a very good precedent in that [the current president] cannot stop the press before printing.” But in the digital age, “no one cares about that …” and the issue becomes “what the government will do after publication.… What are the rules there? This is a new chapter in the history of the Pentagon Papers.”

There is great danger here. And though journalists “may not like” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, they must “wake up!” because “the First Amendment is going to be damaged” if the Obama government proceeds with prosecution. If this president succeeds, Goodale says, “He will have succeeded where [President] Nixon failed.” 

“

Some journalists risk intimidation, detention, even their lives simply for exercising their right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” ─ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

World Press Freedom Day (3rd day of May) was declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations. 

The declaration's intent is to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and to remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sources and notes

Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution, Friday May 17, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/obama_worse_than_nixon_pentagon_papers

Goodale’s book Fighting for the Press, http://www.jamesgoodale.net/

James Goodale

James C. Goodale of the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP first came to public prominence during the Pentagon Papers case of 1971. He is an American lawyer, author and teacher.

His latest book “about what really took place in the Pentagon Papers case … and the perils facing the press today” is Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. In approximately 200 articles published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, he addresses “the role of the press in the Information Revolution.”

Goodale is a leading First Amendment lawyer who has represented The New York Times in all of this newspaper’s cases to go to the Supreme Court: the Pentagon Papers case (The New York Times Co. v. The U.S.); The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (libel); Branzburg v. Hayes; and The New York Times Co. v. Tasini, (digital rights).

He has been a professor since 1977 on various U.S. university faculties and has been a member of the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton in 1980 where he and others have represented scores of media and communications companies: The New York Times, the Hearst Corporation, NBC, Cablevision, WNET/Channel 13, Infinity Broadcasting, the New York Observer, The Paris Review, and others. He was outside general counsel for Channel 13/WNET and a founding officer (secretary) of the New York Observer.   http://www.jamesgoodale.net/biography.html

Pentagon Papers (briefly)

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.

The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance". The report was declassified and publicly released in June 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell

John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913 – November 9, 1988) was the Attorney General of the United States from 1969 to 1972 under President Richard Nixon. Prior to that, he was a noted New York municipal bond lawyer, director of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, and one of Nixon's closest personal friends; after his tenure as Attorney General, he served as director of Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign.

Due to his involvement in the Watergate affair, he was sentenced to prison in 1977 and served 19 months. As Attorney General, Mitchell was noted for personifying the ‘law-and-order’ positions of the Nixon administration, amid several high-profile anti-war demonstrations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell

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