03.01.14
Posted in Deception at 8:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Media Bias
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The BBC has been accused of yielding to political pressure since the last election and allowing a right-wing bias to emerge in its journalism.
The serious criticism by a distinguished media professor suggests that the BBC has compromised its impartiality by depending too heavily on sources from business, the media, law and order and politics.
Covert Marketing
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Two-time “Worst Company In America” winner Electronic Arts isn’t doing its publicity department any favors. The company’s new freemium game Dungeon Keeper tricks frustrated players into leaving bad reviews on its own site, instead of on the Google Play Store, Gamasutra reports.
Politics
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Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., is defending his actions after he physically threatened a reporter at the Capitol after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
The confrontation began Tuesday when Michael Scotto, a reporter for New York cable news station NY1, asked Grimm about a Justice Department investigation into his campaign finances.
After cutting the interview short, Grimm told Scotto, “You ever do that to me again I’ll throw you off this (expletive) balcony.” He also threatened to “break (Scotto) in half.”
NY1 posted video of the incident on its website.
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The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity (through its Wisconsin Reporter and Watchdog.org websites) has aggressively attacked the “John Doe” probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin’s 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Its outlets have also published new information about the apparent targets of the investigation, but they have omitted an important detail: Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe.
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Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.
Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference) and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.
South Korea
Revisionism
Consumerism and Distraction
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This ad strongly promotes the values of consumerism, and implies that consumerism leads directly to happiness. In the ad, the girls bought these shoes, are wearing them, and are now fashionable, popular, and happy. This message encourages the belief that spending money and obtaining material goods is the only path to happiness for girls. This big lie will lower girls’ self-esteem and perhaps cause them to purchase unnecessary goods in their quest to appear cool and likeable.
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02.25.14
Posted in Deception, Europe, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Insults and lies continue to dominate Microsoft’s arguments against OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Summary: Some more disgusting flame and generally poor coverage from Microsoft apologists who hit the British press
THERE is a war of words between the Microsoft camp and the rest of the world or at least Britain, as we covered here before. The Register, which accepts payments from Microsoft, continues its provocative and very offensive coverage, summarised with: “Even if Microsoft bosses collectively whistled Always Look on the Bright Side of Life they’d still struggle to drown out people backing Cabinet Office proposals to adopt the Open Document Format as the official standard for UK.gov missives.”
That’s because everyone but Microsoft (and its partners) does not want or need OOXML, which is all about crime. Can’t The Register get that?
“In the war of words,” says the author, “it is 1-0 to the open source zealots.”
This is journalism?! It’s more like Microsoft lobbying and propaganda disguised as “reporting”.
The whole article is full of insults. The author is “conflating program with format… dismissing the case for open standards as zealotry,” writes iophk. “The Reg has been crap for years no end in sight” (there were Microsoft payments, whereupon the sceptical eye which The Register once laid on Microsoft pretty much went away).
“Zealous about the right thing,” said the headline of one comment response. “Not “open source zealots”, but “open data zealots”,” stresses the commenter. Notice that ODF is not about FOSS; proprietary software can benefit from it also.
“Fred Flintstone” (pseudonym) wrote: “I rather object to the repeated use of the word “zealots” in the article, which seems to suggest the author has a bias.
“IMHO, choosing proper open formats has got ZERO to do with religion or beliefs, but everything with realistic value assessment.”
There are much better comments in this consultation (British readers, please log in and leave feedback). Microsoft’s attack on ODF in this case is paradoxical for the reasons put in this statement: “This isn’t about switching to open source software, but to a format widely and well-supported by open source office formats [...] The government could continue to run Microsoft Office, but the preferred data format would be ODF. This makes Microsoft’s argument seem to be rather shrill. Why on earth would changing the default format of released documents be a big deal?”
Red Hat’s FOSS site covered this subject, but at the same time it gave this proxy of Microsoft a platform in which to equate FOSS usage with “consuming” (similar to the idea of exploitation and so-called “freeloaders”, which is how Microsoft’s Outercurve staff refers to FOSS users in Red Hat’s very own OpenSource.com).
