Tang's DW

This does not make the cop right, but it makes the media wrong.

"According to Fox News:

The government’s "Cash for Clunkers" program – pitched as a plan to jump-start U.S. auto sales and clean up the environment by getting gas-guzzling vehicles off the road -- may have been a clunker itself, according to a new economic study.

As evidence for this conclusion, the article goes on to say that people traded in their big gas-guzzling vehicles for small fuel-efficient cars. In other words, the program worked exactly as intended. Fox calls it a failure because the small cars are also cheaper, so the auto industry made less money than they could have if people were buying big expensive gas guzzlers instead.

Boko Haram has a lobby. Back in June 2012, William Minter of the Africa Focus Bulletin (allafrica.com) created a petition to not declare Boko Haram a terrorist organization. This raises the question: Who is this idiot?

A month before creating the MoveOn petition, Minter circulated a petition opposing sanctions on Boko Haram on the grounds that:

1. it would "internationalize" a group that was already part of international al-Qaeda and getting support from all over the place
2. it would show that some attention is being paid to counter-terrorism
3. defeating Boko Haram would "undermine Nigeria's progress on the rule of law" because only the Nigerian state is responsible for human rights abuses, and only a Muslim may be the legitimate ruler of Nigeria
4. it would impede "humanitarian" and "academic" financial support for Boko Haram

Minter's May letter is signed by these idiots: ( long list cut )

What's sad is that many of the people who signed on to this have spent time in Nigeria and ought to know better. I am reminded of an old quote about an idea being so stupid that only an educated man could support it.

I will propose a very, very low bar for analysing a strategic policy proposal. I don't care how long you've studied the region or how many letters you have after your name, but if your proposal would have a measurably worse outcome in terms of human rights and human suffering than Ann Coulter's proposal to invade and torture and kill everything that moves and convert any survivors to Christianity at gunpoint, you suck at peace studies and conflict resolution.

The expertise of some signatories dates back to the '70s, which means they have completely missed the rise of the new fundamentalists over the past 30 years, which means they are not experts at all. To anyone still under the impression that Boko Haram is an African problem arising from local conditions, I prescribe a reading of Revolutionary Sudan, particularly the parts about how the RCC managed conflict with Sudanese traditions.

There is a disconnect between the public and the education system. When close to 100 people who are specialists in their field take a position like this, it should cause a bigger dent in the public consciousness even if they are wrong.

Potentially related: see earlier.

Sourcewatch associates William Minter with Walter Turner, "President of the Board of Directors for several San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits, including Sound Vision, Global Exchange, and the Institute for a New South Africa" and producer/host of Africa Today on Pacifica Radio. About those groups:

• The Sound Vision Foundation is run by Abdul Malik Mujahid who was a member of the Shura council of the ICNA in 1999 and won the American Library Association's Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award in 1990 for a book saying that all of the "Untouchables" of India should convert to Islam.
• Global Exchange is alleged, always by the far right and never convincingly, to be a front for Cuban intelligence. Then you look at the stuff they do and it's hard not to call them a front for Cuban intelligence.
• The Institute for a New South Africa, in Turner's words, "began in the 1980s and continued in the 1990s to build links between communities and city officials in the United States and South Africa" and "did not survive the 1990s", probably because the apartheid government fell.

I found nothing else to link Minter to Turner other than a few appearances of Minter on Turner's radio program.

The Union for a Better Nigeria, which is apparently one guy with a Facebook page, created a competing MoveOn petition to call for President Obama to publicly oppose Boko Haram. I can't tell you the specifics because the page says "Petition Not Available: This petition has been taken down." It is not clear whether it was taken down by the submitter or by MoveOn.

[Edit May 9] Someone at MoveOn took down the Minter petition. "The content of this petition is under review." Down the memory hole and pretend it never happened. Someone must have been embarrassed.

[Edit May 11] Examples of ongoing propaganda on behalf of Boko Haram:

• Nafeez Ahmed of The Guardian blames Boko Haram's attacks on global warming.
• Lindsey German of The Guardian blames Boko Haram's attacks on "the corruption and inequality that the west's economic war has helped to create". This may not be wrong, but in the exact opposite direction of where German is going with this. Signs point to the US, under the direction of Ambassador Johnnie Carson, engaging in an economic war favoring Boko Haram against its enemies.

The al-Jazeera news network is housing exiled Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders at its own expense. Remember hearing that they are unbiased? Remember hearing that they are the only trustworthy source of news in the Middle East, that you should think happy thoughts when you see their name, that the allegation of their alignment with extremists was unfounded? We even kept hearing that after 2010 when it was learned that al-Jazeera's then-director Wadah Khanfar had previously been the director of a Muslim Brotherhood front group, the International Islamic Federation of Student Organisations. Now they are giving literal and material support to the MB. For an analogy, if we found the heads of the KKK living rent-free in the Fox News building (insert "we already did" joke here), wouldn't that raise questions of bias? Now what does this say about everyone who was flogging al-Jazeera?

Glenn Greenwald has promoted al-Qaeda leader Anwar Awlawki, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and he has agreed to be the keynote speaker at a convention of CAIR, aka these guys. He is also gay, which only matters because all of the above think he should be killed for that reason and he supports them. Now what does this say about everyone who has been flogging Greenwald as a serious journalist whose judgement should be trusted?

