WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.
While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.
I’ve been highlighting sensationalist media coverage my whole career. The media often foregoes facts in order to push a narrative. Sometimes this is to push their own ideology, but often it’s just for ratings. Prominent members of the media individually peddle lies in order to advance their own personal agenda. Katie Couric recently did it by intentionally lying in her anti-gun fauxmentary, and Tom Brokaw recently did it when he lied as commencement speaker about guns and crime.
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As I highlighted in the Tom Brokaw story, the media is often the catalyst for violence, and they certainly were responsible for the violence in Dallas last night.
Studies show that media coverage of certain violent events actually causes violence to occur. When you throw in dishonest media coverage that peddles lies as if they were true, especially when they paint a false narrative of violence against a specific demographic, the powderkeg gets lit. That’s what has been happening for years in the U.S. The media has peddled lies, myths, and distortions of the facts as if they were true to paint a false narrative of police violence, and racism against minorities. They’ve done this with many topics, but we’ll stick to these for today.
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The media has covered nearly every police shooting, and most violent encounters really, involving black suspects as if they were anti-black racist incidents. They have even done this when the officers themselves are black like in the Freddie Gray case. Nearly all of these stories are painted as white supremacist cops using their unfettered power to kill or harm blacks. Even when no white officers were involved. Years of doing this has conditioned the American public to just assume all violent encounters between blacks and police are rooted in anti-black bigotry. The media has also sensationalized these incidents to seem as if they occur far more than they really do.
They do this on a national scale while ignoring similar cases where altercations between whites and police are ignored. If you have three similar stories at the same time involving police killing suspects (as we do now), but you only cover the two cases involving black suspects, how are you not pushing a narrative of anti-black police bigotry? If Dylan Noble were a black unarmed teenager who was killed by police while lying on the ground, there’d be mass media coverage, demonization of police, and protests organized by Black Lives Matter claiming it was yet another example of racist cops killing an innocent unarmed black teen. But Dylan Noble is not black, so the media all but ignores the case in spite of the fact he’s the only suspect who was unarmed.
In the cases of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, we literally don’t have enough evidence to conclude whether police acted inappropriately yet, but everyone just assumes the worst and gets outraged. Why? Because the media has conditioned the population to be overly reactionary in these cases in spite of the fact that most end up being proven that police acted appropriately. Mature reasonable people will look at the Alton Sterling video and see he was resisting arrest, Tasers didn’t work, he had his hand at his right side, he had an illegal gun in his right pocket near where his hand was, and conclude that it was at least plausible the officers acted reasonably. A reasonable person would hold off judgement in this case, as well as the Castile and Noble cases because there’s no evidence to contradict the police’s version of events. Reasonable people would question if the body cameras really fell off, and didn’t record the incident, or wait for the other videos to be released before passing judgement. Reasonable people would know that this is rarely done overnight, and usually only after the investigation is over. We don’t live in a reasonable society now, however. We live in a media sensationalized society, and social media gives us a safe venue to be an asshat peddling lies.
This brings me to another point. Media sensationalism is often buried in otherwise appropriate news articles.
I highlighted this recently when the media pushed a false narrative that cell phones cause brain cancer a week after the largest study ever done on the subject found no link between cell phones and cancer. Yet the large, scientific, study was buried in favor of a small, unscientific paper that didn’t even prove the link existed, but hypothesized it may exist. Good journalists would have disregarded the paper that said cell phones are linked to cancer while reporting on the much bigger, more scientific study saying there was no link. That isn’t what happened. Why? Media sensationalism. Cell phones being proven to not cause cancer isn’t going to sell papers. So now you have a bunch of people running around thinking science has concluded cell phones cause brain cancer, when the opposite is actually true.
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Then a gay YouTuber faked a hate crime to push a false narrative that anti-gay violence is prevalent and common in the U.S., it isn’t.
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A pro-gay media outlet rightfully picked up on this fraud, and exposed him as such. That is good journalism, and an appropriate story to cover. However, buried nine paragraphs down, media sensationalism and bias reared its ugly head. The author claimed that the LGBT community was the most likely group to be targeted for hate crimes according to the FBI. I had to debunk that article’s lie with actual FBI statistics. Here’s a gay publication highlighting a fraudulent anti-gay hate crime, but they still had to inject their false narrative into the article just so they reeled people back in to the mythology they push. Now their readers falsely assume hate crimes against the LGBT community are common. This foments hate.