Microsoft is rallying its British partners, urging them to bamboozle and pressure the British government to drop ODF as a requirement. Don’t let Microsoft monopolise the voice of Brits. Don’t let the company that committed crime pretend that we, the victims, as the bad people (just because we are rightly upset). █
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02.24.14
Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 8:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Slashdot is promoting Microsoft spin/agenda, insinuating that people who dislike Microsoft are irrational and that it’s the equivalent of discrimination
OVER THE PAST few years the blatant Microsoft affinity at Slashdot turned into somewhat of a disease (like in ZDNet, where top-level sections are all about Microsoft and writers are from Microsoft), with additional hires of Microsoft boosters as staff writers and subsequently grooming of the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, and people who work for Microsoft. Selling agenda is the business model now. Slashdot rapidly became a Microsoft mouthpiece, choosing agenda instead of news. No wonder readers are moving elsewhere, abandoning Slashdot and sometimes even boycotting it.
Don’t expect sites like Slashdot to cover what sites like Activist Post are covering, reminding us again that Bill Gates remains an inherently malicious, greedy and selfish individual, spying on children for profit. As Activist Post puts it: “New York state authorities are outsourcing data collection on school kids. The program, which is to be launched state-wide, is supposed to gather information on students starting from the age of five to better “tailor education” to the needs of children.
“New York hired a non-profit private contractor inBloom, funded by the Bill Gates Foundation, as the gatekeeper of this data.”
The latest agenda-selling from Slashdot can be found here, linking to a self-described employee of Microsoft (“Web Platform Team at Microsoft”). Slashdot hardly discloses this relationship, nor does it bother to highlight the fact that Microsoft employment is a choice, not a condition (nobody is born a Microsoft employee). The messenger actually chose to work for the criminal organisation, but now he pretends that the crimes have absolutely nothing to do with him. He is trying to portray disdain for crime as a psychological issue of some kind and to also pretend Microsoft has changed while it’s clear that it did not.
This is a typical Microsoft tactic and Slashdot should be ashamed of itself for pushing this agenda. “Dice publishing shills,” iophk wrote about it, “quite shameless” (here is the alternative link he sent).
The Microsoft spinner says: “I think that Microsoft is very aware of perceptions and is actively trying to counter them by actually being open. I’d say we’re more concerned than a Google or Apple about how folks perceive us.”
Nonsense. Marketing. His closing words are: “I said, find a new reason to hate Microsoft. I didn’t kill your Pappy, son.”
What utter nonsense. He uses projection from collective to personal in an attempt to cleanse his employer from liability for crimes.
“Scott Hanselman disagrees,” Mr. Robert Pogson responds. “He claims we should forget history.”
It’s not just history, it’s the present too, including bribes, racketeering, etc.
To quote further from Pogson: “Bill Gates offered to pay Intuit to ship IE instead of Netscape. That’s not a business deal. That’s a criminal conspiracy to drive Netscape out of business. That’s what Bill Gates is all about, harming others going about their businesses. He’s still in charge last time I checked.”
Lastly, here is where Pogson addresses the deception pattern which is to equate choice with a condition: “Hatred like any mind-set can be rational or irrational. We are right to hate the dog chewing on the kid. We take brisk action to deal with that evil. We are wrong to hate someone for something they can’t help like skin colour, genes, or their ancestral home. There’s nothing anyone can or should do about things like that. Microsoft? It’s definitely in the rational hatred category. M$ is out to get us. It has been from early on in its existence and it’s still run by the same people. Some have changed. But Gates and Ballmer are still around. They are evil people trying to harm us all by supporting and exploiting monopoly to do unspeakable things in IT, meddling with the business of software development, manufacturing, retailing, end-users to enrich itself at the expense of everyone else. Proper businesses serve customers, not enslave them.”
Nobody hates Microsoft staff for racial reasons, but it’s easy for Microsoft to try and spin it like that, especially with its new CEO (we covered this before and predicated this move last year). People hate the choice to commit crimes and the choice to join criminals.