At a lower profile but also in the news recently, Max Blumenthal became a serious journalist by blaming the Jews collectively for two drunk racist Americans he found in Jerusalem. That somehow gave him credibility. After a few more years of bashing the Jews for daring to live on their own land, Blumenthal condemned the Jews as "non-indigenous" to Judea and told them to "be part of the Arab world" (i.e., convert to Islam) or die. Now what does this say about the "academics" and "journalists" who have been flogging Max Blumenthal?

"Redskins" was a name that certain Native Americans tribes called themselves, which, combined with the lack of the word's use as a pejorative, makes the current controversy over the name nonsensical. Similarly, Crayola changed the name of its "Indian Red" crayon color because it was supposedly offensive to Native Americans to name a crayon color after a pigment from India.

The Independent describes convicted murderers as "political prisoners" and justifies it by saying that they killed for a political cause. By that standard, Charles Manson and Anders Breivik are political prisoners and must be released immediately...

Side note: The Independent cites Amnesty as an authority. Nobody paying attention takes them seriously since they fired Gita Saghal to get on the Taliban's good side.

The cynic in me says that every country runs propaganda in other countries, especially the US, but Norway got caught. One hand of the government was upset enough to release the reports. I wonder how much influence is bought by 250 million kronor ($42.5 million) annually.

Interesting quote: "Norway is, after Qatar and the UAE, the largest foreign government contributor to Brookings..." (later) "Only Qatar and the UAE give more money than Norway two foreign policy research Conducted by think tanks and research institutes, but Norway distributes funds two a wider range of grantees." I would like to see the reports on where they send their money and what they get for it given Qatar's position as one of the leading state sponsors of international terrorism these days.

News item: The Syrian rebels named US technology executive Ghassan Hitto as their leader.

Meta-news item: "So far, U.S. media has completely failed to identify any of these [Muslim Brotherhood leadership] positions held by Mr. Hitto who has now become the fourth U.S. Muslim Brotherhood figure to be identified as part of the Syrian National Council." ( Read more... )

As a side note, Syria and the "rebels" are trading accusations of using chemical weapons on Aleppo. Reuters says that the victims were treated at two specific hospitals. These hospitals are in the western part of Aleppo that is still under Assad's control. In other words, the victims were Assad's people.

Assad is not going to risk being caught firing on his own supporters. He needs all the help he can get, and anybody who would believe the state media is already with him. The attack was almost certainly done by the "rebels".

The Washington Free Beacon obtained emails showing media figures conspiring to smear Elliot Abrams for publicly opposing Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. Members of the private mailing list included Atlantic magazine writer James Fallows; American Conservative magazine editor Scott McConnell; probable Saudi agent Chas Freeman, who is in good standing in this crowd; TruthOut board president Robert Naiman; and David Fenton, founder of the Fenton Communications public relations group.

Fenton worked for the Muslim Brotherhood's campaign to open an arms route to Gaza by pressuring the international community into forbidding anyone from inspecting the shipments; this was also known as the "Free Gaza flotilla". The Turkish group IHH was heavily involved in that campaign. From the book Alms for Jihad, authors J. Millard Burr and Robert Collins describe IHH as:

... founded in Istanbul in 1995 specifically to provide support for the Bosniaks [Izetbegovic's forces]. IHH raised immediate suspicions with Turkish authorities, and was eventually closed for a time in 1998 after investigators found bombs in its Turkish office.

Burr and Collins source this information to the US allegations in the case against Aldurahman Alamoudi, who appears to be the same person as Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who incidentally is the link between al-Qaeda and the Republican party (he shared an office with Grover Norquist). Burr and Collins also write about Al-Fatih Ali Hassanein, "a stalwart follower of Hasan al-Turabi" who "was able to maintain contact from Europe with Turabi, Bin Laden, and Shaykh Omar Abd al-Rahman in New York." On Izetbegovic's behalf, Hassanein founded the Third World Relief Agency which became "the principal humanitarian front for moving arms to Bosnia" [emphasis in Burr/Collins], and he was IHH's contact in Bosnia. In other words, al-Qaeda provided the guns, money, and men for Izetbegovic's war; IHH was founded to provide additional support for the war from Turkish sources; and Fenton provided propaganda support to an IHH project.

Fenton is also a big influence in the Democratic Party and has done work for the Huffington Post, MoveOn, People for the American Way, and other Democratic groups. It is a quite loose connection that demands further knowledge before any conclusion can be made on whether Fenton is guilty of anything. Fenton loudly quit the job after it was reported in the press, but it still is interesting that as one walks closer to the social circles Fenton inhabits, one is more likely to bump into fake peace activists who support terrorism and other wars of aggression. For example, J[ihad] Street was founded by a Fenton executive, and we see David Fenton on the same mailing list as the likes of Chas Freeman and Robert Naiman.

An additional matter of interest is that Fenton's involvement with IHH came on a contract with the state of Qatar, suggesting terrorist funding by a state that is supposed to be a US ally.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole in the sense that ingesting certain substances might help, some right-wing sources commenting on Fenton include World Net Daily, Discover the Networks, and the Capital Research Center.