That’s happened with the violence in Dallas last night.
The UK Daily Mirror ran a story today on the black power hate group who’s claimed responsibility for the murders of Dallas police officers last night. Again, good journalism to cover this story in this way. However, 42 paragraphs in, the Mirror sensationalizes police shootings of black suspects with a lie. They wrote:
US police do not publish figures on the number of people shot dead by officers but independent research shows young black men were nine times more likely to be killed by police in 2015.
Not even remotely true without serious statistical gymnastics of a highly dubious nature.
Also, not sure you can call an anti-police website a source of ‘independent research.’ The Daily Mirror’s source is MappingPoliceViolence.org. A website dedicated to highlighting anti-black police violence, and their data is vastly different than official sources, and actual journalism statistics. I’m also not sure where they got the 9x number. The website does say blacks are 3x more likely to be killed than whites. However, that’s a per capita number of the total population for that race. If we want to get into per capita crime numbers, I’m afraid the picture doesn’t look very good considering that blacks commit a highly disproportionate amount of crimes, including murder, than other races. Their ‘solutions’ page is also an intellectually dishonest joke.
The Washington Post and the Guardian have launched their own efforts to track police shootings. Their numbers are similar (Guardian reports slightly higher number of shooting incidents). For the record, these should be tracked better than they are by government officials. I’d also like to see them track the race of the officer.
The Washington Post study for 2015 shows that 87.5% of suspects killed by police were armed with a weapon. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were armed. Dylan Noble wasn’t. Being unarmed is also irrelevant, and usually cited by the ignorant who don’t know what they are talking about. Especially since ‘unarmed’ suspects are 2.6x more likely to murder someone than someone armed with any rifle.
Their study also showed that in 3/4 of police killings “police were under attack or defending someone who was.”
According to The Guardian, in 2015, whites accounted for 50.7% (581) of all fatal police shootings. Blacks accounted for 26.7% (306). More whites were killed by police, but we are told by the media that the opposite is true. Some disingenuous people will start arguing proportion of population at these numbers, but they must remember that blacks make up 13% of the population, but commit 8x the murders as whites/hispanics. If we are going to measure per capita numbers for police shootings, we need to include per capita crime statistics as well. Police operate where the crime is, and there’s more crime in predominantly black areas. Sorry, not sorry, facts.
In 2016, so far, whites account for 49.29% of police killings, blacks account for 24%. Right now, whites are more than 2x as likely to be killed by police.
When the media pushes a false narrative that police officers are hunting down young black men because they are racist on a near daily basis, blacks are being conditioned to be fearful of police. This fear seeds a self-preservation attitude that leads to hate, and ultimately, violence towards police like we saw in Dallas last night. As we’ve seen since Ferguson.
If the media covered alleged police abuse equally, without pushing a racist narrative, perhaps we could focus on eliminating police abuse, and not have racist anti-police militant groups murdering innocent police officers who have nothing do with any alleged abuse.
If the media didn’t cover minorities being killed as racism while ignoring similar cases involving whites, perhaps people wouldn’t have a skewed view of these encounters which are based on mythology. Then, perhaps, radical factions wouldn’t have anger to serve as a launching point for their violent agenda. The nation could stop being divided. If only facts and even handed temperament were pillars of our media, and society instead of inflammatory hyperbole.
In a 43-part tweetstorm on Tuesday, Doucette recounted a recent experience defending a 17-year-old black teen from claims by a police officer that the teen was doing 360s in the middle of the street. Over the course of the story, Doucette demonstrates many of the problems black people face in the U.S. court system and why changes never seem to stick.
Read the article. The police were trying to hose this kid, and there’s no doubt about it. However, Fusion clearly jumped the shark a bit with their headline. As did the lawyer. I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times to people of all races. Again, it’s corrupt blue line vs good cops vs the public. Until officers who lie on reports, and bare false witness are punished, we will have this problem of trust. Let’s just stop pretending it only happens to one group of people. No, it isn’t a ‘black’ thing, and no, there isn’t any evidence to the contrary. Let me give you just one example of the hundreds of cases like this I’ve covered in my career.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 2009 lost Officer James Manor in a fatal car crash responding to a domestic violence call. Officer Manor was a black man. He was killed after Calvin Darling, a white man, pulled out in front of him. This led to a horrific accident, and Officer Manor’s vehicle catching fire. Ultimately, he lost his life.