Slashdot could not defend the editorial choice by saying it’s newsworthy. It’s not news, it’s not noteworthy, and there is a conflict of interest here. █
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02.19.14
Posted in Deception, Microsoft at 7:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Like branding profiteering “goodwill”
Summary: Branding “change” using names like “Nadella” or “Gates” won’t change the reality that Microsoft continues to be a unique company of systematic crime
Microsoft is still a FUD company and racketeering giant which relies on briberies and other serious abuses all around the world. Don’t be confused by persona marketing. Merely changing a face does not change the policies, which are to embrace crime where possible and where legal action is unlikely to possible (or fines unlikely to exceed the “cost of doing business”). Microsoft is like its close partner, the NSA, in this regard. The law is not being obeyed unless the cost of breaking the law somehow becomes too much of a financial liability.
Nadella has been groomed as part of a Microsoft PR campaign. It was all over the Web and quoting Microsoft staff (posing as ‘journalists’), Ken Starks falls into the trap. He says: “Some of you have talked to me and think that Satya Nadella will be the peacemaker. He will be the one who finally shows the world how open source and proprietary software can work together, that sharing some of Microsoft’s code base is just a matter of time.”
This is nonsense. It’s just another Sam Ramji [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] routine. They think that by changing the face they’ll be able to find more fools to open the door to a Trojan horse.
To Starks’ credit, he says “Microsoft is still beholden to their shareholders and Linux bears some nasty scars from deep wounds. I’m not sure that some of the FOSS powers-that-be will want to work with Microsoft.”
They hopefully won’t. Ballmer and especially Gates are still in charge. They are just hiding their racketeering, bribery, FUD and back-stabbing behind yet another face, this time Nadella’s.
Microsoft is changing only in the sense that it’s becoming irrelevant. Its gross behaviour has not changed; it’s just trying harder to hide it. █
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02.17.14
Posted in Deception, Finance, Microsoft at 9:40 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
From Twitpic
Summary: CBS, a widely-known example of propaganda channels, misreports or diverts attention away from reporting about crimes of clients and allies
When covering Microsoft Nokia, ZDNet‘s Microsoft Zack (former Microsoft staff, now doing Microsoft privacy and antitrust spin, not to mention Google/Linux FUD) conveniently ignores Microsoft’s own tax evasion (including conviction in India), put aside the world’s most massive personal tax evasion by Microsoft’s spiritual leader. This is very typical when it comes to reporting about Microsoft by Microsoft moles, ‘former’ staff, and PR folks masquerading as “journalists” (Microsoft Zack is one of many). It’s propaganda, but it’s cleverly disguised (required skill from writers).
The other day it turned out that Gates’ tax-exempt investments in energy companies ended up in a bankruptcy. As one person put it: “Bill Gates’ Texas energy company has filed for bankruptcy protection as the depressed power market results in untenable financial losses.
“The company, Optim Energy (EnergyCo LLC), owned by a Gates investment fund, filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy papers on Wednesday for its three power plants in eastern Texas, citing their inability to counter growing losses in the current market.”
So maybe Bill Gates can spend more money on his existing investments in Exxon and Shell, two murderous companies that pollute our world and poison poor people so that Gates can increase his wealth (as a large shareholder). As Sosumi put it (in IRC), “so much talk for “renewables” and yet Billy’s powerplants runned on coal and natural gas… but wait, there’s a catch… if he was indeed running “renewables”, he’d have gotten a bailout” (Gates already benefited from bank bailouts in Ireland because he was a shareholder).
What we have here is the extension of Microsoft’s financial corruption. The company was not only bribed by the CIA/NSA (as documents released last year reveal) but it also received tax exemptions worth billions after it had installed a mole (former employee, Mr. Hunter) in the US government. This is serious corruption, but white-collar crime is treated differently from most other crimes. In CBS, white-collar crime is either glorified or overlooked. It’s corporate press that’s designed to serve Power. Just look who owns CBS.
Speaking of financial corruption, Xbox has been losing billions of dollars, but CNET (part of CBS, just like ZDNet, which is also renowned for directing and broadcasting NSA advertisements) never mentions that. XBox One is so far behind the competition that it’s likely to be losing billions of dollars again.
Sosumi said that “best thing actually happening would be Microsoft amputating their game division… but on the other hand, what about the embarrassment and money lost?”
People have already died because Microsoft Xbox machines went up in flames. DaemonFC reminded us that “Consumer Reports said that Ford got a lower reliability rating this year in part because of “MyTouch” problems. (Microsoft software)” (so much for proprietary “quality”).
