 - TomDispatch
 Aug 26, 7:51pm  (29 reviews) politics, war, pentagon, war-profiteering http://www.tomdispatch.com/- [Note for TomDispatch Readers This is the second post in a pre-Labor Day "best of TomDispatch" series. The first was Chalmers Johnson's 2005 "Smash of Civilizations." Now, we backpeddle another year to 2004 and reconsider the Pentagon's ceaseless efforts to dream up and build ever more effective, ever more invasive and destructive weaponry not just for 2010, but for 2020, 2030, 2040, and beyond. The new model car or the next version of the iPhone has nothing on the Pentagon, which fully expects to roll out the next version of destruction until Hell freezes over. This makes TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse's 2004 piece -- in those distant days he still signed his posts "Nicholas" -- on ways the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was planning to weaponize the wild kingdom as shiny new as tomorrow's HDTVs.
- The Real News Network - Story
- Jul 28, 6:45am (1 review) politics, iraq, pentagon http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?optio...
- Senator Barack Obama's Middle East/Central Asia leg of his whirlwind world tour was as smooth as the three-pointer he shot in front of US troops. Military historian Gareth Porter explains what's left unsaid behind the triumphal profusion of meetings and photo opportunities.
- Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagons Stealth Corporations
- Jun 25, 8:24pm (2 reviews) military, bush, pentagon, military-complex http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174948/n...
At $34 billion, you're already counting pretty high. After all, that's Harvard's endowment; it's the amount of damage the triple hurricanes -- Charley, Ivan, and Jeanne -- inflicted in 2004; it's what car crashes involving 15-to-17-year-old teenage drivers mean yearly in "medical expenses, lost work, property damage, quality of life loss and other related costs"; it's the loans the nation's largest, crippled, home lender, Countrywide Financial, holds for home-equity lines of credit and second liens; it's Citigroup's recent write-off, mainly for subprime exposure; it's what New Jersey's tourism industry is worth -- and, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, it's the minimal figure for the Pentagon's "black budget" for fiscal year 2009 -- money for, among other things, "classified weapons purchases and development," money for which the Pentagon will remain unaccountable because almost no Americans will have any way of knowing what it's being spent for.
- Senior Pentagon officials planned harsh interrogation tactics used on...
- Jun 18, 8:02am (1 review) abuse, guantanamo-bay, pentagon, senate-investigation http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun...
- A Senate investigation unveiled today found that senior Pentagon officials began planning to use abusive tactics at Guantánamo Bay earlier than they previously acknowledged, borrowing from a programme that trained US troops to resist cruel interrogations
- Three Days in Rome Redux: The Cocktail Napkin Plan for an Iran Coup
- Jun 16, 9:23am (2 reviews) politics, iran, pentagon, covert-meetings http://www.motherjones.com/washington_di...
- Washington Dispatch: More on the covert meetings between Pentagon officials and shady Iranian expats, plus other intel details from a new Senate report.
- Truthdig - A/V Booth - Mary Tillman on 'Today': 'Pat's Death…
- May 7, 4:42am (1 review) books, afghanistan, pentagon, kevin-tillman, today-show http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/200...
- Mary Tillman made a sharp and moving appearance Tuesday morning on the "Today" show to talk about her new book, "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman," about the friendly-fire death of her son, Pat, and the U.S. military's subsequent cover-up in 2004.
In an interview by Meredith Viera, Tillman called Pat's killing "an act of gross negligence," taking aim at the Pentagon's top brass when she said "someone started this deception, and it didn't start at the three-star level."
- What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side | MediaCulture | AlterNet...
- May 5, 5:14am
 (1 review) propaganda, pentagon http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/843... - From the page: "In this case, though, the pundits' undeclared financial interests are only part of a larger and much more serious problem. These officers participated in a covert government program designed to shape U.S. public opinion -- an illegal program, and one that relied on the willingness of major media to play along, without asking too many questions. And that's exactly what happened.
The media outlets that featured the Pentagon's pundits need to address both aspects of this debacle -- that they failed to identify or disclose conflicts of interest, and that they helped propagandize U.S. news audiences. NPR Ombudsman Alicia C. Shepard's recent column only mentioned the former. She pointed to NPR's new "detailed guidelines for vetting on-air guests and looking for potential conflicts of interests" as the solution. But those guidelines don't include questions about contacts with or materials provided by government officials, or trips funded by government agencies. Instead, Shepard concerned herself with the question of whether NPR analyst Robert Scales does or "does not spout the Pentagon's line."
Memo to Shepard: It's illegal for the U.S. government to propagandize its own citizens, regardless. And instead of debating shades of gray, shouldn't NPR be denouncing any propaganda attempt as antithetical to the ideal of a free press?
Increasingly, news audiences are realizing the many ways in which interested parties skew media coverage. Media outlets need to wake up to that reality and work to strengthen their safeguards in defense of the public interest. Their only alternative is to start composing their next weak and belated mea culpa, in a desperate attempt to protect their ever-dwindling credibility."
- YouTube - FOX EXPOSED: The Pentagon is Alright!
- Apr 29, 1:58pm (3 reviews) politics, video, war, pentagon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3QY6Raws...
- Take action at:
http://FreePress.net
Tell Congress: Investigate the Propaganda Pundits
The New York Times has exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.
The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via the news. Many of these propaganda pundits didn't reveal that they were working from Pentagon scripts or lobbying for companies seeking to cash in on major military contracts.
This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism -- and possibly of federal law.
Send a letter to Congress and demand better media. Take action at:
http://FreePress.net
- The New York Times & Log In
- Apr 21, 11:58am (7 reviews) politics, propaganda, pentagon, disinformation http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washin...
- Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand
- Annual Pentagon Request: Half a Trillion and Counting | Danger Room from...
- Feb 4, 2:25pm (1 review) military, department-of-defense, pentagon, budget, trillion, cash-rules http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/an...
- As expected, the administration's budget request for the Defense Department has topped half a trillion dollars, not counting additional money that would be used to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That a lot of money, even by defense standards.
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