The day of the accident we learned Calvin Darling was arrested for DUI. The city exploded into a hatred for Calvin Darling like you wouldn’t believe. An officer responding to a domestic violence call was using his lights and siren while trying to help someone in need, and this DRUNK GUY pulls out in front of him and kills him. The sheriff at the time, Doug Gillespie, was adamant that Officer Manor was doing nothing wrong. He repeated all of this in the media, and on my show as he sat right next to me.
I was the first person in all media that day to urge calm because we didn’t have any evidence Darling was actually drunk. No test had been done at the scene. The rage I got from callers who were citizens, police officers, and their wives was intense. Then I got a call from a listener who witnessed the accident. They said the story being told about Calvin Darling wasn’t true. More on that later.
The reason the public was so outraged about this is that there was a second officer who was driving behind Officer Manor. The witness. That officer is the one who said Manor had his lights on (running code), and that Darling was drunk. He lied.
We eventually learned Officer Manor wasn’t running code. He wasn’t using his lights, or his siren. Neither was the other officer who said he was. He was driving at 109 mph on a 45 mph road in the pitch black of night. The front and back of Metro’s patrol cars are black. Difficult to see at night anyway. When you add in the speed with which the officers were driving, Calvin Darling had no chance to avoid the collision.
We also learned that Calvin Darling was not drunk. He passed all of his blood alcohol tests. We also learned that he attempted to rescue Officer Manor. He risked his life to do so in spite of his own serious injuries. When it became clear he couldn’t get to Officer Manor because of the flames, he attempted to put the fire out. He wasn’t a drunk man who killed a police officer, he was a hero who tried to save an officer who was responsible for a deadly accident, and violating department policy.
You need to understand something here … there was a long time that passed before we learned that Officer Manor wasn’t using his lights or siren. The Sheriff was constantly saying he was sure Officer Manor did nothing wrong before he even had the information (there’s a box installed in the patrol cars that records when lights and siren are used).
Eventually, all charges against Calvin Darling were dropped, and the police settled with him for $120,000. Far too little in my opinion.
Calvin darling, a white man, had done no wrong. Yet he was accused of killing a black police officer, and the police department attempted to set him up to take the fall for a crime of which he was innocent. If it were a white officer and black motorist, the headlines would have all been about how racist white officers tried to frame a black guy for murder. Race had nothing to do with it. It was the thin blue line protecting its own from scrutiny, but the story gets worse.
Now that we knew Officer Manor and the other officer were not running code, were violating policy and the law, and that the other officer had LIED about it on his police report leading to the arrest of an innocent man, who was actually the victim … what must become of the lying officer?
I had Sheriff Gillespie on my show again once this revelation was discovered. He looked me in the eye and promised the other officer (name withheld) would be disciplined. I asked what that discipline might look like, and the Sheriff declined to answer.
Some time passed … weeks, months, years. Nothing ever happened to the officer who lied that day. No discipline at all, I know, because I asked. The media (except for me) stopped asking questions. Metro had successfully swept the criminal actions of this officer under the rug. Not because of race, not because they are evil, but because they take care of their own. Even if their own are corrupt and criminal in many jurisdictions.
Obviously, this isn’t the norm. Somewhat common perhaps, but not the norm. The great law enforcement leaders do their job to protect the public from corrupt officers. Unfortunately, stories like this kid who was being hosed by police over his mythical 360 donuts, and stories like Calvin Darling foment distrust between people and police departments. That trust is further damaged when officers are punished for speaking out against corruption in their department.
Maybe, just maybe, the kid in the Fusion article wasn’t being set up because he was black. Maybe it was just because the officer was a dickhead. Like Officer Thompson, who lied about me when I was a teenager when he said I was drunk (didn’t have a drop), and in possession of alcohol (wasn’t holding anything, or with the group he detained). After the other kids fled (I stayed because I was innocent), he arrested me and charged me with all of the charges the kids who ran faced. He lied on his police report. Then he lied again in court. It took me a while to get over that, and start trusting police officers again.