So, at the end of the day we have corrupt companies being bailed out, bribed, and exempted from tax simply because they have some connections in government. Don’t expect ZDNet to report it; its so-called reporters used to work for Microsoft (some still work for Microsoft while also ‘reporting’ in ZDNet). █
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02.13.14
Posted in Bill Gates, Deception, Microsoft at 11:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Slashdot is being liquidated and the community of Slashdot threatens a boycott of the site
SELLING OUT IS VERY EASY. Earning status and maintaining one’s integrity in the face of temptation is hard. There are always some Sugar Daddies out there, looking to buy themselves positive coverage from seemingly credible sources that would otherwise criticise them. Examples from the UK include The ‘Guardian’ and BBC, both of which accepted a bribe from Bill Gates’ shell entity in an implicit exchange of favours (agenda-pushing for money).
A new report today reveals that The ‘Guardian’ opens its doors even further for the agenda of rich and powerful companies [1]. This trend not limited to such general news sites though; even technology sites go down the same route in pursuit of Sugar Daddies. A lot of them justify it by saying that reporting requires money, hence sellout as a business model is ‘just’.
Not too long ago we covered the mess which was going on at Slashdot and SourceForge, which turned into Microsoft and Bill Gates promotion tools. They even hired longtime Microsoft boosters and former Microsoft staff, just like the BBC had done.
Following the latest scandals at SourceForge [2,3] we had a lot of discussion about it in Techrights IRC (Slashdot managers even came to the channel in attempts to appease) and last week we got a lot of discussion about Dice driving Slashdot into its death with video ads, Microsoft agenda, etc. Slashdot without a community is a dead site because it derives its value from readers and their comments. Our readers who used to like Slashdot said that Dice was essentially liquidating the sites (squeezing the goose for golden eggs) by making the best moves to alienate the readers, i.e. annoy them in exchange for some money/a “quick buck”. Bruce Pernes, who has been very prolific in Slashdot, is saying now in Slashdot that he’s seriously thinking about bringing Technocrat back (Slashdot for grown-ups as he calls it). Last night we made significant changes in Tux Machines, adopting a more Slashdot-like style (in the format/layout sense). It is still the site to follow for very quick and high-quality selection of GNU/Linux and FOSS news — something which Techrights has not been doing as of late (news is not covered quickly enough anymore). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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While it’s generally better not to judge too quickly, I think it’s reasonable that people are holding SourceForge to account for some of their decisions. People who download open source software do not expect to get other applications bundled with them.
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It was like Cooks Source all over again, just without the catchphrase “But honestly Monica.”
It’s been all over the web for the last week or two that the photo imaging program GIMP, a FOSS crown jewel, has dropped SourceForge as a download site. Although the GIMP folks had been a little concerned over some advertisements on SourceForge, the real reason appears to be DevShare, which bundles third party offers with open source downloads for install on Windows machines.
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02.09.14
Posted in Deception at 10:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Putin in KGB uniform
Summary: Roundup of news about foreign policy that puts in perspective Russia’s own human rights abuses
Russia-hostile coverage of the Olympic games in Sochi is of course politically motivated. Coverage in the Western press is openly Russophobic, meaning that it’s actually driven by suppressed fear (phobia). Russia is definitely not good when it comes to human rights, but the press in the West may no longer be in a position of moral high ground. It takes many angles, such as gay rights, surveillance, and scepticism of US undercover agents [1,2]. Don’t pay too much attention to the hypocritical aspects of it all. The US, when it comes to many of those angle (including counter-terrorism and espionage), is hardly any better. Let’s look at some of the recent examples from the news.
“Russia and China are not extrajudicially assassinating thousands of people with air-to-ground missiles, neither domestically nor overseas.”First of all, trials over the “no fly” list prove to be a sham [3], and secret agents show that they simply don’t obey the law [4] and don’t think that they need to [5]. To them, even protests can now be viewed as “terrorism” [6]. This is what we should expect from Stalin, not the US. It’s a shame because the US used to stand for higher moral values.
