A ‘Day’ of Intel

One of my duties at Antiwar.com is to find news links for our readers. As you can imagine, it can get pretty tedious reading the same basic story across the different news agencies, but occasionally I am rewarded with a real gem for my troubles. Yesterday, tucked away deep inside an article in The Jerusalem Post was a tiny mention that an estimated one-third of the dead in yesterday’s IAF air strikes were civilians.

Although I imagined there had to be great “collateral damage” during the assault, there were two things that struck me about the mention. First, it was in an article lauding the “year of intel” that went into the operation. Second, it was in The Jerusalem Post. Here was an article — in an Israeli newspaper — admitting there were great civilian losses during an operation that took a year to plan! I couldn’t believe the juxtaposition.

I made mention of it to a couple of co-workers and then changed our link headline to stress that information. It was so odd that I thought it must have just snuck past an editor during yesterday’s chaotic reporting. So on a whim this morning I decide to see if an editor had gotten around to “fixing” it. Sure enough, now the civilian casualties are down to only “15” deaths in the article. Thankfully, The Mercury News saw fit to quote Palestinian Health Ministry official, Moaiya Hassanain, on that same estimate and hasn’t “fixed” their article. At least, not yet.

On Gaza: Huffington Post Takes Cues From Fox News

That "emergency public relations" campaign Israel announced – just prior to Saturday’s attack on Gaza, which has killed over 200 so far – has been quite effective. Take, for example, the Huffington Post, which begins its "coverage" with this lede:

"Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years."

It was all about "retaliation" – no mention of the Israeli blockade, which keeps vital medical and other supplies out of Gaza. The Palestinians, according to Huffpo, are getting their just desserts. And Fox News – the mouthpiece of the Bush administration and their neocon enablers, has an identical take on the situation:

"Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years."

So do a lot of other media outlets, some of which "credit" this narrative to the Associated Press.

It’s not like there was no alternative to the AP story: after all, having just raised $25 million from rich Obama backers, you would think the HuffPuff would have the resources to re-write this particular narrative along more objective lines, but you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for implying that perhaps this would impact their fundraising negatively.

They also don’t want to get ahead of their Dear Leader, Obama, who shows no signs of making so much as a comment many hours after the killing started – and isn’t expected to be any more even-handed than the Bush administration, in any event.

A ‘Potent’ Weapon of War

Among the world’s intelligence agencies, there’s a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.

“The KGB has always used ‘honey traps,’ and it works,” Baer said. For American officers, a more common practice was to offer medical care for potential informants and their loved ones, he said. “I remember one guy we offered an option on a heart bypass,” Baer said.

Friday’s Washington Post reports that the CIA is offering Afghanis a new form of payola for helping the US military: viagra.

Read the rest…

NORAD Tracks Mr. Santa’s Wild Ride

In its 50 years in operation, NORAD never saw a mission it didn’t like. Perhaps its most bizarre (and since the Cold War, most high profile) annual ritual of the air defense command is the “tracking” of Santa Claus across the planet. The process has come a long way from when I was a child and you’d see a brief clip of where Santa was on the 6-o-clock news, providing real-time tracking of the pop-culture icon.

And while NORAD assures us that “almost no taxpayer dollars” are spent on this mission, the question of how on earth this became their job remains. They try to explain it on the site, saying Sears once screwed up a phone number in a local advert and the guy on duty played along. But over half a century later, a joke became a formal mission in its own right… complete with corporate sponsors.

Bizarre however is to look at where Santa is declared to have stopped and where he has omitted from his global trek. Santa skipped Taiwan altogether, but found time to visit the sparsely populated Japanese island of Chichi-Jima (best known for reports it hosted US nuclear weapons during the Cold War). Kashmir missed out, as did Southern Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas (perhaps NORAD felt there was enough air traffic looming over South Waziristan for Santa to stop off in Wana?). Somehow, he felt the need to stop in Diego Garcia however, the depopulated island used by the United States for extralegal War on Terror interrogations. Santa also stopped off at Guantanamo Bay, perhaps he is a human rights investigator now?

Qom, Iran was briefly listed this afternoon, but was hastily changed to read “International Space Station.” No other Iran cities were listed. Santa stopped in Gori, Georgia as well, but conspicuously ignored Israel (no doubt the Office of Antiboycott Compliance is salivating at the legal ramifications of this omission).

Santa has just arrived in the continental United States… which will no doubt be well represented in his visits. But for children around the world (particularly in nations with heavily Christian populations like Serbia) the question must be asked: how does NORAD decide which nations Santa is to visit in a given year, and which he omits.

What’s the Deal With Antiwar Radio?

Well, see, I’m packing up the truck and moving to LA with an eye toward a new radio project. I should be back posting interviews within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, there are 5 from last week which have just been posted, Chris Emery (posted as a post-script to Roger Charles), Thomas Woods, Glenn Greenwald, Philip Giraldi, Patrick Cockburn, and there are hundreds of past interviews by me and Charles Goyette here. (All of my interviews since 2003 are available at ScottHortonShow.com.)

Ms. Bianca Oblivion will also be playing reruns on KAOS Radio at the regular time (11-1 PM Texas time) at least for a little while…

Merry Christmas.

First Amendment Takes Another Hit

Fellow Brooklynite Javed Iqbal, 45, today plead guilty to broadcasting Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV programming to US customers. The charge is “providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.”

Eric brought this news item to my attention and asked if I wanted to blog about it.

“Not really. What should I add?”

“Add your outrage.”

I paused and thought about it. “But I’m not outraged right now.”

And that got me to thinking — why AREN’T I outraged? Is it that I am so used to this Administration jailing people for absurd and frivolous reasons? Am I now merely bored by the thought of the government spying on American citizens on the basis of nebulous and unlikely threats of terror? Has it become so “whatever” to hear of someone denied an explicit constitutional right because it might help the propaganda arm of an organization our government has declared a terrorist organization but which is not by all legitimate and objective standards a terrorist organization?

The last time I checked, the only time Hezbollah lifted a finger to physically harm Americans was when the latter were occupying Lebanon — and even then, it’s not proven. Israel might consider Hezbollah to be terrorists for daring to challenge the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, but as I live in the United States, I don’t care much to live by the warped standards of Israeli justice.

This was not shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Al-Manar may broadcast distasteful programs, but it doesn’t incite its viewers to commit violence. This case IS an outrage and should outrage anyone who prefers liberty over security — not that anyone is more secure by Iqbal’s certain conviction.

Broadcasting Al-Manar should not be considered a crime in the United States, where the law of the land explicitly declares that it is the exact opposite: the protected activity of expression.