As a society, we have to stop automatically jumping to the bigotry conclusion because of the races of those involved. We should only accuse people of bigotry when there is actual evidence of it. To continue to make baseless race-baiting accusations against anyone, but especially the police, only serves to foment mistrust, hatred, and even violence. Often this animosity gets seeded in people because of false accusations, mythology, and outright lies.
Mostly white constitutionalists have been sounding the corrupt police abuse alarm for a long time before #BlackLivesMatter chic was a thing, and they were all but ignored. Now that many minorities are starting to see what they saw all those years ago, they still aren’t teaming up to hold corrupt law enforcement accountable.
How is it that #BlackLivesMatter protesters, many of whom have rioted and used violence or threats of violence, get a pass in the media? They are trying to propel change they say. Legitimately protesting alleged police abuse they say. Funny how the narrative changes when it’s white guys with cowboy hats who protest the same police and government abuse at a wildlife refuge with far less violence. Those guys are racist, white, right-wing terrorists. They are protesting the exact same thing people.
The debate has raged for some days now … was the killing of al-Awlaki in Yemen illegal?
Rep. Ron Paul says it was, but he says everything is illegal.
There are two primary arguments alleging the illegality of al-Awlaki’s killing.
First, he was a US citizen, and as such, was due a trial.
Second, the US violated international law by assassinating him in Yemen.
Neither argument holds up, both morally or legally.
First I’ll address international law.
Neither the Hague Convention of 1899, or the Protocol Addition to the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid al-Awlaki’s killing by international law. Right off the get go, proponents of this argument are off to a bad start. In fact, the international law community has often taken the stance that killing an adversary can often fall within the confines of international law.
The clauses that traditionally have been construed as prohibiting “targeted killings” are far from clear prohibitions. In the Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (29 July 1899), Article 23b states that it is prohibited “to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” Treachery is not explicitly defined, and it can be argued that using missiles to attack a car in which a target is traveling, while brutal and having a high probability of injuring bystanders, does not fall within the purview of treachery. Similarly, targeted killings can be argued to fall outside the Protocol I Article 37 prohibition on killing, injuring, or capturing “an adversary by resort to perfidy”—described as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Article 37 gives examples of perfidy including “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or surrender” and “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status.”
Basically, you can’t ‘assassinate’ under false-flag circumstances. No such circumstance existed with the al-Awlaki killing. It should be noted that this provision addresses someone belonging to a hostile nation OR army. While al-Awlaki did not belong to a hostile nation, he did belong to a hostile army. This is important later when I argue the relevance of his US citizenship.
In addition to this international law, the US has NO LAW forbidding foreign assassinations. We do, however, have a policy of not undertaking assassinations. Policy does not equal law.
The second component to this operation is that Yemen fully approved, and supported the killing of al-Awlaki. So no argument can be made that we violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation.
The other argument making its way around is that al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal because he was a US citizen. As such, an assassination order by the President of the United States would violate his constitutional right of due process. It should also be noted that al-Awlaki was not the only American killed in the attack.
Al-Awlaki’s ties to terrorism are not in dispute, his actual influence is. So can the president order his killing, or not?
8 U.S.C. § 1481 addresses the issue of US citizenship in situations like this.
(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention ofrelinquishing United States nationality –
(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;
The law also addresses taking up arms against the United States in section 7. Considering al-Awlaki’s Yemeni citizenship, which does not recognize dual-citizenship, and his taking up arms against the US, it would appear that he renounced his US citizenship long ago.
Section 7 automatically revokes his citizenship because of his terrorist activities, but requires capture and tribunal. Since he was in Yemen, we revert to international law which permits his killing in order to prevent a further loss of life. More relevant is local Yemen law. Again, they assisted in the killing of al-Awlaki.
Is his killing a gray area? Only in the perpetually unrefined laws of US citizenship. Laws that most Americans agree need to be revamped, but the law nonetheless.
The only component missing to classify al-Awlaki as a non-citizen appears to be a mere formality of choreographed theater that would only serve to satisfy the selfish needs of third party citizens, not the parties directly involved. It’s pretty clear that al-Awlaki, the US, and Yemen were all on the same page.