Moving on down the news, Lithuania orders probe of CIA torture [7] and Poland too gets involved [8]. Bush started this tradition of torture 12 years ago [9] and Obama continues the tradition, which is beyond controversial, even among US citizens [10] (the US population hardly endorses this). A former CIA analyst who became a critic of the CIA recalls the important role played by Rep. Otis Pike, who is now dead [11]. Back when some elements of Congress and the White House ‘dared’ to confront the CIA (as Kennedy did before he was assassinated) Pike played an important role in fighting the NSA, CIA, etc. His death at this stage is somewhat poetic. The voices of opposition [12] are dying away, especially in the government. According to “Republican” Web sites (masquerading as “news”), the CIA has been grossly lying about Benghazi [13-15]. So-called “Democrat” Web sites are interested in keeping their clients in Congress, so they hardly bother reporting it.
In a Democrats-friendly newspaper, the New York Times, one writer asks “How Many Non-Combatants Are Killed by Drones?” [16]
This is a meaningless question because it uses the nebulous term “combatant”, which according to another (years older) report from the New York Times just means “adult male” (same as “militant”). In Pakistan, the CIA halted assassinations for about a month now [17-23] because an alternative approach is being attempted, not the extrajudicial assassination (by CIA) of people on NSA-gathered lists. After war crimes in Iraq [24] and growing hatred due to drone strikes in countries like Yemen [25] it seems reasonable to give peace a chance. It would not be beneficial to CIA budget (and NSA’s too), but it would at least respect people’s lives and help regain some consent/approval from the public. South Sudan has oil now, so expanders of militarism now eye this other region [26] (we covered this before). Opposition to drones has grown strong enough (with movies [27,28], protests [29] and articles [30-34]) to potentially ground (not crash [35]) the drones, but as the CIA-connected paper put it [36], it will be hard to cut budgets. The army-friendly press says [37] that “an international agreement before the U.S. modus operandi becomes the international norm.”
So, going back to Russia, put in perspective this older superpower’s policy. It is not necessarily the worst abuser of human rights. Russia and China are not extrajudicially assassinating thousands of people with air-to-ground missiles, neither domestically nor overseas.
What’s needed right now — universally –is respect for human rights, digital rights (like privacy) and other types of values. What we don’t need is hypocrisy, partisanship, and political manipulations by propaganda. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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We already wrote about the release of Judge Alsup’s ruling in the Rahinah Ibrahim case. However, I wanted to do a second post, concerning one of the issues that first grabbed our attention about the case — the fact that Ibrahim’s daughter, a US citizen, was put on the no fly list and blocked from flying to the US to be a witness at the trial. The DOJ insisted that this was untrue and the daughter had simply missed her flight — claims that were later proven to be outright lies. At the time, it appeared that Judge Alsup was not at all happy about this, and we hoped that this would result in some sort of sanctions or punishment for the federal government lying to a federal judge.
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The CIA has confirmed that it is obliged to follow a federal law barring the collection of financial information and hacking into government data networks.
But neither the agency nor its Senate overseers will say what, if any, current, recent or desired activities the law prohibits the CIA from performing – particularly since a section of the law explicitly carves out an exception for “lawfully authorized” intelligence activities.
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Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan last week was asked at a Senate hearing if the agency is subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law that protects computer networks belonging to the government and to financial institutions from unauthorized access.
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Indeed, the government arbitrarily labels anyone it doesn’ t like – including American citizens – as “terrorists”.
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A Lithuanian court has ordered an investigation of the torture of a Saudi Arabian terrorism suspect by Central Intelligence Agency operatives at a secret prison in the small Baltic nation.
Amnesty International reports the Vilnius Regional Court has ordered a probe into the torture of Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who was sent to Lithuania via extraordinary rendition after being captured in Pakistan and handed over to US authorities in 2003.
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Polish prosecutors may seek access to terror suspects detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay for direct questioning as part of an investigation into whether a secret CIA prison operated here in 2002-2003, an official said Thursday.
The prosecutors would need U.S. permission to question prisoners held at Guantanamo and are weighing whether to make a request. Washington has provided little help to Poland’s investigation, which was launched in 2008, and has already denied an appeal from Warsaw for assistance in gathering evidence.
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Today marks the 12th anniversary of a Bush Administration Military Order accepting the advice of counsel that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that detainees are not legally entitled to humane treatment. This decision to violate international law would open the door to one of the darkest chapters in recent U.S. history: years of torture that we are still grappling with today.
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Very little is known about many of the activities at the Central Intelligence Agency. Even the stories that are revealed in the press are not able to give us the entire picture of what this agency is doing behind the scenes. Ring of Fire co-host Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. discusses the murky history of the CIA with author and former CIA attorney John Rizzo.
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In the mid-1970s, Rep. Otis Pike led a brave inquiry to rein in the excesses of the national security state. But the CIA and its defenders accused Pike of recklessness and vowed retaliation, assigning him to a political obscurity that continued to his recent death, as Lisa Pease recounts.
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As a former soldier and war resister, I no longer suffer from a military fetish. I’m not interested in war porn, not aroused by excessive on-screen violence. As a veteran, it might surprise you to hear that I am not interested in how Private Ryan was saved, or how the Brothers became a Band in the killing fields of Europe by killing the proverbial ‘bad guy’. I’m more interested in learning what brought these men to the killing fields. The background story, the political dimension; why these old men in Washington sent these young men to slaughter and die, and who profits from the carnage. But these inquiries hardly ever survive the cutting room floor.
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The recently-released bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi sheds new light on the role of Michael Morell, the CIA’s former deputy director, in the official “talking points” explanations put forward after the attack.
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Regardless of Barack Obama’s unwillingness to answer Bill O’Reilly’s questions in the pre-Super Bowl interview, the White House led cover up of the truth behind the Benghazi attack won’t die.
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Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California, urged the nation’s intelligence leaders today to get behind an important idea: The Obama administration, he said, should publish an annual report on American drone strikes, showing how many combatants and especially how many non-combatants are killed by unmanned aircraft each year.
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In the interview with Bloomberg, Khan said terrorism would be fueled if talks failed and a military operation followed.
The peace negotiations between the government and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan will probably fail and a resulting military operation would lead to more violence, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairperson Imran Khan told Bloomberg.
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The Obama administration will narrow its controversial drone program in Pakistan to target a short list of high-level terrorists, and aim to end it during the prime minister’s current term, senior U.S. officials have told their Pakistani counterparts.
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The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to U.S. officials.
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Peace talks between Pakistani authorities and the Taliban (TTP) have been delayed or derailed at least four times since January 2013 because of US drone strikes on high-ranking militants, the Bureau has found.
It is now 43 days since the last reported US drone strike in Pakistan – the longest hiatus in over two years. Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based reporter who is part of the team negotiating with the TTP on behalf of the Pakistani government, confirmed to the Bureau that Islamabad had asked the US for a cessation of drone strikes during the latest round of peace talks, which started today.
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Pakistan on Thursday said it wanted a complete end to US drone strikes and not a decrease in their frequency.
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The media cover-up has been a weapon in the crimes of western states since the first world war.
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The Pentagon’s recently created East Africa Response Force (EARF) is here. Its soldiers flew at short notice to South Sudan in December to protect the US embassy and its staff, a lesson learnt from the catastrophic attack on the poorly defended US consulate in Benghazi.
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Greenwald embodies the populism of George Bailey and the sly delight of a spy handed a secret dossier. His Brave New Films has skewered Wal-Mart, Fox News (Bill O’Reilly despises him) and the conservative politics of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Greenwald’s narratives have criticized the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and his latest documentary condemns the Obama administration’s drone program for killing civilians in Pakistan and other countries in a misguided strategy to combat terror.
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The UK and France have this funny relationship, but let’s not get into that. They’ve both signed a treaty to get rid of nuclear weapons but the UK government has already spent billions making the parts to renew Trident, our current nuclear arsenal, despite the vote on whether or not to renew it being in 2016. On top of this, at a time of huge cuts, austerity and job losses especially within local councils, our Prime Minister David Cameron met with French President Francois Hollande at Brize Norton RAF base to make a deal on a new, more autonomous drone, at a cost of £120m to the taxpayer. I stood outside with a banner.
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You have heard testimony that Weaponized Drones, including those flown from Hancock Air National Guard Base are on the front line of illegal wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries around the world. You have heard testimony that Armed Drones threaten civilian populations in these countries, and contrary to government assertions, kill indiscriminately, leaving a trail of dead civilians in their wake. Even the oft affirmed ‘militant’ target is a civilian in most cases, perhaps in every case depending whether American combatants can be said to be engaged in a legal war. According to Customary International Law and numerous treaties which I will now elaborate, these wars of aggression are illegal.