Both al-Alwaki and Yemen agree that he is a citizen of Yemen. The US agrees that he revoked his citizenship. Who are you to swoop in and negate those facts?
The only sources of outcry appear to come from the ignorant, and those with a vested interest in ideological pacifism. Not from a position of morality or legality.
Ultimately, this is a debate that will fall upon opinion. If you think al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal, you’ll likely never change your mind. Same goes for those who think it was legally justified. Each individual will have to decide for themselves if international law, US law, or Yemeni law should reign supreme.
I’ve often asked this question in my writings and on my show. Most often, in discussions with the ignorant about Saddam being the innocent victim of Bush/Cheney aggression.
No clear answer has been given by pacifists to the question: “What would justify war?”
The pacifist hordes often give conflicting answers. For example, Ron Paul (who claims a form of pacifism) was interviewed by John Stossel in 2007, and was asked what would justify a war.
If you’re attacked, you have a right and an obligation to defend (your) country. I do not believe there is ever a moral justification to start the war.
That sounds nice, but I found Paul’s answer interesting, and vague. What constitutes an attack? Is it on your property, your citizens, or must it be within your national borders? Pacifists have been unable to clarify this position for me over the years.
What does this have to do with Iraq, and my greater point later?
Before the 2003 Iraq invasion, Saddam was repeatedly ‘attacking’ the US and her allies in a little discussed conflict in the no fly zones. Yet Ron Paul, and others, have frequently said that there was no justification for the invasion of Iraq. So … shooting/attacking US citizens, and destroying US property is not an attack?
I’m of a different viewpoint, and my training to invade Iraq under Clinton proved that even Slick Willy agreed with me.
So why bring this up now? Iraq was a resounding success, and Saddam is dead. Because we may be heading for another war.
Tensions have been rising with Pakistan for years. The killing of Osama bin Laden only catapulted those tensions to the mainstream. During the aftermath of that operation, we clearly learned that Pakistan is no friend of the US. Yet, something far worse was kept from us.
A group of American military officers and Afghan officials had just finished a five-hour meeting with their Pakistani hosts in a village schoolhouse settling a border dispute when they were ambushed — by the Pakistanis.
Yep. Ambushed by the Pakistanis … ahem … allegedly.
Maj. Larry J. Bauguess lost his life in the attack.
This blatant act of war was covered up by both the Pakistanis and Washington. In fact, Pakistan has been well-known to retaliate for collateral damage by US forces with open attacks on US personnel.
Some will blame America for the incident, and say that Pakistan was just retaliating for their losses. An interesting point, albeit one that ignores Pakistan’s hindering our intelligence, and often openly helping the enemy against us.
Then there’s Iran. We know they are sending weapons across the border into Iraq to help kill Americans. There have even been clashes with US and Iranian military forces. Something that was also kept quiet, and has happened more than once.
Right about now someone will say that none of this would happen if we weren’t there to begin with, so we are still the aggressor. That’s about as intelligent as inviting someone over for dinner, and then calling them a burglar.
Am I calling for war with Pakistan or Iran? No.
Were those two incidents justification for war in my opinion? Yes.
I’m saddened that neither party has an option for president that touts legit military credentials. We have, after all, been at war for a decade with no truly experienced military veteran in the White House. Going forward, we may not have an option for peace either. It makes me wonder … how different things would be if a competent military commander were also sitting in the White House.
UPDATE: After neglecting this post for a couple of years, I finally updated it with a few links to new WMD confirmation in January 2017. Scroll down to the bottom for more updates.
This is a post I used to have on my show’s old website. It’s a compilation of several posts of I’ve done in the past, and is only a small amount of the information about WMDs out there. It is, however, more than enough to prove they existed, and were found after the invasion. Some listeners have been requesting it.
Why is it that every time we learn Iraq did have WMDs the press plays the ‘shocked’ card? Just how many times can you pretend to be shocked over the same story as if you’ve never heard it before?
Wikileaks released more documents this last week, and among them yet more evidence that Iraq did have WMDs at the time of the invasion, and we found them.
You’d have to be the intellectual equivalent of an amoeba to not get this by now. Then again, we are talking about the press along with their anti-war cocktail buddies.
So what new information did we learn, and what info has been right under your nose the whole time? You’ll find out after the jump.