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This culture of secrecy underscores the reality that real drone reform is on the verge of conclusively failing to launch. Despite months of political fury and negative press, the drone program and its worst impulse — to kill without accountability for who is killed and why — are poised to become a permanent part of the way the United States conducts counterterrorism.
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On January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama authorized his first drone strike. The attack, launched against a compound in northwestern Pakistan, killed between 7 and 15 people—but missed the Taliban hideout the Central Intelligence Agency thought it was targeting. Over the next five years, the CIA carried out more than 390 known drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (The agency carried out 51 drone strikes between 2004 and 2009, during the Bush administration.)
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Brace yourself: George W. Bush’s former attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, is arguing publicly that the Obama administration’s drone war exceeds legal limits on executive authority. As anyone with a memory of Gonzales’s tenure under Bush knows, this is more than a little ironic.
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Expect the activism to grow.
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An unmanned drone from Holloman Air Force Base crashed at White Sands National Monument.
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Over the weekend, my colleague Marjorie Censer published a story that tells us a lot about why the U.S. military costs so much: Legislators won’t let the people in uniform spend less money, even when expensive programs outlive their usefulness. In this case, it’s the iconic tank, which BAE Systems has built in York, Pa., since the 1960s. Though modern warfare requires more long-range systems like drones and missiles than overwhelming force on the ground, Congress has continued to give the Army more money than it’s even asked for to keep building expeditionary fighting vehicles.
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We need an international agreement before the U.S. modus operandi becomes the international norm.
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02.07.14
Posted in Deception, Marketing, Microsoft at 9:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The latest lies from Canalys are basically Microsoft promotion disguised as “just statistics”
WE HAVE REPEATEDLY seen and reported dubious claims of Microsoft “success” in mobile because it always turns out to be baseless propaganda, often from Microsoft-paid entities.
We are again seeing all sorts of ridiculous claims about Microsoft mobile “success” (tiny gains) — claims that are mostly thrown around for promotion by Microsoft booster and shameless (at times AstroTurfing) PR agencies. The Microsoft boosters really need some source to cite if they sell an illusion and ZDNet (part of ) is a popular source because there’s lots of Microsoft staff and boosters there, masquerading as “journalists” (Microsoft Zack, for example, plays the Microsoft “privacy” card at ZDNet these days, omitting his employment at Microsoft). ZDNet‘s worst writer, Rachel King (we covered her for propaganda and PR before), writes that “Windows Mobile is coming on the strongest, poised to be the biggest disruptor in 2014.” [1]
Oh, really?
This reminds us of familiar deception from Microsoft- and Apple-funded firms like Net Applications (no longer cited anymore; maybe after a while they stop funding disgraced entities and move on to another, just as they do with their lobbyists).
Canalys and its shameless lies are already debunked thoroughly by Tomi Ahonen [2]. “On Mythbusters today,” he wrote, “did Windows Phone really grow more last year than Android and iOS? We put Canalys to the test. And also in today’s program the Microsoft way to cook your books. Mythbusters team tires to turn a yes into a no. How can you tell the opposite of the truth through the magic of statistics.”
Remember when IDC was paid by Microsoft to make fake market share studies and also to push out to the press (not just IDG) bogus claims? Microsoft did the same with Gartner. So the question remains, what is the relationship (if any) between Canalys and Microsoft? We might never know. It took a long while to discover that Microsoft had paid Net Applications and also had former staff there (prolonging the myths around market share). It was not an isolated incident or example. We covered many more. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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For quite awhile now, there has been no question about which operating system dominates the smartphone market, domestic or worldwide. Android’s reach is not slowing down either, based on a new report from global market research firm Canalys.
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Mark Twain quoted Benjamin Disraeli saying that there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. This is the mythbusters edition about Canalys the supposedly professional mobile industry analyst house who would like to sell you their expensive reports. its been a while since we’ve had to do some work as the industry’s stats police but unfortunately for the supposedly trustworthy Canalys, this is already the second time they are on our agenda.
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